In the bus on the way to work he thought over what Mrs. Schoenberg had said about the doleful informer, and said to himself: To be forgotten by God is not necessarily to be doomed. On the contrary, it may mean becoming as light and free as a lizard in the desert. He brooded on the similarity between two Hebrew verbs, the one meaning “forget” and the other “dwindle” or “die away.” The most wretched fate was not to be forgotten but, precisely, to fade away. Will, longings, memories, carnal desires, curiosity, passion, gladness, generosity—everything gradually faded. As the wind died in the mountains, so the spirit too expired. Indeed, even pain decreased somewhat with the passage of the years, but then, together with pain, other signs of life also declined. The simple, silent, primal things, those things that every child greeted with excitement and wonderment, such as the succession of the seasons, a kitten scampering in the yard, a door swiveling on its hinges, the life cycle of plants, swelling fruit, whispering pines, a column of ants on the veranda, the play of light on the valleys and the hillsides, the pallor of the moon and its halo, spiders’ webs laden with dewdrops in the early morning, the miracles of breathing, speech, twilight, water boiling and water freezing, the glitter of the midday sun on a any sliver of glass, so many primal things that we once had but have lost. Things never to return. Or, worse, they will return rarely, glimmering in the distance, while the original excitement will have vanished forever. And everything is dimmed and dissolved. Life itself is gradually growing dusty and grubby. Who will win in France? What will the Likud central committee decide? Why was the article rejected? How much does a managing director earn? How will the minister respond to the charges that have been leveled at him?