When he got off the bus, he muttered like a captious old man: “Wordplay. Empty wordplay.” Because suddenly his earlier juggling with the words for “forget” and “dwindle” or “die away” struck him as so cheap that he did not even say thank you or good-bye to the driver as he got off the bus, which he was always very particular about doing, even in moments of absent-mindedness, including yesterday when he inadvertently got off at the wrong stop.

Fima stood in the gray street for a moment or two, among dead leaves and scraps of paper blowing in the wind. He concentrated on the whisper of damp pines behind the stone walls, and he stared at the departing bus. What had he left on the bus? A book? An umbrella? An envelope? Perhaps a small package? Something belonging to Tamar? Or to Annette Tadmor? “Cranes wheel and whirl”: a forgotten line from an old children’s song suddenly came back to him. He consoled himself with the hope that what he had forgotten on the seat was merely the copy of Ma’ariv that he found there. Thanks to the minister and the cranes, he could not even remember the headlines.

24

Shame and Guilt

IN THE GARDEN, AS HE WALKED ALONG THE PAVED PATH THAT LED around the small block of flats to the clinic, he stopped and stood for a moment, because from the second floor, through closed windows, wind, and rustling pine trees, there came the sound of a cello. One of the old women, or perhaps a pupil, was practicing the same scales over and over again.