In the bus on his way to work he saw a woman, an immigrant from an Arab country, sobbing on the back seat, while a little girl, probably her daughter, aged seven or eight, comforted her by repeating over and over again, “He didn’t do it on purpose.” At that instant the word “purpose,” good purpose, bad purpose, not on purpose, suddenly seemed to contain one of the secrets of existence: love and death, loneliness, desire, and jealousy, and the wonders of light and forest, mountains, plains, and water—is there or is there not a purpose in these things? Is there or is there not a purpose in the basic similarity between you and the lizard, between a vine leaf and your hand? Is there or is there not a purpose in the fact that your life is trickling away day by day between burned-out kettles and dead cockroaches and the lessons of the Great Revolt? The word “trickling,” which he had stumbled across many years before in Pascal’s Pensées, struck him as cruelly apposite, as though Pascal had selected it after delving into his, Fima’s, life, just as he himself studied the life of Yoezer even though Yoezer’s parents were not yet born. And what might the wizened Sephardic señor dozing on a wicker stool in front of the haberdashery shop think of Pascal’s gamble, in which, according to its author, the gambler cannot lose? And can a wager which one can only win properly be called a gamble? And by the way, would His Worship please explain Hiroshima or Auschwitz? Or the death of the Arab child? Or the sacrifice of Ishmael and Isaac? Or the fate of Trotsky? I am that I am? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? His Worship is silent. His Worship is dozing. His Worship is smiling. His Worship is amused. Amen. Meanwhile, Fima missed his stop and had to get off at the next one. Despite which, he did not forget to thank the driver and say good-bye. As he always did.

At the clinic he found Tamar Greenwich alone. The two doctors had gone to sort something out at the tax office and would not be back till four o’clock or so. “Yesterday, when you didn’t come to work,” Tamar said, “it was a really crazy day. And today it’s completely quiet. There’s nothing to do except answer the phone. We could have an orgy. Except your shirt’s buttoned wrong. You missed a button. Tell me, Fima, can you think of a river in Eastern Europe, three letters beginning with B?”