Shloma smiled to himself: by the explosion of his nostrils God must have given him a sign that spring was here. This was a surer sign than the arrival of storks, and from then on days would be interrupted by these detonations, which, lost in the hubbub of the city, would punctuate its events from various directions like a witty commentary.

"Shloma," I called out from our low first-floor window.

Shloma noticed me, smiled his pleasant smile, and saluted.

"We are alone in the whole square, you and I," I said softly, because the inflated globe of the sky resounded like a barrel.

"You and I," he repeated with a sad smile. "How empty is the world today!"

We could have divided it between us and renamed it, so open, unprotected, and unattached was the world. On such a day the Messiah advances to the edge of the horizon and looks down on the earth. And when He sees it, white, silent, surrounded by azure and contemplation, He may lose sight of the boundary of clouds that arrange themselves into a passage, and, not knowing what He is doing, He may descend upon earth. And in its reverie the earth won't even notice Him, who has descended onto its roads, and people will wake up from their afternoon nap remembering nothing. The whole event will be rubbed out, and everything will be as it has been for centuries, as it was before history began.

"Is Adela in?" Shloma asked with a smile.

"There is no one at home, come up for a moment and I'll show you my drawings."

"If there is no one in, I shall do so with pleasure if you will open the door."

And looking left and right in the gateway, with the gait of a sneak thief he entered the house.

IV

"These are wonderful drawings," Shloma said, stretching out his arm with the gesture of an art connoisseur. His face lit up with the reflection of color and light. Then he folded his hand round his eye and looked through this improvised spyglass, screwing up his features in a grimace of earnest appreciation.

"One might say," he said, "that the world has passed through your hands in order to renew itself, in order to molt in them and shed its scales like a wonderful lizard. Ah, do you think I would be stealing and committing a thousand follies if the world weren't so outworn and decayed, with everything in it without its gliding, without the distant reflection of divine hands? What can one do in such a world? How can one not succumb and allow one's courage to fail when everything is shut tight, when all meaningful things are walled up, and when you constantly knock against bricks, as against the walls of a prison? Ah, Joseph, you should have been born earlier."

We stood in the semidarkness of my vast room, elongated in perspective toward the window opening on the square. Waves of air reached us in gentle pulsations, settling down on the silence. Each wave brought a new load of silence, seasoned with the colors of distance, as if the previous load had already been used up and exhausted. That dark room came to life only by the reflections of the houses far beyond the window, showing their colors in its depth as in a camera obscura. Through the window one could see, as through a telescope, the pigeons on the roof of the police station, puffed up and walking along the cornice of the attic. At times they rose up all at once and flew in a semicircle over the square. The room brightened for a moment with their fluttering wings, broadened with the echo of their flight, and then darkened when they settled down again.

"To you, Shloma," I said, "I can reveal the secret of these drawings. From the very start I had some doubts whether it was really I who made them. Sometimes they seem to me unintentional plagiarism, something that has been suggested to me or remembered ... As if something outside me had used by inspiration for an unknown purpose. For I must confess to you," I added softly, looking into his eyes. "I have found the great Original . . ."

"The Original?" he asked, and his face lit up.

"Yes indeed, look for yourself," I said kneeling in front of a chest of drawers. I first took out from it Adela's silk dress, then a box of her ribbons, and finally her new shoes with high heels. The smell of powder and scent filled the air. I took out some books: in the bottom of the drawer lay the long unseen, precious, beloved script.

"Shloma," I said trembling with emotion, "look, here it is . . ."

But he was deep in thought, with one of Adela's shoes in his hand, looking at it mediatively.

"God did not say anything of the kind," he said, "and yet my conviction is total. I cannot find any arguments to the contrary. These lines are irresistible, amazingly accurate, and final, and like lightning illuminate the very center of things.