wander through that city, the city of the dead.
I walked and walked. How small that city was, measured against the other city in which we live! And yet how far the dead outnumber the living! We need houses and spacious streets and ample room, so that there may be space for the four generations that look upon the light of day at the same time, and drink water from the spring and wine from the vines, and eat bread from the wheat of the plains. But there is scarcely anything — scarcely anything — for all these generations of the dead, for all these steps of humanity descending down to us. The earth takes them back, and oblivion gathers them in. Farewell!
And suddenly, at the edge of the cemetery, I realized that I was in its oldest part, where those whose deaths lie far in the past have become mingled with the soil, where the crosses themselves have grown old, and where the cemetery's new arrivals will likely be laid tomorrow. The place was full of roses that had known no share of care, and of strong, magnificent cypress trees. What a mournful, beautiful garden, fed upon human flesh! I drew into myself beneath a green tree and hid myself completely among the thick, desolate branches, and waited, clinging to the trunk of the tree as a drowning man whose ship has broken up clings to a plank.
When the darkness had grown deep I left my hiding place and began to walk gently, deliberately, with mute steps, over that earth filled with the dead. I wandered long, but I could not find her tomb a second time. I went on searching, my arms outstretched, my hands and feet and knees and chest — even my head — knocking against the tombs. And still I could not find her. I kept on searching like a blind man groping his way. I felt the stones, the crosses, the iron railings, the metal wreaths, and the wreaths of
withered flowers, and I read the names with my fingers — read the names by passing my fingertips over the letters. What a night, what a night! I could not find the beloved a second time.
And there was no moon on the horizon. What a night! I was terrified — terribly terrified — in those narrow passages between two rows of graves. Graves! Graves!
Graves! Nothing but graves! To my right, to my left, before me, around me, everywhere — graves! I sat down on one of them, for I was unable to keep up the search. My knees were in the grip of exhaustion. I could hear the beating of my heart. And I heard something else as well. What did I hear? A confused noise that has no name
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