You wait. You wait a minute of hope and days of hopelessness. Sometimes you just wait, there’s no greater… — Bernard Malamud

If only his innocence were written on a sheet of paper, he could pull it out and say, ‘Read, it’s all here,’ but since it was hidden in himself they would know it only if they sought it, and they were not seeking.

He had learned, it wasn’t easy; the experience was his; it was worse than that, it was he. He was the experience. It also meant that now he was somebody else than he had been, who would have thought it? So I learned a little, he thought, I learned this but what good will it do me? Will it open the prison doors? Will it allow me to go out and take up my poor life again? Will it free me a little once I am free? Or have I only learned to know what my condition is – that the ocean is salty as you are drowning, and though you knew it you are drowned? Still, it was better than not knowing. A man had to learn, it was his nature.

‘Little brother,’ he said to Yakov, making the sign of the cross over him, ‘don’t lose hope. The stones of the bridge may crumble but the truth will come out.’

‘And till then,’ sighed the fixer, ‘what of my wasted youth?’