As the hills fell back behind the wayfarers the inn began to take shape in the pearl-coloured haze, and the day Joseph rested for the first time in this inn rose up in his memory with the long-forgotten wanderers whom he had succoured on the occasion: the wizened woman in her black rags and the wizened child in hers. They came up from the great desert and for the last fifteen days had only a little camel’s milk, so they had said, and like rats they huddled together to eat the figs he distributed.
He had seen the inn many times since then and the thought came into his mind that he would never see it again. But men are always haunted by thoughts of an impending fate, he said to himself, which never befalls. But it has befallen mine ass to tire under my weight, he cried. He must be very tire
