A chirping in the wires means that a bus is coming. Ordinarily, one of the alighting passengers hurries ahead of the rest and one lags behind. In the summer, when the passengers jump off the running board in their bright-colored clothes, they look like tumbling ninepins or a riotous band of red-, white-, and brown-skins; in the winter, disguised in their dark clothing and lit by the arc lamps at the turnaround, like refugees or pilgrims. (On this score, we are one with the red Indians.) In batches, they hurry across the little bridge. Not all the homecomers swing their bags like that child now. Rarely does one of the walkers stop and look down at the water (at the most, someone will set his burden down for a moment or shift it to the other hand); a few tap their sticks or umbrellas on the planks. Seldom does one of the bridge crossers curse, grumble, or laugh; but once in a while you hear a narrative note: “When my father …” A squeaky shopping cart; a springy baby carriage; a purring electric wheelchair. Then a little stage business: two schoolboys take advantage of the bridge for an exchange they have just agreed upon in the bus, while an adult, after tossing his coin in the box, takes a newspaper out of the plastic bag fastened to the railing. An old woman doubled up with gout stops on the hump of the bridge and squints up at the weather. “Smarty up there does just what he pleases.”
The laggard is a young woman; the many different-colored clips in her pinned-up hair glitter and sparkle as she crosses the bridge.
For a moment, the empty bridge is suffused with feminine perfume.
After an interval comes a horse-drawn carriage adorned with garlands and crowded with musicians on their way from one performance to another; they have put their clarinets, trumpets, and cymbals aside and look tired; only the accordion player, who is sitting on the back of the shafts with his instrument in the crook of his arm, opens the bellows on the bridge, producing a long-drawn-out tone.
Now from the medieval canal — as from the medieval figures over the doors of the Old City churches — now peace, mischief, quietness, gravity, slowness, and patience.