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watching, Melker went out into the desert wind and walked across the empty tiled plaza to the Egged bus stop. All the shops in the little suburban mall were closed except for a
shwarma
stand beside the recreation room. He took out his clarinet and began to play the first notes of
Rhapsody in Blue,
languorously, then explosively—flawlessly, it seemed to him. For a long time there was no one to hear. The lights of the
shwarma
stand went out. He stood and played: Raziel, a phantom busker in some stone city of the labyrinth. But before the bus arrived, Dr. Obermann's older patient joined him at the kiosk.
    "Bravo," said the older man shyly. "Wonderful."
    "Really?" Razz asked, putting away his instrument and reed. "Thanks." He could sense the man's unfocused strength of soul.
    "Yes, you're very good." The man seemed to be making an effort to smile. "You must play professionally."
    "How about you?" Melker asked.
    "I?" The man coughed with embarrassment. "Oh, no."
    "In the States," Melker said, "a shrink would have a back door, right? So we lunatics wouldn't encounter each other at the bus stop."
    The man in tweed, the musical Christian convert, appeared to give this observation considerable reflection. He seemed to be still pondering it when the bus drew up.
    "I thought you must be a performer," Melker said to the older man as they rode together. "Doctor Obie keeps his weird hours for entertainment people. I thought you might be a musician like me."
    "No, no," grumbled the man. "No, hardly."
    "What are you?"
    The older man stared at him, pretending surprise at his effrontery.
    "I'm Adam De Kuff," he said. "And you?"
    "I'm Raziel Melker. They call me Razz." He looked into De Kuff's eyes from behind his shades. "You're from New Orleans."
    De Kuff looked a bit troubled. But he smiled. "How did you know?"
    Melker smiled back. "There's a hospital down in N.O. called De Kuff. A Jewish hospital. And a concert hall, right? De Kuff is a grand old name in the Crescent City. A tip-top name."
    "In any case," the man said stiffly, "it will have to do. It's the only name I own."
    "What is it, Dutch?"
    "It was once Dutch, I'm told. With a K-U-I-F. Before that Spanish, de Cuervo or de Corvo. Then it became Dutch in the West Indies. Or off-Dutch. Then plain De Kuff in Louisiana."
    "When I meet a fellow madman," Razz said by way of explanation, "it makes me a little crazier."
    Adam De Kuff shifted away slightly. But eventually, on the long ride, they fell into conversation again. The bus was almost empty. Its route lay between the Jerusalem airport and the heart of the city, following Ramallah Road, zigzagging to drop and pick up single passengers at new developments like the one where Obermann had his office, stopping at Neveh Yaacov and Pisgat Ze'ev, then skirting French Hill and Ammunition Hill through the Bukharan Quarter and Mea Shearim to Independence Park. The streets it served were nearly deserted at that late hour, bathed in chemical light. Its driver was a surly, sandy-haired Russian.
    "Obermann is really a lot younger than he looks," Razz was explaining to De Kuff. "He has an old man's manner because he has an old soul." He had unconsciously adopted a little of De Kuff's cultivated southern accent.
    De Kuff smiled sadly. "Don't we all?"
    "Has he helped you?" Razz asked. "Pardon my asking, but I think we may have a few things in common."
    "He's very gruff. A typical Israeli, I suppose. But I like him."
    They rode all the way to the end of the line together, and as it turned out, their conversation lasted through the night. In De Kuff's overstuffed hotel suite they talked about tantric Buddhism and the Book of the Dead, kundalini yoga and the writings of Meister Eckhart. When the Muslim call to prayer broke over the city they were watching the sky over Mount Zion, for first light. They sat in upholstered chairs beside the east-facing window. De Kuff's cello, in its case, leaned against a closet door.
    Once, during the small hours, Razz