They searched for small joys and sometimes found them: a hunched-over, lisping old woman selling the first violets; a bristling little kitten, mewing non-stop, its little pink mouth wide open; a flaming, fancifully formed autumn leaf—unique and different from all others. Say what you will, but it’s miraculous when two worn-out people who have been halfway to hell manage to find such small joys, the way children find fragments of colored glass in a stinking garbage dump.
