I woke early this morning, when it was dark, and I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I got up and pulled on my clothes and left my apartment and went down the stairwell of the building and out through the vestibule to the sidewalk outside, where I could hear, once I was heading in the direction of the bridge I wanted to cross, so I could reach the other side, and wander that part of the city that is busy during the day, but at this hour would be deserted, the wailing of sirens that seemed to reach me from a long way off, and that produced in me a mournful feeling, so that I began to wonder for whom they had been summoned, and for what reason, though after I was on the bridge, where the wind was up, so that I’d lowered my head and had buried my face in my jacket, and was out over the water, I could no longer hear them, and my mind became occupied with other things.