THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE DONE

SORROW was everywhere. People on street corners would suddenly weep. They could not help themselves. In dark apartments, in parked cars, at roadside tables, people wept. The dog by his master’s side, the cat on the sill, they wept as well. The king and the queen had died and so had the prince, and the president of the republic, and the stars of the silver screen. The whole world wept. And the weeping went round and round and could not stop.