The snow sifted silently down, clouds of white confetti in the glare of the street lamps, mantling the streets with white, spilling softly from laden, wind-stirred branches, drifting with the wind and embanking the scars and stumps of buildings that remained of what had been the city. Mr. Friedlander trudged across the wide, quiet avenues, his bare, balding head burrowed low in his tattered collar for warmth, chin against chest, wet feet numb and stinging with cold inside his torn overshoes whic