Repairer

Is there a shoe repairer in town?

The repairer will come tomorrow.

And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.

1987, Nadine Gordimer, A Sport of Nature, New York: Alfred Knopf, p. 168, Where the European city grid of right angles was overgrown and broken up by the purposeful tangle of African pursuits—the shortest point-to-point meander taken on foot between barbers and fruit-sellers, scribes and bicycle repairers—to be white was to feel invisible; only a sensuous self-assurance, while it lasted, could counter that.