The soldier thinks he has definitely lost the track when he sees the boy waiting for him a few feet away, under a street light, huddled in his black cape already white with snow.
"Here it is," he says, pointing to a door just like the others.
Then there is the electric bulb swaying at the end of its long wire and the man's shadow swaying across the closed door like a slow metronome.
During the night the soldier awakens with a start. The blue bulbs are still on, hanging from the ceiling, a row of three down the center of the room. In a single movement the soldier has thrown back his covers and sat up on the edge of his bed, his feet on the floor. He was dreaming that the alarm signal had sounded. He was in a winding trench whose top reached as high as his forehead; in his hand he was holding some kind of grenade, elongated in shape, with a delayed-action explosion device which he had just set going. Without a second to lose he had to throw it out of the trench. He heard it ticking steadily like an alarm clock. But he stood there with the grenade in his hand, his arm extended as if to throw it, inexplicably paralyzed, increasingly rigid, less and less able to move even a finger as the moment of the explosion approached. He must have shouted in his sleep to escape the nightmare.
Yet the other sleepers seem perfectly calm. Probably he has not really cried out. Looking more carefully, he discovers that his neighbor's eyes are wide open: both hands under his neck, he continues to stare straight ahead into the darkness.
Half intending to find some water to drink, half to look as if he knew what he were doing, the soldier stands up and, without putting on his shoes in order to avoid making noise, leaves the row of beds and heads for the door through which he first came. He is thirsty. Not only his throat feels dry, but his whole body is burning despite the cold. He reaches the door and tries to turn the handle, but the lock resists. He dare not shake it too hard for fear of waking everyone. Besides, the door seems to be locked.
Having turned around, panic-stricken, he realizes that the windows, the imitation windows drawn in black on the wall, are now on his left although they were on his right when he came into this room the first time. He then notices a second, identical door at the other end of the long passage between the two rows of beds. Realizing that he must have turned the wrong way, he crosses the entire length of the room between the two rows of prone bodies. All the eyes are wide open and watch him pass, in complete silence.
As a matter of fact, the other door opens easily. The latrines are located at the other end of the hall. The soldier noticed this as he came upstairs, before lying down. Intending to shift the package wrapped in brown paper under his arm, he suddenly remembers having left it unguarded beneath the bolster. He immediately closes the door again and quickly returns to his bed. At first glance he sees that the bolster is now lying flat against the vertical iron bars; he approaches and discovers that the box is no longer there; he turns the bolster over as if it were necessary to convince himself further of the fact, turns the bolster over twice more; finally he straightens up, no longer knowing what to do, but there are no longer blankets on the mattress either. And three beds farther along the soldier recognizes some blankets bundled into a ball on an empty mattress. He has simply gone to the wrong bed.
On his bed, everything is where it was: blankets, bolster, and package. And, under the bed, the boots and the coiled- up leggings are also there. The soldier lies down again without having had anything to drink. Despite his burning throat, he no longer has the strength to make another attempt to walk through the labyrinth of unlighted hallways until he reaches this infinitely distant and problematical water. His passages through the dormitory have occurred very quickly, in the last restlessness of a feverish awakening. He now feels incapable of taking another step. Moreover, he could not go out carrying his big box without awakening or reinforcing futile suspicions; his recent behavior has made him only too noticeable already. He scarcely takes the time to wrap his feet and legs in one of the blankets before stretching out again, spreading the second blanket over his whole body as well as he can. And once more he is walking in the snow through the empty streets along the high, fiat housefronts which succeed each other indefinitely, without variation. His route is punctuated by black lampposts with stylized ornaments of old- fashioned elegance, their electric bulbs shining with a yellow luster in the leaden daylight.
The soldier walks as fast as he can without running, as though he feared someone might be pursuing him and that all the same too evident a flight might arouse the suspicion of passers-by. But no figure appears as far as the eye can see toward the gray end of the straight street, and each time the soldier turns around to look back, continuing straight ahead without slowing down, he can see that no pursuer threatens to catch up with him: the white sidewalk stretches behind him as empty as in the other direction, with only the line of footprints made by his hobnail boots, slightly distorted each time the soldier has turned around.
He was waiting on a street corner near a lamppost. He was looking at the corner of the house opposite him on the other side of the street. He had already been looking at it for some time when he noticed that there were some people in a room on the third floor. This was a rather large room with no visible furniture and two windows; the figures came and went from one window to the other, but without coming near the panes, which had no curtains. The soldier particularly noticed their pale faces in the room's half-darkness. The room must have had dark walls to make these faces stand out so clearly. The people seemed to be talking to each other, consulting each other; they made gestures, as the relative whiteness of their hands indicated. They were looking at something in the street, and the subject of their discussion seemed of some importance. Suddenly the soldier realized that this could only be himself. There was nothing else outside those windows on the sidewalk or in the street. To disguise his intentions the soldier began examining his surroundings, staring at the horizon first in one direction, then the other. Not exactly to disguise his intentions, but to show that he was expecting someone and was not concerned with the house in front of which he merely happened to be standing.
When he again glanced furtively toward the third floor windows, the pale faces had come noticeably closer to the bare panes. One of the figures was obviously pointing at him, hand outstretched; the other faces were grouped around the first at various levels, as if some of their possessors were standing, some crouching, others on tiptoe or even on chairs; the other window was empty.
"They think I'm a spy," the soldier decided. Preferring not to have to refute this accusation, which risked being formulated in a more immediate way, he pretended to consult a non-existent watch on his wrist and walked off without further thought down the next cross street.
After about ten steps he decided his behavior was foolish: it merely confirmed the suspicions of his observers, who would lose no time following him. Instinctively he began to walk faster. Imagining he heard behind him the sound of a window being flung open, he even had difficulty keeping himself from running.
The soldier turns around once more to look behind him: there is still no one. But as he turns back in the direction he is walking, he now sees the boy who seems to be waiting for him as he passes, half hidden behind the corner of a house at the next crossroad.
This time the soldier stops short. The door of the apartment house on his left is half-open, revealing a dark hallway. Farther on, at the crossroads, the child has stepped back a little so that he is entirely concealed by the stone corner of the building. The soldier suddenly turns into the door and finds himself in the hallway. At the far end, without losing a minute, he begins climbing the short flights of the narrow staircase which turns at right angles, each flight separated from the next by a small square landing.
On the top floor, there is the room sealed behind its thick curtains. The shoe box wrapped in brown paper is lying on the chest, the dagger-bayonet on the marble mantlepiece. The dust has already covered the heavy double-edged blade with a thin layer whic
h dims the metal's luster under the shaded light from the lamp on the table. The shadow of the fly on the ceiling continues its circuit.
To the right of the large luminous circle whose circumference it regularly follows, there is, at the corner of the ceiling, a slender black line about an inch long and scarcely noticeable; a crack in the plaster, or a spider web covered with dust, or some trace of a bump or scratch. This imperfection in the white surface, moreover, is not equally visible from every point in the room. It is particularly apparent to an observer near the base of the wall to the right, at the other end of the room, looking up along what is virtually the diagonal of this wall, as is normal for someone lying on the bed, his head resting on the bolster.
The soldier is lying on his bed. It is probably the cold which has awakened him. He is on his back, in the same position he was in when he first opened his eyes; he has not moved since. In front of him the windows are wide open. On the other side of the street there are other windows identical to these. In the room all the men are still lying down. Most of them look as if they are sleeping. Nor does he know what time it is now. His immediate neighbors, to the right and left, are wrapped as closely as possible in their blankets; one of them, who has turned toward him, has even covered part of his face, leaving only his nose sticking out, while a flap of material pulled over his head covers his eyes as well. Although it is difficult to tell what kind of clothes the sleepers are wearing, it appears that none of them has undressed for the night, for there are no clothes to be seen hanging somewhere or folded up or thrown down at random. Moreover, there are no closets or shelves or cupboards of any kind, and only the bed ends could be used to hang coats, jackets, and trousers on; but these bed ends, made of metal rods painted white, are all as unencumbered at the foot as at the head. Without moving his body, the soldier pats his bolster behind him in order to make sure his box is still there.
He must get up now. If he does not succeed in giving this package to its intended recipient, he at least has the chance of getting rid of it while there is still time. Tomorrow, tonight, or even in a few hours, it will be too late. In any case, he has no reason to stay here doing nothing; a prolonged stay in this pseudo-barracks, or infirmary, or hospitalization center, can only make new complications for him, and he may thereby be compromising his last chances of success.
The soldier tries to raise himself on his elbows. His entire body is paralyzed. Having slipped only a few inches on his back toward the head of the bed, he lets himself fall back, his shoulders leaning against the vertical iron rods supporting the upper, thicker bar against which his head rests. The box, luckily, is in no danger of being crushed. The soldier turns his face to the right, where there is a door through which he should be leaving.
Next to the man whose face is hooded in a flap of the coarse brown blanket, the sleeper beyond has one arm outside his blankets, an arm wearing the khaki sleeve of a military jacket. The reddish hand hangs over the edge of the mattress. Farther along, other bodies are lying stretched out or curled up. Several have kept their field caps on.
At the end of the room, the door has opened noiselessly and two men have come in, one behind the other. The first is a civilian, wearing hunting clothes: heavy leather boots, narrow riding breeches, a thick duffle-coat, and a long muffler around his neck. He has kept on a faded felt hat, shapeless with age and wear; his entire outfit is worn, tattered, and even rather dirty. The second man is the one from the evening before, wearing his jacket and corporal's cap with its unsewn stripes. Without stopping at the first beds, without even glancing at them in passing, they have advanced down the central space to one of the sleepers in the opposite row under the second window. Stopping at the foot of the bed, the two men speak together in low voices. Then the civilian in the felt hat approaches the pillow and touches the body near the shoulder. At once the body, wrapped in blankets, sits up and a pale face appears, the eyes deep in their sockets, the hollow cheeks blackened by several days' growth of beard. Startled out of his sleep, the man takes some time to get his bearings, while the two others stand motionless beside him. He passes one hand over his eyes, across his forehead, and through his short, grayish hair. Then he begins to lean back and suddenly collapses on his mattress.
The civilian must be some kind of doctor or hospital attendant, for he then carefully grasps the man's wrist and holds it between his fingers for some time, as if he were taking the man's pulse, although without consulting any watch. He then lays the inert arm alongside the prone body. He exchanges a few more words with the man accompanying him; after which the two of them cross the width of the room diagonally to reach the patient whose red hand sticks out of the blankets and hangs over the edge of the mattress. Leaning forward in order not to move the sleeper's hand, the attendant grasps it as he did the one before, without in this case producing the slightest reaction. The examination lasts a little longer this time, and afterwards the two men have a longer conversation in low voices. Finally they move away from the bed without having awakened the patient.
The attendant now glances around the rest of the room; he stops at the newcomer, who, unlike his comrades, is half sitting up on his bed. The corporal with the unsewn stripes gestures with his chin to indicate him and says something like: "arrived last night." They come closer. The corporal remains at the foot of the bed. The other man comes to the pillow. The soldier mechanically holds out his wrist, which the attendant grasps firmly without asking any questions. After a few seconds he declares in a low voice, as if he were talking to himself: "You have fever."
"It's nothing much," the soldier says, but his own voice, weak and hoarse, surprises him.
"A high fever," the other man repeats, letting go of his hand.
The hand falls back, inert, on the mattress. The corporal has taken a black notebook and a short pencil out of his pocket and writes some information which the soldier has no difficulty making out: the day and hour of his arrival, the serial number on his overcoat collar, this number 12,345 which has never been his.
"Has it been long?" asks the attendant in the felt hat.
"Long since I've been here?"
"No, since you've had fever."
"I don't know," the soldier says.
The man turns back to his colleague and they step toward the windows for a short discussion which the soldier cannot hear, nor can he read the words on their lips, for he does not see their faces. But the attendant comes back toward him; he leans over and with both hands at once feels each side of his chest through the various layers of clothing:
"Does it hurt when I press?"
"No . . . not any more."
"You've been sleeping like this?"
"What do you mean like this?"
"With a wet coat."
The soldier now pats the stiff, rough material that is still somewhat damp. He says: "It must be the snow . . ."
His words are so faint that they disintegrate before he has spoken them; afterwards he even doubts whether he has actually pronounced them at all.
The attendant now addresses his colleague: "It would be better to change him."
"I'll go see if I have something," the other man says, and he immediately walks to the door, his steps soundless.
Remaining alone, the attendant buttons his dun-colored canvas duffle-coat that is faded and spotted down the front, forcing the three braided-leather buttons into their loops; all three are damaged, the bottom one split by a large scratch halfway through its width, leaving a strip of leather that protrudes about a quarter of an inch. The attendant has put his hands in his shapeless side pockets. He stares at the soldier for a moment and asks:
"Aren't you cold?"
"No ... Yes ... A little."
"We can close this now," the man says, and without waiting for his interlocutor's agreement, he moves toward the left end of the dormitory to close the last window. Then he moves along the wall toward the right, slipping between the wall and the iron rods that form the heads of the beds, and continues th
e operation, coming closer and closer, pulling in the French windows and closing the fastenings which he is obliged to force, making several attempts. As he advances, the daylight wanes in the large room, the darkness increasing from the left and gradually thickening.
There are five windows. Each has two leaves with three square panes in it. But these panes are visible only when the window is open, for the inner side is covered with dark, translucent paper pasted neatly over the entire surface of the pane. When the man is through, the entire room is plunged into half-darkness, the five rectangular openings are replaced by five series of six purplish, vaguely luminous panes through which filters a light like those of the blue night lamps, all the more inadequate since it succeeds the bright daylight without any transition. The man in the duffle-coat and the felt hat at the right end of the room is only a black silhouette, motionless against the lighter wall, near the outside door.
The soldier supposes that the visitor is about to leave the room, but instead he turns toward his bed:
"There," he says, "now you won't be so cold." And, after a silence: "They'll bring you other clothes. But you have to stay in bed."
He stops talking again; then he resumes: "The doctor will come soon, maybe this afternoon, or later this morning, or tonight . . At times he speaks so low that the soldier has trouble hearing him.
"Meanwhile," he continues, "you'll take the pills they give you . . . You mustn't. . ." The end of his sentence is inaudible. He has taken a pair of heavy fur-lined gloves out of his pocket and slowly pulls them on, still adjusting them as he moves away. After several yards all that can be seen of him is a vague shadow; and even before he has reached the door he disappears altogether. Only his heavy boots can be heard continuing on their way with slow steps.
Jealousy and in the Labyrinth Page 21