There is no longer light enough to make out the positions of the sleepers. The soldier imagines that this will make it easier for him to leave the dormitory without being seen. He will get a drink as he leaves, from the latrines down the hall.
He makes another effort to sit up and this time succeeds. But he is still leaning against the metal bar behind him. In order to make his position more comfortable he raises the bolster behind him and puts it on top of the box. Then he leans to the right, his hand reaching toward the floor for his boots. At this moment he notices a black silhouette in front of him whose head and bust are outlined against the luminous panes of mauve paper. He recognizes his host of the night before, the corporal without stripes, with his pointed field cap. The soldier's right hand returns to its place on the mattress.
The man puts something that looks like a heavy overcoat across the iron crosspiece at the foot of the bed. Then he steps forward between the two beds and hands the soldier a glass three-quarters full of a colorless liquid.
"Drink this," he says, "it's water. There are pills in the bottom. Afterwards you'll have coffee along with the others."
The soldier seizes the glass and drinks greedily, but the half-dissolved pills which he swallows with the last mouthful stick in his throat and there is no more water to help him get them down. There is a kind of bitter granular deposit which stays in his throat and makes him feel as though it were stripped raw. He feels even thirstier than before.
The man has taken back the empty glass. He observes the whitish streaks which have remained on the sides. Finally he goes away after pointing at the foot of the bed: "I've brought you another overcoat," he says, "put it on before you lie down again."
An indeterminable period after the silent shadow has vanished, the soldier decides to get up. He pivots his legs carefully and sits on the edge of the bed, his knees bent, his feet resting on the floor. Letting his body settle a little, he waits for a long time, at least so it seems to him.
Before going any further he throws off his blankets, which now form a pile on the mattress. Then, leaning down, he gropes about for his boots; having found them under his fingers, he pulls them on, one after the other, and begins lacing them up. Mechanically he unrolls his leggings and wraps them around his calves.
But he has considerable difficulty standing up, as if the weight and burden of his body had become those of a diving suit. Then he begins walking without too much difficulty. Trying to avoid making loud noises with his hobnail boots on the floor, he leaves the row of beds, and without hesitating more than a few seconds, turns right toward the door. He immediately changes his mind and turns back to inspect the overcoat left by the corporal. It is virtually the same as his own, perhaps less worn. The distinctive mark of the regiment—a felt diamond bearing the serial number—has been unsewn from the collar tab on each side.
The soldier lays the garment across the end of the bed and examines it in the darkness, his mind a blank, supporting himself with one hand on the horizontal iron bar. At the other end of the bed he sees the box, still under the bolster. He moves to the head of the bed, rolls back the bolster, picks up the box, puts it under his left arm. At its touch, he feels the dampness of the wool cloth. He puts both hands in his pockets. The lining is wet and cold.
Coming back to the dry overcoat, in the same spot as before, he waits for another moment before leaving. If he exchanges coats, he will not have to unsew the red felt diamonds on his collar. He takes his hands out of his pockets, puts the box down on the bed, slowly unbuttons the overcoat he is wearing. But at first he cannot extricate his arms from the sleeves, because the joints of his shoulders have become so stiff. When he is finally rid of the wet coat, he lets himself rest a minute before continuing the operation. The two coats are now beside each other across the metal bar. In any case, he must put one of them back on. He picks up the new one and slips into the sleeves quite easily, buttons up the four buttons, picks up the box again, puts it back under his left arm, thrusts his hands into the pockets.
This time he has not forgotten anything. He walks carefully toward the door. At the bottom of his right pocket, his hand encounters a round, hard, smooth, cold object the size of a large marble.
In the lighted hallway he passes the corporal who stops to watch him go by, seemingly on the point of speaking when the soldier goes into the latrine—normal behavior, after all; the corporal may think he has taken his package with him because it contains toilet articles.
When he comes out again, having drunk a great deal of cold water from the tap, the corporal is no longer there. The soldier continues down the hall to the stairway; he begins to walk down, holding onto the railing with his right hand. Although he watches his movements carefully, the stiffness of his knees forces him to advance both heavily and mechanically, and the impact of his heavy boots echoes against the wooden steps, one after the other. At each landing the soldier stops; but as soon as he begins going down again, the noise of his hobnail boots on the steps resumes—regular, heavy, isolated, echoing through the house, as in an abandoned building.
At the foot of the staircase, in front of the last step of the last flight, the lame man is leaning on his wooden crutch. The crutch is thrust forward against the steps; the whole body leans forward in what seems a precarious balance; the face is raised, frozen in a forced smile of welcome.
"How are you," he says. "Slept well?"
The soldier too is motionless now. His package under one arm, the other hand on the railing. He is standing at the edge of the first landing between flights, seven or eight steps higher than his interlocutor. He answers: "I'm all right," in a hesitant tone of voice.
In his present position, the lame man is standing in his way. The soldier would have to shove him aside in order to step off the stairs and reach the door to the street. The soldier wonders if this is the same person as the man he met in the apartment of the woman with pale eyes. The man, as a matter of fact, who told him of the existence of this pseudo-barracks for invalids. If it's not the same man, why should he speak to the soldier as if he knew him? If it is the same man, how did he get here on his crutch through the snow-covered streets? And why?
"Is the lieutenant up there?"
"The lieutenant?"
"Yes, the lieutenant! Is he up there?"
The soldier hesitates to answer. He moves closer to the railing in order to lean on it, but he does not want to show how tired he is, stands as straight as possible, and speaks as clearly as he can: "Which lieutenant?"
"The one in charge of this place. You know!"
The soldier realizes that he should at least pretend to know what the man is talking about: "Yes," he says, "he's up there."
He wonders how the lame man will manage to climb the stairs with his crutch, which he generally uses so skillfully. Perhaps he has stopped at the bottom of the stairs because it is impossible for him to climb them. In any case, he is not making the slightest gesture now, merely staring at the soldier, neither stepping back to let him pass nor advancing to meet him.
"I see you've unsewn your number."
The smile on the raised face has grown broader, twisting the mouth and the whole side of the face.
"That was a good idea," the man continues, "in any case it's safer."
To cut short the conversation, the soldier decides to step forward. He comes down one step, but the lame man has not moved an inch, so that the soldier's second foot now stops beside the first, instead of moving down to the next step.
"Where are you going now?" the lame man asks.
The soldier shrugs evasively: "I have things to do."
"And what have you got in your box?" the lame man asks.
Starting down the stairs without stopping this time, the soldier grumbles an irritated answer: "Nothing much." Standing opposite the man, he suddenly flattens himself against the railing. Nimbly the lame man shifts his crutch and moves toward the wall. The soldier passes in front of him and continues down the hallway. He has no n
eed to turn around to know that the lame man is staring after him, leaning forward on his crutch.
The door to the street is not locked. As he is turning the handle the soldier hears the bantering, vaguely threatening voice behind him: "You seem to be in a hurry this morning." He goes out the door and closes it behind him. On the stamped metal plaque fastened to the jamb he reads: "Headquarters, Military Stores of the North and Northwest Regions."
It is so cold in the street that the soldier is shocked. Yet he feels that the cold is doing him good. But he would like to sit down. He must content himself with leaning against the stone wall, setting his feet on the strip of fresh snow between the housefronts and the trampled, yellowish path. In his overcoat pocket his right hand again comes in contact with the large, smooth marble.
It is an ordinary glass marble about an inch in diameter. Its entire surface is completely regular and highly polished. The interior is colorless and transparent except for a central opaque nucleus the size of a pea. This nucleus is black and round. From whatever angle the marble is examined, the nucleus appears as a black disc a fraction of an inch across. Around it the mass of limpid glass reveals only unrecognizable fragments of the red-and-white pattern of which it occupies a circular fraction. Beyond this circle extends on all sides the checkerboard pattern of the oilcloth covering the table. But in the surface of the marble is also reflected, pale and distorted and greatly reduced in scale, the furnishings of the café.
The child rolls the marble gently across the red-and- white checked oilcloth, not pushing it hard enough to make it move beyond the edges of the rectangular surface. It crosses the latter diagonally, follows the long side, returns to its point of departure. Then the child picks it up, stares at it a long time, turning it round and round. Then his large serious eyes shift to the soldier: "What's inside it?" he says, in his voice which is too low to be a boy's.
"I don't know. Glass too, probably."
"It's black."
"Yes, it's black glass."
The child examines the marble again and asks: "Why?" And when the soldier does not answer he repeats: "Why is it inside?"
"I don't know," the soldier says, then after a few seconds: "To look pretty probably."
"But it's not pretty," the child says.
He has lost almost all his mistrust now, and although his voice still has its grave, almost adult timbre, he speaks with a childish simplicity, sometimes even with a naïve abandon. He is still wearing his black cape over his shoulders, but he has taken off his beret, revealing his short blond hair parted on the right.
This boy is the one from the café, apparently, who is not the same as the one who took the soldier (or who will take him, afterwards) to the barracks—from which, as a matter of fact, he has brought back the marble. In any case, it is this boy who has brought the soldier into the café run by the large, thickset, taciturn man, where he has drunk a glass of red wine and eaten two slices of stale bread. He felt stronger after this snack, and to thank the child he has given him the glass marble that was in his overcoat pocket.
"Are you really giving it to me?"
"Yes, I told you so."
"Where does it come from?"
"From my pocket."
"And before that?"
"Before that? I don't know about before that," the soldier says.
The child glances at him inquisitively, and probably incredulously. He immediately becomes somewhat more reserved again and his voice is much colder when he remarks, his eyes fixed on the overcoat collar:
"You've unsewn your number."
The soldier tries to make a joke of the matter. "It's no use any more, you know."
The child does not smile. He does not look as if the explanation were satisfactory.
"But I know it," he says. "It was 12,345."
The soldier does not answer. The boy continues:
"Is it because they're going to come today that you took it off?"
"How do you know they're going to come today?"
"My mother ..." the boy begins, but he goes no further.
To say something, the soldier asks: "And she lets you run around the streets?"
"I don't run around. There was an errand to do."
"Is she the one who sent you?"
The child hesitates. He looks at the soldier as if he were trying to guess what is coming next, where he is being led to, what kind of trap is being set for him.
"No," he says finally, "she's not."
"So it was your father?" the soldier asks.
This time the boy decides not to answer. The soldier himself has been speaking more slowly during the last few remarks. The slight animation the wine had given him has already vanished, and his fatigue gradually masters him again. Probably he still has fever; the effect of the pills has not lasted long. Nevertheless he continues, his voice lower:
"I ran into him this morning, I think, as I was leaving the barracks. He does pretty well on his bad leg. Yes, I'm sure that's who it was. So he wasn't at home..."
"He's not my father," the child says, and he turns his head toward the door.
The two workers at the next table have broken off their conversation, perhaps some time ago. The man whose back was turned has pivoted on his chair without letting go of his glass or raising it from the table, and he has remained in this position, his body half turned to look behind him toward the soldier, or toward the child. The latter has moved away. At least he is now some distance from the soldier to the left, near the wall where the white bulletins are posted announcing the military evacuation of the city. Complete silence has fallen in the room.
The soldier has remained in the same position: his elbows and forearms in front of him, his grease-spotted hands lying near each other about four inches apart, the right hand still holding the empty glass.
The bartender, a tall, thickset figure, has returned to the room and is standing behind his bar at the far right. He is motionless too, leaning slightly forward, his arms wide apart, his hands grasping the edge of the bar. He too is looking at the soldier, or at the child.
The child has put his beret back on his head. He has pulled both sides far down in order to cover his ears as much as possible, and he has pulled the cape around his body, holding it closed with both hands from inside. At the other end of the room, the bartender has not moved either. When he served the soldier just now, he told him that when he had first seen him through the glass, then crossing the threshold, he had taken him, in this city where no soldiers circulated any longer, and where everyone expected to see the newcomers appear at any moment—he had taken him for one of the latter. But this was only the effect of surprise, and once the soldier had come in, the bartender had immediately recognized the familiar uniform with the long overcoat and the leggings.
The boy had then closed the door behind this unexpected customer. The bartender standing at his post, the customer in middle-class clothes standing near the counter, the two workers sitting at their table, all stared at him without saying anything. It was the boy who had broken the silence, his low voice sounding so little like a child's that the soldier had supposed one of the four men watching him come in had spoken. The child was still standing near the door at this moment, behind him. But the others facing him remained motionless, mouths closed, lips motionless; and the sentence, without someone to have spoken it, seemed to be a title underneath a picture.
Afterwards the soldier, his glass of wine finished, has remained no longer in this silent café. He has picked up his package from under his chair and has left the room, accompanied as far as the door by the stares of the bartender and the two workers. After quickly readjusting the distended white string, he has put the package wrapped in brown paper back under his left arm.
Outside, the cold has shocked him once again. This overcoat must not be as thick as the other, unless the temperature has dropped a great deal during the night. The snow, hardened by repeated trampling, grates under his hobnail boots. The soldier walks faster in order
to warm himself; urged on by the regularity of the noise his boots make as he walks, he advances without looking where he is going, as though aimlessly, through the deserted streets. When he decided to continue on his way, it was because of the notion that there still remained something to be done in order to get the box to its proper recipient. But when he found himself on the sidewalk again, having closed the café door behind him, he no longer knew which way to turn: he simply tried to proceed to the first meeting place (where he had not been met), without, moreover, losing any time thinking out the best way to get to it, since the man was no longer waiting for him there, now, in any case. The soldier's only hope is that the man lives in the vicinity and that he will meet him on his way. At the first crossroad he has found the lame man again.
Approaching the crossroad where the man is standing, at the corner of the last house, he realizes that it is not the lame man but the man in middle-class clothes who was drinking at the bar just now; he is not leaning on a crutch, but on an umbrella which he is holding in front of him, its tip stuck in the hard snow. His body leans forward slightly. He is wearing spats over his well polished shoes, narrow trousers, and a short overcoat which is probably fur-lined. He has no hat on his head, which is bald in front.
Just before the soldier reaches him, the man bows quickly, his umbrella remaining stuck at an angle in the snow in front of him. The material of the umbrella, rolled tight, is protected by a black silk sheath.
The soldier answers the bow with a nod and attempts to continue on his way, but the other man makes a gesture with his free hand, and the soldier imagines that the man is about to speak to him. He turns toward him and stands still, raising his eyebrows with the look of someone expecting to be spoken to. The man, as if he had foreseen nothing of the kind, then lowers his eyes toward the end of his umbrella stuck at an angle in the hard yellow snow. Yet he has kept his left arm half raised, elbow bent, hand open, thumb up. On his third finger he is wearing a heavy signet ring with a gray stone in it.
Jealousy and in the Labyrinth Page 22