The more the soldier advances, the more he has the impression that this figure is retreating. But one of the doors has been opened on the right. Here, moreover, the footprints stop. Click. Darkness. Click. Yellow light revealing a narrow vestibule. Click. Darkness. Click. The soldier is once more in the square room furnished with a chest, a table, and a day bed. The table is covered with a checkered oilcloth. Above the chest the photograph of a soldier in battle dress is fastened to the wall. Instead of sitting at the table drinking wine and slowly chewing his bread, the soldier is lying on the bed; his eyes are closed, he seems to be sleeping. Around him are standing three motionless people, who are looking at him without speaking: a man, a woman, and a child.
Right next to his face, at the head of the bed, the woman is bending forward slightly, examining the sleeper's drawn features, listening to his laborious breathing. Behind her, near the table, stands the boy, still wearing his black cape and beret. At the foot of the bed, the third person is not the lame man with the wooden crutch, but the older man whose head is bald in front, wearing a short fur-lined overcoat and well-polished shoes protected by spats. He has kept his fine gray leather gloves on; the one on his left hand is distended, on the third finger, by the stone of his signet ring. The umbrella must have remained in the vestibule leaning against the coat rack, with its ivory handle and its silk sheath.
The soldier is lying on his back, fully dressed, with his leggings and his heavy boots. His arms are at his sides. His overcoat is unbuttoned; underneath it, his uniform jacket is spotted with blood on the left side, near the waist.
No. Actually it is another wounded man who occupies the scene, outside the door of the busy café. The soldier has no sooner closed the door behind him than he sees a young man coming toward him, a soldier drafted the year before whom he has met several times during the retreat and again this morning at the hospital, who is also about to go into the café. For a second, the soldier imagines he has before his eyes the valiant fighter referred to inside, the man whose conduct the cavalry corporal had just been praising. He immediately realizes the impossibility of such a coincidence: the young man happened to be at Reichenfels during the enemy attack, but in his own regiment, as the green diamonds on his uniform attest; yet this unit did not include a single hero, as the cavalry corporal had clearly implied. As the soldier is about to pass his comrade, merely nodding to him, the latter stops to speak to him: "Your friend you went to see this morning in surgery," he says, "is pretty bad. He's been asking for you several times."
"All right," the soldier says. "I'll go back."
"You better hurry. He won't last long."
The young man has already put his hand on the brass doorknob when he turns to add: "He says he's got something to give you." After a moment's thought: "But maybe it's just delirium."
"I'll go see," the soldier says.
He immediately begins walking quickly, taking the shortest route. The setting he passes through is no longer that of the great symmetrical and monotonous city with its straight roads intersecting each other at right angles. And there is no snow yet. The weather is even rather mild, for the season. The houses are low, old-fashioned, vaguely baroque, over-ornamented with volutes, molded cornices, columns with carved capitals framing the doors, balconies with sculptured brackets, complicated cast-iron railings. All of which corresponds to the lampposts on the street corners, former gas lights that have been converted, consisting of a cast-iron column widening at the base and supporting, three yards from the ground, a lyre-shaped structure with twining branches, from which is suspended the globe containing the large electric bulb. The shaft itself is not uniform, but girdled with many rings of varying shapes and sizes, indicating at various heights changes in diameter, swellings, constrictions, circular or spindle-shaped bulges; these rings are particularly numerous toward the top of the cone which constitutes the foot of the structure; around this cone spirals a garland of stylized ivy embossed on the metal and reproduced identically on each lamppost.
But the hospital is only a military building of classic construction, at the rear of a large, bare, gravel courtyard separated from the boulevard and its leafless trees by a high iron fence whose gate is wide open. On each side the sentry boxes are empty. In the center of the huge courtyard one man is standing, a non-commissioned officer with belted tunic and kepi; he is standing perfectly still. He seems to be thinking; his black shadow lies at his feet across the white gravel.
As for the room where the wounded man is, it is an ordinary hall whose metal beds have been painted white— a decor which also leads to nothing, if not to the box wrapped in brown paper lying on the kit shelf.
Hence it is with this box under his arm that the soldier walks through the snowy streets along the high, flat house-fronts when he is looking for the meeting place, hesitating among several similar crossroads, deciding that the description he has been furnished is quite inadequate to determine the exact place with any certainty in this huge city arranged so geometrically. And finally he goes back to an apparently uninhabited apartment house, pushing open a door that has remained ajar. The hallway, painted dark brown halfway up the wall, has the same deserted aspect as the streets themselves: doors with neither door mat nor calling card, absence of the usual household utensils left here or there which usually show that a house is inhabited, and walls completely bare save for the compulsory civil defense bulletin.
And then comes the side door which opens onto a narrow vestibule where the black-sheathed umbrella is leaning against an ordinary coat rack.
But another entrance makes it possible to leave the apartment house without being seen by someone watching for you at the doorway: it opens onto the cross street at the end of the secondary hallway perpendicular to the first, to the left of the staircase ending the latter. Moreover, this street is in every way similar to the preceding one; and the child is here at his post, waiting for the soldier at the foot of the lamppost in order to lead him to the military offices which serve as a kind of barracks and hospital.
In any case they have set out with this intention. However the crossroads and sudden changes in direction increase in number, and the interminable walk through the night continues. Since the boy goes faster and faster, the soldier is soon no longer able to follow him and is alone again, with no other recourse than to seek some shelter in which to sleep. He doesn't have much choice, and must content himself with the first door he finds open. This is once again the apartment of the young woman in the gray apron with the black hair, the pale eyes, the low voice. Yet he had not noticed, at first, that the room where he had been given bread and wine, under the framed photograph of the husband in battle dress fastened to the wall over the chest, contained a day bed as well as the rectangular table covered with a checkered oilcloth.
At the top of the wall opposite this bed, almost at the angle of the ceiling, there is a small, sinuous black line a little over four inches long, which may be a crack in the plaster, perhaps a dusty spider web, perhaps merely a defect in the white paint emphasized by the harsh lighting of the electric light bulb hanging at the end of its wire swaying back and forth in a slow, oscillating movement. In the same rhythm, but in the opposite direction, the shadow of the man with the unsewn chevrons and the civilian trousers (is this the man whom the lame man called the lieutenant?), the shadow on the floor sways left and right against the closed door on either side of the motionless body.
This pseudo-lieutenant (but the insignia missing from his jacket were those of a corporal, their outline remaining clearly visible on the brown material), this man who took in the wounded or the sick must have first leaned out of a second floor window, probably the one just over the door, in order to try to see, in the darkness, who wanted to come in. However this does not resolve the main problem: how had he known that there was someone on the doorstep? Had the boy knocked on the closed door when he got there? Therefore, the soldier, having finally caught up with his guide after a considerable delay, since he had n
o longer been following him for some time now save by his tracks, had not suspected that his presence would already be announced and that while he was perched on the narrow stoop vainly trying to decipher the inscription stamped on the polished plaque by passing his fingertips back and forth across it, his host, three yards above him, was minutely observing part of his overcoat which stuck out beyond the doorway: a shoulder, a stained sleeve hugging a package whose shape and size resembled those of a shoe box.
Yet no window was lighted, and the soldier had thought this house, like the others, deserted by its inhabitants. Having pushed open the door, he had soon realized his error: a large number of tenants were still there (as everywhere else, too, no doubt), and appeared one after the other on all sides, a young woman flattening herself at the rear of the hallway against the corner of the staircase, another woman suddenly opening her door on the left, and finally a third, on the right, revealing, after some hesitation, the vestibule leading once again to the square room where the soldier is now lying.
He is lying on his back. His eyes are closed. The lids are gray, as are the forehead and the temples, but the cheekbones are bright pink. Across the hollow cheeks, around the half open mouth and over the chin, there is a four or five days' growth of black beard. The sheet, pulled up to the chin, rises periodically with the slightly wheezing respiration. One reddish hand with black stains at the joints of the fingers sticks out at one side and hangs over the edge of the bed. Neither the man with the umbrella nor the boy is in the room any longer. Only the woman is here, sitting at the table, but at an angle, so that she is facing the soldier.
She is knitting a garment out of black wool; but her work is not yet far along. The heavy ball of yarn is lying near her on the red-and-white checked oilcloth which hangs over the edge of the table in wide, stiff folds at the corners. The rest of the room is not quite as the soldier has remembered it; not counting the day bed, whose presence he had scarcely noticed on his first visit, there is at least one important thing to be noted: a high window now completely concealed by long red curtains falling from ceiling to floor. Though wide, the day bed might easily have passed unnoticed, for it is placed in the corner concealed from the eyes of someone coming into the room by the open door; afterwards the soldier turned his back to it when he was eating and drinking at the table; and besides, he was paying little attention to the furnishings, his senses dulled by fatigue, hunger, and the cold outside. However he is surprised that his eyes were not caught by what was then, as now, just opposite him: the window, or in any case the red curtains made of some thin shiny material that resembles satin.
These curtains must not have been drawn; for, as they look today, spread out under the light, it is impossible not to be struck by their color. Probably the window itself was then visible, between two narrow vertical red strips that were not clearly lighted and so much less noticeable. But if it had been daylight, what did this window look out on? Was it a street scene which would appear through the panes of glass? Given the monotony of the neighborhood, there would certainly be nothing remarkable about such a view. Or else it was something else: a courtyard, perhaps, so narrow and dark on the ground floor level that it provided little daylight and no view of any interest, especially if thick draperies kept whatever was outside from being seen.
Despite these rationalizations, the soldier is still perturbed by such a gap in his memory. He wonders if anything else in his surroundings might have escaped him and even continues to escape him now. It suddenly seems very important to make an exact inventory of the room. There is the fireplace, about which he has remembered almost nothing: an ordinary black marble mantelpiece with a large rectangular mirror over it; its iron grate is open, revealing a heap of light gray ashes, but no andirons; on the mantelpiece is lying a rather long object, not very tall—only a half an inch, or an inch at the most—which cannot be identified from this angle, not being placed near enough the edge of the shelf (it is even possible that it is much wider than it looks); in the mirror are reflected the satiny red curtains whose folds gleam with vertical reflections . . . The soldier has the impression that all this is nothing: he must take note of other details in this room, details much more important than all the preceding ones, one detail in particular which he had been vaguely conscious of when he came into the room the other time, the day of the red wine and the slice of bread ... He no longer remembers what it was. He wants to turn around in order to examine the chest more carefully. But he cannot manage to move except in the most insignificant way, a kind of torpor paralyzing his whole body. Only his hands and forearms move with any ease.
"You want something?" the young woman's low voice asks.
She has not changed position, having stopped in the middle of her work, her knitting still held in front of her, her fingers still placed—one forefinger raised, the other bent double—as if they were about to make a new stitch, her face still bent over to make sure it is executed properly, but her eyes raised toward the head of the bed. Her features are anxious, severe, even strained by her application to her work; or else by the anxiety afforded by this wounded man who has appeared so unexpectedly in her apartment; or else for some reason unknown to the latter.
"No," he says, "I don't need anything."
He speaks slowly, in a way that he himself finds surprising, the words abnormally distinct without his making them so intentionally.
"Are you in pain?"
"No," he says, "I can't . . . move . . . my body."
"You mustn't try to move. If you need something, ask me. It's because of the shot the doctor gave you. He'll try to come by tonight to give you another one." She has begun knitting again, her eyes lowered again over her work. "If he can," she says again. "No one can be sure of anything now."
It must also be the shot which gives the soldier this nausea he has been feeling since his awakening. He is thirsty; but he does not want to get up to drink from the faucet in the latrines down the hall. Instead he will wait until the attendant in the canvas duffle-coat and the hunter's boots comes back. No, that's not it: here, it is the woman with the low voice who is taking care of him. It is only at this moment that he is surprised to be back in this room whose setting belongs to a much earlier scene. He distinctly remembers the motorcycle, the dark hallway where he lay down in darkness against the door. Afterwards . . . He no longer knows what comes after: doubtless neither the hospital nor the busy café nor the long walk through the empty streets, now impossible in his condition. He asks:
"Is the wound serious?"
The woman continues knitting as if she had heard nothing.
He repeats: "What kind of wound is it?"
At the same time he realizes that he is not speaking loud enough, that his lips are forming the words, but without adding any force to them. The second time, however, the young woman has raised her head. She sets her work down on the table beside the large black ball of yarn and remains motionless, staring at him in silence, with a look of expectation, or anxiety, or fear. Finally she decides to ask: "Did you say something?"
He repeats his question again. This time weak but distinct sounds come out of his mouth, as if her voice with its extraordinary low intonations were restoring him the use of his own; unless the woman has guessed his words by reading them on his lips.
"No, it's nothing. It will all be over soon."
"No, not today, and not tomorrow. A little later." But he has no time to lose. He will get up tonight. "The box," he says, "where is it?" To make himself understood he must start over again: "The box ... I had with me ...
A fleeting smile passes over the watchful face: "Don't worry, it's here. The boy brought it back. You mustn't talk so much. It's bad for you."
"No," the soldier says, "it isn't... very bad." She has now picked up her knitting again; she continues to look at him, her hands resting on her knees. She resembles a statue. Her regular face with its sharp features recalls that of the woman who served him some wine one day, some other time, long ago. He ma
kes an effort to say: "I'm thirsty."
His lips have probably not even moved, for she neither stands up, nor answers, nor makes the slightest gesture. Moreover, her pale eyes had perhaps not even glanced at him, but at the other drinkers sitting farther away at other tables, toward the back of the room, where her gaze has now passed the soldier and his two companions, moving over the other tables along the wall where the small white bulletins are tacked whose fine-printed text still attracts a knot of readers, then the window with its pleated curtain at eye level and its three enameled balls on the outside of the glass and the snow behind it falling regularly and vertically in slow, heavy, close flakes.
And the new layer which gradually accumulates on the day's footprints, blurring angles, filling depressions, leveling surfaces, has quickly effaced the yellowish paths trampled by the pedestrians along the housefronts, the boy's isolated footprints, the two parallel furrows which the side car has made in the middle of the street.
But first he must make sure the snow is still falling. The soldier decides to ask the young woman about it. Does she even know, in this windowless room? She will have to look outside, to pass through the still open door back through the vestibule where the black umbrella is waiting, and through the long series of hallways, narrow staircases, and more hallways turning off at right angles, where she may easily get lost before reaching the street.
In any case it takes her a long time to come back, and it is now the boy who is sitting in her place at the table. He is wearing a turtle-neck sweater, short pants, wool socks, and felt slippers. He is sitting bolt upright without leaning against the back of the chair; his arms are stiff at his sides, his hands grasping the rattan arms of the chair; his bare legs sway between the front legs of the chair, making equal but opposite oscillations in two parallel planes. When he notices that the soldier is looking at him, he immediately stops moving; and, as if he had patiently waited for this moment to find out about something that is bothering him, he asks in his serious voice, which is not a child's voice at all: "Why are you here?"
Jealousy and in the Labyrinth Page 25