Jealousy and in the Labyrinth (28 page)

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 the 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.

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.