Jealousy and in the Labyrinth (34 page)

Everything was calm outside. From now on no one ventured out in the streets. A few scattered flakes of snow were falling through the motionless air. The two of them lifted the body, the man holding him by the thighs and the woman by the shoulders, under the arms. It was only then that she saw the blood which made a large stain on one side of the overcoat; but the doctor reassured her, declaring that it had nothing to do with the seriousness of the wound, and he carefully stepped off the stoop, skillfully carrying his share of the burden, followed by the young woman, who had more trouble keeping the soldier in a position she considered the least uncomfortable, struggling to maneuver this extremely heavy body, constantly changing her grip, and by doing so only succeeding in shaking him up more. Three steps ahead of them the boy was holding the umbrella in its black silk sheath in one hand and the shoe box in the other.

Then the doctor had to go home in order to get first aid supplies for the wounded man, until a hospital could take him (which might be some time, given the general disorganization) . But when they had reached the young woman's apartment, which luckily was quite nearby, they again heard the sound of a motor, less distinct but more powerful. This time it was no longer merely a motorcycle but heavy cars or perhaps trucks. Therefore the man had to wait a while longer before daring to go outside again, and the three of them had remained in the room where they had laid the still unconscious soldier on the day bed. Standing motionless, they looked at him without speaking, the woman near the pillow leaning over his face, the man at the foot of the bed still wearing his gray leather gloves and his fur-lined coat, the child near the table with his cape and his beret on his head.

The soldier has also remained fully dressed: overcoat, leggings, and heavy boots. He is lying on his back, his eyes closed. He must be dead for the others to leave him like this. Yet the next scene shows him in the bed, the sheets pulled up to his chin, half listening to a confused story the same young woman with pale eyes is telling him: a slight difference of opinion having arisen between the kindly doctor with gray gloves and another individual whom she does not describe clearly but who must be the lame man. The latter must have returned to the house—much later, after the first injection—and wanted to do something which the other two, particularly the doctor, objected to. Although the basis of their disagreement is not easy to make out, its violence is sufficiently indicated by the behavior of the antagonists, both of whom make a number of expressive gesticulations, assume theatrical attitudes, and make exaggerated faces. The lame man, leaning one hand on the table, even finishes by brandishing his crutch at the other; the doctor raises his arms to heaven, opening his hands like a prophet preaching a new religion, or a dictator answering the cheers of the crowd. The woman, frightened, steps to one side to avoid the dispute; but without shifting her other foot, she turns toward what she is avoiding in order to follow the last exchanges which threaten to become dramatic, while still hiding her eyes behind her hands which are spread before her face. The child is sitting on the floor near an overturned chair; his legs are lying flat forming a wide V; in his arms, against his chest, he is holding the box wrapped in brown paper.

Then come scenes still less distinct—still more inaccurate, too, probably—violent although generally silent. They take place in vaguer, less characterized, more impersonal areas; a staircase recurs several times; someone is going down it rapidly, holding onto the railing, taking several steps at the same time, almost flying from one landing to the next, while the soldier, in order not to be knocked over, is obliged to step back into a corner. Then he goes more calmly down the stairs himself, and at the end of the long hallway he finds the snow-covered street again; and at the end of the street he finds the busy café again. Inside, everyone is as before: the bartender behind his bar, the doctor with the fur-lined coat in the group of middle-class citizens standing in front of the bar, but a little apart from the others and not participating in their conversation, the child sitting on the floor against a bench filled with drinkers near an overturned chair, still holding the box in his arms, and the young woman in the pleated dress with the dark hair and the graceful walk raising her tray with its single bottle over the heads of the seated drinkers, and finally the soldier sitting at the smallest table between his two comrades, who are ordinary infantrymen like himself, dressed as he is in overcoats buttoned to the neck and field caps, exhausted as he is, looking at nothing, as he is, sitting stiffly in their chairs and, like himself, saying nothing. All three have exactly the same face; the only difference among them is that one is seen from the left profile, the second full face, the third from the right profile; their six hands are resting on the table whose checkered oilcloth falls in rigid, conical folds at the corner of the table.

Does the waitress turn away from their motionless group now, presenting her classical profile toward the right, but with her body already turned in the other direction, in the direction of the man in middle-class clothes situated slightly behind his own group, also seen in profile and from the same side, his features motionless like hers, like theirs? Someone else also has an impassive face amid the agitation of the entire company; it is the child sitting on the floor in the foreground, on the parquet floor resembling that of the room itself, continuing the latter, so to speak, after a brief separation which consists of the horizontal strip of vertically-striped wallpaper and then, lower down, the three drawers of the chest.

The parquet floor extends beyond without further interruption, to the heavy red curtains, above which the fly's threadlike shadow continues its circuit across the white ceiling, now passing close to the dark line that spoils the uniformity of the surface near the angle of the wall in the right corner, just within the field of vision of the man lying on the day bed, the back of his neck supported by the bolster.

He would have to get up in order to see at close range just what this defect consists of: is it actually a crack, or a spider web, or something else? He would probably have to stand on a chair, or even on a ladder.

But once on his feet, other thoughts would quickly distract him from this project: the soldier would first of all have to find the shoe box again, probably put in another room now, in order to deliver it to its recipient. Since there can be no question of such a thing for the moment, the soldier need only remain motionless, lying on his back, his head raised slightly by the bolster, staring straight in front of him.

And yet his mind feels clearer, less drowsy, despite the persistent nausea and the progressive numbing of his entire body, which has grown worse since the second injection. It seems to him that the young woman who is leaning over him to give him something to drink is also looking at him more anxiously.

She speaks to him again about the lame man, against whom she seems to have some kind of grudge, or something even more violent. In her remarks she has already returned several times to this man who shares her apartment, apropos of other subjects, and always with a certain reticence, though at the same time revealing a need to explain her feelings on the matter, as if she were ashamed of this presence she was trying to justify, to destroy, and to minimize. Besides, the young woman never explains the relationship connecting them. She has had to struggle, among other things, to keep the lame man from opening the shoe box: he claimed it was essential to know what was in it. As a matter of fact, she herself has wondered what should be done with it . . .

"Nothing," the soldier says. "I'll take care of it once I'm up."

"But," she says, 'if it's something important and you have to stay here for a while . . ." Suddenly she seems overcome with anxiety, and the soldier supposes he himself is responsible for it and would like to allay it.

"No," he says, "it's not so important."

"But what should be done with it?"

"I don't know."

"You were looking for someone. Was it to give it to him?"

"Not necessarily. To him, or to someone else. He would have told me who."

"Was it important for him?"

"It might be. I'm not sure."

"But what's in it?" She has spoken this last sentence with such vehemence that he feels obliged to tell her, as far as he is able, despite the fatigue this conversation causes him, despite his own lack of interest in this particular point, despite his fear of disappointing her by the insignificance of his answer:

"Not much, I think, I haven't looked, probably letters, papers, personal effects."

"It was for a friend?"

"No, someone I barely knew."

"Is he dead?"

"Yes, he died at the hospital. He was wounded in the stomach."

"And was it important for him?"

"Probably. He had asked for me and I came a few minutes too late. They gave me the box, from him. Then someone called him, on the telephone. I answered. I think it was his father or something. They didn't have the same name. I wanted to know what should be done with the box."

"And he asked you to meet him." Yes; the man who telephoned has arranged to meet him in his own city, this one, where the soldier could try to go too, each henceforth doing whatever he could among this retreating army. The meeting place was not the man's house, for family reasons or something of that kind, but in the street, since all the cafés were closing, one after another. The soldier found a military truck carrying old uniforms which was going in this direction. Yet he had to come part of the way on foot.

He didn't know the city. He might have lost his way and gone to the wrong place. It was at a crossroads near a street light. He had not heard clearly, or not remembered the names of the streets. He has relied on topographical indications, following the prescribed itinerary as best he could. When he thought he had reached the place, he waited. The crossroads corresponded to the description he had been given, but the names of the streets did not sound like the vaguely remembered consonants. He has waited a long time, he has seen no one.

He was certain of the day, in any case. As for the time, he had no watch. Perhaps he has arrived too late. He has looked around the neighborhood. He has even waited at another crossroads identical to the first. He has wandered through the whole city. He has returned several times to the original place, insofar as he was capable of recognizing it, that day and the days following. In any case it was too late then.

"Only a few minutes. He had just died, before anyone had noticed. I had stayed in a café with some non-coms, men I had never seen before. I didn't know. They told me to wait for a friend of theirs, another man, a recruit. He was at Reichenfels."

"Who was at Reichenfels?" the woman asks. She leans a little closer to the bed. Her low voice fills the whole room as she insists: "Who? In which regiment?"

"I don't know. Someone. The doctor was there too, with his gray ring, leaning on the counter, and the wife, the lame man's wife, the one who poured the wine."

"What are you talking about?"

Her face is quite close to his. Her pale, dark-rimmed eyes are made even larger by the widening of the lids.

"I have to go get the box," he says. "It must be back at the barracks. I forgot it. It's on the bed, behind the bolster . . ."

"Lie still, rest. Don't try to talk any more."

She holds out her hand to pull up the sheet. The palm and the inner surface of the fingers show black stains, as though from paint or grease, which have resisted washing.

"Who are you?" the soldier says. "What should I call you? What's your name? . . ."

But she no longer seems to hear him. She arranges the sheets and the pillow, straightens the blanket.

"Your hand," the soldier says again. This time he cannot proceed further.

"Lie still," she says, "it's nothing. It's from carrying you. The overcoat had fresh stains on the sleeve."

They stumble at every step over the ruts and soft earth, the darkness illuminated only occasionally by fleeting gleams. Both men have abandoned their knapsacks. The wounded man has also left his rifle behind. But the soldier has kept his, even though its strap has just broken and he is obliged to carry it in his hand, horizontally. Three steps ahead, the boy is carrying the umbrella in the same way. The wounded man grows heavier and heavier and clings to the soldier's neck, making it still more difficult for the latter to walk. Now he can no longer move at all: neither his arms nor even his head. He can only look straight ahead at the leg of the table from which the oilcloth has been removed, the table leg now visible all the way to the top: it ends in a sphere supporting a cube, or rather an almost cubical parallelepiped, with square horizontal surfaces but rectangular vertical ones; the vertical surface has a design carved within a rectangular frame following the shape of the surface itself: a kind of stylized floret, its straight stem splitting near the top into two small symmetrical arcs on either side, like a V with curved branches, the concavity toward the bottom, slightly shorter than the terminal portion of the axial stem starting from the same point, and . . . , his eyes no longer able to remain lowered so long, his gaze is obliged to move up the length of the red curtains to the ceiling and the hair-thin, somewhat sinuous crack whose shape also has something distinct and complicated about it which it would be necessary to follow with application from one turn to the next, with its curves, vacillations, uncertainties, sudden changes of directions, inflections, continuations, slight regressions, but it would take more time, a little time, a few minutes, a few seconds, and it is already, now, too late.

On my last visit, the third injection was useless. The wounded soldier was dead. The streets are full of armed soldiers who march by singing in low voices, their songs more nostalgic than joyous. Others pass in open trucks in which the men are sitting stiffly, rifles upright, held in both hands between their knees; they are arranged in two rows, back to back, each row facing one side of the street. Patrols circulate everywhere, and no one may go out after nightfall without a pass. It was necessary to give the third injection, and only a practicing doctor would have had authorization to do so. Fortunately the streets were poorly lit, certainly much worse than during the last few days when the lights were on even in broad daylight. But it was too late for the injection. Besides, they only served to make the dying man's last hours less painful. There was nothing else to do.