One afternoon the faint irregular scrape and chink of the bricklayers' trowels on the other side of the wall suddenly ceases. Lying on my mat, I prick my ears: there is a faraway hum in the air, a faint electric quality to the still afternoon that fails to resolve itself into distinguishable sounds but leaves me tense and restless. A storm? Though I press my ear to the door I can make out nothing. The barracks yard is empty.
Later the trowels resume their chink-chink.
Towards evening the door opens and my little friend enters with my supper. I can see that he is bursting to tell me something; but the guard has come in with him and stands with a hand on his shoulder. So only his eyes speak to me: glowing with excitement, I can swear they say that the soldiers have returned. In which case why not bugles and cheering, why not horses trotting across the great square, why not the noise of preparations for a feast? Why does the guard grip the boy so tightly and whip him away before I can give him a kiss on his shaven skull? The obvious answer is that the soldiers have returned, but not in triumph. If so, I must beware.
Later in the evening there is a burst of noise from the yard and a hubbub of voices. Doors are opened and slammed, feet tramp back and forth. Some of what is said I can hear clearly: talk not of strategies or barbarian armies but of aching feet and exhaustion, an argument about sick men who must have beds. Within an hour all is quiet again.
The yard is empty. Therefore there are no prisoners. That at least is cause for joy.
It is mid-morning and I have had no breakfast. I pace my room, my stomach rumbling like a hungry cow's. At the thought of salty porridge and black tea my saliva runs, I cannot help it.
Nor is there any sign that I will be let out, though this is an exercise day. The bricklayers are at work again; from the yard come sounds of everyday activity; I even hear the cook calling to her grandson. I beat on the door but no one pays any attention.
Then in mid-afternoon the key scrapes in the lock and the door opens. "What do you want?" says my warder. "Why have you been banging on the door?" How he must detest me! To spend days of one's life keeping watch on a closed door and attending to the animal needs of another man! He has been robbed of his freedom too, and thinks of me as the robber.
"Are you not letting me out today? I haven't had anything to eat."
"Is that what you called me for? You'll get your food. Learn some patience. You're too fat anyway."
"Wait. I have to empty my bucket. It stinks in here. I want to wash the floor. I want to wash my clothes too. I can't appear in front of the Colonel in clothes that smell like this. It will only bring disgrace on my warders. I need hot water and soap and a rag. Let me quickly empty my bucket and fetch hot water from the kitchen."
My guess about the Colonel must be right, for he does not contradict me. He opens the door wider and stands aside. "Hurry up!" he says.
There is only a scullery maid in the kitchen. She gives a start when the two of us walk in, in fact even seems about to run away. What stories have people been telling about me?
"Give him some hot water," the guard orders. She ducks her head and turns to the stove where there is always a great cauldron of steaming water.
Over my shoulder I say to the guard, "A bucket-I will fetch a bucket for the water." In a few strides I am across the kitchen to the dim recess where, along with sacks of flour and salt and crushed millet and dried peas and beans, the mops and brooms are kept. On a nail at head-height is the key to the cellar where the sides of mutton are hung. In an instant I have pocketed it. When I turn I have a wooden bucket in my hand. I hold it up while the girl ladles boiling water in. "How are you?" I say. Her hand trembles so much that I have to take the ladle from her. "Can I have a little soap and an old rag, please?"
Back in my cell I strip and wash in the luxuriously warm water. I wash my one spare pair of drawers, which smells like rotten onions, wring it out, hang it on the nail behind the door, and empty the bucket on the paved floor. Then I lie down to wait for nightfall.
The key turns smoothly in the lock. How many people besides myself know that the cellar key unlocks the door to my prison-room as well as the large cupboard in the main barracks-hall, that the key to the suite of rooms over the kitchen duplicates the key to the armoury door, that the key to the north-west tower stairway also opens the north-east tower stairway, the smaller cupboard in the hall, and the hatch over the waterpipe in the courtyard? One does not spend thirty years immersed in the minutiae of the life of a tiny settlement for nothing.
The stars twinkle out of a clear black sky. Through the bars of the yard gate comes the gleam of a fire on the square beyond. Beside the gate, if I strain my eyes, I can make out a dark shape, a man sitting against the wall or curled up in sleep. Does he see me in the doorway of my cell? For minutes I stand alert. He does not stir. Then I begin to edge along the wall, my bare feet making whispering noises on the patches of gravel.
I turn the corner and pass the kitchen door. The next door leads to my old apartment upstairs. It is locked. The third and last door stands open. It is the door of the little room sometimes used as a sickbay, sometimes simply to quarter men in. At a crouch, feeling with my hand before me, I creep towards the dim blue square of the barred window, fearful of stumbling over the bodies whose breathing I hear all about me.
One strand begins to separate from the skein: the sleeper at my feet breathes fast, at each exhalation giving a little moan. Is he dreaming? I pause while a few inches from me, like a machine, he continues to pant and moan in the dark. Then I creep past.
I stand at the window and look out across the town square, half expecting campfires, lines of tethered horses and stacked arms, rows of tents. But there is almost nothing to see: the embers of a single dying fire, and perhaps the gleam of two white tents far away under the trees. So the expeditionary force is not back! Or is it possible that these few souls here are all that is left of it? My heart stops at the thought. But that is not possible! These men have not been to war: at worst they have been roaming the up-river country, hunting down unarmed sheep-herders, raping their women, pillaging their homes, scattering their flocks; at best they have met no one at all-certainly not the gathered barbarian clans from whose fury the Third Bureau is engaged in protecting us.
Fingers as light as a butterfly's wing touch my ankle. I drop to my knees. "I am thirsty," confides a voice. It is the man who was panting. So he was not asleep.
"Quietly, my son," I whisper. Staring, I can make out the whites of his upturned eyeballs. I touch his forehead: he is feverish. His hand comes up and grips mine. "I have been so thirsty!" he says.
"I will bring you water," I whisper in his ear, "but then you must promise to be quiet. There are sick men here, they must sleep."
The shadow beside the gate has not moved. Perhaps there is nothing there, perhaps only an old sack or a stack of firewood. I tiptoe across the gravel to the trough where the soldiers wash. The water is not clean but I cannot afford to unstop the pipe. A battered pot hangs at the side of the trough. I scoop it full and tiptoe back.