There is a flurry of voices, men's and women's, from the yard below. As I scuttle into my hiding-place I hear the tramp of footsteps on the stairs. They recede to the far end of the balcony, then come slowly back, pausing at each door. The walls separating the cubicles on this upper floor where the servants sleep and where a soldier of the garrison can buy a night's privacy are mere slats papered over: I can hear clearly as my hunter throws open each door in turn. I press myself against the wall. I hope he does not smell me.
The footsteps round the corner and come down the passage. My door is opened, held open for a few seconds, closed again. So I have passed one test.
There is a quicker, lighter tread: someone runs down the passage and enters the room. My head is turned the wrong way, I cannot even see her feet, but I know it is the girl. This is the moment at which I ought to come into the open, beg her to hide me till night falls and I can find my way out of the town and down to the lakeside. But how can I do it? By the time the bed has stopped heaving and I have emerged she will have fled screaming for help. And who is to say that she would offer refuge to one of the many men who have spent time in this room, one of many passing men from whom she earns a livelihood, a man in disgrace, a fugitive? Would she even recognize me as I am? Her feet flutter about the room, stopping here, stopping there. I can make out no pattern in their movements. I lie still, breathing softly, sweat dripping off me. All at once she is gone: the stairs creak, there is silence.
A lull falls over me too, a spell of lucidity in which I see how ridiculous it is, all this running and hiding, what a silly thing it is to be lying under a bed on a hot afternoon waiting for a chance to sneak away to the reed-brakes, there to live no doubt on birds' eggs and fish that I catch with my hands, sleeping in a hole in the earth, biding my time till this phase of history grinds past and the frontier returns to its old somnolence. The truth is that I am not myself, I have been terror-stricken, I perceive, since the moment in my cell when I saw the guard's fingers clamp over the shoulder of the little boy to remind him not to speak to me, and knew that, whatever it was that had happened that day, I was to bear the blame for it. I walked into that cell a sane man sure of the Tightness of my cause, however incompetent I continue to find myself to describe what that cause may be; but after two months among the cockroaches with nothing to see but four walls and an enigmatic soot-mark, nothing to smell but the stench of my own body, no one to talk to but a ghost in a dream whose lips seem to be sealed, I am much less sure of myself. The craving to touch and be touched by another human body sometimes comes over me with such force that I groan; how I looked forward to the single brief contact which was all I could have with the boy, morning and evening! To lie in a woman's arms in a proper bed, to have good food to eat, to walk in the sun-how much more important these seem than the right to decide without advice from the police who should be my friends and who my enemies! How can I be in the right when there is not a soul in the town who approves of my escapade with the barbarian girl or who would not feel bitter against me if young men from here were killed by my barbarian protégés? And what is the point of suffering at the hands of the men in blue if I am not iron-hard in my certainty? No matter if I told my interrogators the truth, recounted every word I uttered on my visit to the barbarians, no matter even if they were tempted to believe me, they would press on with their grim business, for it is an article of faith with them that the last truth is told only in the last extremity. I am running away from pain and death. I have no plan of escape. Hiding away in the reeds I would starve within a week, or be smoked out. I am simply seeking ease, if the truth be told, fleeing to the only soft bed and friendly arms I have left to me.
Again footsteps. I recognize the girl's quick tread, this time not alone but with a man. They enter the room. By his voice he cannot be more than a boy. "You shouldn't let them treat you like that! You're not their slave!" he says with vehemence.
"You don't understand," she replies. "Anyway, I don't want to talk about it now." There is silence, then more intimate sounds.
I flush. It is intolerable that I should stay for this. Yet like the cuckold in the farce I hold my breath, sinking further and further into disgrace.
One of them sits down on the bed. Boots thud to the floor, clothes rustle, two bodies stretch themselves out an inch above me. The slats bow, pressing into my back. I stop my ears, ashamed to listen to the words they say to each other, but cannot prevent myself from hearing the fluttering and moaning I remember so well from the girl in the grip of pleasure, the girl I used to have my own endearments for.
The slats press harder upon me, I flatten myself as far as I can, the bed begins to creak. Sweating, flushed, sickened to feel how aroused I am despite myself, I actually groan: the long low groan curls from my throat and mingles unnoticed with the sounds of their panting breath.
Then it is over. They sigh and subside, the twitchings and stirrings cease, they lie at rest side by side drifting off into sleep, while unhappy, rigid, wide awake, I wait my chance to escape. It is the hour when even the chickens doze, the hour when there is only one emperor, the sun. The heat in this tiny room under the flat roof has grown stifling. I have not eaten or drunk all day.
Pushing with my feet against the wall, I edge out till I can gingerly sit up. The pain in my back, an old man's pain, announces itself again. "I am sorry," I whisper. They are truly asleep, like children, a boy and a girl, naked, hand in hand, beaded with sweat, their faces relaxed and oblivious. The tide of shame sweeps over me with redoubled force. Her beauty awakes no desire in me: instead it seems more obscene than ever that this heavy slack foul-smelling old body (how could they not have noticed the smell?) should ever have held her in its arms. What have I been doing all this time, pressing myself upon such flowerlike soft-petalled children-not only on her, on the other one too? I should have stayed among the gross and decaying where I belong: fat women with acrid armpits and bad tempers, whores with big slack cunts. I tiptoe out, hobble down the stairs in the blinding glare of the sun.
The upper flap of the kitchen door stands open. An old woman, bent and toothless, stands eating out of a cast-iron pot. Our eyes meet; she stops, the spoon in mid-air, her mouth open. She recognizes me. I raise a hand and smile-I am surprised at how easily the smile comes. The spoon moves, the lips close over it, her gaze shifts, I pass on.
The north gate is closed and barred. I climb the stairway to the watchtower over the angle of the wall and stare out hungrily over the beloved landscape: the belt of green stretching along the river, blackened now in patches; the lighter green of the marshes where the new reeds are shooting; the dazzling surface of the lake.
But there is something wrong. How long have I been locked away from the world, two months or ten years? The young wheat in the acres below the wall ought by now to be a vigorous eighteen inches high. It is not: except at the western limit of the irrigated area the young plants are a stunted sickly yellow. There are great bare patches nearer the lake, and a line of grey stooks by the irrigation wall.
Before my eyes the neglected fields, the sunstruck square, the empty streets shift into a new and sinister configuration. The town is being abandoned-what else is there to suppose?-and the noises I heard two nights ago must have been noises not of arrival but of departure! My heart lurches (with horror? with gratitude?) at the thought. Yet I must be mistaken: when I look down more carefully at the square I can see two boys quietly playing marbles under the mulberry trees; and from what I have seen of the inn, life is going on as usual.