The Train Was On Time Part 5

"Yes," he said into the room, "I believed it was only her soul that I loved. But what is a soul without a body, what is a human soul without a body? I couldn't desire her soul so pa.s.sionately, with all the insane pa.s.sion I was capable of, without longing for her just to smile at me at least once, once. G.o.d," he slashed the air with his hand, "always the hope, and nothing but the hope, that that soul might become flesh," he cried, "only the insane burden of hope! What's the time?" He turned on her and, although he spoke roughly and brusquely as if she were a servant girl, she was glad to see that at least he had not forgotten her presence. "Forgive me," he added swiftly, grasping her hand, but she had already forgiven him, she had forgiven him before it happened. She glanced at the clock and smiled. "Eleven." And she was filled with a great happiness, only eleven. Not yet midnight, not even midnight, how glorious, how lovely, how wonderful. She was as gay as a carefree child, jumped up and danced across the room: I'm dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love....

He watched her, thinking: it's strange, really, that I can't be angry with her. Here I am, half-dead with pain, deathly sick, and she's dancing, although she has shared my pain, and I can't be angry, I can't....

"You know what?" she asked, suddenly pausing. "We must have something to eat, that's what we need."

"No," he said, appalled. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because then you'd have to leave me. No, no," he cried out in anguish, "you mustn't leave me for a single second. Without you...without you...without you I can't go on living!"

"What?" she asked, without knowing which word her lips were forming, for a delirious hope had sprung up within her.

"That's right," he said softly, "you mustn't go away."

No, she thought, that's not it after all. I'm not the one he loves. And aloud she said: "I don't have to go away! There's food too in the closet."

How miraculous, that somewhere in a drawer of that closet there should be cookies, and cheese wrapped in silver foil. What a glorious meal, cookies and cheese and wine. He didn't like his cigarette. The tobacco was dry, and it had a kind of foul army taste.

"Give me a cigar," he said, and needless to say there was a cigar there too. A whole box of cigars good enough for a major, all for the Lvov mortgage. It felt good to stand there on the soft carpet, watching Olina arrange the little snack on the coffee table with gentle, loving hands. When she had finished, she suddenly turned to him and looked at him with a smile: "You couldn't go on living without me?"

"No," he said, and his heart was so heavy he couldn't laugh, and he thought: I ought to add now: because I love you, and that would be true and it would not be true. If I said it I would have to kiss her, and that would be a lie, everything would be a lie, and yet I could say with a clear conscience: I love you, but I would have to give a long, long explanation, an explanation that I don't know myself yet. Always those eyes of hers, very gentle and loving and happy, the opposite of the eyes I desired...still desire...and he repeated, looking straight into her eyes: "I couldn't go on living without you," and now he was smiling....

At the very moment when they were raising their gla.s.ses to drink a toast to their birthdays or their wasted lives, at that very moment their hands began to tremble violently; they put down their gla.s.ses and looked at one another in dismay: there had been a knock at the door....

Andreas held back Olina's arm and slowly stood up. He strode to the door, taking only three seconds to reach it. So this is the end, he thought. They're taking her away from me, they don't want her to stay with me till morning. Time is still alive, and the world is turning. Willi and the blond fellow are each in bed with a girl somewhere in this house, that old woman is downstairs lying in wait for her money, the slot of her mouth always open, slightly open. What shall I do when I'm alone? I shan't even be able to pray, to go down on my knees. I can't live without her, because I do love her. They mustn't do that....

"Yes," he asked softly.

"Olina," came the madame's voice. "I have to speak to Olina."

Andreas looked around, pale, aghast. I'll give up the five hours if only I can spend just one more half-hour with her. They can have her then. But I want to spend one more half-hour with her, and look at her, just look at her, maybe she'll play the piano again. Even if it's only, I'm dancing with you into heaven....

Olina smiled at him, and he knew from that smile that she would stay with him whatever happened. And yet he was scared, and he knew now, as Olina quietly unlocked the door, that he did not want to part with this fear for her. That he loved this fear too. "Leave your hand in mine, at least," he whispered as she was going out, and she left her hand in his, and he heard her outside beginning to talk to the madame in hurried, heated Polish. The two women were locked in combat. The moneybox was doing battle with Olina. He anxiously scanned her eyes when she came back without closing the door. He did not let go of her hand. She had turned pale too, and he could see that her confidence was no longer very great....

"The general's turned up. He's offering two thousand. He's furious. He must be raising the roof down there. D'you have any money left? We have to make up the difference, otherwise...."

"Yes," he said; he hastily turned out his pockets, which still contained money he had won from Willi at cards. Olina twittered something in Polish through the door. "Hurry," she whispered. She counted the bills. "Three hundred, right? I haven't a thing! Not a thing!" she said frantically. "Yes I have, here's a ring, that's five hundred. It's not worth more than that. Eight hundred."

"My coat," said Andreas, "here it is."

Olina went to the door with the three hundred, the ring, and the coat. She was even less confident on her return.

"She reckons the coat's worth four, only four-no more. And the ring six, thank G.o.d for that, six. Thirteen hundred. Don't you have anything else? Hurry!" she whispered. "If he gets impatient and comes upstairs, we're sunk."

"My paybook," he said.

"Yes, let me have it. A genuine paybook is worth a lot."

"And my watch."

"Yes," she laughed nervously, "the watch. You still have a watch. Is it running?"

"No," he said.

Olina went to the door with the paybook and the watch. More excited Polish whispering. Andreas ran after her. "Here's a sweater," he called through the door, "a hand, a leg. Can't you use a human leg, a wonderful, superb human leg...a leg from an almost-innocent? Can't you use that? To make up the difference. Are you still short?" His voice was quite matter-of-fact, not excited, and he kept Olina's hand in his.

"No," came the madame's voice from outside. "But your boots. Your boots would make up the difference."

It's hard work, taking off one's boots. But he managed, just as he had managed to pull them on quickly when the Russians came roaring up to the position. He took off his boots and pa.s.sed them out by way of Olina's small hand.

And the door was shut again. Olina stood before him, her face quivering. "I have nothing," she wept, "my clothes belong to the old woman. So does my body, and my soul-she doesn't want my soul. Only the Devil wants souls, and humans are worse than the Devil. Forgive me," she wept, "I have nothing."

Andreas drew her towards him and softly stroked her face. "Come," he whispered, "come, I'll make love to you...." But she raised her face and smiled. "No," she whispered, "no, never mind, it's not important."

Again footsteps approached along the corridor, those confident, unswerving footsteps, but strangely enough they were no longer afraid. They exchanged smiles.

"Olina," the voice called outside the door.

More Polish twittering. Olina smiled at him over her shoulder: "When do you have to leave?"

"At four."

She closed the door, without locking it, came back, and said: "At four the general's car is coming to pick me up."

Her trembling hands had spilled wine over the cheese, so she cleared it away, gathered up the soiled tablecloth, and rearranged the things. The cigar had not gone out, thought Andreas, who was watching her. The world had nearly come to an end, but the cigar had not gone out, and her hands were quieter than ever. "Coming?"

Yes, he sat down opposite her, laid aside the cigar, and for a few minutes they looked past one another, in silence and almost blus.h.i.+ng, because they were both terribly ashamed at the knowledge that they were praying, that they were both praying, here in this brothel, on this couch....

"It's midnight now," she said as they began eating. It's Sunday now, thought Andreas, Sunday, and he abruptly set down his gla.s.s and the cookie he had just begun; a frightful cramp paralyzed his jaws and hands and seemed even to blind his eyes; I don't want to die, he thought and, without realizing it, he stammered, like a weeping child: "I...I don't want to die."

I must be mad to think I can smell paint so vividly...I was barely seven at the time they painted the garden fence: it was the first day of school holidays, and Uncle Hans was away, it had rained in the night, and now the sun was s.h.i.+ning in that moist garden...it was so wonderful...so beautiful, and as I lay in bed I could distinctly smell the garden and the paint, for the painters had already started painting the fence green...and I was allowed to stay in bed a while...because school was out, Uncle Hans was away, and I was to get hot chocolate for breakfast, Aunt Marianne had promised me the night before because she had just opened a new account...whenever we opened a new account, a brand-new one, we began by buying something special. And that paint, I can smell it as plainly as anything, but I must be mad...there can't possibly be a smell of green paint here. That pale face across from me, that's Olina, a Polish prost.i.tute and spy...nothing here in this room can smell so cruelly of paint and conjure up that day in my childhood so vividly. "I don't want to die," stammered his mouth. "I don't want to leave all this behind...no one can force me to get onto that train going to...Stryy, no one on earth. My G.o.d, maybe it would be a mercy if I did lose my mind. But don't let me lose it! No, no! Even though it hurts like h.e.l.l to smell that green paint now, let me rather savor this pain than go mad...and Aunt Marianne's voice telling me I can stay in bed a while...since Uncle Hans is away...."

"What's that?" he asked, startled. Olina had risen, without his noticing it; she was sitting at the piano, and her lips were quivering in her pale face.

"Rain," she said softly, and it seemed to cost her an unspeakable effort to open her mouth, she hardly had the strength to nod toward the window.

Yes, that soft rus.h.i.+ng sound that roused him with the power of a sudden burst of organ music...that was rain...it was raining in the brothel garden...and on the treetops where he had seen the sun for the last time. "No!" he cried as Olina touched the keys, "no," but then he felt the tears, and he knew he had never cried before in his life...these tears were life, a raging torrent formed from countless streams...all flowing together and welling up into one agonizing outburst...the green paint that smelled of holidays...and the terrible corpse of Uncle Hans laid out in its coffin in the study, shrouded in the heavy air of candles...many, many evenings with Paul and the hours of exquisite torment spent trying to play the piano...school and war, war...war, and the unknown face he had desired, had...and in that blinding wet torrent there floated, like a quivering disk, pale and agonizing, the sole reality: Olina's face.

All this because of a few bars of Schubert, making it possible for me to cry as I have never cried in my life, to cry as maybe I only cried when I was born, when that dazzling light threatened to cut me in two.... Suddenly a chord struck his ear, a chord that shook him to the depths of his being, it was Bach, yet she had never been able to play Bach....

It was like a tower that was spiraling upward from within, piling level upon level. The tower grew and pulled him with it, as if it had been hurled up from the bowels of the earth by a gus.h.i.+ng spring that was fiercely shooting its way past the gloom of centuries into the light, into the light. An aching happiness filled him as, against his will yet knowingly and consciously, he was borne upward on level after level of that pure, upthrusting tower; as if borne on a cloud of fantasy, wreathed in what seemed a weightless, poignant felicity, he was yet made to experience all the effort and all the pain of the climber; this was spirit, this was clarity, little remained of human aberration; a fantastically clean, clear playing of compelling force. It was Bach, yet she had never been able to play Bach...perhaps she wasn't playing at all...perhaps it was the angels...the angels of clarity, singing in towers each more ethereal and radiant than the last...light, light, O G.o.d...that light....

"Stop!" he cried out, and Olina's hands recoiled from the keys as if his voice had torn them away....

He rubbed his aching forehead, and he saw that the girl sitting there in the soft lamplight was not only startled by his voice: she was exhausted, she was weary, infinitely weary, the towers she had had to climb with her frail hands had been unimaginably high. She was just tired, the corners of her mouth twitched like those of a child that is too tired even to cry; her hair had loosened...she was pale, and deep shadows encircled her eyes.

Andreas moved toward her, took her in his arms, and laid her on the sofa; she closed her eyes and sighed; gently, very gently she shook her head as if to say: just let me rest...all I want is to rest a little.... Peace, and it was good to see her fall asleep; her face sank to one side.

Andreas rested his head in his hands on the little table and was also aware of an infinite weariness. It's Sunday, he thought, one o'clock in the morning, three more hours to go, and I must not sleep, I will not sleep, I shall not sleep; and he looked at her ardently and tenderly. That pure, gentle, small, wan girlish face, now faintly smiling in the bliss of sleep. I must not sleep, thought Andreas, yet he could feel his weariness bearing relentlessly down on him. I must not sleep. G.o.d, don't let me fall asleep, let me look at her face.... I needed to come to this brothel in Lvov, I needed to come here to find out that there is such a thing as love without desire, the way I love Olina...I must not fall asleep, I must look at that mouth...that forehead and those exhausted, golden, delicate wisps of hair over her face and the dark shadows of indescribable exhaustion around her eyes. She played Bach, to the very limits of human capacity. I must not fall asleep...it's cold...the cruel hostility of the morning is already waiting behind the dark curtains of the night. It's cold, and I have nothing to cover her with...I've flogged my coat, and we made a mess of the tablecloth...it's lying around somewhere stained with wine. My tunic, I could put my tunic over her...I could cover the open neck of her dress with my tunic, but even as he thought this he simply felt too tired to get up and take off his tunic...I can't even lift my arm, and I must not fall asleep; I've still got so many things to do, so many things to do. Just let me rest here a bit with my arms on the table, then I'll get up and put my tunic over her, and I'll pray, pray, kneel by this couch that has seen so many sins, kneel by that pure face from which I had to learn that there is such a thing as love without desire...I must not fall asleep...no, no, I must not fall asleep....

His awakening gaze was like a bird that suddenly dies high up in the air in flight and plunges, plunges into the infinity of despair; but Olina's smiling eyes caught him as he fell. He had been desperately afraid that it was too late...too late to hurry to the appointed place. Too late to hurry to the only rendezvous that mattered. Her smiling gaze caught him, and she answered the unspoken yet anguished question, saying softly: "It's three-thirty...don't worry!" And only now did he feel her light hand resting on his head.

Her face lay on the same level as his, and he hardly needed to move his head to kiss her. It's a pity, he thought, that I don't desire her, a pity that it's no sacrifice for me not to desire her, no sacrifice not to kiss her and not to long to sink down into that seemingly sullied womb....

And he touched her lips with his, and there was nothing. They exchanged smiles of amazement. There was nothing. It was like an ineffectual bullet bouncing off armor of which they themselves were not aware.

"Come on," she said softly, "I'd better see you get something for your feet, hadn't I?"

"No," said Andreas, "don't leave me, you mustn't leave me for a single second. Never mind the shoes. I can just as well die in my socks, lots of men have died in their socks. Fled in panic when they were suddenly confronted by the Russians, and died wounded in the back, facing Germany, wounded in the back, the worst disgrace that could befall the Spartans. Many died like that, never mind the shoes, I'm so tired...."

"No," she said, glancing at her watch. "I could have given up my watch, and you would have kept your boots. One always thinks one has no more to give, and I honestly had forgotten my watch. I'll trade my watch for your boots, we won't be needing it any more...or anything else."

"Or anything else," he repeated under his breath, and he raised his eyes and looked around the room, and for the first time he saw how pitiful it was, the ancient wallpaper and meager furniture: old armchairs over there by the window, and a dingy couch.

"Yes," Olina murmured, "I'm going to get you away. Don't look so scared!" She smiled, her eyes close to his white, tired face. "That car of the general's is a gift from heaven. Just trust me and believe me: no matter where I take you, it will be life. Do you believe me?" Andreas nodded in bewilderment, and she repeated, her face close to his as if in solemn entreaty: "No matter where I take you, it will be life. Trust me!" She clasped his head. "There are tiny little places in the Carpathians where no one will ever find us. A few houses, a little chapel, no partisans even. I used to go to one, I would try to say a few prayers and play on the priest's old baby grand. D'you hear?" She sought his eyes, but his gaze was still roaming the soiled wallpaper against which bottles had been smashed and sticky fingers had been wiped. "We'll have music, d'you hear?"

"Yes," he groaned. "But the others, those other two. I can't leave them now. It's impossible."

"That's out!"

"And the driver," he asked, "what did you intend doing with the driver?" They stood face to face, and there was something like hostility between their eyes. Olina tried to smile. "Starting today," she said softly, "starting today I'm not going to hand over any more innocent men to the executioner. You must trust me! It wouldn't have been too difficult just with you. Simply have the driver stop somewhere, and then we'd run away...disappear! Free, just disappear! But with your two friends it won't work."

"All right, then you'll have to leave me. No," he raised his arm to silence her. "I'm simply telling you there's to be no bargaining. It's either-or. You must understand, you must," he said, looking deep into her serious eyes, "because you loved them, some of them, didn't you? You must understand."

Slowly, heavily, Olina's head drooped. Andreas did not realize this was a nod until she said: "All right, I'll try...."

While Olina, her hand on the door, waited for him, he cast one more look around that dirty little Polish bar, then followed her out into the ill-lit corridor. But the room, the bar, was palatial compared with that corridor in the early morning. That mocking, chill, dingy half-light in a brothel corridor at four in the morning. Those doors, like doors in a barracks, all alike. All equally shabby. And that dreary, dreary squalor.

"In here," said Olina. She pushed open one of the doors and there was her room: scantily furnished with the necessities of her trade; a bed, a small table and two chairs, and a washbasin on a spindly, three-legged stand, next to the stand a pitcher, and a small closet against the wall. Only the bare necessities, like in a barracks....

It was all so unreal, sitting on the bed and watching Olina wash her hands, take her shoes out of the closet, remove her red slippers, and put on her shoes. Oh yes, there was a mirror too, for her to refurbish her beauty. Those traces of tears must be wiped away and fresh powder put on, there being nothing ghastlier than a red-eyed wh.o.r.e. Lipstick and eyebrow pencil had to be reapplied, nails cleaned, and all this was carried out as deftly as a soldier preparing for the alert.

"You must trust me," she said in a chatty, matter-of-fact tone. "I'm going to get you away, d'you hear? It won't be easy if you insist on taking along the other two, but it can be done. A lot can be done...."

Don't let me go out of my mind, Andreas prayed, don't let me go out of my mind in this brutal attempt to grasp reality. The whole thing is impossible, this room in a brothel, shabby and faded in the gray dawn, full of revolting smells, and that girl over there by the mirror, crooning softly, crooning to me, while her fingers skillfully touch up the red on her lips. This is impossible, and this tired heart of mine that wishes for nothing, and these limp senses of mine that desire nothing, neither to smoke nor eat nor drink, and my soul that is deprived of all longing and wants only to sleep, to sleep....

Maybe I'm already dead. Who can grasp all this, these bedclothes I automatically pushed aside, the way one always does if one has to sit down on a bed, these sheets that are not dirty and yet not clean, these horribly mysterious sheets, not dirty and not clean...and that girl over there by the mirror, busy coloring her eyebrows, black, fine-drawn eyebrows on a pale forehead.

"A-hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we will go, like in the good old days! D'you know that one?" asked Olina with a smile. "It's a German poem. 'Archibald Douglas.' It's about a man who was exiled from his native land. And we Poles, we have been exiled into into our native land, into the midst of one's native land; no one knows what that means. Born 1920. A-hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we will go, like in the good old days. Listen!" She was actually crooning that old ballad, and it seemed to Andreas that now the limit had been reached, a gray cold morning in a Polish brothel, and a ballad, set to music by Lowe, being crooned for his benefit.... our native land, into the midst of one's native land; no one knows what that means. Born 1920. A-hunting and fis.h.i.+ng we will go, like in the good old days. Listen!" She was actually crooning that old ballad, and it seemed to Andreas that now the limit had been reached, a gray cold morning in a Polish brothel, and a ballad, set to music by Lowe, being crooned for his benefit....

"Olina!" came that level voice again outside the door.

"Yes?"

"The bill. Hand it out to me, please. And get ready to leave, the car's at the door...."

So this is the reality, the girl handing out the bill through the door, with tapering fingers, a bill on which everything had been written down, beginning with the matches, which he still had in his pocket, those matches he had been given yesterday evening at six. That's how fantastically fast time goes, this time we cannot grasp, and I've done nothing, nothing, in that time, and there's nothing I can do but follow this refurbished beauty, down the stairs to settle the account....

"These Polish tarts," said Willi, "simply terrific! That's what I call pa.s.sion, eh?"

"Yes."

The room downstairs was just as meagerly furnished. A few rickety chairs, a bench, a threadbare carpet that looked like frayed paper, and Willi was smoking. He was completely unshaven and was searching his luggage for more cigarettes.

"You were certainly the most expensive, my lad. My bill wasn't much less either. But this young friend of ours, he cost almost nothing. Hey there!" He dug the blond fellow, who was still asleep, in the ribs. "A hundred and forty-six marks." He snorted with laughter. "It seems he actually did sleep with the girl, literally slept. There were two hundred marks left over, so I slid them under the door of his girl's room, as a tip, see? Because she made him happy so cheaply. D'you happen to have a cigarette left?"

"Yes."

"Thanks."

What an incredibly long time Olina was taking to settle the account, over there in the madame's office, at four in the morning. That was an hour when the whole world slept. Even in the girls' rooms all was quiet, and downstairs in the big reception room it was quite dark. The door from which the music had come was dark, and one could see and smell that dark room. The only sound was the discreet engine purring away outside. Olina was behind that reddish door, and it was all reality. It had to be reality....

"So you think this general's wh.o.r.e-car will take us too?"

"Yes!"

"Hm. A Maybach, I can tell by the engine. Nifty job. Mind if I go ahead and speak to the driver? He's sure to be a noncom."

Willi shouldered his luggage and opened the door, and there it really was, the night, the gray-veiled night and the dim headlamps of a waiting car out there by the entrance. As coldly and inescapably real as all war-nights, full of cold menace, full of horrible mockery; out there in the dirty holes...in the cellars...in the many, many towns cowering in fear...summoned up, those appalling nights that at four in the morning have achieved their most deadly power, those ghastly, indescribably terrible war-nights. One of these was there outside the door, a night full of terror, a night with no home, not even the smallest, smallest warm corner to hide in...those nights that had been summoned up by the resounding voices....

So she really believes she can rescue me. Andreas smiled. She believes it is possible to slip through the fine mesh of this net. This child believes there is such a thing as escape...she believes she will find ways to avoid Stryy. That word has been cradled within me since my birth. It has lain deep, deep down, unacknowledged and unawakened; it was with me when I was still a child, and maybe a dark shudder rippled through me, many years ago in school, when we learned about the foothills of the Carpathians and I read the words Galicia and Lvov and Stryy on the map, in the middle of that yellow-white patch. And I've forgotten that shudder. Maybe, often and often, the barb of death and summons was cast into me without ever catching in anything down there, and only that tiny little word had been set up and saved up for it, and finally the barb caught....

Stryy...that tiny little word, terrible and b.l.o.o.d.y, has surfaced and expanded into an ominous cloud that now overshadows everything. And she believes she will find ways of avoiding Stryy....

Besides, her promise doesn't attract me. I'm not attracted by that little village in the Carpathians where she proposes to play on the priest's piano. I'm not attracted by that seeming security...all we have is promises and pledges and a dark uncertain horizon over which we have to plunge to find security....

At last the door opened, and Andreas was surprised by the rigid pallor of Olina's face. She had put on a fur coat, a charming little cap was perched on her beautiful loose hair, and there was no watch on her wrist, for he was wearing his boots again. The account had been settled. The old woman was smiling so mysteriously. Her hands were folded across her desiccated body, and after the soldiers had picked up their luggage and Andreas was opening the door she smiled and uttered a single word: "Stryy," she said. Olina did not hear it, she was already outside.

"I too," said Olina in a low voice as they sat side by side in the car, "I too am condemned. I too have betrayed my country because I spent all last night with you instead of sounding out the general." She took his hand and smiled at him: "But don't forget what I told you: no matter where I take you, it will be life. Right?"

"Right," said Andreas. The whole night ran through his memory like a smooth thread being reeled off, yet there was one knot that left him no peace. Stryy, the old woman had said, and how can she know that Stryy...he hadn't said anything about it to her, and still less would Olina have mentioned that word....

So this is supposed to be reality: a discreetly purring car with its subdued headlamps lighting up the nameless road. Trees, and now and again houses, all saturated with gray darkness. In front of him those two necks, encircled by sergeants' braid almost identical, solid German necks, and the cigarette smoke drifting back from the driver's seat. Beside him the blond fellow, sleeping like a child worn out by playing, and on the right the steady gentle contact with Olina's fur coat and the smooth thread of the memory of that lovely night sliding by, faster and faster, and always stopping short at that strange knot, at the place where the old woman had said: Stryy....

Andreas leaned forward to look at the softly lit clock on the dashboard, and he saw it was six o'clock, just on six. An icy shock ran through him, and he thought: G.o.d, G.o.d, what have I done with my time, I've done nothing, I've never done anything, I must pray, pray for them all, and at this very moment Paul is walking up the altar steps at home and beginning to recite: Introibo. And on his own lips too the word began to form: Introibo.

But now an invisible giant hand pa.s.sed over the softly gliding car, a terrible, silent stirring of the air, and into this silence came Willi's dry voice, asking: "Where are you taking us, bud?" "To Stryy!" said a disembodied voice.

And then the car was slashed by two raging knives that rasped with savage hatred, one from the front, the other from behind, tearing into that metal body which reared and turned, filled with the shriek of fear of its occupants....

In the silence that followed there was no sound but the pa.s.sionate devouring of the flames.

My G.o.d, thought Andreas, are they all dead?...and my legs...my arms, is only my head left?...is no one there?...I'm lying on this bare road, on my breast lies the weight of the world, so heavily that I can find no words to pray....

Am I crying? he thought suddenly, for he could feel something moist running down his cheeks: no, something was dripping onto his cheeks; and in that ashen morning light, which was still without the yellow mildness of the sun, he saw that Olina's hand was hanging down over his head from a fragment of the car, and that blood was dripping onto his face from her hands, and he was past knowing that now he was really beginning to cry....