Silently the divine eyes said to mine: "What can we do, we
criminals?" And we smiled at each other for the last time, the eyes and
my eyes.
A station. The _apache_ descends. I follow with my numerous _affaires_.
The divine man follows me--the v-f-g him.
The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more unrolled;
finally I could not possibly hold it.
It fell. To pick it up I must take the sack off my back.
Then comes a voice, "allow me if you please, monsieur"--and the sack has
disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at
length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed
under my great sack.... I never thanked him. When I turned, they'd taken
him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet.
Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of
strange tongues. Some high boy's voice is appealing to me in Belgian,
Italian, Polish, Spanish and--beautiful English. "Hey, Jack, give me a
cigarette, Jack...."
I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court.
All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up to
doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked. More like ladders than
stairs.
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