She frequently sighed; she saw no reason to disguise her boredom; why not, when everyone else was bored?—and openly, sometimes blatantly. There was little Jerry Starer half-consciously pressing the flaps of his ears against the ear canal, as if to discover whether the high monotonous drone of Mr. Schwilk’s voice might not mix with the tedious sound of the rain against the windows, to comprise a single sound. And Lester Hughey, his snoutish face flaccid with indifference, his eyes heavy-lidded; Lester whom Marya had once thought she “liked”—and who, in turn, was said to have “liked” her, for a few weeks—now slouching in his seat at the very rear of the room, mud-stained boots in the aisle. And Agnes Roemischer leaning forward to draw her long sharp nails lightly up and down Stan Fitzsimmons’s back: and Stan, good-looking Stan, adrift in an erotic doze in which poor Schwilk, preening and smirking and posing his rhetorical questions, must have played a curious role indeed.

Now Schwilk was speaking of freedom, and necessity, and determinism, and the “transcendence of fate,” and the radiators clanged and thumped, and Marya, drowsy herself, felt her eyelids close . . . and saw at once the battered face rise as if it had been waiting for her all along, snug beneath her eyelids. That hideous face, utterly familiar: the jaw broken, the skin discolored, something “not quite right” about one of the eyes: the nostrils wide and black as if flaring out in a final impassioned attempt to draw breath—to live. Life, only life!—what mattered but life!

Where had the body been laid?—upon a kind of table?—a table made of metal—cold to the touch—so high Marya had to stand on tiptoe. The air was cold too, and tasted of metal. And the smell—the stink—faint but unmistakable—of beer, vomit, intestinal gas: Marya drew it in with every helpless breath.

Marya jerked awake. Her heart kicked once in her breast, then resumed its normal rhythm.

She was suffused with a sudden rage toward Schwilk, who was speaking now of faith—faith in free will—a faith that “creates its own future.” He presented the example of the mountain climber caught somewhere in his climb, unable to descend, forced to leap across an abyss to save himself. Marya gathered that it was a philosophical proposition of some kind. Schwilk quoting William James, whoever William James was, Schwilk speaking rapidly and haughtily, tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard. He seemed to know beforehand that his words weren’t diverting enough, weren’t provoking enough, to rouse the class from its torpor, but he continued nonetheless: “. . . it’s impossible to retreat and it’s dangerous, very dangerous, to go forward . . . the distance he has to leap is such that he might fall to his death. . . . Do you see? Are you following? Though we don’t climb mountains . . . most of us . . . it’s a situation that strikes a deep chord . . . doesn’t it? . . . for the mountain climber is faced with a choice of beliefs that determine action. He can believe he’ll make the leap safely; or he can believe that he will fail, and fall to his death. Well—do you see? Do you understand the point?” Mr. Schwilk said brightly, looking about the room.