"I didn't know, I didn't know!" The voices rose. The Tunnel closed.

I stumbled, turning this way and that. Here soldiers tortured a young woman with their spears, while others wept and sought to throw themselves between her writhing form and her tormentors. Here babies ran on chubby legs with little hands outstretched to be gathered in the arms of weeping fathers, mothers, murderers.

And pinned to the ground, his body covered in armour, his beard long and red, his mouth open in a howl, lay one cursing God cursing the Devil and cursing all Fate. "7

will not, I will not, I will not!"

"And who stands behind those doors," said a sombre Helpful Ghost, her beautiful hair shimmering around her in ethereal whiteness, her soft hand on my face. "See there—"

The double doors about to open, the walls lined with books. "Your dead, my beloved, your dead, all those you've killed!"

I stared at the soldier on his back, roaring from his red-bearded mouth, "Never, never will I say it was right, never, never...."

"Not my dead," I cried. I turned and ran. I stumbled and fell again on my face in the soft press of bodies. Beyond, the ruins of a city withered in fire; walls crumbled on all sides, the cannon exploded again, and once more, a noxious gas filled the air, people fell coughing and choking for breath, the chorus of I DID NOT KNOW blended all in one instant of order that was worse than none!

"HELP ME!" I cried and cried. I never knew such release in screaming, such pure and abandoned cowardice, to shout to High Heaven in this Godforsaken place where cries were the very air itself, and no one heard, no one but the smiling Helpful Dead.

"Learn, my dearest."

"Learn." Whispers like kisses. A wraith, an Indian man, turbaned head, darkened face.

"Learn, my young one."

"Look up, see the blossoms, see the sky. ..." A Helpful Ghost danced in circles, her white dress passing in and out of the clouds and spurts of soot and filth, her feet sinking into the marl but turning still with certainty.

"Don't fool me, there is no garden here!" I shouted. I was on my knees. My clothes were torn, but in my shirt I had the veil! I bad it.

"Take my hands...."

"No, let me go!" I slipped my hand in my coat to cover the veil. Staggering towards me a dim figure rose, hand outstretched, "You, you cursed boy, you filthy boy, you in the Paris streets, like Lucifer Himself full of golden light, you! Think what you did to me!"

The tavern took form, the boy falling backwards from the blow of my mortal fist, the barrels going over and the growl of the disheveled and drunken men who closed in on me.

"No, stop it," I roared. "Get him away from me. I don't remember him. I never killed him. I don't remember, I tell you, I can't....