Then he realized it wasn’t to Blum that he was explaining all this (Blum who had been dead for more than three years now, that is, whom he knew was dead because all he had seen was this: the same face as on that rainy grey morning in the barn, but even further reduced, shrunken and woebegone between the huge prominent ears that seemed to have grown as the face shrank, melted, and the same feverish, silent, gleaming stare reflecting the greenish-yellow light of the bulbs illuminating the barracks at least lighting them enough for what they had to do: open their eyes, sit up on their cots and stay there for a minute or so, half numb until they managed to realize where they were and what they were, and then get up, simply to stand up without doing anything more than tying their shoes (since now they didn’t know what it meant to undress, save on Sundays when they hunted for lice) and dusting off the night’s straw, pulling on their overcoats and finally lining up outside in the darkness waiting for the dawn until they had been counted like a herd of cattle: light enough for that then, and for him to see the handkerchief Blum was holding in front of his mouth, and that the handkerchief was almost black, but not with dirt, that is, if the bulbs had been strong enough he would have been able to see that it was red, but in the dimness it was merely black, and Blum still not saying anything, with only that woebegone, desperate and resigned something in his too shiny eyes, and Georges: “But it’s only a little b . . . Lucky bastard! You sure can pick your days: the infirmary, sheets, and they’ll probably send you home disabled . . . Lucky bastard!” and Blum still looking at him without answering, his eyes burning in the dimness, wide as a child’s, and Georges saying, repeating: “Lucky bastard, what I wouldn’t give to be able to spit up a little like that myself: nothing but a little drop like that Good God then I could go too but I wouldn’t be that luck . . .” and Blum still looking at him without answering, and he hadn’t ever seen him again), realizing then that it wasn’t to Blum that he was trying to explain all this, whispering in the darkness, and not the cattle car either, the narrow air hole blocked by the heads or rather the blobs jostling each other noisily, but a single head now that he could touch merely by raising his hand as a blind man recognizes and doesn’t even need to bring his hand closer to know in the darkness, smelling the warmth, the breath, breathing the air coming out of the faint dark flower of the lips, the whole face like a kind of dark flower leaning over his as if it were trying to read to divine . . . But he seized her wrist before she reached him, grasping the other hand in the air, her breasts rolling over his chest: they struggled a moment, Georges thinking without even wanting to laugh Usually they’re the ones who don’t want the lights on but there was still too much light in the darkness she leaning over the side her head as it moved away from the window revealing the stars and he could feel the cold gleam reach him splashing like milk on his face thinking Good fine look, feeling her weight the weight of all that female flesh her hip crushing his leg the hip shining phosphorescent in the darkness he could see it gleaming in the mirror too and the two pineapples on each side of the wardrobe pediment and that was almost all and she: Go on talk to him some more, and he: Who? and she: Whoever it is, not me, and he: Then who? and she: But even if I had been only an old moth-eaten whore to you, and he: For God’s sake all I’ve done is dream about you think about you for five years, and she: Not me, and he: Who then who, and she: Not who, you’d be smarter to say what, I think it’s not hard to guess I think it’s not hard to imagine what a bunch of men without women for five years can think about, the kind of things you see written on walls of telephone boxes or toilets in cafés I think it’s natural I think it’s the most natural thing in the world but in those drawings you see there they never show the faces it usually stops at the neck when it goes that far when whoever has used the pencil or the nail to scratch the plaster has taken the trouble to draw something else, to go higher than, and he: Oh for God’s sake but then the first woman who comes along, and she: But back there you had me in the palm of your hand (and making a sound that was something like a laugh in the dark, something that shook her slightly, shook them both, the two bodies sealed together, the breasts, so that he seemed to hear it echoing in his own body, so that he laughed too, that is, not really a laugh, in the sense that it expressed no joy: only that sort of spasm, hard, like a cough, echoing together in their two bodies then stopping when she spoke again:) or rather all of you did since there were three of you, Iglésia you and what was his name . . . and Georges: Blum, and she: . . .That little Jew who was with you the one you had found again . . .