Then Georges no longer listening to her, no longer hearing her, sealed again in the stifling darkness with that thing on his chest, that weight which wasn’t the warm female flesh but merely air as if the air was lying there too lifeless with that tenfold hundredfold weight of corpses, the heavy corpse of the black air stretched out at full length on top of him its mouth pressed to his own, and he desperately trying to make that breath tasting of death of corruption penetrate his lungs, then suddenly the air came in: they had slid back the door again, the explosion of voices, of orders coming in with the air, Georges wide awake now, thinking: “But it’s not possible, it’s not possible that they can get any more in, we . . .” then something violent, jostling, swearing in the darkness, then the door sliding closed again, the iron bolt shooting to outside, and again it was the darkness populated only by breathing, the ones who had just come in probably pressed against the door and probably wondering how long they could stay inside without fainting or just waiting (probably thinking: it can only last a few minutes, which is all to the good) for the moment when they would lose consciousness, the continuous sound of breathing in the darkness like bellows, then (probably tired of waiting for it to happen) someone who had just come in talking, saying (but not angry, only with a kind of boredom): “Could you maybe at least make room for us to sit down?” and Georges: “Who just spoke?” and the voice: “Georges?” and Georges: “Yes, over here, over . . . God, so they got you too! So you . . .” still talking while he was trying to crawl towards the door despite the swearing, without even feeling the blows they rained on him, then a hand grabbed his ankle and he fell, someone kicked him hard on the side of the face, at the same time that Blum’s voice reached him, closer now, saying, “Georges,” then the voice of the man from Marseilles saying: “Stay where you are. You can’t get through!” and Georges: “Listen, it’s an old pal . . .” and the man from Marseilles: “Go to hell!” and Georges charging, trying to stand up, then when he was half standing, feeling something like a ton of steel hit him in the chest, thinking in a kind of blinding flash: “God it’s not possible they put horses in here too, they . . .” then hearing the iron door slam against his head (or his head ring against the iron door—unless there was no iron door, unless his head rang all by itself), Blum’s voice right beside him now saying without sounding any louder: “Bunch of bastards,” Georges able to hear him hitting out in the darkness, patiently somehow although as fast as he could, landing the greatest possible number of kicks and blows, Georges trying to fight too but not very well because his arm or his foot immediately met something he couldn’t strike very hard, then there was probably too little air for them to continue fighting long, for gradually and by a kind of tacit agreement between them and their opponents (that is, between them and that darkness in which they were trying to land and from which blows landed on them) they stopped, the voice of the man from Marseilles saying that he’d take care of them later, and Blum saying: “That’s right,” and the man from Marseilles: “I know what you look like,” and Blum: “That’s right, you took my picture,” and the man from Marseilles: “Go on, show off, wait till it’s daylight, wait till we get out of here,” and Blum: “That’s right: take my picture,” and probably there wasn’t even enough air for them to go on insulting each other because that stopped too, and Blum said: “Are you all right?” and Georges groping in the knapsack, and there was still the piece of bread and the bottle wasn’t broken, saying: “Yes I’m all right,” but his lip seemed to be made out of wood and then he felt something running down the inside of his mouth, feeling his lip with his fingers, exploring it carefully, thinking: “Fine. I’ll eventually wonder if I was really in the war. But at least I managed to get myself wounded, to shed at least a few drops of my precious blood so that afterwards at least I’ll have something to tell and so I can say that all the money they’ve spent to make me into a soldier hasn’t been completely wasted, although I’m afraid that that isn’t in the regulations, that is, the right way, that is, hit by an enemy aiming at me, a crouching sniper, but only by a hobnail boot, although that’s not even sure although I’m not even certain I can boast later of anything as glorious as being wounded by one of my own kind because it probably was something like a mule or a horse that was stuffed into this wagon by mistake, unless we were the ones who were in this wagon by mistake since its original purpose was to carry animals, unless it’s no mistake at all and they filled it with animals the way it was meant to be filled, so that we’ve become something like animals without realizing it, I think I remember reading somewhere a story like that, men changed with a tap of a wand into pigs or trees or stones all by reciting some Latin verses . . .” then thinking: “And so he’s not completely wrong. And so after all words are at least good for something, so that in his summer house he can probably convince himself that by putting them together in every possible way you can at least sometimes manage with a little luck to tell the truth. I’ll have to tell him that. It’ll make him happy. I’ll tell him that I’ve already read in Latin what’s happened to me, so that I wasn’t too surprised and even to a certain extent reassured to know that it had already been written down, so that all the money he’s spent too to make me learn Latin wasn’t completely wasted either. It’ll probably make him happy, yes. It’ll certainly be a . . .” Then he stopped. It wasn’t his father he wanted to talk to. And it wasn’t even the woman lying invisible beside him, maybe it wasn’t even Blum to whom he was explaining, whispering in the darkness, that if the sun hadn’t disappeared they would have known which side their shadows were on: now they were no longer riding through the green countryside, or rather the green lane had suddenly stopped and they (Iglésia and he) stayed where they were, stupefied, sitting on their skeletal mounts in the middle of the road, while he thought with a kind of stupor, a despair, a calm disgust (like the convict letting go the rope that has allowed him to climb up the last wall, crouching, standing up, preparing himself to jump, and then discovering that he had just fallen at the very feet of his guard who is waiting for him): “But I’ve already seen this somewhere. I know this. But when? And where was it?  . . .”