I am blind—

This blindness isn’t mine. It occupies me, and gazes unbearably at me from everywhere—the whole world is looking at me. I’m disembodied and struggling like a ghost paralyzed by a charm or trapped in a looking glass—my sense of being stared at is the only one that remains to me and the stare has a meaning, I know what it’s saying without speaking, without my hearing it.

Say you’ll go.

“I won’t say it!”

Say you’ll go.

“I won’t say it! I won’t say it! I won’t say it!”

It repeats itself without the slightest alteration. The repetition is or wants to seem simultaneous, one utterance said once and an infinity of times at once, and that repetition also says something of its own in reply to me.

“I won’t go!”

Then this will go on.

“Then I’ll get used to it!”

The feeling lasts and lasts—it’s going to break me, but I am pouring myself into my own words and thoughts for refuge.

I feel myself drop onto my cot. The gaze is lapsing. This is the retirement of a resourceful enemy, who will find another way. It wants to wring something from me, even something easy, an acquiescent appearance will do. Will do what?

Thrushchurl is sleeping across from me. The tent flap unscrolls lazily in an empty breath of air.

*

Trumpets wail.

Day dawns.

Drums drum.

Feet drum.

Guns wail.

The city groans.

Movement fills out scurrying legs and hands.

Eyes dart.

Saskia has smeared her eyes with kohl.

Orders are barked, or sonorously called.

The captain directs me to go with a group of militia men toward the slopes; I am supposed to climb with them to a fortified place.

“But, my medicine ...”

“There are other medics here,” the Captain says, putting his hand warmly on my shoulder, putting his eyes warmly on my eyes, putting his voice warmly in my ears and even my mouth. “Don’t worry about that.”

I follow the militia men toward the fortified place. The buildings subside and we leave cobbled streets for packed clay and heaped rocks.

When I get to my feet again they are lying all around me—

I rush to one who screams and claws his abdomen, dies under my hands with one last cry. The others are dead as well. I alone escaped, because I was hindmost and only just emerging from the rocks. Dancing forms veer away the bright sun gold on their black shoulders and hats. Though uninjured I moan as I go forward uncertainly to look round me because I am ringing through and through as if a huge hammer had just banged me like a bell. No fear, nothing but a stupid animal with a silly name distraught and puking in shock. I stand over my reeking vomit and dash the water from my cheeks, cold dawn air harsh on my face, hearing shots from all around, a gathering bellow that seems unreal like a memory in the mind against the unchanging calm of the slopes, the dawn.