washed-out blood and pus stains, he will have a faint odor of chloroform and disinfectant, and in his hand will be two syringes. "Already one o’clock in the morning?" I ask.
"Yes," she answers. The injections are my clock. Earlier clocks had one hand and the sun revolved around it. My modern clock has two new hands. One is filled with penicillin, the other with painkiller. Every three hours they each jump ahead, one after the other.
"Slept well?" she asks, as she inserts the first needle.
"Didn’t sleep a wink."
"You can’t fool me. You slept the whole time. I saw it myself." "Honestly, I did not. I was thinking."
"What about?"
"Ah sorts of things."
"Then stop thinking," she says as she gives me the second injec-tion. I hardly feel it.
"Stay here," I beg her.
"I am here the whole time. You must sleep. If only you want to, you can sleep. Just stop thinking. Count sheep."
Sheep ... herd ... robbery... "I don’t want to think about sheep." "Then count something else. Or count nothing at all. Think of sleep. Think that you are sleeping. That is auto-suggestion. Use your imagination. Concentrate. Think that you are sleeping, that your mother is standing by your bed, you are a little boy, and sleep ..."
I want to think about sleeping. I am sleeping, I am sleeping, I am sleeping...
* * *
I am sleeping in an orange grove next to the deserted village that serves as our forward base. Everyone is sleeping and snoring. Everyone - the whole company. Those in the company who are still alive and well after these eleven days. The famous company, the men in the jeeps, the heroes.
But they don’t look like heroes. This is not the way the rear sees them. The figures sleeping here are pitiful. Sleeping and snoring, turning from one side to the other, talking in their sleep. Their clothes are filthy and foul. Their skin is pale, their faces look tense with their bones showing and their cheeks sunken.
I am sleeping in a trench. I look like all the rest - pale, with an unkempt beard, sunken eyes, and stinking. The trench is not mine. I