'This is Polchek,' the corporal said, indicating Polchek.
'Then what's wrong with him?' the sergeant said. He said to the other man: What's your name?'
'I-' the man said; again he glanced rapidly about, at nothing, no one, anguished and despairing.
'His name is-' the corporal said. 'I've got his papers-' He reached inside his tunic and produced a soiled dog-eared paper, ob-viously a regimental posting order. 'Pierre Bouc.' He rattled off a number.
There's no Bouc on this list,' the sergeant said. 'What's he doing here?'
'You tell me,' the corporal said. 'He got mixed in with us some-how Monday morning. None of us know any Pierre Bouc either,'
'Why didn't he say something before this?'
'Who would have listened?' the corporal said.
'Is that right?' the sergeant said to the man. 'You dont belong in this squad?' The man didn't answer.
'Tell him,' the corporal said.
'No,' the man whispered. Then he said loudly: 'No!' He blun-dered up. 'I dont know them!' he said, blundering, stumbling, half-falling backward over the bench almost as though in flight until the sergeant checked him.
'The major will have to settle this,' the sergeant said. 'Give me that order.' The corporal passed it to him. 'Out with you,' the ser-geant said. 'Both of you.' Now those inside the room could see beyond the door another file of armed men, apparently a new one, waiting. The two prisoners passed on through the door and into it, the sergeant, then the orderly following; the iron door clashed behind them, against that room and all it contained, signified, portended; beyond it Polchek didn't even lower his voice: 'They promised me brandy. Where is it?'
'Shut up,' the sergeant's voice said. 'You'll get what's coming to you, no bloody fear.'
'I'd better,' Polcheck said. 'If I dont, I might know what to do about it,'
'I've told him once,' the sergeant's voice said. 'If he dont shut up this time, shut him up,'
'With pleasure, sergeant,' another voice said. 'Can do,'
Take them on,' the sergeant's voice said. Though before the iron clash of the door had ceased the corporal was already speaking, not loud: just prompt, still mild, not peremptory: just firm: 'Eat,' The same man essayed to speak again but again the cor-poral forestalled him. 'Eat,' he said. 'Next time he will take it out,' But they were spared that. The door opened almost immediately, but this time it was only the sergeant, alone, the eleven heads which remained turning as one to look at him where he faced the corporal down the length of the littered table.
'You,' the sergeant said.
'Me?' the corporal said.
'Yes,' the sergeant said. Still the corporal didn't move. He said again: 'You mean me?'
'Yes,' the sergeant said. 'Come on,' The corporal rose then. He gave one rapid look about at the ten faces now turning from the ser-geant to look at him-faces dirty, unshaven, strained, which had slept too little in too long, harassed, but absolute, one in whatever it was-not trust exactly, not dependence: perhaps just one-ness, singleness.
'You're in charge, Paul,' he said to the Breton.
'Right,' the Breton said. Till you get back,' But this time the corridor was empty; it was the sergeant himself who closed the door behind them and turned the heavy key and pocketed it. There was no one in sight at all where he-the corporal-had expected to find armed men bristling until the moment when they in the white glit-tering room in the Hotel de Ville sent for them for the last time. Then the sergeant turned from the door and now he-the corporal-realised that they were even hurrying a little: not at all furtive nor even surreptitious: just expedite, walking rapidly back up the cor-ridor which he had already traversed three times-once yesterday morning when the guards had brought them from the lorry to the Thursday Night cell, and twice last night when the guards had taken them to the Hotel de Ville and brought them back, their-his and the sergeant's-heavy boots not ringing because (so recent the factory-when it had been a factory-was) these were not stone but brick, but making instead a dull and heavy sound seeming only the louder because there were only four now instead of twenty-six plus the guards. So to him it was as though there was no other way out of it save that one exit, no direction to go in it except on, so that he had already begun to pass the small arch with its locked iron gate when the sergeant checked and turned him, nor any other life in or near it so that he didn't even recognise the silhouette of the helmet and the rifle until the man was in the act of unlocking the gate from the outside and swinging it back for them to pass through.
Nor did he see the car at once, the sergeant not quite touching him, just keeping him at that same pace, rapidity, as though by simple juxtaposition, on through the gate into an alley, a blank wall opposite and at the curbedge the big dark motionless car which he had not noticed yet because of the silence-not the cavernous emptiness in which their boots had echoed a moment back but a cul-de-sac of it, himself and the sergeant and the two sentries-the one who had unlocked the gate for them and then locked it after them, and his opposite flanking the other side of the gate-not even at parade rest but at ease, their rifles grounded, immobile and re-mote, as though oblivious to that to which they in their turn were invisible, the four of them set down in a vacuum of silence within the city's distant and indefatigable murmur. Then he saw the car. He didn't stop, it was barely a falter, the sergeant's shoulder barely nudged him before he went on. The driver didn't even move to descend; it was the sergeant who opened the door, the shoulder, a hand too now, firm and urgent against his back because he had stopped now, erect, immobile and immovable even after the voice inside the car said, 'Get in, my child'; then immovable for another second yet before he stooped and entered it, seeing as he did so the pallid glint of braid, a single plane of face above the dark enveloping cloak.
Then the sergeant shut the door, the car already in motion and that was all; only the three of them: the old man who bore far too much rank to carry a lethal weapon even if he were not already too old to use it, and the driver whose hands were full with managing the car even if he had not had his back to him who could not re-member in four days anyhow when there had not been one arm or two but from twenty to a thousand already cocked and triggered for his life: out of the alley and still no word-direction or command-from the old man in the braided hat and the night-colored cloak in the corner opposite him, not back to the city but skirting through the fringe of it, faster and faster, pacing its cavernous echoes through the narrow ways of the deserted purlieus, taking the rapid turnings as if the mechanism itself knew their destination, making a long concentric through the city's edge, the ground rising now so that even he began to know where they were probably going, the city itself beginning to tilt toward them as it sank away beneath; nor any word from the old man this time either: the car just stopped, and looking past the fine and delicate profile beneath what should have been the insuperable weight of the barred and braided hat, he could see not the Place de Ville itself, they were not that high above the city yet, but rather as though the concentration of its unwearyable and sleepless anxiety had taken on the glow and glare of light.
'Now, my child,' the old general said: not to him this time but to the driver. The car went on and now he did know where they were going because there was nothing else up here but the old Roman citadel. But if he felt any first shock of instinctive and purely physi-cal terror, he didn't show it. And if at the same instant reason was also telling him, Nonsense. To execute you secretly in a dungeon would undo the very thing which they stopped the war and brought all thirteen of you here to accomplish, nobody heard that either: he just sat there, erect, a little stiffly who never had sat completely back in the seat, alert but quite calm, watchful and composed, the car in second gear now but still going fast around the final con-voluted hairpin turns until at last the stone weight of the citadel Thursday Night itself seemed to lean down and rest upon them like a ponderable shadow, the car making the last renversement because now it could go no farther, stopping at last and not he nor the driver but the old general himself who opened the door and got out and held the door until he was out and erect again and had begun to turn his head to look until the old general said, 'No, not yet,' and turned on him-self, he following, up the final steep and rocky pitch where they would have to walk, the old citadel not looming above them but squatting, not Gothic but Roman: not soaring to the stars out of the aspiration of man's past but a gesture against them of his mor-tality like a clenched fist or a shield.