I didn’t insist on taking the metro anymore, but accompanied Thomas to the Univermag, to wait for the end. The Russian offensive, west of the Kessel, had completely smashed through our lines. A few days later, Pitomnik was evacuated in an indescribable chaos that left thousands of wounded scattered throughout the frozen steppe; troops and HQ flowed toward the city; even the AOK, in Gumrak, was preparing its retreat, and the Wehrmacht expelled us from the bunker of the Univermag, to rehouse us temporarily in the former premises of the NKVD, which had once been a handsome building, with a large glass cupola now shattered and a polished granite floor, but whose basements were already occupied by a medical unit, which left us only the demolished offices on the first floor, over which we still had to fight with Seydlitz’s staff (as in a hotel with a sea view, everyone wanted to be on one side, not the other). But all these frenetic events left me indifferent, I barely noted the latest changes, since I had made a wonderful discovery, an edition of Sophocles. The book was torn in half, someone must have wanted to share it, and it was alas only in translation, but Electra was still there, my favorite. Forgetting the shivers of fever that shook my body, the pus that was oozing from my bandage, I lost myself blissfully in the verses. At the boarding school where my mother had had me locked up, to flee the surrounding brutality, I had taken refuge in my studies, and I especially liked Greek, thanks to our professor, the young priest I’ve already mentioned. I wasn’t yet fifteen but I spent all my free time at the library, deciphering the Iliad line by line, with passion and limitless patience. At the end of the school year, our class organized a performance of a tragedy, Electra, in fact, in the school gym, rigged out for the occasion; and I was chosen for the title role. I wore a long white dress, sandals, and a wig whose black curls danced on my shoulders: when I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I saw Una, and I almost fainted. We had been separated from each other for almost a year. When I walked onto the stage I was so possessed by hatred and love and the sensation of my young virgin’s body that I saw nothing, heard nothing; and when I moaned Oh my Orestes, your death is killing me, tears streamed from my eyes. When Orestes reappeared, I screeched, possessed by the Erinyes, vociferated my injunctions in that beautiful, sovereign language, Go on, then, one more blow, if you still feel the strength, I cried, encouraging him, urging him to murder, Kill him quickly, then expose his body: let his gravediggers be whatever creatures find him. And when it was over, I didn’t hear the applause, didn’t hear the words of Father Labourie who was congratulating me, I was sobbing, and the butchery in the House of Atreus was the blood in my own house.
Thomas, who seemed to have completely recovered from his accident, scolded me amicably, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. To tease him, when I emerged from my Sophocles, I quoted Joseph de Maistre at him: What is a lost battle? It’s a battle you think you have lost. Thomas, delighted, had a sign painted with these words, which was posted in our hallway: this, apparently, earned him Möritz’s congratulations, and the new slogan got as far as General Schmidt, who wanted to adopt it as the motto for the army; but Paulus, it was said, opposed it. Neither Thomas nor I, by mutual agreement, spoke any longer of evacuation; but everyone knew that it was only a question of days, and the fortunate chosen ones of the Wehrmacht were already leaving. I sank into a sordid indifference; only the obsessive fear of typhus shook me now and then, and not content with scrutinizing my eyes and lips, I undressed to look for black spots on my torso. I didn’t even think about the diarrhea anymore; on the contrary, squatting in the stinking latrines, I found a certain tranquility, and would have liked, as when I was a child, to lock myself up in them for hours reading, but there was no light, and no door, either, so I had to make do with a cigarette, one of my last. My fever, almost permanent now, had become a warm cocoon in which I could curl up, and I took an insane enjoyment in my filth, my sweat, my dehydrated skin, my stinging eyes. I hadn’t shaved for days and a fine reddish beard contributed to my voluptuous feeling of dirtiness and neglect. My sick ear was suppurating, resounding by turns like a bell or a muffled siren; sometimes I couldn’t hear anything at all. The fall of Pitomnik had been followed by a few days’ lull; then, around January 20, the methodical annihilation of the