spered conference near the bed of
the sick man in the brown vest. He is curled up, and breathes humbly.
They say, very low:

"He's going to die--in one hour from now, or two. He's in such a state
that to-morrow morning he'll be rotten. He must be taken away on the
moment."

At nine in the evening they say that, and then they put the lights out
and go away. I can see nothing more but him. There is the one lamp,
close by, watching over him. He pants and trickles. He shines as
though it rained on him. His beard has grown, grimily. His hair is
plastered on his sticky forehead; his sweat is gray.

In the morning the bed is empty, and adorned with clean sheets.

And along with the man annulled, all the things he had poisoned have
disappeared.

"It'll be Number Thirty-six's turn next," says the orderly.

I follow the direction of his glance. I see the condemned man. He is
writing a letter. He speaks, he lives. But he is wounded in the
belly. He carries his death like a fetus.

* * * * * *

It is the day when we change our clothes. Some of the invalids manage
it by themselves; and, sitting up in bed, they perform signaling
operations with arms and white linen. Others are helped by the nurse.
On their bare flesh I catch sight of scars and cavities, and parts
stitched and patched, of a different shade. There is even a case of
amputation (and bronchitis) who reveals a new and rosy stump, like a
new-born infant. The negro does not move while they strip his thin,
insect-like trunk; and then, bleached once more, he begins again to
rock his head, looking boundlessly for the sun and for Africa. They
exhume the paralyzed man from his sheets and change his clothes
opposite me. At first he lies motionless in his clean shirt, in a
lump. Then he makes a guttural noise which brings the nurse up. In a
cracked voice, as of a machine that speaks, he asks her to move his
feet, which are caught in the sheet. Then he lies staring, arranged in
rigid orderliness within the boards of his carcass.

Marie has come back and is sitting on a chair. We both spell out the
past, which she brings me abundantly. My brain is working
incalculably.

"We're quite near home, you know," Marie says.

Her words extricate our home, our quarter; they have endless echoes.

That day I raised myself on the bed and looked out of the window for
the first time, although it had always been there, within