hastily: “He wants to leave the room, sister.”
“Ah!” says the sister, “but he shouldn’t climb out of his bed with his plaster bandage. What do you want then?” she says, turning to me.
I am in mortal terror at this new turn, for I haven’t any idea what the things are called professionally. She comes to my help.
“Little or big?”
This shocking business! I sweat like a pig and say shyly: “Well, only quite a little one———”
At any rate, it produces the effect.
I get a bottle. After a few hours I am no longer the only one, and by morning we are quite accustomed to it and ask for what we want without any false modesty.
The train travels slowly. Sometimes it halts and the dead are unloaded. It halts often.
Albert is feverish. I feel miserable and have a good deal of pain, but the worst of it is that apparently there are still lice under the plaster bandage. They itch terribly, and I cannot scratch myself.
We sleep through the days. The country glides quietly past the window. The third night we reach Herbstal. I hear from the sister that Albert is to be put off at the next station because of his fever. “How far does the train go?” I ask.
“To Cologne.”
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