that. He is dead. I’ll lay any money on that.”
I shake my head: “Not possible. Only ten minutes ago I was talking to him. He has fainted.”
Kat’s hands are warm, I pass my arm under his shoulders in order to rub his temples with some tea. I feel my fingers become moist. As I draw them away from behind his head, they are bloody. “You see———” The orderly whistles once more through his teeth.
On the way without my having noticed it, Kat has caught a splinter in the head. There is just one little hole, it must have been a very tiny, stray splinter. But it has sufficed. Kat is dead.
Slowly I get up.
“Would you like to take his pay-book and his things?” the lance-corporal asks me.
I nod, and he gives them to me.
The orderly is mystified. “You are not related, are you?”
No, we are not related. No, we are not related.
Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died.
Then I know nothing more.
288
