“What's your name?”
The man looked up, blinking, too dazed to speak. “Don't know your own name, eh?” said the officer, glaring at the man savagely, using his curt voice like a whip.—“Quick, take off yer shirt and pants and get back to bed.”
The Officer of the Day moved on, flashing his light to one side and the other in his midnight inspection of the barracks. Intense blackness again, and the sound of men breathing deeply in sleep, of men snoring. As he went to sleep Fuselli could hear the man beside him swearing, monotonously, in an even whisper, pausing now and then to think of new filth, of new combinations of words, swearing away his helpless anger, soothing himself to sleep by the monotonous reiteration of his swearing.
A little later Fuselli woke with a choked nightmare cry. He had dreamed that he had smashed the O. D. in the jaw and had broken out of the jug and was running, breathless, stumbling, falling, while the company on guard chased him down an avenue lined with little dried-up saplings, gaining on him, while with voices metallic as the clicking of rifle triggers officers shouted orders, so that he was certain to be caught, certain to be shot. He shook himself all over, shaking off the nightmare as a dog shakes off water, and went back to sleep again, snuggling into his blankets.
II
John Andrews stood naked in the center of a large bare room, of which the walls and ceiling and floor were made of raw pine boards. The air was heavy from the steam heat. At a desk in one corner a typewriter clicked spasmodically.
“Say, young feller, d'you know how to spell imbecility?”
John Andrews walked over to the desk, told him, and added, “Are you going to examine me?”
The man went on typewriting without answering. John Andrews stood in the center of the floor with his arms folded, half amused, half angry, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, listening to the sound of the typewriter and of the man's voice as he read out each word of the report he was copying.
“Recommendation for discharge”... click, click..."Damn this typewriter....
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