I am forgetting the girl. Drifting towards sleep, it comes to me with cold clarity that a whole day has passed in which I have not thought of her. Worse, I cannot remember certainly what she looks like. From her empty eyes there always seemed to be a haze spreading, a blankness that overtook all of her. I stare into the darkness waiting for an image to form; but the only memory on which I can absolutely rest is of my oiled hands sliding over her knees, her calves, her ankles. I try to recall our few intimacies but confuse them with memories of all the other warm flesh in which I have sheathed myself in the course of a lifetime. I am forgetting her, and forgetting her, I know, deliberately. Not from the moment when I stopped before her at the barracks gate and elected her have I known the root of my need for her; and now I am steadily engaged in burying her in oblivion. Cold hands, cold heart: I remember the proverb, touch my palms to my cheek, sigh in the dark.

In the dream there is someone kneeling in the shelter of the wall. The square is quite empty; the wind drives the dust in clouds; she huddles behind the collar of her coat, pulls her cap down to cover her face.

I stand over her. "Where does it hurt?" I say. I feel the words form in my mouth, then hear them emerge thin, bodiless, like words spoken by someone else.

She brings her legs forward awkwardly and touches her ankles. She is so small that she is almost lost in the man's coat she wears. I kneel, unlace the capacious woollen socks, unwrap the bandages. The feet lie before me in the dust, disembodied, monstrous, two stranded fish, two huge potatoes.

I lift one on to my lap and begin to chafe it. Tears well from behind her eyelids and run down her cheeks. "It is sore!" she wails in a tiny voice. "Ssh," I say, "I will keep you warm." I lift the other foot and hug the two together. The wind pours dust on us; there is grit on my teeth. I wake up with aching gums and blood in my mouth. The night is still, the moon is dark. I lie for a while looking up into blackness, then slide back into the dream.

I enter the barracks gateway and face a yard as endless as the desert. There is no hope of reaching the other side, but I plod on, carrying the girl, the only key I have to the labyrinth, her head nodding against my shoulder, her dead feet drooping on the other side.

There are other dreams in which the figure that I call the girl changes shape, sex, size. In one dream there are two shapes that arouse horror in me: massive and blank, they grow and grow till they fill all the space in which I sleep. I wake up choked, shouting, my throat full. The texture of the days, on the other hand, is as dull as porridge. Never before has my nose been so rubbed in the quotidian. The flow of events in the outside world, the moral dimension of my plight, if that is what it is, a plight, even the prospect of defending myself in court, have lost all interest under the pressure of appetite and physical functions and the boredom of living one hour after another. I have caught a cold; my whole being is preoccupied in sniffing and sneezing, in the misery of being simply a body that feels itself sick and wants to be well.

One afternoon the faint irregular scrape and chink of the bricklayers' trowels on the other side of the wall suddenly ceases. Lying on my mat, I prick my ears: there is a faraway hum in the air, a faint electric quality to the still afternoon that fails to resolve itself into distinguishable sounds but leaves me tense and restless. A storm? Though I press my ear to the door I can make out nothing. The barracks yard is empty.

Later the trowels resume their chink-chink.

Towards evening the door opens and my little friend enters with my supper. I can see that he is bursting to tell me something; but the guard has come in with him and stands with a hand on his shoulder. So only his eyes speak to me: glowing with excitement, I can swear they say that the soldiers have returned. In which case why not bugles and cheering, why not horses trotting across the great square, why not the noise of preparations for a feast? Why does the guard grip the boy so tightly and whip him away before I can give him a kiss on his shaven skull? The obvious answer is that the soldiers have returned, but not in triumph. If so, I must beware.

Later in the evening there is a burst of noise from the yard and a hubbub of voices. Doors are opened and slammed, feet tramp back and forth. Some of what is said I can hear clearly: talk not of strategies or barbarian armies but of aching feet and exhaustion, an argument about sick men who must have beds. Within an hour all is quiet again.

The yard is empty. Therefore there are no prisoners. That at least is cause for joy.

It is mid-morning and I have had no breakfast. I pace my room, my stomach rumbling like a hungry cow's. At the thought of salty porridge and black tea my saliva runs, I cannot help it.

Nor is there any sign that I will be let out, though this is an exercise day. The bricklayers are at work again; from the yard come sounds of everyday activity; I even hear the cook calling to her grandson. I beat on the door but no one pays any attention.

Then in mid-afternoon the key scrapes in the lock and the door opens. "What do you want?" says my warder. "Why have you been banging on the door?" How he must detest me! To spend days of one's life keeping watch on a closed door and attending to the animal needs of another man! He has been robbed of his freedom too, and thinks of me as the robber.

"Are you not letting me out today? I haven't had anything to eat."

"Is that what you called me for? You'll get your food. Learn some patience. You're too fat anyway."

"Wait. I have to empty my bucket. It stinks in here. I want to wash the floor. I want to wash my clothes too. I can't appear in front of the Colonel in clothes that smell like this. It will only bring disgrace on my warders. I need hot water and soap and a rag. Let me quickly empty my bucket and fetch hot water from the kitchen."

My guess about the Colonel must be right, for he does not contradict me. He opens the door wider and stands aside. "Hurry up!" he says.

There is only a scullery maid in the kitchen. She gives a start when the two of us walk in, in fact even seems about to run away. What stories have people been telling about me?

"Give him some hot water," the guard orders. She ducks her head and turns to the stove where there is always a great cauldron of steaming water.

Over my shoulder I say to the guard, "A bucket-I will fetch a bucket for the water." In a few strides I am across the kitchen to the dim recess where, along with sacks of flour and salt and crushed millet and dried peas and beans, the mops and brooms are kept. On a nail at head-height is the key to the cellar where the sides of mutton are hung. In an instant I have pocketed it. When I turn I have a wooden bucket in my hand. I hold it up while the girl ladles boiling water in. "How are you?" I say. Her hand trembles so much that I have to take the ladle from her. "Can I have a little soap and an old rag, please?"

Back in my cell I strip and wash in the luxuriously warm water. I wash my one spare pair of drawers, which smells like rotten onions, wring it out, hang it on the nail behind the door, and empty the bucket on the paved floor. Then I lie down to wait for nightfall.

The key turns smoothly in the lock. How many people besides myself know that the cellar key unlocks the door to my prison-room as well as the large cupboard in the main barracks-hall, that the key to the suite of rooms over the kitchen duplicates the key to the armoury door, that the key to the north-west tower stairway also opens the north-east tower stairway, the smaller cupboard in the hall, and the hatch over the waterpipe in the courtyard? One does not spend thirty years immersed in the minutiae of the life of a tiny settlement for nothing.