A child tugs at my hand. "Is he a barbarian, uncle?" he whispers. "No," I whisper back. He turns to the boy next to him. "You see, I told you," he whispers.

Since no one else seems prepared to do it, I am the one to whose lot it falls to pick up the trailing reins and lead these tidings from the barbarians back through the great gates, past the silent watchers, to the barracks yard, there to cut their bearer loose and lay him out for burial.

The soldiers who set out after his lone companion are soon back. They canter across the square to the courthouse from which Mandel conducts his reign and disappear inside. When they reappear they will speak to no one.

Every premonition of disaster is confirmed, and for the first time true panic overtakes the town. The shops are swamped with customers bidding against each other for stocks of food. Some families barricade themselves in their houses, herding poultry and even pigs indoors with them. The school is closed. The rumour that a horde of barbarians is camped a few miles away on the charred river-banks, that an assault on the town is imminent, flashes from street corner to street corner. The unthinkable has occurred: the army that marched forth so gaily three months ago will never return.

The great gates are closed and barred. I plead with the sergeant of the watch to allow the fisherfolk inside. "They are in terror of their lives," I say. He turns his back on me without reply. Above our heads on the ramparts the soldiers, the forty men who stand between us and annihilation, gaze out over lake and desert.

At nightfall, on my way to the granary shed where I still sleep, I find my way blocked. A file of two-wheeled horse-drawn commissariat carts passes along the alley, the first loaded with what I recognize as sacks of seed grain from the granary, the others empty. They are followed by a file of horses, saddled and blanketed, from the garrison stables: every horse, I would guess, that has been stolen or commandeered in the past weeks. Roused by the noise, people emerge from their houses and stand quietly by watching this evidently long-planned manoeuvre of withdrawal.

I ask for an interview with Mandel, but the guard at the courthouse is as wooden as all his comrades.

In fact Mandel is not in the courthouse. I return to the square in time to hear the end of a statement he reads to the public "in the name of the Imperial Command". The withdrawal, he says, is a "temporary measure". A "caretaker force" will be left behind. There is expected to be "a general cessation of operations along the front for the duration of the winter". He himself hopes to be back in the spring, when the army will "initiate a new offensive". He wishes to thank everyone for the "unforgettable hospitality" he has been shown.

While he speaks, standing in one of the empty carts flanked by soldiers holding torches, his men are returning with the fruits of their foraging. Two struggle to load a handsome cast-iron stove looted from an empty house. Another comes back smiling in triumph bearing a cock and a hen, the cock a magnificent black and gold creature. Their legs are bound, he grips them by the wings, their fierce bird-eyes glare. While someone holds open the door he stuffs them into the oven. The cart is piled high with sacks and kegs from a looted shop, even a small table and two chairs. They unfold a heavy red carpet, spread it over the load, lash it down. There is no protest from the people who stand watching this methodical act of betrayal, but I feel currents of helpless anger all about me.

The last cart is loaded. The gates are unbarred, the soldiers mount. At the head of the column I can hear someone arguing with Mandel. "Just an hour or so," he is saying: "they can be ready in an hour." "No question of that," replies Mandel, the wind carrying the rest of his words away. A soldier pushes me out of his path and escorts three heavily bundled women to the last cart. They clamber aboard and seat themselves, holding up their veils to their faces. One of them carries a little girl whom she perches on top of the load. Whips crack, the column begins to move, the horses straining, the cartwheels creaking. At the rear of the column come two men with sticks driving a flock of a dozen sheep. As the sheep pass the murmur in the crowd grows. A young man dashes out waving his arms and shouting: the sheep scatter into the dark, and with a roar the crowd closes in. Almost at once the first shots crack out. Running as fast as I can in the midst of scores of other screaming running people, I retain only a single image of this futile attack: a man grappling with one of the women in the last cart, tearing at her clothes, the child watching wide-eyed with her thumb in her mouth. Then the square is empty and dark again, the last cart trundles through the gates, the garrison is gone.

For the rest of the night the gates stand open and little family groups, most of them on foot and weighed down under heavy packs, hurry after the soldiers. And before dawn the fisherfolk slink back in, meeting with no resistance, bringing their sickly children and their pitiful possessions and their bundles of poles and reeds with which to begin all over again the task of home-building.

My old apartment stands open. Inside the air is musty. Nothing has been dusted for a long time. The display cases-the stones and eggs and artifacts from the desert ruins-are gone. The furniture in the front room has been pushed against the walls and the carpet removed. The little parlour seems not to have been touched, but all the drapery carries a sour stuffy smell.

In the bedroom the bedclothes have been tossed aside with the same motion I use, as if I myself had been sleeping here. The odour from the unwashed linen is alien.

The chamber pot under the bed is half full. In the cupboard there is a crumpled shirt with a ring of brown inside the collar and yellow stains under the armpits. All my clothes are gone.

I strip the bed and lie down on the bare mattress, expecting some sense of unease to creep over me, the ghost of another man lingering still among his odours and disorders. The feeling does not come; the room is as familiar as ever. With my arm over my face I find myself drifting toward sleep. It may be true that the world as it stands is no illusion, no evil dream of a night. It may be that we wake up to it in-eluctably, that we can neither forget it nor dispense with it. But I find it as hard as ever to believe that the end is near. If the barbarians were to burst in now, I know, I would die in my bed as stupid and ignorant as a baby. And even more apposite would it be if I were caught in the pantry downstairs with a spoon in my hand and my mouth full of fig preserve filched from the last bottle on the shelf: then my head could be hacked off and tossed on to the pile of heads on the square outside still wearing a look of hurt and guilty surprise at this irruption of history into the static time of the oasis. To each his own most fitting end. Some will be caught in dugouts beneath their cellars clutching their valuables to their breasts, pinching their eyes shut. Some will die on the road overwhelmed by the first snows of winter. Some few may even die fighting with pitchforks. After which the barbarians will wipe their backsides on the town archives. To the last we will have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets, that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished. No one can accept that an imperial army has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty old guns who live in tents and never wash and cannot read or write. And who am I to jeer at life-giving illusions? Is there any better way to pass these last days than in dreaming of a saviour with a sword who will scatter the enemy hosts and forgive us the errors that have been committed by others in our name and grant us a second chance to build our earthly paradise? I lie on the bare mattress and concentrate on bringing into life the image of myself as a swimmer swimming with even, untiring strokes through the medium of time, a medium more inert than water, without ripples, pervasive, colourless, odourless, dry as paper.