A hand gropes over the bed-cover.
The sergeant-major.
He goes off with the cigars.
An hour later we notice we are moving.
I wake up during the night.
Kropp is restless too.
The train rides easily over the rails.
I cannot realize it all yet; a bed, a train, home.
"Albert!" I whisper.
"Do you know where the latrine is?"
"The door is on the right, I think."
"I'm going to have a look."
It is dark, I grope for the edge of the bed and cautiously try to slide down.
But my foot finds no support, I begin to slip, the plaster leg is no help, and with a crash I lie on the floor.
"Damn!" I say.
"Have you bumped yourself?" asks Kropp.
"You could hear that well enough for yourself," I growl, "my head–––"
A door opens at the rear of the car.
The sister comes with a light and looks at me.
"He has fallen out of bed–––" She feels my pulse and smooths my forehead.
"You haven't any fever, though."
"No," I agree.
"Have you been dreaming then?" she asks.
"Perhaps–––" I evade.
The interrogation starts again.
She looks at me with her clear eyes, and the more wonderful and sweet she is the less am I able to tell her what I want.
I am lifted up into bed again.
That will be all right.
As soon as she goes I must try to climb down again.
If she were an old woman, it might be easier to say what a man wants, but she is so very young, at the most twenty-five, it can't be done, I cannot possibly tell her.
Then Albert comes to my rescue, he is not bashful, it makes no difference to him who is upset.
He calls to the sister. She turns round.
"Sister, he wants–––" but no more does Albert know how to express it modestly and decently.
Out there we say it in a single word, but here, to such a lady–––All at once he remembers his school days and finishes hastily:
"He wants to leave the room, sister."
"Ah!" says the sister, "but he shouldn't climb out of his bed with plaster bandage.
What do you want then?" she says turning to me.
I am in mortal terror at this turn, for I haven't any idea what the things are called professionally.
She comes to my help.
"Little or big?"
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.