A minute later a sister appears.
In her black and white dress she looks like a beautiful tea-cosy.
"Shut the door, will you, sister?" says someone.
"We are saying prayers, that is why the door is open," she responds.
"But we want to go on sleeping–––"
"Prayer is better than sleeping," she stands there and smiles innocently.
"And it is seven o'clock already."
Albert groans again.
"Shut the door," I snort.
She is quite disconcerted. Apparently she cannot understand.
"But we are saying prayers for you too."
"Shut the door, anyway."
She disappears, leaving the door open.
The intoning of the litany proceeds.
I feel savage, and say:
"I'm going to count up to three.
If it doesn't stop before then I'll let something fly."
"Me too," says another.
I count up to five.
Then I take hold of a bottle, aim, and heave it through the door into the corridor.
It smashes into a thousand pieces.
The praying stops.
A swarm of sisters appear and reproach us in concert.
"Shut the door!" we yell.
They withdraw.
The little one who came first is the last to go.
"Heathen," she chirps but shuts the door all the same.
We have won.
At noon the hospital inspector arrives and abuses us.
He threatens us with clink and all the rest of it.
But a hospital inspector is just the same as a commissariat inspector, or any one else who wears a long sword and shoulder straps, but is really a clerk, and is never considered even by a recruit as a real officer.
So we let him talk.
What can they do to us, anyway–––
"Who threw the bottle?" he asks.
Before I can think whether I should report myself, someone says:
"I did."
A man with a bristling beard sits up.
Everyone is excited; why should he report himself?
"You?"
"Yes.
I was annoyed because we were waked up unnecessarily and lost my senses so that I did not know what I was doing."
He talks like a book.
"What is your name?"
"Reinforcement-Reservist Josef Hamacher."
The inspector departs.
We are all curious.
"But why did you say you did it?
It wasn't you at all!"
He grins.
"That doesn't matter.