Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/310

and then drops, pierced by an enemy bullet. A bluish pallor spreads over his face. His eyes, wide open in disbelief, stare at her.

"You're alive-and I'm dead! It can't be true! How could it happen?" the dead eyes seem to ask.

"How could it happen?" She had seen those questioning eyes before somewhere. In the eyes of the insane mother, perhaps on the roadside near Orleans. "How could it happen?" All the dead eyes seemed to ask the same question.

The moist oilcloth covering on the narrow hospital bed burned her flesh. The wound in her shoulder was not painful now; for a while it would be quiet and then pulse with unbearable fury.

Through the open window she could smell the withering autumn leaves, falling slowly from the branches of the trees. On her mind's film images of past autumns flickered, far away and shadowy, that swarmed onto the screen-like ceiling.

Millions of her tortured people are projected there; the old and the young, youths and maidens, fathers and mothers, tiny children. Their naked bodies huddle close together, so that the bullet that comes from behind can go right through them all. The grave is cluttered with corpses, and still the bodies fall with mathematical precision...

Thousands, millions of people are liquidated-becoming mere numbers, cold, mathematical figures, logarithmic tables arranged in the rigid columns for cold-blooded statisticians. Try to separate the compact zeros, dismember each number, and before your eyes appear vibrant living beings, like Michel, the teacher-radiant, wise, and so good-natured; near him Leah, the dark-eyed beauty, leader of the Hashomir. The lovely Zossia, with her Polish-speaking lad, strolling through the autumn woods.