Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 111

She threw her legs over the side of the bunk and pulled open the screen. The guard dropped his magazine and started up from his chair,

his hand dropping to the pistol at his hip.

"I will not harm you..." Rosa smiled at him, not yetV She pointed to the door which led into the tiny shower cabinet and toilet. The guard relaxed and nodded acquiescence. He followed her as she crossed the cabin.

Rosa walked slowly between the bunks, looking at the sick men that lay in them.

"All of you," she thought happily. "All of you!" O

She slid the tongue of the lock across, and was alone in the bathroom. She undressed, and leaned across the washbasin to the small mirror set above it. She could see the reflection of her head and shoulders. There was a purple and red bruise spreading down from her neck and staining the white swell of her right breast. She touched it tenderly A with her fingertips.

"Herman Fleischer," she said the name gloatingly, "it will be today I promise you that. Today you will die." And then suddenly she was crying.

"I only wish yOU could burn as my baby burned I wish you could choke and swing on the rope as my father did." And the tears fell fat and slow, sliding down her cheeks to drop into the basin. She started to sob, dry conVUlsive gasps of grief and hatred. She turned blindly to the shower cabinet, and turned both taps full on so that the rush of the water Would cover the sound of her weeping. She did not want them to hear it.

Later, when she had bathed her face and body and combed her hair and dressed again, she unlocked the door and stepped through it. She stopped abruptly and through puffy reddened eyes tried to make sense of what was happening in the sick-bay.

It was crowded. The surgeon was there, two orderlies, four German seamen, and the young lieutenant. All of them hovered about the stretcher that was being manoeuvred between the bunks. There was a man on the stretcher, she could see his form under the single grey blanket that covered him, but Lieutenant Kyller's back obscured her view of the man's face. There was blood on the blanket,

and a brown smear of blood on the sleeve of Kyller's white tunic.

She moved along the bulkhead of the cabin and craned her head to see around Kyller, but at that moment one of the orderlies leaned across to swab the mouth of the man on the stretcher with a white cloth. The cloth obscured the wounded man's face. Bright frothy blood soaked through the material, and the sight of it nauseated Rosa. She averted her gaze and slipped away towards her own bunk at the end of the cabin. She reached the screen, and behind her somebody groaned.

It was a low delirious groan, but the sound of it stopped Rosa instantly. She felt as though something within her chest was swelling to stifle her.

Slowly, fearfully, she turned back.

They were lifting the man from the stretcher to lay him on an empty bunk. The head lolled sideways, and beneath its stain of bark juice, Rosa saw that dear, well loved face.

"Sebastian!" she cried and she ran to him, pushing past Kyller,

throwing herself on to the blanket-draped body, trying to get her arms around him to hug him.

"Sebastian! What have they done to you!" Sebastian! Sebastian!"

Rosaleaned across him and held her mouth to his ear.

"Sebastian!" She called his name quietly but urgently, then brushed his forehead with her lips. The skin was cold and damp.

He lay on his back with the bed clothes turned back to his waist.

His chest was swathed in bandages, and his breathing sawed and gurgled.

"Sebastian. It's Rosa. It's Rosa. Wake up, Sebastian.

Wake up, it's Rosa."

"Rosa?" At last her name had reached him. He whispered it painfully, wetly, and fresh blood stained his lips.

Rosa had been on the edge of despair. Two hours she had been sitting beside him. Since the surgeon had finished dressing the wound,

she had sat with him touching him, calling to him. This was the first sign of recognition he had given her.

"Yes! Yes! It's Rosa. Wake up, Sebastian." Her voice lifted with relief.

"Rosa?" His eyelashes trembled.

"Wake up." She pinched his cold cheek and he winced.

His eyelids fluttered open.

"Rosa?" on a shallow, sawing breath.

"Here, Sebastian. I'm here." His eyes rolled in their sockets,

searching, trying desperately to focus.

"Here," she said, leaning over him and taking his face between her hands. She looked into his eyes.

"Here, my darling, here."

"Rosa!" His lips convulsed into a dreadful parody of a smile.

"Sebastian, did you set the bomb?" His breathing changed,

hoarser, and his mouth twitched with the effort.

"Tell them he whispered.

"Tell them what?"

"Seven. Must stop it."