Everything in the classroom was damp and grey—the whitewashed walls, the black desks which had been wiped with wet sleeves, the concrete floor which showed every footprint—and when Roger, in his corner by the window, moved his head, it touched the coats hanging on the hooks, with cold drops clinging to the woollen hairs. Sitting on a bench without a back, with his shoulders hunched, he was pretending to be writing in a notebook spread out in front of him, but it was further down that his gaze was directed, at the book with the cloth covers lying open on his knees, hidden by the desk. The book smelled of the lending library, the coats hanging from the hooks smelled of wet wool, the classroom smelled of foul ink and stale chalk; everything was dull, everything seemed old and dirty, with excessively bold forms, excessively harsh outlines against a vague background, like the glistening roofs which could be seen beyond the huge courtyard of the college, or like that distant window, already lit up, behind which somebody came and went without your being able to tell whether it was a man or a woman, or what mysterious task it was performing.
