For a few seconds, I have been a blaze of pure consciousness, without identity, without place, without time, only the waking and the sensation of cold, the darkness in which I’m lying curled up, wrapped in the sheltering warmth of my own body, on my side, hands between my legs and knees up against my chest, my feet icy despite the boots and wool socks, my fingertips numb, my joints so stiff that if I try to move, I may not be able. There’s something more than the cold and the darkness like the bottom of a well, like a breath of moist stone and frozen, plowed earth. The smell of manure too, manure mixed with mud, an ocean of mud and manure that swallows up military boots, horses’ hooves, the wheels and tracks of war machines. What has woken me is a sense of danger, a reflection of alarm so powerful that in one second it dissipated all the weight of sleep. Quicker than my still groggy consciousness, my right hand feels beneath the blankets in search of the gun. The Spanish wool gloves, the harsh sleeve of the gray military tunic stained with dry mud, the feel of the greatcoat I’m using as a pillow and of the mattress of damp straw on which I was sleeping: each is a feature added to my identity, to this persona that nevertheless observes from without, someone groping among rough fabrics for the cold metal of a Luger.
