The cry broke off. Kandid saw that he was standing right in front of the building before the square black door, and strove to understand what he was doing there with Nava in his arms. He did not succeed, for out of the square black door came two women and Karl, all three displeased and frowning, and halted in conversation. He saw their lips moving and guessed they were arguing irritably but the words he could not understand, just once he caught the half-familiar word "chiasmus." Then one of the women, without interrupting the conversation, turned to the crowd and gestured as if inviting all of them into the building. Kandid said, "Right away, right away," and hugged Nava to him more tightly than ever. Once again the loud cry rang out and everybody began shuffling about, the fat people began to embrace one another, hug one another close, stroke and caress each other; their eyes were dry and their lips tightly closed, nevertheless they were crying and shouting, taking farewell of each other, for it turned out they were men and women and the men were saying good-bye to the women forever. No one wanted to go first, so Kandid went up first, since he was a brave man, since he knew he had to and since he knew that there was no help for him in any case. Karl, however, glanced at him and motioned him aside with a barely perceptible shake of the head, and Kandid felt utterly weird because it wasn't Karl after all, but he understood and retreated, knocking into soft and slippery bodies with his back. And when Karl gave
another shake of the head, he turned, slung Nava over his shoulder and ran on rubbery legs along the bright, empty village street as if in a dream; there was no sound of pursuit.
He came to himself as he collided with a tree. Nava shrieked and he lowered her to the ground. There was grass underfoot.
From here the whole village could be surveyed. A fog of lilac luminescence hung in a cone over the village, and the houses looked blurred as the figures of the people seemed blurred.
"For some reason I can't remember anything," said Nava, "why are we here? We went to bed. Or am I dreaming?"
Kandid lifted her and carried her farther and farther crashing through bushes, tripping over grass, until all around became completely dark. He pushed on a little farther yet, set Nava down once more and sat down beside her. Around them grew tall warm grass, keeping the damp out; never had Kandid chanced upon such a dry, warm, blissful place since he had been in the forest. He had a headache and drowsiness kept coming on; he felt no desire to think at all, there was just this feeling of huge relief that he had been about to do something terrible and had not done it.
"Dummy," said Nava dreamily, "you know. Dummy, I've remembered where I heard talk like that before. You used to talk like that, Dummy, when you hadn't recovered your wits. Listen, Dummy, maybe you've just forgotten. You were very sick then, Dummy, lost your wits altogether..."
"Go to sleep," said Kandid. He didn't want to think. Not about anything. Chiasmus, he recalled and fell asleep at once. Not quite at once. He recalled suddenly that it wasn't Karl that had gone missing; that was Valentine, it was Valentine's name that had been posted up in orders, Karl had perished in the forest and they had put his body, discovered by accident, in a lead coffin and shipped it to the Mainland. But he thought he might be dreaming all that.
When he opened his eyes, Nava was still asleep. She was lying on her stomach in the hollow between two roots, her face buried in the crook of her left arm with her right flung out to one side; Kandid saw a thin shining object in her dirty, half-open fist. At first he didn't realize what it was, and he was occupied with the sudden memory of the strange half-dream of the night, his fear, and the relief he felt at something terrible which had not happened. It then occurred to him what the object actually was, even its name swam into his memory. It was a scalpel. He waited a while, testing the shape of the object with the sound of the word, realizing at the back of his mind that it was correct, but impossible, because a scalpel by its name and shape was monstrously incongruous in this world. He roused Nava.
Nava awoke and, sitting up, began to talk at once.
"What a dry place, I never in all my life thought there were dry places like this, look how high the grass grows, eh, Dummy?" She became quiet and brought the scalpel in her fist close to her eyes. She gazed at it for a second, then squealed and flung it, shuddering, from her. She leapt to her feet. The scalpel sliced into the grass and stood quivering. They looked at it and both were terrified.
"What is it, Dummy?" whispered Nava at last, "what a horrible thing ... is it a thing? Maybe it's a plant? Look, it's all dry around here - maybe it grew here?"
"Why -horrible'?" asked Kandid.
