VI
When Halvorsen awoke, he supposed he was in Hell. There were the young lovers, arms about each other's waists, solemnly looking down at him, and the mother was placidly smoothing his brow. He stirred and felt his left arm fall heavily.
"Ah," said the mother, "you mustn't." He felt her pick up his limp arm and lay it across his chest. "Your poor finger!" she sighed. "Can you talk? What happened to it?"
He could talk, weakly. "Labuerre and I," he said. "We were moving a big block of marble with the crane—somehow the finger got under it. I didn't notice until it was too late to shift my grip without the marble slipping and smashing on the floor."
The boy said in a solemn, adolescent croak: "You mean you saved the marble and lost your finger?"
"Marble," he muttered. "It's so hard to get. Labuerre was so old."
The young lovers exchanged a glance and he slept again. He was half awake when the musician seized first one of his hands and then the other, jabbing them with stubby fingers and bending his lion's head close to peer at the horny callouses left by chisel and mallet.
"Ja, ja," the musician kept saying.
Hell goes on forever, so for an eternity he jolted and jarred, and for an eternity he heard bickering voices: "Why he was so foolish, then?" "A idiot he could be." "Hush, let him rest." "The children told the story." "There only one Labuerre was." "Easy with the tubing." "Let him rest."
Daylight dazzled his eyes.