My rifle with fixed bayonet over my shoulder, I kept pacing slowly on the top of the broad wall surrounding the prison in an enormous square. The sun burned down pitilessly. In the tiny courtyard small groups of Arab prisoners cowered in the sulky silence of inactivity. All talking was forbidden in the prison. The overseer's sharp words of command now and then, and the ring of my steps on the stones of the wall, sounded into the silence. Mechanically I followed the path prescribed for "sentry-go," marching round and round the prison square.
From the high wall I had a view of all Sidi-bel-Abbès. The town was like a city of the dead in this frightful heat. The blinds in all the houses were pulled down and there was not a soul to be seen in the streets. In the hot, trembling air the faint outlines of the mountains of Thessala glittered in the far distance. There was not a breath of wind.
Two légionnaires in white fatigue uniforms turned into the street leading to the prison. They were men from our company, bringing us our evening soup. They called out something to me that I could not understand and I acknowledged it with an indifferent nod. Then they knocked at the gate of the prison and had to wait an age till the overseer opened it with his jingling bunch of keys and they could carry their soup-pail into the guard-room. Some minutes later one of them came into the yard by the guard-room and beckoned to me to come nearer to him. As I approached, I saw that he held a white something in his hand.
"Eh, une lettre pour toi!" he cried. "Here's a letter for you."
Very much annoyed I called down to him to hurry up and get out of this. It was too hot for practical jokes. I never got letters….
"But here is one," said the man. "Your name, your company, your number—everything all right! La la—I'm off—I'll give your letter to the corporal. May Allah better your bad temper! Sapristi, how hot it is!"
I had to wait half an hour until I was relieved. Those were terrible minutes. A letter—a letter for me? It seemed almost impossible. There was nobody in the world who could or should know where I was or what I was doing. The blood rose in hot waves to my head—and all at once I recognised that there was only one human being who could have written to me—that her love was not dead.
Slowly the seconds, the minutes went by. I waited in indescribable suspense. The sun was sinking. The houses of Sidi-bel-Abbès were bathed in its ruddy glow. Below me in the prison yard I heard a noisy chattering in guttural Arabic. The prisoners were being given their food and were then allowed to speak. The poor devils' chatter seemed to pierce my brain; that buzzing noise down below hurt me, until I could not stand it any longer.
"Be quiet there!" I cried.
There was immediate silence. A gendarme called out to me that I had made a mistake and that talking was allowed. "Pas defendu de parler," he said to the prisoners, and the Arabs looked up at me with angry eyes.