“So when we shall be under the sod sleeping our long night, before next spring has awakened its green verdure on our remains, base and nameless oblivion will already have overtaken us. On the simple white cross my hastily traced name will not even be read....
“Perhaps in passing near my abandoned grave someone will say, ‘Poor fellow!’ Perhaps someone more sentimental than the rest will throw flowers on it.
“But in disappearing, old horse, we shall harm no one.
“The tears on the beautiful eyes I know so well will at first be bitter, but they will be dried at last.”
This rather melancholy monologue was not to Kiki’s taste at all. He interrupted me by whinnying loudly. He knew it was time for oats.
So we went back to the cantonment under the fine midday sun. Before our door at the last house on the left, on the road to the sugar refinery, Burette, the quartermaster-sergeant, was going through his matutinal ablutions. He generally began them about eleven, just as they were calling dinner, which made him twenty minutes late and gave him a chance to growl about the cooking, which was not hot enough to suit him, or about his share, which, according to his appetite, was reduced to a proper allowance.
Inside, seated before an open canteen which served him equally as a seat or a writing desk, was Adjutant Dotan reading and re-reading and sighing over the letters he took from a voluminous package in front of him. In a loud voice he mused over the problem which haunted his days and nights:
“Shall I marry? Or, shall I not?”
For two years now Dotan had seen the realization of his matrimonial projects grow further and further away from week to week, from month to month.