"In the living room, Annette."
He had made up his mind: he was leaving by bus: Paris: bus to Moire: then rejoin the Corps. Gulping his coffee he told his future to go to hell. But there was something in the coffee, in the taste and smell of it, that tied in with the antiquity of the room, his past, the Chopin bust that was watching, mistrusting him. A second cup. And the coffee brought to mind the room where he had been born ... voices ... faces. It seemed to him he heard his mother. Smoking a cigarette, he wandered about, annoyed by the fireless fireplaces and their sense of accusation.
A copy of Combat lay on a chair: in a matter of hours life would become combat: soon life would be a thing of the past, like a newspaper, like a comic strip. The cat would jump off the sofa and disappear forever. The skull would revolve round and round inside the tank helmet.
He was dressing in his greasy mechanic's clothes when Jean appeared.
"Orville," she said, scared. "Orville."
She had never seen his face so tragic.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"I'm leaving ... you know I had to go ... tomorrow anyway."
"Claude phoned me ... he said ... why?..."
"Why," he repeated, without making it an interrogation, and glared at her.