Page:Diamonds To Sit On.pdf/116

 104

DIAMONDS TO SIT ON

it’s only physical suffering. It makes me shudder to remember all the moral suffering that used to go on here. In those days a skeleton used to stand next to that safe. It belonged to a student, Ivanopulo, who bought it and was then afraid to keep it in his own room. The other people used to hit themselves on the safe and the skeleton would fall on them.’ The two friends went up a spiral staircase until they reached a place which had once been a large room, but was now divided up by partition walls to form long cubicles each two yards wide. Each cubicle was hke a schoolboy’s pencil-box, but instead of pencils and penholders there were people and ‘ Primus ’ stoves in them. ‘ Are you in, Nicky ? ’ asked Bender in a low voice as he stopped at the central door. In reply to this question, talking immediately began in the five pencil-boxes. ‘ Yes, I am,’ came a voice from behind the door. ’ That fool has got early visitors again I ’ whispered a woman’s voice, coming from the farthest pencil-box to the left. ‘ Can’t you let a fellow sleep ? ’ growled pencil-box number two. There was a malicious whisper from number three : ‘ They’ve come for Nick from the militia. It must be about the broken window-pane.’ Pencil-box number five was silent except for the roar of a ‘ Primus ’ stove and the sound of two people kissing. Bender kicked the middle door open. The whole partition rocked and he and Hippolyte pushed their way into Nick’s cubicle. It was a terrible place. The only furniture was a red-striped mattress raised on four bricks. That did not disturb Bender, and Nicky did not even move. He was sitting on the mattress with his feet under him, and next to him was such a heavenly creature that Bender immediately became