The Shadow Of The Mole

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Denis sat silently on The Mole’s bed. It was late, but the dormitory for the men who were fit enough to fight or to labour was never quiet. Dreamers muttered fretfully in their sleep; farts reverberated like tearing sandpaper; there were mumblings, groans and whisperings like small creatures colliding. The war had abducted the realm of sleep. During his round – he was responsible for the medical supplies – the young Lieutenant had noticed that The Mole was awake.

Denis could sense the man’s body heat, and smelled his musky, sour sweat. There came no sound, not a sign of discomfort.

“A physician and his patient share confidentiality,” Denis whispered. “It’s not my goal to report your real story to the Captain. Just tell me who you are, why you hid in that tunnel and how you manage to keep up that indifference of yours.”

To his surprise, there came an answer, although The Mole, lying on his belly, wasn’t looking up at him. Instead, he seemed to address something underneath his bed. “Tell me who you are… What an interesting question. Can you tell me who you are, doctor?”

“That isn’t the point. You are…”

“If you can’t tell me who you are, can you then perhaps prove to me that the world you are seeing is real?”

“I can touch it, sense it, see it, hear it, taste it.”

“That proves nothing. If you can’t tell me who you are, then you can’t rely on the senses of a self which is fictitious. Each man lives in his own dream and calls it ‘the world’.”

“That is solipsist thinking.”

“The world, as you call it, doctor, is like the shadows in Plato’s cave, a dream projected into our mind by the other in us. The Classics called that entity The Daemon. He who uses us as mules.”

“You can’t suppose I would believe that.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never had the feeling there’s the voice of a stranger in you. It may warn you, it may insult you, it may predict your future, it may give you dreams which seem more real than what we call reality, it may trade you for a better mule, it can do a multitude of things, and it is eternal.”

The hole in the ice opened. Black water rose as though something underneath had stirred it.

Denis felt a sharp pain in his left knee. He lay on the floor beside his bed. Something warm trickled down his ear. Bemused, he touched it and felt sticky blood. He had bumped his head against the legs of the next bed when he had fled something in his dream.

Light footsteps, someone quick on her feet.

Before her hand touched his shoulders, he knew that she would be the one who came to console him, and he heard an echo deep inside his body, like a sighing whisper.

What was the meaning of his nightmare? The Mole and his bed had seemed so real, the words he spoke so intrusive.

Marie mumbled something under her breath when she helped him to stand.

“How are you feeling?” she said, when he sat down on his bed and massaged the tender spot behind his left ear. He saw the concern in her eyes.

The whisper had sighed: She could have been the one.

What did this dizzying confusion mean?

Was he the one suffering from shell shock?