cabinet, and he knew that she couldn ’ t stand there like that forever but was going to collapse or cry out or give a loud moan; and then she thought that maybe it was a good thing that she too — even though it came at the cost of so great an effort and so many trials — was in attendance at this secret duel, this dangerous game in which one of the players has a jack of spades with two swords on his side and the other has only the imaginary shield of a poker face and his intellect and perhaps of time as well: if the Allied forces somewhere in Europe or in the Urals or the Pacific didn ’ t manage to remove several tens of thousands of jacks of clubs, clad in tunics and armed with their two swords, from the deck, and soon, thereby joining forces with time (the ace of hearts), Dr. Nietzsche would have his two SS men work Jakob over — in spades — as punishment for his disobedience and his passive resistance, and Marija would remain there in that cabinet bleeding out like a slaughtered lamb hung upside down on a hook. And for an instant she wondered how this game without rules would evolve if she weren ’ t there; she decided that even if she bled to death and so stopped eavesdropping and spying on the game, invisible but present, even then they would, nonetheless, still feel her mute presence (in the same way that she now felt the presence of Polja ’ s corpse in the barracks), her testimony or her accusation: Jakob would then, if only that one time, give a different response, even though it might only vary by a shade from the one he threw back at Dr. Nietzsche now, in front of her.
The chair scraped anew and she saw the unseen skull of Dr. Nietzsche and his graying locks á la Schopenhauer, as she had noted to herself the first time she saw him, as he looked angrily into Jakob ’ s invisible face:
“ You are familiar with the situation on the front lines? ” he said.
“ One hears talk. ”
“ Unfortunately, it ’ s accurate, ” Dr. Nietzsche said. “ The Allies are advancing. You know that to be the case. No less so than I do. ”
“ It ’ s more that I have a premonition of it, ” Jakob said.
“ Yes, yes. You ’ re all . . . You ’ re all Bergsonians, goddamn it. ” He paused for a moment: “ Intuition . . . versus free will. ”
“ Ah, ” Jakob continued. “ Also sprach Zarathustra . ”
“ Never mind that now, ” Dr. Nietzsche said nervously. “ Let ’ s get down to cases; this conversation has led us far afield. ”
Then, at last, he said something which must have signified the beginning of that discussion for the sake of which he was now sitting there with Jakob — she was just as impatient as either of the men — so that things could finally get started and then what had to happen could finally happen and this game could be wrapped up and she could be rescued but it still seemed to her that time wasn ’ t moving, was at a standstill, just like this conversation being conducted by two voices, their speakers invisible, while she bled to the point of passing out with strained attentiveness in a position of both disfigured sacrifice and unseen witness; she was horribly dependent upon the words and the voices she could hear and on the facial expressions and hand gestures she couldn ’ t see while at the same time aware of her own role and her own movements, her own immobility that was every bit as significant and momentous as the two men ’ s words; aware to the point of pain and numbness both that every movement of her hand and even every beat of her pulse was governed by that diminutive cogwheel of events; and not only that: even every one of her thoughts connected with Jakob denoted something essential because it guided her and floated, invisibly present, now more than ever before, because of that sacrificial blood that was running out of her and depriving her of strength and dimming her consciousness — it was not just the pledge of her absolute union with Jakob but also the
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