PARTISAN REVIEW
and again. Suddenly he felt excruciating pain everywhere-pain and
cold. "So I have been unconscious, after all," he thought. In spite
of that, the present seemed only like
a
direct continuation of what had
gone before.
It was growing faintly light. There were camels near where he
was lying; he could hear their gurgling and their heavy breathing. He
could not bring himself to attempt opening his eyes, just
in
case it
should tum out to be impossible. However, when he heard someone
approaching, he found that he had no difficulty in seeing.
The man looked at him dispassionately in the gray morning light.
With one hand he pinched together the Professor's nostrils. When
the Professor opened his mouth to breathe, the man swiftly seized
his tongue and pulled on it with all his might. The Professor was
gagging and catching his breath; he did not see what was happening.
He could not distinguish the pain of the brutal yanking from that
of the sharp knife. Then there was an endless choking and spitting
that went on automatically, as though he were scarcely a part of it.
The word "operation" kept going through his mind; it calmed
his
terror somewhat as he sank back into darkness.
The caravan left sometime toward midmorning. The Professor,
not unconscious, but in a state of utter stupor, still gagging and drool–
ing blood, was dumped doubled-up into a sack and tied at one side
of a camel. The lower end of the enormous amphitheater contained
a natural gate in the rocks. The meharis, lightly-laden beasts on this
trip, passed through single-file, and slowly mounted the gentle slope
that red up into the beginning of the desert. That night, at a stop be–
hind some low hills, the men took him out, still in a state which per–
mitted no thought, and over the dusty rags that remained of his cloth–
ing they fastened a series of curious belts made of the bottoms of tin
cans strung together. One after another of these bright girdles was
wired about his torso, his arms and legs, even across his face, until he
wa~
entirely within a suit of armor that covered him with its circular
metal scales. There was a good deal of merriment during this deck–
ing-out of the Professor. One man brought out a flute and a younger
one did a not ungraceful caricature of an Ouled Nail executing a
cane dance. The Professor was no longer conscious; to be exact, he
existed in the middle of the movements made by these other men.
When they had finished dressing him the way they wished him to look,
they stuffed some food under the tin bangles hanging over his face.
Even though he chewed mechanically, most of it eventually fell out
