Later on I went up into my room and collected my papers. All the time I could hear my mother’s steps down below: it was a step that I could recognise among a thousand others. It always sounds as though she drags one of her feet slightly, but she does not do so really, it only sounds like it, and it gives her gait a kind of swaying rhythm. I love to hear it, for it always reminds me of my childhood. Whenever I dreamed anything frightful in my little truckle bed that step would come slowly across the room, and even before it reached me all that was terrifying had disappeared. On the ground floor a cupboard was opened: the noise sounded like a sigh; then drawers were gliding in and out. Beyond the garden the dogs barked. Now and then violent outbursts of firing rent the hills. But even then my mother’s steps never stopped. I could hear them passing quietly backwards and forwards between the trunks in the hall and her room. CHAPTER III _Dawn of November 2nd._ It was long after midnight before my mother’s door closed. I hung a silk handkerchief over the lamp so that its light might not be seen from outside and then I went through the letters accumulated on my writing-table. Suddenly a bell rang in the hall. The telephone.... Who could call so late? What has happened? I ran quickly down the stairs. An unfamiliar voice spoke to me from the unknown. A terrified, strange voice: “Save yourself! The Russian prisoners have escaped from their camp. Three thousand of them are coming armed. They kill, rob and pillage. They are coming towards the town. They are coming this way....” “But....” I wanted to express my thanks, but the voice ceased and was gone. It must have gone on, panting, to awaken and warn the other inhabitants of lonely houses. For an instant my imagination followed the voice as it ran breathless along the wires in the night and shouted its alarm to the sleeping, the waking, the cowardly, the brave. It comes nameless, goes nameless, waits for no thanks, flies on the torn wings of shattered, despised human fellowship. The Russians are coming.... I stood irresolute for a time in the cold passage. What should I do? Every moment life seemed to present new problems. From the dark hall I listened for any sound from my mother’s room and looked to see if a light appeared under her door. But all was in darkness. Should I call her, tell her? What good would it be? I walked slowly up the stairs. There was no sound from the room of my brother, who was very ill. They both sleep.... It is better so. At any rate, it would be impossible for us to descend that soaked, slippery mountain path in the night. And if we could, where should we go? Fly? They said that when there was an earthquake. But where can one find shelter when the earth is quaking everywhere?