Pain is his existence, complete now. It does not increase when he removes one hand from the wire.

With the hand he snakes the blanket off his shoulders, shakes it out, unfurls it to its four-thickness fold, swings it overhead, slaps it blindly down, feels it drape over the barbed wire above him, feels across the blanket until through the cloth he finds a taut strand-the point of a steel barb bursts through the padding into his finger. He shifts his hand an inch to the left, between barbs, and clenches his grip.

He frees the other hand and both feet. Now he hangs full length by one hand from the blanket-padded barbed wire.

The rain beats against him. He gets the left hand up and gropes between the barbs. When he has his grip he heaves his left leg high, hooks his heel against the blanket and feels it slide over the barbed wire. A prick of steel rakes his calf but he drags himself up with his weight on the puncture, thinking of the free earth beyond, propelled by his hate, visualizing the four faces.

For a moment he is poised on top of the wire, tangled in folds of the sodden blanket, and he flashes on a monkey he saw high in a tree in montagnard country with fragmentation bombs exploding all around. Then he is rolling, switching his handgrips frantically, his legs swinging off into space.

He hangs free. His toes bang against the outside of the mesh and he swings his feet out and lets himself drop.

He tries to land mainly on the good left leg but the battered knee takes part of the fall and he cries out faintly. The knife drops from his mouth. He is on both hands and one knee, holding the injured knee protectively off the earth; he sobs, his agony beyond control.

The four of them. They put me in here. They could have sent me to prison but they sent me here. When men invade your spirit and trample your dignity they must be destroyed.