But the front is not separate. It is inside Schwarzs-child, and the symptoms I have been sending out, suppu-rative bullae and excoriated lesions, are not what is wrong with him at all. The lesions on his skin are only the barbed wire and shell holes and connecting trenches of a front that is somewhere farther in.

The doctor puts a new dressing of crepe paper on my hand. “I have tried to invalid Schwarzschild out,” the doctor says, and Müller looks at him, astounded. “The supply lines are blocked with snow.”

“Schwarzschild cannot be invalided out,” I say. “The front is inside him.”

The doctor puts the roll of crepe paper back in his kit and closes it. “When the roads open again, I will invalid you out for frostbite. And Müller, too.”

Müller is so surprised, he blurts, “I do not have frostbite.”

But the doctor is no longer listening. “You must both escape,” he says—and I am not sure he is even listening to himself—“while you can.”

“I have a theory about why you have not told me what is wrong with Schwarzschild,” Müller says as soon as the doctor is gone.

“I am going for the mail.”

“There will not be any mail,” Müller shouts after me. “The supply lines are blocked.” But the mail is there, scattered among the motorcycle parts. There are only a few parts left. As soon as the roads are cleared, the recruit will be able to climb on the motorcycle and ride away.

I gather up the letters and take them over to the lantern to try to read them, but my eyes are so bad, I cannot see anything but a red blur. “I am taking them back to thewireless hut,” I say, and the recruit nods without looking up.

It is starting to snow. Müller meets me at the door, but I brush past him and turn the flame of the Primus stove up as high as it will go and hold the letters up behind it.