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the rest of his lecture.
    “Bull!” grunted Hal. “The name suits him to a T!”
    Frank shook his head.
    “You’ve got to try to understand him,” he said. “But he said it himself: he don’t get many nice changes! But tell me, Hal, people who go to a circus to see the human cannonball, why do they do it? They fork out 500 francs for the dubious hope of seeing a man get himself killed, that’s why! In here, there’s no charge and there’s never any doubt about the result, so you can imagine…”
    “In here ,” sighed Hal. “The word’s like a splinter I’ve got stuck in my finger… Here! In here!”
    “Too damn right,” agreed Frank. “And that’s more than enough pain to be going on with, thank you very much!”
    “Every time I say it or think of the words, the other ones come into my mind too.”
    “The other what?”
    “The other words, the ones that mean the opposite: out there! Right?”
    “Out there!” murmured Frank dreamily.
    “Yes!” said Hal, his eyes ablaze. “Out there! Where there’s air and plants and animals!… People piling into cinemas or going home to make love! Don’t you ever think about that, about two people getting it on with each other? A bed! A woman, with the salt taste of her mouth… the smell of her!…”
    Frank leapt off his cot and grabbed the bars of his cell with both hands.
    “Stop it,” he said dully. “Keep your trap shut! You’re not doing us any favours! When you’re rotting in a jail like this, you shouldn’t talk about such stuff.”
    “You’re right,” agreed Hal. “Rotting’s the word… damn right it is! And this is just the start of it. There’ll be days and days…”
    “Years, Hal!”
    “Worse: hours. It’s the hours that get you down the most.”
    Frank held his face so hard against the bars that they left white marks on his cheeks.
    “I’ve had a bellyful of it,” he said.
    He’d spoken matter-of-factly, without raising his voice. It was an admission, an admission of infinitely human frailty.
    “Never mind,” murmured Hal. “Maybe we’ll get used to it…”
    “You wish! You can’t get used to something you can’t take any more! You can’t get used to this greyness everywhere, to the walls, to the hours which never stop dripping onto our heads, one after another… Take the guy in the condemned cell waiting for the executioner to come for him… At least he can concentrate on one specific thing… He still has hope, a wonderful hope: he’s hoping that he’ll live… But me…”
    He let himself slide down onto the floor until he was sitting on his heels. He rested his head on his knees.
    “I’m alone, with a past which is dying inside me like some plant that nobody waters any more!”
    After a moment, he looked up. There was a hard gleam in his eyes and his jaw was slack.
    “I tell you, Hal. I’d gladly swap places with that guy…”
    “What guy, Frank?”
    “The one they’re going to shorten… Dying’s as good as a rest, right?… One jolt and it’s ‘Good night all!’ The earth drops away under you, like you’re a red balloon and someone has let go of the string.”
    Hal shook his head.
    “Wonder of wonders!” he said. “Infinity on every floor!”
    “Hal!” cried Frank in a voice full of anguish.
    “Yes?”
    “What if you’re not a cop after all?”
    “Oh, not that again! No one knows better than you that if there’s a cop here, it’s not me!”
    But Frank took no notice.
    “Hal, we could try something…”
    “What do you have in mind?” asked Hal.
    “Don’t you see?”
    They stared at each other. Hal got up, and went and looked out through the bars. Lowering his voice, he said:
    “I can see very well… And if I didn’t think you really were a—”
    “Leave it!”
    “…I’d have suggested it long ago.”
    “Do you think it’s possible?”
    “No!”
    “Look, I really need to try something impossible.”
    “Me too,” said Hal. “Do you reckon there’ve been guys who’ve