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your sleep?’ The man in a rush for something, after blood. Like the doctor at Cosford, the trick cyclist. Same style. Wanting to steal what was left of you and pretending you shouldn’t object.
    â€˜My sleep is more than enough for me, thank you. I sometimes have to wake up early, just to keep it from wearing me out.’
    â€˜And now you are here in Germany again, pretending to be in a camp – now with this, you sleep?’ The fucker guessing, correctly guessing, that insomnia – a charming word, that, full of Latin – insomnia had been a problem but, since coming here, had abandoned him completely.
    Such conditions could go either way, Alfred supposed, but it turned out the hut noise had soothed him: the breathing, creaks, the shift of bodies, the chafing night din of a barracks, none of it annoyed him any more. Instead he’d gained a sleep like drowning, like being swallowed, a crush of grey taking him off as soon as he lay down and folding over him, thick and seamless, until they had to shake him at reveille, haul him back up to the light.
    No need to mention that yesterday morning you’d gone round to have a swill, get yourself presentable, and had to pause, sit down on the clean, fake steps of some other clean, fake hut and realise you were tearful, ached, because the pretend camp, pretend fences, pretend guards – they had been what you wanted. The bastard thing had made you miss it. The fucking thing had put itself inside you so deep that you felt this happiness to see it built again and straggling with men: pretend Kriegies –
Kriegsgefangene
: all German, that word – pretend POWs, like yourself and more than only you coming back for their second time, volunteering for their prison, more than only you – and you were fucked off with yourself and fucked off with them and fucked off with the thing and its taste and its fear and its living in you and fucked off that it wouldn’t be long before filming was over and they’d send you home.
    And I’m looking for the faces, too. From when it was real. From when we were Kriegies.
    Because some of it here can seem so much the same and that leads you to expect them, even when you’re certain they’re not coming: the boys you need to see.
    Alfred rolled on to his side, saw Vasyl tip his head back and eat the Klim out of the can – just pouring it down too fast to taste. It made the bugger cough for a moment before he paused, spoke again, the words thick with milk. ‘I said, do you sleep, Mr Alfred? In my camp – in my real camp. I sleep.’
    â€˜Then why come and do this? If your camp is so bloody lovely, why don’t you stay in it? Want to be a film star, do you?’ Alfred felt his tiredness coming, inviting a pain in the head. ‘Or didn’t you get enough of the fucking war?’
    â€˜Displaced Persons, we have no choice until they decide what to do with us, we must stay where they keep us. Work is a way to leave.’ Vasyl sighed as if he was a man of distinction and excellent schooling, someone cultured who loved porcelain and perhaps symphonies and it was a very great shame that a person of so many qualities should be suffering so badly and speaking to a so much lower type who was too stupid even to notice. He made a point of emptying the rest of the Klim out on the grass, wasting it, watching Alfred for any reaction.
    Alfred just made a smile and didn’t shout and looked as if he might be stupid, because he was good at that – self-taught. Self-defence.
    â€˜We have to be very patient and wait very nice with each other and not speak a great deal, or ask questions. It is very dull.’ Vasyl lit yet another cigarette. ‘This making a film is a thing to do which is not concert party, or recital with poetry, or digging a field, or debate concerning democracy and the future –
in preparing tomorrow’s peace, English influence will never be devoted