all at once, body lice appear. Palm-size encampments of glittering larvae take shape in our rags and blankets. Like the turbulent images in a nightmare, these silvery splotches begin to stir, then squirm, and then frightfully, inextinguishably, disperse. Our nights of half sleep end, like that. Those hours allotted to rest now pass with curses and tormented scratching. Despite the risk of meeting with the slave drivers’ rubber truncheons and the sentry’s rifle butt, even during the day we have no choice: we repeatedly set down our tools to scratch ourselves all over, our faces contorted with
...more
