she glanced once more at the Colonel . he showed no signs of being interested in what was going on before his eyes , and the shoe remained , untouched , at his feet . it occurred to her briefly ( two more prisoners were examined ) how odd it was that of all the people in the convoy who had been held up by this Colonel and his assistant , she and Benvenuto were the only ones who knew that they could not be what they seemed . and did Benvenuto know ? it also seemed to her that the soldier was taking a long time reaching Benvenuto , but she did not trust her senses . it must be no time at all , she said . then she heard the soldier shout : fall out ! get back in the trucks ! and the Colonel add , in their language , and do n&apos;t waste any time about it ! and though it seemed impossible to her that she should have escaped , she could not think of any other possible explanation for the command . as they started shuffling back towards the truck she tried to keep walking evenly , in spite of the fact that one foot was now higher than the other . no one moved very fast . she saw Benvenuto get into the truck among the first without looking either right or left ; she saw the soldier help one of the wounded up over the tail-gate ; she saw the Colonel start to hurry the line along , pushing each man along by the shoulders ; and when she was a few prisoners away from boarding the truck herself , she saw the Colonel step on her shoe . at first it seemed that he would not even notice his discomfort in his impatience to get on to the next truck . but obviously the heel of the shoe annoyed him and he got the soldier to point his flashlight down at the offending object . the soldier picked it up and held it in his hand , but the Colonel took it from him and methodically wiped the mud from it so that its red leather shone . Clara meanwhile had passed him and was in the truck , manoeuvring to be as close to Benvenuto as possible . when she turned round she could see the shoe in the Colonel &apos;s hand . it looked very small and the Colonel &apos;s hand looked very large . what a pretty shoe , Lescaut said . what a very pretty shoe . three . liberation . 1 . until the very moment when she was captured Clara had believed in her heart of hearts that she and Benvenuto would escape . she did not know how , but she was convinced that it would be so . in those few hours from noon to midnight of that August day that had been so filled with the unusual , she had never ceased to believe in the usual , in the day-to-day life she had enjoyed for many years . today she was with Benvenuto ; tomorrow she would be with Benvenuto . had it not always been so ? would it not always be so ? the more you love , the more you think it likely that the world must love too . it takes stubborn facts to dislodge belief or habit . until the moment , then , that Manon Lescaut picked up the shoe , Clara was convinced against all appearances that she and Benvenuto must be saved : because they loved each other , if for no other reason . another thing she had taken for granted was that Benvenuto also had faith in their escape , for if he had n&apos;t why had he undertaken to fly with her ? in fact , Clara had believed that it was she who tended to be more realistic in appraising their chances , and Benvenuto who had been swayed by the o&apos;erweaning optimism of his nature . but when their capture was certain , she saw that Benvenuto had never believed that they would escape . he made this perfectly plain by his reactions . far from being more frightened than before , his capture plainly relieved his mind of whatever doubts he may have had . he followed and obeyed Manon Lescaut as though he was absolutely certain that the Rumanian knew what he was doing , why he was doing it ; and even as though he thought that the Rumanian probably knew better than he , Benvenuto , did , what was good and suitable for him . Clara was used to following his lead , and within minutes she , too , began to feel a certain relief that she had been captured . the moment she realized that she and Benvenuto would not escape , she saw that everything that had happened in the past twelve hours had happened just as it had been ordained ; and in the same way everything that would happen to them now would happen as it was ordained . and if this was so , there was no need to plan anything or to feel any fear . several times , during the hour that followed their capture , when they were being driven through the back roads in the mountains in a jeep the Rumanian had commandeered , she looked to Benvenuto to see if he thought the same way ; and whenever she looked , she saw her own feelings confirmed . Benvenuto &apos;s face was deprived of all expression . it had done away both with its past and with its future ; it neither regretted nor expected . from time to time his large and strong hand passed under her blanket to meet hers and lie there on her lap ; and even in this he showed neither pleasure nor pain . his hand merely indicated that he was there next to her and that they were together . she derived a great strength from this and she and Benvenuto were able to sustain everything the Rumanian said and did in silence . the Rumanian was not cruel , except with his words , and his words all seemed to deal with someone called the Capit&amp;aacute;n and with times that had gone by and had no particular relevance at the moment . indeed , she could not imagine why he bothered to mention half the things he mentioned : did he think Benvenuto had forgotten them ? or would deny them ? but now that all those things were done , now that they were over with , what could recalling them serve ? they were taken to a caf&amp;eacute; in the mountains and told to sit down on two chairs by the wall , on either side of one of those football games which are so common , where all the players are on handles and you make goals by twisting the handles and making the players kick a ping-pong ball into the goal . Benvenuto sat down on the side of the red team and she sat down on the side of the white . the Rumanian introduced her to a man called Major Vincent and then introduced Benvenuto . they did not get up from their chairs , nor did the Major , whom she saw as a small , fat , pink man , seek to shake their hands . she presumed that they were going to be handed over into his charge , and she was surprised to find that she did not care . then a glance at Benvenuto told her that he too did not care . it was unimportant in whose hands they were ; all would happen as it had been ordained . 2 . it was possible for Major Vincent to misjudge the emotions of Benvenuto and Clara as he did because from his point of view , knowing what he knew of their fates , there was very little in their present appearance to indicate anything else but the most abject fear and humiliation . as he studied them in the fullness of his self-satisfaction , nothing suggested that the pale , weary , shrunken , wizened old man in his tattered rags was the same proud Capit&amp;aacute;n who had guided the destiny of his country for twenty years . in Bassanio &apos;s patched and threadbare uniform Benvenuto looked like an ordinary fugitive from justice caught in an absolutely futile disguise . gone was the habitual arrogance of his expression , gone the proud thrust of his jaw , the many gestures of the hands ; extinct the brilliance and fire of his eyes . nor was it possible to see in her an Emperor &apos;s mistress , a pampered Pompadour , as the Major had always imagined her . she looked - the expression caused the Major a smile - like a wife , a sort of faithful adjunct , a mute copy of her master . she sat in a slouch with one fine shoe on one delicate foot , in a dress spattered and stiff with mud : to the Major her cropped hair and thin breasts , her pale and drawn face and her sleepless-strained eyes brought to mind nothing more than submissiveness and servility . when the Rumanian brought them in , Major Vincent decided that they were both in the last stages of fear and exhaustion and that he would have no trouble with them . Benvenuto and Clara were not the first prisoners he had taken , nor would they be the first he would execute . most of his other prisoners had behaved in a certain way , and he was confident Benvenuto and Clara would behave in the same way . what he read as fear in their faces he ascribed to the overwhelming depression of being taken when they thought they would be free . he thought of Benvenuto as being in the same position as that prisoner of the Spanish Cardinal during the inquisition . one night the Cardinal left the prisoner &apos;s door unlocked and through endless dangers and mounting fear the prisoner made his way to the very outer wall of the citadel - only to find the Cardinal waiting for him there when he had scaled that wall . to be a few steps short of achieving one &apos;s aims , Major Vincent thought , was as terrible a fate as could befall a man . like that Cardinal , the Major had his methods with prisoners , and he believed them to be the most modern and most efficient methods , and relatively without cruelty . what he wanted from the Capit&amp;aacute;n before he killed him was to see him broken down into absolute zero ; he wanted him to deny ever having been a human being ; he wanted him to unthink every thought he had ever had . if he could succeed in this , he would have accomplished two desirable aims . first , his own thoughts would rule supreme and he would feel , as he had felt before , that state of semi-exaltation in which his own ideas seemed to supersede all others and have free play with the realities of the world . in that state there were no cars that did not function , no stomachs with special requirements and no imperfections of communication . second , it would be much easier to kill his prisoner once he had been reduced to absolute zero . somehow , he had found , the more afraid a man was , the easier it was to kill him . the Major had his methods for achieving these aims : they had always succeeded in the past . the mind is a simple thing , he thought . it is made to feel and understand one thing at a time , so that you can make it swing like a pendulum . you can make doubt play with hope , speculation with logic . ultimately the only relief is in not caring at all . the mind will take death with ease then , for life is a burden and a torment and death is a liberation . what the Major did not understand was that Benvenuto and Clara had reached this point without him . it was the Major &apos;s odd vanity to think that he could impose this on two human beings . in reality , they were making it necessary for him to follow that path . but Major Vincent also had his moments of doubt . it was impossible , for instance , to calculate what effect the girl would have on his plans . what ought he to do with her ? would n&apos;t it be considered unnecessarily cruel to kill the girl as well ? and how could he reduce her to zero when obviously all her concerns were with the Capit&amp;aacute;n and she barely thought of herself at all ? for the moment he sidestepped the thought . I will decide what to do with her later , he imagined , not thinking that Clara would have anything to say in his decision . 