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Show 31 beings. The image invades his mind: himself motionless, entirely motionless, unable to do or initiate anything, unable to smell, to breathe, to hear see think- -and then images come of those who still do move, ragged children creeping through war-torn European streets, sailors in shipwrecks, clinging to a bit of floating board with a grip tighter than death, Ann Boleyn screaming for her life as she is dragged along the Tower, silent Jews peering out of hollow hungry eyes in the concentration camps, but still breathing, injured mountain climbers dragging themselves across icefields with fingers frozen up to the knuckles, people moving through fires, withstanding falls, pushing their lungs again after they are pulled from the water, the desperate community of those who resist death, who survive. He thinks of the fierce old heart and gizzard of Franco, thumping on long after death might have claimed him, of men lost in wells or caves or mines, unearthed forty-eight hours after earthquakes, and he knows that he, 'Robeck, is one of them, not one of those limp pale creatures whose slim hands slip from the edge of the lifeboat or whose pulse is too weak to survive the shock, or who lie down in hospitals, nursing homes, rented rooms and refuse to get up, not because they cannot but because they see no point in continuing on. He has always been one of the stubborn ones, cantankerous, argumentative, rebellious; that is why he has defended his position with as much zeal as he has in his Defense, ^ <5; but he cannot let its conclusion fall upon him. "No," he says aloud. It is a hesitant, blurted sound, but it brings with it the beginnings of a surge of relief, and again he says it, "no," louder this |