He was silent, sitting on the ground, sharpening his knife. He never was a talkative man. Now more than ever, because of the bunch of idiots he was forced to stay with or because of the war. He always looked very inquisitorial. "You scare women off", that's what his friends used to say about it. Not that he ever cared much. Maybe he had that face because he was angry with the world or himself, or maybe it was just his resting face. Fact is that he looked at everybody like that and, mixed together with his silence and his knife, he could be very unsettling. But he was no bad man. Not for the most part, at least. And everybody knew that. Or at least he hoped so.