The further I have gone on my journey – which I wanted to be instinctive, the better to penetrate the mystery – the more I could understand the implacable system that regulated this place down to the last second. I was a prisoner of what I knew. I was trapped in my books, my technical reports. In reality things did not work like that, not just like that. Behind the cold logic of the Machine was the savage mystery of death which pervaded the camp, the cruel laws of random chance which, here more than anywhere else, stalked the prisoner’s every step, watched him, made certain that the selection for this task, this punishment, fell to him again, which decided that illness should strike him rather than another, which meant instant death; things magically conspired that trivial incidents linked together to become great catastrophes which jammed this splendid, unstoppable Machine, panicking the Bonzen, humiliating them, unleashing reprisals, terrible fury, wanton acts, unending punishments; there were the days and nights of privation; there was the mystery of time, stretching out to infinity until it broke the will, destroyed all hope, even all regret, then suddenly contracting, choking the world, making every movement seem hurried, a pitiless garrotte that made each minute weigh heavily, each second more tenuous; and there was the weather, its shifting moods, its tortures, its sudden fevers; there was the lack of privacy, the shame and the animal instincts that accompanied it; there was the hunger, endless, frantic; the smells that turned your stomach; there was the terrible loss of awareness that made the prisoner his own worst enemy, each having signed a pact with hunger, the instinct to survive, with madness, and there were the thousand tiny everyday events which could at any moment turn to tragedy; my God, the tragedy that might result from a stolen shoe, a cap lost in the dead of winter, one glance too many at an officer, a second of inattentiveness, a bowl shattering, a twisted ankle, a bout of dysentery or lumbago, an infected wound; there was the gruelling preoccupation with constantly having to look busy, to never raise suspicion; there was the turmoil you carried around in your head all day, all night; there were the suppurating fears, the endless questions, the morbid moments of elation, the childish fears, the excruciating needs, the impossible dreams, the fleeting memories of another life in a world where the sun existed, where day and night were a mercy shared with others. A trivial thing could mean death, could make life unbearable, everything was uncertain, everything doomed to failure, to darkness, to decay. It must have been so bad that we hoped this splendid, unstoppable Machine would keep on turning. Perhaps we even prayed to God to forget us and to watch over the Beast. Ensure she had her dead so she might gorge herself on them and leave us in peace. When everything runs well, we can snatch a moment of peace here and there. When everything runs smoothly, we can bide our time and die in peace.