Was he really handsome or did I only find him handsome because he was the only man who wasn’t old? I, who knew so little, and who couldn’t remember the world, did recognise the signs of age. I’d seen hair turn grey, and then white, speckles appear, baldness threaten the heads of the oldest women, wrinkles, dry skin, folds, weakening tendons, stooped backs. The guard had clear skin, his step was supple as I knew mine was, despite the little space there was for me to test it; he was upright and young like me. I found that strange: weren’t there enough old men left? Maybe they were all dead? Or did they not know what to do with the young men? They couldn’t think of any more tasks to set them and so they sent them to pace up and down between the bars and the wall? There hadn’t been any young guards before, I said to myself, and my heart began to race. How long had he been there? I had the feeling that I hadn’t noticed him straight away, I hadn’t counted the days, I didn’t know when I’d started making up stories because I had no reference points. Unless I was mistaken, if his presence was recent, then, for the first time in years, something had changed. Beyond the walls, in that outside world which was totally concealed from us except for the food we ate and the fabric they gave us, things had happened and those events affected us. The guards had always been so old that we didn’t notice them age. I’d been a little girl when I arrived, now I was a woman, a virgin for ever, but an adult despite my underdeveloped breasts and my aborted puberty: I’d grown, my body had recorded the passage of time. The old women didn’t change any more than the old guards, their hair had turned white, but it happened so slowly that it was hardly noticeable. I’d been their clock: watching me, the women watched their own time tick by. Maybe that was why they didn’t like me, perhaps the mere fact of my existence made them cry. The young guard wasn’t a child when he arrived, he was tall, with thick hair, and there were no lines on his face. When he showed the first signs of withering, then I would feel my own skin to see whether I was getting older. He too would be a clock, we would grow old at the same speed. I could watch him and judge how much time I had left from the springiness of his step.

So, there had been a change. Somewhere, a decision had been taken which affected us, the impact of which we could assess: one of the old men had disappeared—perhaps he’d died—and had been replaced. Had this escaped the notice of those who governed our lives, were they not concerned about giving us a piece of information, or had they relaxed their vigilance?