‘What about when Alice wanted to kill herself and Claudia stopped her?’

‘That’s one memory that stands out amid all the confusion. No one knows when that was.’

I’d been counting for four months. We’d decided no longer to worry about the anarchic routine they imposed on us—my heart would act as our clock. One evening, as the lights were being dimmed, we decided that it was eleven o’clock, and that from that moment, I would count the days as twenty-four hours, as in the past. Sometimes, when we were in the middle of lunch, joylessly eating the boiled vegetables, a woman would ask me the time and I’d reply:

‘Two o’clock in the morning.’

That rekindled a spirit of rebellion in their dulled minds. We had our own time, which had nothing in common with that of those who kept us locked up; we’d rediscovered the quality of being human. We were no longer in league with the guards. Inside the bars, my strong, regular heart fuelled by youthful anger had restored to us our own territory; we’d established an area of freedom. New jokes sprang up. When the hatch opened for the second time and we were given a few kilos of pasta, if it was eight o’clock in the morning according to my heart, there was always one woman who’d say:

‘Ah! Here’s breakfast!’

Or, if it was midnight:

‘The show’s over, let’s have dinner in town.’

And we’d have a fit of giggles. I laughed too, I remember now, because I’d stopped seeing the women as enemies since I’d been giving them what I could: the time. I hadn’t forgotten the young guard, and when he was on duty, I continued to watch him, sitting close to the bars, hoping that one day he’d betray himself and give some sign that he’d noticed me, but that did not happen. I still wonder whether it was out of discipline, or whether he really hadn’t been struck by the fact that one of the women, always the same one, never took her eyes off him for a moment. I didn’t tell myself any more stories.

I’d created the only new thing possible in our static lives. While my gaze was riveted on the young guard, no one disturbed me. Had they done so, it would have drawn attention to me. That left me plenty of time to think. I began to fear that, once again, we would be stultified by habit. It seemed to me that certain discussions no longer aroused much interest, and some of the women began yawning when we tried once again to fathom the rationale behind the time difference. They moaned that we were wearing ourselves out for nothing, that we wouldn’t find an explanation, that everything was arbitrary. I told myself that if their enthusiasm waned, I’d start hating them again and feeling alone, whereas I’d been enjoying myself. They’d go back to making jokes that excluded me and I’d be angry again. But Anthea thought I was wrong and that they really had woken up. ‘It’s even dangerous,’ she added. ‘I’m afraid that the guards will realise and will drug us again. We’ll sink back into apathy, we’ll be half dead and we won’t even realise it. I can’t imagine anything more humiliating.’