Today I say staircase as if, at that time, I knew what it was and what I was looking for. As a matter of fact, we weren’t even certain that we were underground. The women thought so because there were no windows. I’d never found myself at the foot of a staircase, but I’d heard of them and I immediately realised what this was. I ran up a few stairs then turned round to call, unnecessarily, because Anthea and Dorothy had followed me. They were more cautious than I—later they told me they dreaded the sudden appearance of the guards, and that before following me, they’d shouted to the women that they might have to fight, and the women had replied that they were prepared to be killed if necessary, but they would never return to the cage. I was no longer thinking of them. I ran up the stairs recklessly; I ran with a sort of all-consuming elation, an intoxication akin to the feeling I’d no longer been able to induce by making up stories once I’d emerged from my isolation and begun talking to the others. I was borne by an impulse so powerful that, had a guard appeared at that moment, even if he were twice my size, I’d have knocked him over and trampled him underfoot; I was possessed by a wild joy that was heedless of all else. I climbed without becoming breathless, without getting tired, even though I had never taken more than twenty steps in a straight line. I flew up the steps as in the dreams I had later, dreams I’d heard the women describing, where you rise up and glide like the birds that I was soon to watch being carried by the airstreams, effortlessly drifting, dancing for hours in the twilight, just as I was dancing up the steps, weightless, floating, in an exhilarating ascent towards the undreamed-of unknown, the outside, the world that was not the cage; and I had no thoughts, only a visceral thrill that swept me along, and images, perhaps, that raced through my mind, or simply words that gushed up and rose to receive the imminent images—the sky, the night, the horizon, the sun, the wind, and many more, countless words that had accumulated over the years and which were in a hurry, spurring me on. Oh! That first time I went up the stairs! When I think of it, my eyes fill with tears and I feel that compulsion, that surge of triumph. I think I’d be prepared to relive twelve years of captivity to experience that miraculous ascent, the wonderful certainty that made me so light that I flew up the hundred steps in one go, without stopping for breath, and I was laughing.

All of a sudden, I found myself at the top. I was in what we later called a cabin, three walls and a door, also open, the plain spreading out before me. I bounded forward and looked. It was the world.