It wasn’t necessary for me to stop Anthea’s heart. Each death had contributed a little to killing her. There had been so much hope when we’d escaped from the prison, and then this slow dissipation, the gradual abandonment of all expectations, a defeat that had killed everything without a battle. She wondered when it had dawned on us that we were as much prisoners out in the open as we had been behind bars. Was it after finding the second bunker when we’d been terrified at the sight of the thirty-nine dead women, heaped up or collapsed on top of one another? Or the first time we’d descended a staircase with no further hope of finding the cage open? Or when Mary-Jane had hanged herself? When did we know for certain that we had no future, that we would continue to live as parasites on those who’d locked us up, stealing below ground to take our food from the departed enemy? And how was it that we hadn’t died from sheer nausea? She mulled over these questions endlessly, and I listened in silence. The impossibility of finding any answers fuelled the grief that was killing her. When there were only six of us left, and Greta died, Anthea no longer had the strength to stand and had to be carried to the cemetery. We used a litter like the one on which Dorothy had died, and Anthea lay on her back gazing up at the sky as we walked, still wondering if it was that of planet Earth. There was a moon. The women always said that it looked like the moon they’d known, but they weren’t sure they could trust their own memories. Anthea’s sight had grown poor, she screwed up her eyes with a futile persistence. When we arrived, Greta was already lying in her grave and Laura was keeping vigil. Rose had passed away, but the women had learned the song and their voices resonated for a long time over the plain, because they repeated it several times. I had never sung. We hadn’t sung in the bunker, and afterwards it was too late, I had a lump in my throat. Nor could I shout, I could only produce a raucous croak that didn’t travel far. I do not know whether I am still able to speak. Of course, all I have to do is try, but I don’t seem to want to. And what does it matter if I’ve become mute in a world where there is no one to talk to?

We stood at the graveside for a long time, in silence. From time to time, one of the women would repeat the terrible words: ‘From the depths, I call on you, O Lord.’ Perhaps that isn’t exactly the right translation, none of us really knew that dead language which they chanted over a land that was almost dead, but they’d told me what they understood. Their voices soared up, they gazed at the dark sky as if they somehow expected a reply, but nothing ever crossed that vault except the silent movement of the stars. Then, one after the other, they fell silent, the chorus died out like an untended fire, and silence descended, barely ruffled by the lightest of winds that permanently blows. All that was left for us to do was to throw earth over the emaciated body that was barely discernible under the blanket and then make our way slowly back to the village of empty houses.