Even in the guards’ quarters: I don’t think I’d ever formulated that so clearly. Those words kept haunting me and were beginning to annoy me, when at last an idea began to form: we had understood that the guards didn’t want to give us any clues as to the reasons for our captivity and our being kept alive, but we’d always assumed that they knew. What if they were as much in the dark as we were? What if they were forced to do a job that they weren’t permitted to understand? What if by putting the same things in all the bunkers, those in charge wanted to keep all information from them as well as from us? I was electrified by this theory, I could feel my footsteps dancing and I began to laugh. I was perfectly aware that I had only added another question to all the others, but it was a new one, and, in the absurd world in which I lived, and still live, that was happiness.

I would be the sole proprietor of this land, I’d said to Anthea shortly before she died. But I knew that the stones and the cold stores would constitute a paltry treasure. I’d set out with the intention of discovering things—possibly the power plant the women had always talked about, the place from which the orders that governed our lives were issued—anything that was new. To think that the guards knew nothing was a new idea, and to me nothing seemed more precious. I would have liked to celebrate. Since I lived as I pleased, walking, eating and sleeping when I felt like it, I couldn’t invent anything special, but that evening, I lit the fire and grilled my meat with a light heart. I promised myself sweet dreams that night. I don’t know if I had them. Every night, I had plenty of company, and, on waking, I always had the vague recollection that I’d been laughing and playing with women and men, but I never managed to remember anything more specific. That always surprises me because when I am awake, I forget nothing.

Having realised that, in fact, the guards were also victims, I was prepared for the strange encounter that awaited me. I’d been walking for a year, always in the direction of the rising sun. The landscape had changed a little, the long undulations had become hills, and I never climbed them without hope. The rivers were deeper and it was possible to swim in them, which gave me immense pleasure, and I saw new types of tree in the denser woods. I carefully examined the bushes, because I remembered that the women had spoken of wild berries—strawberries, blackberries and raspberries—which all tasted delicious, but I never saw anything that resembled their descriptions. Once, I came across what I thought must be mushrooms, but I didn’t pick them because they’d said that they might be poisonous. It was on leaving one of these woods that I was struck by the lie of the land.