The most precious thing I found in the bunker is paper. There were several reams, and a box of pencils. That was how I was at last able to learn to write. The books helped me, even the ones on astronautics. Admittedly, I didn’t understand the mathematics, but they contained many lengthy chapters of explanations in which I studied the ways of saying things, the spelling and the grammar. I spent a lot of time studying the incomprehensible diagrams which went with the text. I copied them and that taught me to draw accurately, keeping the proportions right, so that I was able to map my excursions.

I decided that this bunker would be my home base. I asked myself hundreds of questions about its purpose. It wasn’t marked by a cabin, but by a mound of stones that could easily be overlooked, and I wondered whether they were meant to conceal it or mark it. It contained more provisions than I’d ever seen in the prisons, and I’d be able to live there for ever. It seemed to me that it was a luxurious place, but obviously I didn’t have a clear idea of luxury. In the ceiling, there are the same air-conditioning grates as in the other bunkers and, when I keep absolutely quiet, I can hear the same soft hum that indicates that everything is working. The bed is very big, several people could sleep in it, and there’s room for six people to sit around the table. In the kitchen there are four dozen glasses and several different kinds of plate. Does one person need all that? I am really sorry that there are no clothes, for not only would it have been useful to find some, but I could also have learned a lot from them. The books only taught me to write. Was this the home of a leader or an outlaw’s hideout? I am certainly too ignorant to interpret things that would probably have been blindingly clear to the women with whom I’d lived, for they at least had seen the world.

Then I gave up asking pointless questions. I examined everything, but I knew no more about the absent owner of my home than I had done on my arrival. I no longer think about him. Whatever his plans had been, he failed and his domain was now mine. Neither he nor I can do anything about that.

After two months, I set off exploring again. I made more than fifty expeditions, either walking in straight lines or in concentric semicircles. I found nothing but locked prisons. Perhaps there were other places like the one where I’d made my home, but I didn’t see them, even though I never forgot to inspect the ground, patiently looking for another mound of stones. I have understood nothing about the world in which I live. I have criss-crossed it in every direction but I haven’t discovered its boundaries.

On my last trip, I was standing on top of a hill, before me stretched a long walk down and a new plain and I could see a cabin in the distance. Suddenly, I was overcome with despondency. I told myself another staircase, the guards’ room, the cage and forty emaciated corpses. I sat down and the realisation dawned on me that I’d had enough. For the twenty or so years that I’d been alone, hope had buoyed me up, and suddenly, it had deserted me. I had imagined, a thousand times, a bunker where the cage would be open, where the prisoners, intoxicated with joy could have escaped. They’d have found the sky, the plain, they’d have trembled, dreamed of towns, of rescuers, but would, like us, have discovered this same hollow freedom. It was as if I could see them before me, looking at me and demanding an explanation: is this what you have to offer us? Leave us alone, we’re better off dead than desperate. I bowed my head and set off home.