Yet, I set about writing this account: apparently, even if I no longer have the strength or the heart to go off exploring again, my hope, which waned briefly, has not really expired. The bunker I didn’t enter might have been the one, or the next one, or another one to the west that time I went east. Who knows whether, one day, a very old man or a very old woman might arrive here, see the raised cover, be amazed, hope, and start descending the spiral staircase? That person will find these sheets of paper piled on the big wooden table and read them, and someone will at last receive a message from another person. Perhaps, at this very moment, as I end my days exhausted, a human being is walking across the plain as I did, going from bunker to bunker, a rucksack on their back, determinedly seeking an answer to the thousands of questions consuming them. I know that I can’t wait much longer, that I will soon have to deal myself the death blow that my companions so often requested, because the pain is becoming increasingly relentless.

From time to time, at night, I go upstairs and sit outside. I listen. Recently, I resolved to try and shout at the top of my voice: ‘Hello! Is anybody there?’ My voice was croaky and weak, but I still listened. I heard only the soft rustle of the grass in the breeze. Another time, I collected lots of branches and made a fire that could be seen from a long way off. I kept it going all night, although my common sense told me that there was no one. But it also told me that there are so many bunkers and that probably, most probably, there was another one where the siren had gone off when the door was open, and why should they all be dead? The night goes by, I think of my life, the girl in a rage who taunted the young guard, angry at the present—as if I had a future—or easily climbing the hundred stairs, caught in the web of illusions in the middle of the boundless desolate plain, under a sky that is nearly always grey, or such a pale blue that it seems to be dying. But a sky does not die, it is I who am dying, who was already dying in the bunker—and I tell myself that I am alone in this land that no longer has any jailers, or prisoners, unaware of what I came here to do, the mistress of silence, owner of bunkers and corpses. I tell myself that I have walked for thousands of hours and that soon I will take my last ten steps to go and put these sheets of paper on the table and come back to lie down on my deathbed, an emaciated old woman whose eyes, which no hand will close, will always be looking towards the door. I have spent my whole life doing I don’t know what, but it hasn’t made me happy. I have a few drops of blood left, that is the only libation I can offer destiny, which has chosen me. Then I see the pale winter dawn break and I go back down to sleep, if the pain allows me any respite, on the big bed where there is room for several people.