He is walking a little stiffly. There is a buzzing in his ears. The van doors open although no one has touched them, and in an instant he is being thrown inside by hands that must be horribly practised at it. He is aware of the darkness, and the buzz of everything he is to leave behind – then his head strikes the steel wall so that he sees sparks and he flounders into an even deeper darkness, as the van starts to slither forward with its chilling snake-like sound alongside the flowing river of beautiful arrows.

14

Inwards

Inwards, inwards. Where will it end? The last gilded arrows shine. Then it is over. Then one has arrived.

Is this that door?

Is this what it’s like – in every direction? I can’t recognize it all from what survivors have told us.

What is hanging in the air here, lying in layers? Cries from dry lips: No! No! No!

In this place the air one breathes is made up of nothing but this word.

What is sound? Here, with walls and doors as secure as these, it is something that does not escape into the world outside.

There! The lock clicked shut. This is the room.

Stig! calls a tremendous voice. Here people have endured the ultimate so that you should come to no harm.

Yes, he replies, trembling with awe before the greatness of it.

And here torture has made them blurt out things, though they would rather have died than uttered them, he thinks. No one can blame them for that! They prayed to heaven that it might not happen.

He seems to be making up a partial self-defence beforehand. But he is not so much afraid on account of that. He has had various occasions on which to test his nerves and strength of will, although the last one was a defeat.

I shall think about Karen and Rascal, he tells himself. About something close and familiar and straightforward.

The voice that is calling him says: Now it is your turn.

I pray now for one single gift between heaven and earth.
____ ____ ____

Inwards….

Inwards, inwards….

____ ____ ____
…Well Stig, have you anything to tell us now?…

Karen Karen Karen Karen….

15

The Heart through the Stone

Somewhere in the centre a man is leaning against the wall, counting the buttons on his jacket. Then he starts walking again. There is a bad smell in the air in his tiny prison cell.

The man walks up and down. Two or three paces, and then he must turn. And then he walks again. He counts the buttons on his jacket. And nothing else happens. He has to fill in the rest for himself. Last year and the year before that it was just the same. He has drawn a line somewhere too, that nobody knows about, and which he stops and looks at.

‘What’s that?’ he says, listening to see if anyone is knocking on the wall, as happens sometimes. But there is no knocking just now.