But it had not lasted very long. After a while the swine had thrown open the door and said ‘Come with me!’ to the newcomer. He got up and left, and did not return. Then it was twice as lonely.

He is never taken away for anything. They don’t take him out for an airing any more, because of some pettiness. And now it seems an incredibly long time since he last spoke to anyone. He lost count of time ages ago for all his drawing and counting. It’s because of a fine flour sifting down from somewhere. He has started to change. Fine flour seems to be sifting down somewhere inside his brain. That’s what it feels like. Fine, fine dust.

‘What’s that?’ he asks when he hears something in his solitude.

Nothing. Only the dark dirty walls, and the endless tramping of feet being led past along the corridor outside. But the sound he has been listening for, for someone to be brought in to him, has not come again.

He starts listening more and more to this flour sifting down. It has an unimaginably slight sound that he is able to hear. He resists it occasionally: If I start doing this, everything will collapse. But his resistance weakens. He starts counting the buttons on his jacket, worn smooth by now.

In the meantime the flour sifts down: sifting, sifting flour. It is happening somewhere or other and it is irritating to be aware of it. Fine dust is sifting endlessly from a hole in his brain.

You mustn’t do this, he says to himself. If you go on like this you’ll slide away into the night.

He paces up and down, up and down.

‘What’s that?’ he asks out loud, thirsting to hear a human voice. But no answer ever comes to tell him what it is.

He steadies himself: You mustn’t! If you keep on pacing like this you’ll break down completely.

No, I mustn’t, but what shall I do? he asks, afraid. I’m not the sort of person who is able to stand this, that’s the trouble. He is driven from one thing to another, in continual terror of going to pieces. He could have fallen to his knees on the hard floor, begging to be sent more satisfying thoughts, so that this fearful empty time might be borne. He knows there are some people who can be inactive for considerable lengths of time without being harmed. But he is completely confused already.

He walks, and sits. The swine arrives regularly. He stares indifferently at the swine. The swine says something now and again, but he never replies, although he is thirsting for conversation.

The lamp burns in the ceiling. So it must be daytime. Then the light is turned off, after which he is supposed to sleep. And all the time the fine flour is sifting down somewhere. He starts up in terror at his helplessness. Then he sinks back again, and counts his buttons to keep his fingers moving.