He lies down, but adds: ‘Haven’t I been here long enough for my son to grow up ? You must answer me.’

He even seizes the clothes of the swine who is standing above him.

‘If he was a schoolboy then, he’s one now, I told you. But you don’t seem very clear about it, the way you’re carrying on. Anyway, I don’t suppose it was that son going past.’

A painful grip loosens its hold. It wasn’t my son. I must thank him for saying that.

And yet, when he looks up, he cannot bring himself to do so. The fellow above him is only standing ready to strike him down if he should disobey and not lie flat and quiet on the bench.

Then he hears the knocking in the stone. It is still there. Full of life.

‘Listen,’ he says without thinking, but so quietly as if telling a secret. ‘You must go now,’ he says suddenly to the swine. ‘I am unable to look at you any longer.’

Imagine, we address each other politely, the swine and I! he thinks.

This takes the guard so much by surprise that he seems unable to react.

‘You must go,’ he repeats, lying obediently stretched out on the bench.

The swine says, ‘I have orders to see that you make no noise. As soon as you’re quiet I’ll go, don’t you worry. But not before. This has got to stop.’

The man on the bench is listening only for the knocking. It seems to him to be like a living heart, in the very centre of the stone, frenzied during the last few minutes. Things he has not been able to think about for a long time are passing through his brain. Above him bulges this creature; it makes his stomach turn over simply to look at him, after all the times he has come in.

‘I am quiet now,’ he says, to get him away. But it’s no use. He’s only standing there because he’s been ordered to go. What’s the matter with him ? Can’t he hear the knocking in the wall? Doesn’t he realize that it’s impossibly dangerous? Can’t he hear that it’s – that they’re just leaving…

‘They’re about to leave! Can you…’

‘Be quiet!’ says the swine, on guard over him, expressionless and sinister. Above him there are others using bitter, threatening language; with faces like stone, words that cut. He is a nonentity, nothing but a snout, and an arm that can strike.

Someone is knocking in the stone. The prisoner can hear it but without understanding. It passes through him in waves. Something in him responds helplessly, wanting to join in. He twists impatiently and makes as if to get up again.

‘Now then! Lie still.’

He cowers back again. ‘But listen,’ he says, and his voice is totally changed. ‘There’s a knocking in the stone,’ he explains.

‘Knocking in the stone?’ answers the other coldly. ‘You went off your head a long time ago, don’t you understand ? And now will you keep quiet and not give all this extra trouble?’