No, he can’t be dead. After all he was alive when they brought him in. I noticed his eyes as he stood in the doorway. There was a light that must have been his eyes. No, he can’t be dead.

He’s asleep. Or he’s fainted. He looked very weak, slung between them. But there was life in him.

The prisoner gazes at this beautiful face, fascinated, waiting for some movement, some word from him, even so little as a twitch of those outstretched feet, anything instead of this lifelessness.

He compares this man with the swine. He cannot remember anyone else. Incredible that a person can look like this too.

He is unable to give names to the things he sees: this calmness, paleness and transparency that he observes, and this indescribable exhaustion that is over too. Shadows of pain survived. He knows no name for all this. He makes this straightforward comparison with the swine.

That is why he is so fascinated.

A human being has come in to him, as if dropped from the skies on to his bench.

The whole cell has changed instantly with the arrival of this face with the closed eyes and the white transparent forehead and the tired set of the mouth.

But he is not dead. It seems an impossibility. Now that he’s come he must not be dead. He must wake up and reveal more of himself.

Shall I wake him? He’s lying so awkwardly and painfully, just as he was thrown down. I’ll make him comfortable so that he’ll be able to rest better.

But he dare not touch the stranger when it comes to the point, only gaze at him. And the stranger lies there as before, white and immovable, filling the narrow, evil-smelling room with awe.

Wake up of your own accord, he wishes.

‘You’re not dead,’ he says in a low voice, filled with restrained exultation.

He rests in the sight of this human face, rests from something that has been hunting him remorselessly, against which he could not defend himself. This is what he needed. It has come to him.

I must see your eyes, he wishes, as one might wish that a spring would well up in front of someone whose throat is parched with thirst.

And now life returns.

The forgotten man cringes as soon as he sees a hint of it. Life is returning to his guest. He is gradually regaining consciousness. The toe of one twisted foot drops and stretches so that the foot belongs with the other one again. The mouth moves and a sigh is heard. Then the eyes open in all their splendour, widen and grow large with astonishment. They begin to move.

The prisoner, who has been waiting for all this, is helpless. All he can do is watch and drink it in. He has a desire to bow his head in worship, but does not do so, merely standing stiff and clumsy, and completely absorbed. There is the light. At this moment it seems to him that all he needs and must have is there in front of him on the bench. It has simply come to him.