At this moment he feels a new man.

The eyes are resting on him.

He almost wishes that there will be no more to it than this. He is afraid of what he may say. Let it go on as it is now, so complete and undisturbed, so filled with what one’s own imagination can put into it. He is poor no longer. This has made him rich.

But now he looks as if he’s going to speak. Life has returned to the whole face. It does not look so peaceful as it was just now; shadows are flitting over it. But the eyes have the same clear light, which falls over the dirty, forgotten, stifled man like a shower.

He’s speaking.

‘Where am I?’

‘With me,’ answers the prisoner respectfully. It does not occur to him that he should answer in any other way.

They consider one another.

‘I don’t know you,’ says the new arrival.

But he speaks intimately as if to a friend, as if it’s the only possible tone they can use. The eyes convey it rather than the mouth. He’s friendly. The swine and I address each other formally, thinks the forgotten man, with a spurt of joy at the difference.

‘Who are you?’ he ventures to ask, without having said anything about himself.

‘Stig,’ answers the man curtly. He has got out of the habit of using any other name. It is dangerous to use names needlessly, and it has become second nature to him so that he never thinks of calling himself anything else.

The prisoner cannot remember knowing anyone with that name. But he does not want to admit it, for some reason.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ he replies.

‘Do you know me?’ asks Stig in amazement.

‘No,’ says the prisoner, not daring to boast to this person. ‘No, I –’ he stammers. ‘But why did they bring you in here?’ he adds quickly. ‘Are you going to stay here with me?’

Stig is thinking about something else.

He is quite conscious now. His body is coming out of its torpor, giddy and trembling and battered. Recent, appalling memories are forcing their way to the surface.

The prisoner can see that Stig is in pain. But all he can think about is whether he is going to stay here or not, and he repeats his question.

‘I don’t know,’ answers Stig.

He hasn’t much voice left. Everything is crowding in on him. He is looking around him, exhausted, at the unkempt room.

‘But they brought you here,’ says the prisoner persuasively. ‘So they must intend you to stay with me? Are you ill?’ he adds.

He is blinded by his longing for Stig to stay with him. This human being has come to him, he must not leave him.

Stig lies there, weak, half dead.

‘Are you going to stay here, then?’ he merely asks.

The prisoner is confused. Is he not to stay here for ever? How would he get out when the swine always bolts the door and never allows him even to set foot across the threshold ?