‘Don’t you know how long you’ve been here?’ asks Stig instead of answering his prayer.

‘No. Let me see.’

He thinks back. But there is only sifting dust there. Fine grey flour sifting down.

‘No, I can’t manage it. Something gets in the way. Last night I thought my son was here, that he was grown up, but I don’t know. I have a son!’

‘Yes, you told me so.’

‘But they never come and see me. Not my son. Not my wife. Why don’t they?’

‘They’re not allowed to.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because that’s how it is. It’s no use asking why. Nobody’s allowed in.’

The prisoner tries to understand this. ‘No, I suppose not,’ he says, and gives up. ‘But you’re here now.’

‘Is your son grown up?’

‘I thought he was because I’ve been here so long, but he said my son was still only a schoolboy.’

‘Who said that?’

‘The swine.’

Stig says nothing.

‘The swine said so, when I thought my son was being taken past last night to be shot against the wall.’

‘Did they take somebody past here last night?’ asks Stig, who couldn’t help giving a start when he heard about the wall.

‘Yes, it often happens. They go past here again and again. In both directions. I’ve heard shots too.’

‘You must have imagined it.’

‘No!’

And now the prisoner becomes alert, so that Stig starts listening to him more attentively than before.

‘Things are alive round here!’ he tells him, his strange eyes darting conspiratorially. ‘Do you know what’s happening outside here, who’s there, and what they’re knocking on the stones for?’

‘Yes. You see, a good many of us are made to come in here,’ answers Stig, his voice harsh from the memory of that relentless struggle in the cellars and the shadows; of his comrades who have been struck down, one after another, and have ended up here. Now he has been hooked himself.

‘But they keep on knocking,’ says the prisoner.

‘Oh yes. They’re knocking because they’ve nothing else to do.’

Stig tries to dismiss it. Nobody bothers to talk about the knocking. There are many kinds of signal, and it has become second nature to him to keep silent. No danger here, but all the same….

The prisoner continues: ‘I thought everything was alive.’

‘Well yes, you hear so much when you’re in a place like this.’

Strange to hear from this half-crazy man about his comrades shut away inside these walls, about how they keep in touch. Stig knows all about it; how what is going to happen becomes common knowledge incredibly quickly inside these piles of stone. But how could this man have picked up the messages and understood them? He can hardly have heard much. And yet Stig knows that he is speaking the truth: the stone becomes alive in certain moments of intense terror.

And what about himself? What is he facing?

He will have to go in again soon.

It can’t be any worse than before, he thinks.