The young voice calling in the night roused him first, and then more and clearer messages came. The stone is no longer stone at this moment when Stig is under torture. Now and now – it turns into waves in a dead stone. They know this, sitting in their cells. They know it is happening now. They are sharing his struggle – sharing the strain of his silence, since he knows so much that is dangerous. The forgotten man has no knowledge of that; such matters are beyond him, since he has forgotten the key and never talks to anyone. But he joins in more fervently and intensely than those who are merely thinking about it. A heart is beating through the stone, that is what he can hear. A heart is beating in extremity, and he is a part of this heart. It is beating and beating in a dark impossible room. A human being is undergoing the ordeal.

Listen, he thinks.

What is happening now?

It is still suffering. It is beating in a faster rhythm, more agitated, more and more laboured.

And time passes. He does not notice it. He is lying on the bench, and the intolerable minutes are standing still. Far away a tortured heart is beating alone. Alone, however much those here are at one with it.

Beating through the stone.

We are with you.

Yet it is lonely in the fire.

Still suffering.

There is groping and searching, through the walls, in the bewildered knocking, in the mute staring at the stone wall, in the thoughts in uproar.

It is still suffering. Is it possible? Is it so strong?

It is beating and beating.

The prisoner is so agitated that it seems to him as if the whole of the centre is trembling, as if people are storming from all directions in order to reach one solitary doomed heart that is still beating and may not stop yet.

Let us set it free! he thinks wildly, listening, mouthing the empty air. Surely it will stop now? No, it’s beating.

A knocking is saying something to him. It is beneath his feet, and sounds muted and secretive. It is in the floor. He realizes that no one has knocked against the floor before, for he has never heard this previously. Someone is standing below, knocking on the ceiling, someone who has not sent out any messages before. Now he is saying what he wants to say.

The prisoner has to listen to this as well, going down on the floor in an attempt to interpret what is being said. The knocking is there, and unlike all the other knocking, so that it is nerve-racking not to be able to interpret it.

That’s how it must be when I knock, he thinks. That’s how it sounds to them. But I do get answers. He tries, and the answer comes back at once.

Now he is lying on the bench again. He has to listen so intently that he scarcely has time to draw breath. Terrible visions pass before him. He dare not let them pause, and tries to dismiss them. Let it stop beating soon.