‘Oh no!’ says Henry, looking desperately from the one to the other.

John clears his throat. ‘Well, you’d better go, Henry. We can’t waste any more time. Good-bye.’

Henry goes to the door, a broken man. There he turns once more. ‘Good-bye.’

He looks beseechingly at the two of them. There is something gentle and unusual about him. From a better world. Something that makes Peter and John remember that there are times other than these. Good, gentle times that must come again, that they are waging a death struggle for, so that they may come again. Henry is like that. It is as if they are struggling so that Henry may become of use and be allowed to come back.

He goes out of the door, his head bent. The times are not his. John shuts it behind him. ‘That’s that,’ he says, sitting down.

‘Yes, nothing else to do,’ answers Peter.

So Peter and John remain sitting alone. It is terrible how their group has diminished.

Peter refers to it. ‘We’re getting fewer,’ he remarks.

The drawing of lots is still undecided. They must settle it between them. But first they sit for a little to take in the fact that their number is so reduced. We’re getting fewer. It sounds depressing. They are both struck by a thought that neither wishes to interpret to the other. There are few of them left.

‘Well, we’d better try our luck once more,’ says John, preparing two folded sheets of paper and shuffling them behind his back. ‘Which will you have?’

Peter decides. He gets it. He makes no comment.

John says nothing immediately either. He is embarrassed. Peter ought to have been the leader, he is thinking. Peter seems to stand above him in some ways. Stig made a mistake when he decided that I should be his successor.

Finally Peter asks, ‘Is it to be done immediately?’

‘Yes, as soon as possible.’

‘Some other directive must have been given about it?’

‘Yes, it’s like this –’ begins John, but pauses. Peter has bowed his head in thought. John looks at him questioningly, but Peter sits with his burden and his thoughts and his white face. One must cleanse oneself of base motives before such an undertaking.

18

The Finger

The arrow polisher is staring at his desk. Can he see anything? No.

Can he hear anything? A finger busy on his desk, holding him fast so that he is incapable of moving. It was there the minute he came home from the centre, and it has been there ever since.

No, he tells himself, I’m not seeing anything. There’s a fine layer of dust lying on the surface, and there are no scratches in it – which would have been made by a finger trying to write.

Nonsense, the whole thing.

No, it isn’t nonsense either.

It is a finger. He can hear only too well how the fingertip and the nail are scratching the surface: the tiny rasping of the horny nail against the wood. He can hear what is being written too, for this is no ordinary writing. He can hear it instead of seeing it. It is for him alone.