Is this a person? he asks, when the first petrified shock has started to wear off.

He does not ask out loud, only in his mind, and this object cannot answer him in any case.

His certainty increases.

Who is this?

That cannot be answered either.

Everything here is mute. Peter has adjusted his lamp and his eyes. He asks the nearest of the dead men slowly, ‘What had you done?’

Not for the sake of an answer. All of them are equally dead. Earth seems to be loosening and falling from these walls, but it is only something he imagines because it seems suitable. Nobody knows what these walls are made of. But during their tunnelling they have unexpectedly broken through one of them. Peter has no idea how it happened. He pushed forward through an opening, in a reckless search, far from his companions, and then this sight met him.

The thought shoots through him: Am I alive myself?

Yes, he is alive. He mustn’t get it twisted like that.

He is simply standing here. And a puff of air rises up towards him, but for him the sight is at once freed of any stench and earthly impurity. He is standing beneath the centre, and here are the dead in their little niches. Here they are. Death has newly cleansed the house.

Peter’s face is shining faintly among them, not a muscle moving. Does he quite realize what he has found? It doesn’t matter. His face is like a candle, austere, no longer trembling.

This is where they are gathered. He could call out names in here. He knows who is here.

What can he see really? A glimpse, no more. It is so confined that it is impossible to move, and yet so vast and limitless that the universe itself is here. No raw, rotting earthfall.

This is where they are, buried at this very place, beneath the weight of all the walls in the centre. What do the walls in the centre matter? They lie above these bodies like a quilt. The first mild wind will blow them away, and then they will lie there in the light, as they were and shall be.

This is for Peter. Only he could find this. Hundreds of hands are tunnelling wildly and daringly beneath the centre from all directions, so that the centre shall collapse and the graves be opened – but this experience is for Peter alone. No one may come here who puts any personal desires first. Peter’s face is white with the struggle he has won, as he stands here facing these bodies.

They stretch far in. He does not know how many of them there are. They have been thrust into a stifling cell, but when the drifting mist clears it becomes the universe.

He dare not move. He has the feeling that this will last only so long as he is as motionless as they are. If he were to reach out a finger the walls would slide down in front of him, between himself and them. He may not approach them.