He knows it’s not dangerous to talk to this fellow. And at this moment he means what he says. He grows a little taller. It seems to him that he might well catch a glimpse of Stig in the distance, now that he can measure up to him a little. His greatest desire is for Stig to stop here.

But there is no sign of Stig. Usually he passes fairly frequently. And he listens to people talking incautiously to him about Stig. He hears a good deal, one way and another, since he is continually out in the corridors. The people who come over to him and talk mention Stig along with other things they gossip about, and the arrow polisher does not set much store by it. But the people who merely hurry past without bothering about him at all, they talk too, and it seems to him that it is about Stig, and he is seized by a fierce desire to be friends with Stig, friends with these people who hurry so, and who probably never let Stig’s name cross their lips outside their own rooms.

Those rooms where Stig goes in and out. But where you will never set foot.

It makes him angry to think about it. I will get in, I too, he thinks. I shall have to do something to make them stop here and greet me.

Out of this desire he has fabricated a dream that he tends throughout his working hours: a dream about Stig who stops and talks to an equal, who is himself, about secret, dangerous matters.

If Stig were to do that I should be saved.

But they never stop. He does not have much regard for the ones who do stop. They cheer him up, of course, but still…. He is so dreadfully exhausted sometimes from watching everyone hurrying past; then nobody who stops is unappreciated as long as they cheer him up.

Now someone is standing there saying, ‘But you get such good wages, my lad. You won’t find anything better these days.’

‘No, that’s true. But I’m fed up with working for them. They can look after it themselves.’

The other man sneers. He is tactless enough to sneer in another fellow’s face when he feels like it. The arrow polisher can take it or leave it.

‘What are you sneering at?’ he asks. He knows him from many meetings and conversations.

‘You’ve been saying this for so long now it’s time you found a different excuse. It gets boring.’

And he goes.

The arrow polisher groans because he has said this so often before. If only Stig would stop by, I’d resign and be done with it on the spot.

Just then a man passes. Not Stig. But he is looking straight in front of him as if the arrow polisher did not exist.

The arrow polisher groans.

I will contact them. I won’t go on. At home recently even Frank and Freda have been looking at me strangely too. I won’t stay any longer.