Look at them.

Peter watches the various groups in there, taking note of their work. They are working on many different tasks, or what passes for working in this place.

They are hammering the nails as if in a stupor.

We’re building! they think, listless and embittered at the same time, as they stand hammering the planks together for a new barracks inside the walls and the stockade.

They are lifting their hammers as if in a stupor. We’re building. May it happen as slowly and gradually as possible. May nothing come of it!

The nail sinks in slightly. But the blow is not repeated for a long time. The hammer has been lowered. Here we are working, but may nothing come of it! But then the hammer has to be lifted again: someone is coming. Harsh eyes, harsh hands. The hammer strikes the nail. When the harsh eyes and cruel weapons are out of sight the hammer rests beside the nail once more. The fragrant timber lies splendid and golden and waits.

Glorious work, building. But here it is bewitched, like so much else in this house. In this place work is desecrated.

Peter remains at the chink, watching.

He has an urge to call out to them, but he must not.

Here nobody may enter. The stockade is high and dangerous. Here come only those whom the van captures on its silent rounds, and who are not to have the dark wall in the background as their place of residence and punishment.

The enclosure is huge. Long, low houses within a house stand here, and new ones are built at this profane speed: may they never be finished! They will be finished some time just the same: the centre is exacting. Outside there is the stifled house, in here everything is doubly stifled. They are kept on the move all day. Some faces look as if they are disintegrating, while others turn to stone, and yet others are radiant – so that those who are exhausted may hold out, may turn towards them when the darkness threatens to engulf them, when countless hours have passed in forced labour and stupor, in pitfalls of disappointment, and in pain after punishment.

Peter watches. Some of them are digging in the ground to lay cornerstones under yet another wooden house. There is always need for more room here. The stream increases as the cracking in the house sounds increasingly dangerous. There comes a knocking at the door, at the time when people are waking up, and then they are taken off to this enclosure, to shiver through months of cold, to go hungry, and all the rest of it.

Look at these men building a stone wall. How they desecrate this splendid craft! Ailing and weak they break the stone, resting as soon as the eyes of the guard are averted.

He watches another carrying food. Others are carrying scrubbing pails. What was that? One was picked out and led away. Peter has witnessed it; he knows that this man is going to be interrogated, with all that goes with it. This taking away to be interrogated haunts the minds of all of them; it hangs over them, in uncertainty and terror. Such men put down their tools, exchange a look with the others around them, and then they are gone through the dark doorway in the background.