The sentry closes the door. He stands stiffly and immovably to attention, his eyes always on the warning lamp in the wall. There it flashed again! The van is on its way out. He plays on the switches on the panel in front of him. He is standing inside a tiny little sentry-box like a cupboard, with an uninterrupted view of the steel door and the lamp. The door opens. The dreaded van appears. It glides forward and past. He presses switches and silently the door shuts tight. The sentry stares steadily at the lamp. The van may be here on its way back again in a second, you never know; you only know that in a short time or after a long time it is there – and if the door is not open the sentry is finished. Here all advancement is inwards; here nobody tolerates anything that is not done according to the rules.

It is simply called ‘the centre’, when people talk about it and think about it. All the arrows point towards it – towards the thick walls in the middle of the house, these walls that have shot up since the darkness arched above. They seem to be built around the source of darkness. There is more inside them than anyone knows about, for nobody knows about everything everywhere. Paths lead in towards closed doors. Outside the arrows flash. When you have looked at them for a while they come alive, they stream in to the brain that exists somewhere behind heavy masses of stone. The place is huge and silent, and reflects everything else the house knows about it. The bewitched arrows gleam so that the empty corridors in front of them are harshly illuminated. Whoever finds himself there accidentally is likely to come to a sudden halt: an enormous dark wall towers up, doubly dark between all the arrows. Here it seems wisest to get away again. Here one is close to the darkness. Here the doomed enter. The silent van carries them noiselessly in. It seems as if no one can prevent it.

The sentry receives it. He presses the switches as soon as the light blinks in the lamp. The sentry and the lamp stare at one another. They become fastened to each other as if by suction. The lamp has a kind of life too. Everything that people mean when they say the centre is contained in this tiny blink, cold and senseless. Perverse. The guard stares into it and meets its gaze. The solitary insane eye in the wall is his master.

No sound comes here from the stifled, cracking house around him. Nothing is turned this way. Only the silent van passes between them, and the thick walls of the van deaden all sounds that might be uttered inside it. It runs silently and punctually. The eye of the abyss blinks, and the sentry, who is hypnotized by it, plays on the switches at the right time as precisely as a robot.