Something is repeating, quietly and briefly: It has been set in motion.

What has? he asks.

It has been set in motion, it seems to tell him. It has been set in motion for him. He understands what it means.

After a while he sits at his desk. No use lying down to rest. He has various papers on the desk. He sits staring vacantly at them without moving them.

As he is sitting like this he stiffens and his eyes widen: a finger is writing on the desk top. It has been set in motion, writes the finger. There is a little dust on the surface. Freda has not managed to do the dusting along with everything else. But no letters are left in the dust. All the same this finger is writing, over and over again. He knows it is a finger; he can hear the slight scratching against the wood. He can hear the words forming: It has been set in motion.

He is unable to move.

‘Don’t wake me up if I sleep too long!’ he calls loudly so that Freda can hear him. ‘I must have a good rest!’

‘All right,’ comes the answer from the other side of the door, ‘you do that.’

So he can sit there and try to pull himself together. But listen! There it is again: It has been set in motion.

He is unable to move.

12

A Crossroads

Stig is on his way home after yet another stint with the papers in the cellar. He is tired, but is walking rapidly in order to get through all the dangerous corridors at the right time. Some times of day are more dangerous than others. The people in the cellars are aware of such matters and act accordingly.

He does not look up. After a tiring shift the darkness around him seems even more oppressive, the light in the corridors even more troublesome. The arrows swim past him like golden fish.

There’s the man who polishes the arrows.

Stig’s intention is to look away from him as he goes past, but suddenly he notices that the man is smiling and nodding at him. He recoils at the sight of him, without knowing why. He has noticed that this arrow polisher stops working in one way or another when he approaches. Once he even asked him to stop, as if he had a message for him. Stig has no intention of stopping. He will have nothing to do with this man. Doesn’t he understand what he’s doing? And now here he stands with a smile on his face. Stig hurries past.

Stig meets other people too, people he knows, so that they give one another almost a secret greeting as they pass the time of day. And in some places he meets the darkness itself. Parts of it with staring eyes. People who pass in and out of the centre, gilded, or disguised in ordinary clothing. They pass one another, brushing shoulders. Beside them swim the arrows, in the piercing cloud of light, which is none other than the seething darkness – and around them is endless night and a crushing weight bearing down on everything – as if this great house were standing on the bed of the sea.