As soon as he leaves the arrow corridors he finds crowds of people milling about, eyes downcast, hurrying hither and thither, struggling to find the simplest things in the bewitched house: a little food, a stitch of clothing.

They queue endlessly. Then they wonder whether it might not be better to queue somewhere else, and they hurry there.

Stig makes haste through it all. A great dumb cry rises up from them: that soon things must be changed. It hounds Stig on. Working in the deepest cellars, he is responsible to a certain extent for dragging this out. They work as hard as they can down there, but the darkness will not give way. It lies huge and hidden in the centre as before. They tunnel beneath it, and yet…. They are going to win, and yet…. It’s taking such a long time.

Stig has a couple of small rooms where he lives with his wife and his son, Karen and Rascal. Rascal is a small schoolboy.

Stig has arranged things so that a separate door leads into one room that is his alone. His work demands it. He always goes in there first. There may be something waiting for him, and Rascal and Karen must have as little as possible to hide. Rascal must have nothing to hide; he cannot be trusted to keep quiet.

Just as Stig reaches his own door he is handed a scrap of paper. The friend who brought it has gone already. Stig enters his room calmly and glances around before opening the note which is screwed up into a ball.

A few scribbled lines: disjointed words, and numbers. He reads them. It takes a little time but it’s clear enough. Afterwards he puts the note into the stove and sets a match to it, then pulverizes the brittle black cup that remains.

They know about you. Try to get away at once. Don’t go where you had intended to this evening.

Well, he thinks, sitting down, so we’ve come to that. He stretches out his legs to relax. The stint in the cellar was a long one and so unrelievedly grey.

This is different at any rate.

They know about you.

So someone has gone to them and given him away. Useless to speculate who it might be. The stakes are high now, and many need to be involved and in the know. And everyone has acquaintances, and acquaintances have other acquaintances. Nothing to speculate about. All he knows is that his closest colleagues are not concerned.

He also knows that, involved as he is, the danger is great. He knows too much. They have been told so. Soon they will know very much more about him, now they are on his track.

Get away.

The note cannot be called in question. And the words carry weight. This is a warning from a more powerful circle than the one he belongs to, where they have a broader perspective.

He is staring into the black window-pane. The house is cracking. You feel this tension wearing you down, and you never get used to it; it is always there to plague you. If he were to open the door the arrows would be swimming past immediately outside. They point towards the unknown. A little word from somebody and you are on your way there too, soon to be in the know. On your way towards the severe ordeal that never stops flickering in your consciousness.