The sun was going down when I set off again. The rest had done me good and my aches were gone. I’d reckoned the bunker was half an hour away, and was pleased to find that I wasn’t mistaken: I reached it in twenty-eight minutes. I put my rucksack down inside the cabin and made my way down the stairs without hurrying. There was almost no smell, but I still tried to breathe cautiously. The women had compared the stench with that of a sewer, of insalubrious marshes or a cesspool – none of which I had known. For me, it was simply the faint smell of corpses. Down below, in the narrow corridor, the doors were open to reveal the usual layout: the guards’ room, the cupboard at the back, the big double doors of the prison. I saw a chair had been knocked over and a saucepan overturned, spilling its contents which had dried leaving a brown stain. This slight disorder was rare and aroused my curiosity, but first of all, I had to go and see the cage. We had always felt this was an obligation, even when we’d become certain that we would never find the door open. We had to pay our respects to the dead, to those contorted bodies that lived there, piled haphazardly, perpetual inhabitants of horror and silence.
They were women. I stared at them for a long time, then I walked around the cage taking in everything: there was nothing new. The knives, forks and plates were still in the cage, revealing that here, when the alarm had sounded, they’d been eating. A whip was lying on the floor of the area where the guards had paced up and down. One of them must have been rather more jumpy than was customary and had dropped his weapon. Perhaps he was the one who’d knocked over the chair as he fled. The whip was lying against the wall, out of reach of the prisoners who’d tried to grab it to the very end. One was slumped against the bars, her arm still outstretched, overcome by death during her final attempt.
The guards’ room contained only the usual items: chairs, a table, lockers. Absolutely nothing had been left behind. Anthea had often told me she found that odd, but I didn’t really understand. I possessed nothing, so I couldn’t imagine the objects she told me about: books, letters, cigarettes, playing cards, razors. I travelled with two blankets, a small shovel, a can-opener, matches and food, and so I didn’t find it surprising that the guards only had their clothes and their weapons. I righted the chair, sat down and felt sad. I hadn’t wanted to look at the dead women, but I forced myself. Apart from the one with her arm outstretched, I hadn’t really seen them. I told myself that I’d been hypocritical and, since I had no one to lie to, I discovered that you can lie to yourself, which felt very strange. Was I missing companionship more than I thought and making myself into another, a witness, if only to deceive her? I pondered this thought for a long time, but I couldn’t see how to develop it further. I was as much a prisoner outside this empty land as I had been in the cage during my early years. I gave up this futile avenue and resumed my usual train of thought, which was always to plan, assess and organise, and went to investigate the food store. That was the only thing that varied from one bunker to the next, as if deliveries had comprised large quantities of the same thing and the choice of how these were used was left up to the guards. In the cold store, I found large hunks of beef which I’d have to defrost before I could cut them up. There was no pork or mutton left. In the cupboard were several tins of powdered milk, which thrilled me. It was at least three years since I’d last had any, and I knew that it was a very nourishing food that would help build up my strength. I was interested in some other tins of powder. At that time, my reading was very poor and I found it hard to decipher the labels. When I managed to do so, I was puzzled by the word ‘orange’. Of course, I’d heard the women say it and I gradually recalled that it was with nostalgia for one of the good things of the past. I diluted a little of the powder in water and tasted it with curiosity. I found it rather bitter and needed sweetening, but I rarely had any sugar. But Anthea had told me about vitamins and I took the tins thinking that they’d improve my diet.
I made several trips down into the bunker to bring up the meat, the powders, a mattress and a chair. I cooked a copious meal and had the brainwave of sprinkling my mixture of meat and vegetables with milk powder. After that, I slept for a long time. When I awoke, I realised that there was nothing more for me to do there. I felt vaguely disappointed, as if I had hoped for more from that bunker, as if I’d forgotten that they were all the same. The next one would also have the door locked, but I’d be unlikely to find more milk there. Perhaps there’d be some other novelty? The women had talked of chocolate, bread and cheese. I was looking for something else. I told myself that, while waiting to find out what it was – because I was modest to the point of not thinking ‘before finding it’ – I would enjoy the lovely red meat that I could grill over my fire of twigs, and also the milk, of which I drank a whole gourdful.
At around eight o’clock in the morning, I felt wonderfully good. I went down into the bunker to fetch a few cans to replace the ones I’d used in the past few days and to see if I could find some thread, which I’d forgotten to do the day before. By the time I was ready to leave, my rucksack weighed a lot more than when I’d arrived, but it didn’t feel too heavy. I was already a lot stronger and I wanted to take the mattress with me, because I’d slept much better than on the ground, but I told myself I ought to be careful, and that there’d be plenty of time to think about that in a few days, at the next bunker, when I’d completely adjusted to my new life. Perhaps I would no longer need it.
I didn’t leave the usual signs on the ground as I no longer believed there might be any other survivors. But I discarded the mattress in front of the cabin so that if I came that way again, I’d recognise my own traces.
I think I have given an accurate account of this first bunker. I think so, but I can’t be certain. I’m sure that was the one where I found milk, but afterwards, which one was it where I found tea? The fifth? The tenth? They were all the same, with their forty mummified corpses piled up or scattered across the floor. Only once did I find thirty-eight, and only once did I find all the women lying calmly, as if they’d understood that death was inevitable and had decided to wait in silence. Another time, the keys had fallen within two metres of the bars and I thought how dreadful it must have been to see them without being able to reach them. Sometimes, a tap was running in the cage, making a little trickling sound that startled me at first, but I’d already lost all hope that the door would be open. Each time, there was the food store and the permanent light. I travelled eastwards, from one bunker to another, carrying my provisions, and in the end, I never did take a mattress. My shoes wore out, which didn’t bother me – eventually I was bound to find some boots to fit me. Then came the season when the sky is always cloudy, with the fine drizzle that I knew well, and I was glad to find a waterproof sheet in one of the guard rooms. It was folded on the table, beside a pile of new blankets which hadn’t been put away. That set me thinking again about how rare it was to find unusual objects in the bunkers, as if it had been decreed that they all had to be absolutely identical. I was about to plunge into my habitual speculation about the guards and the meaning of our imprisonment. At first, I felt like shrugging and turning my thoughts to other things. But why? How else would I occupy my mind? After our escape, Dorothy used to say: ‘Let’s organise our life, let’s not waste our thoughts.’ The fact was, I could use my thoughts as I pleased, the idea of wasting them was absurd. My survival was guaranteed, I would never exhaust all the food available, and the rare bad weather had never made me ill. I could allow my mind to wander as it pleased, it didn’t matter if the paths it took were dead ends – all I had to do was put a stop to them. It was certain that the purpose of our deportation and captivity would never be revealed to me through the abandoned objects, and the whip lying on the ground taught me nothing useful. I found the same thing in all the bunkers, even in the guards’ quarters.