Little things made me uncomfortably aware that my mind was falling into disorder. At the beginning I had still been lucid during the interrogations, my statements had been calm and considered; that duality of thought by which I knew what to say and what not to say was still functioning. Now I stammered when I tried to get out even the simplest sentences, for while I spoke I stared, hypnotized, at the pen that ran across the paper taking down what I said, as though I wanted to chase after my own words. I sensed that my strength was failing, I sensed that the moment was approaching when, to save myself, I would tell everything I knew, and perhaps more, when I would betray twelve people and their secrets to escape the chokehold of this nothingness, without gaining anything more than a moment’s rest for myself. One evening it had come to this: when the guard happened to bring me my food in this moment of suffocation, I suddenly shouted after him, ‘Take me to the interrogation! I’ll tell everything! I want to make a full statement! I’ll say where the papers are, where the money is! I’ll tell everything, everything!’ Luckily he didn’t hear me. Perhaps he didn’t want to hear me.

“At this moment of greatest need, something unforeseen happened that promised to save me, at least for a time. It was the end of July, a dark, overcast, rainy day: I remember this detail clearly because the rain was hammering against the windowpanes in the corridor through which I was led to the interrogation. I had to wait in an anteroom. You always had to wait to be brought before the interrogator: having you wait was another part of the technique. First they shattered your nerves when they summoned you, suddenly pulling you out of your cell in the middle of the night, and then, when you had prepared yourself for the interrogation, when your mind and will were steeled, they made you wait, pointlessly and pointedly, for one hour, two hours, three hours before the interrogation, to exhaust you physically and wear you down mentally. And they made me wait a particularly long time on this Wednesday, the 27th of July, two whole hours on my feet in the ante-room; I remember this fact too for a particular reason: in this anteroom, where I had to stand for two hours until I was ready to drop (I wasn’t permitted to sit down, of course), hung a calendar, and I am not capable of explaining to you how, in my hunger for anything printed, anything written, I stared and stared at that one number, that little bit of writing ‘July 27’ on the wall; my brain devoured it, you could say. Then I went on waiting and waiting and stared at the door, wondering when it would finally open and what the inquisitors might ask this time, though I knew that what they asked would be quite different from anything I was preparing for. Yet in spite of everything the agony of this waiting and standing was at the same time a relief, a pleasure, because this room was at least different from mine, somewhat larger and with two windows instead of one, without the bed and without the washbasin and without that particular crack in the windowsill that I had looked at a million times. The door was painted a different color, there was a different chair against the wall and to the left of it a file cabinet with files and a coatrack with hangers on which three or four damp military coats were hanging, the coats of my tormentors. So I had something fresh, something different to look at with my ravenous eyes, something new at last, and they clutched avidly at every detail. I examined every crease in those coats, I noticed for example a raindrop hanging from one of the wet collars, and, as ridiculous as it may sound to you, I waited with absurd excitement to see whether this drop would eventually run off along the crease, or whether it would defy gravity and keep clinging—yes, I stared and stared at that drop breathlessly for minutes on end as though my life depended on it. Then, when it had finally rolled off, I counted the buttons on the coats over again, eight on one, eight on another, ten on the third, and compared the lapels once more; my voracious eyes touched, caressed, embraced all these ridiculous, trivial details with a hunger I am unable to describe. And suddenly my gaze was riveted on something. I had discovered a slight bulge in the side pocket of one of the coats. I moved closer and thought I knew from the rectangular shape of the bulge what was in this slightly swollen pocket: a book! My knees began to shake: a BOOK! For four months I had not held a book in my hands, and there was something intoxicating and at the same time stupefying in the mere thought of a book, in which you could see words one after another, lines, paragraphs, pages, a book in which you could read, follow, take into your mind the new, different, diverting thoughts of another person. Mesmerized, I stared at the little convexity of the book in the pocket, they blazed at that one inconspicuous spot as though they wanted to burn a hole in the coat. Finally I could not control my craving; without thinking I moved closer. The mere thought that I might so much as feel a book through the material made my fingers tingle down to the tips. Almost without knowing it, I crept closer. Fortunately the guard paid no attention to my behavior, though it was undoubtedly odd; perhaps it seemed only natural to him that someone who had been on his feet for two hours might want to lean against the wall for a moment. Finally I was standing right next to the coat; I had carefully put my hands behind my back so I could touch it without attracting attention. I touched the cloth and sure enough felt something rectilinear through it, something that was flexible and rustled slightly—a book! A book! And the idea flashed through my mind like a bullet: steal this book! Maybe you’ll succeed, you can hide it in your cell and then read, read, read, finally read again! Once this idea had entered my head, it was like a strong poison; my ears began to ring and my heart began to pound, my hands became ice-cold and paralyzed. But after a dazed moment I gently, stealthily pressed still closer to the coat; with my hands hidden behind my back, I nudged the book from the bottom of the pocket, higher and higher, my eye on the guard all the while. And then I grasped it; one gentle, careful tug, and the book, small, not too thick, was in my hand. Now that I had done the deed, I was frightened for the first time.