“Excuse us,” one of them says. “We’re on the cleaning detail. We’re just trying to put your rooms in order; usually you’re out when we come.”
“Forget it,” the other one says harshly. “Don’t make apologies or excuses to them; we don’t have to. It’s not in the orders. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not in therapy this morning,” I say mildly. “I was dismissed. I’m sorry that I surprised you.”
“We’ll just be on our way,” the first one says. He casts several glances over the room, right to left to center and then backs away cautiously. “Just cleaning,” he says. “That’s all.”
“Never mind,” the second says rather vaguely. “They’re all monsters anyway. Besides, I can’t take them seriously. Nothing here is serious.”
“Excuse me,” I say, wanting to intervene in the discussion, “what do you mean, nothing here is serious?”
“Forget it,” the discourteous one mumbles and seizes his partner by the shoulder. The two of them retreat, mumbling to one another, leaving the door open. I get up and close it, another minor intrusion in my life, surely no harassment when compared to the overall quality of our life in the enclosure but I cannot quite get the remark from my mind. Nothing serious about the enclosure! It is an entirely new way of looking at the matter.
I go to the eating room as per schedule and as always find a table by myself; I return to my rooms where there is no evidence of further search. I remain on the bed and play with theTelegraph and this journal. Nothing much happens during the afternoon. I do not hear from my therapist. None of my conspirators drop by. Nala does not come. I receive no “inspection tours.” It is an inauspicious way in which to spend what I hope will be the last of all my afternoons in the enclosure. I realize that I am ready for catastrophe; that my body is bent to it, that I want to receive calamity as one would a lover and that somehow I am disappointed. Perhaps I want them to get word of the plans and arrest us all. Perhaps I want Nala to come and tell me that her strangeness comes from the fact that she has told her therapist everything. Perhaps I am waiting for the two scavengers to return and demand my notes. Nothing, however, happens. Nothing at all. It is like almost every afternoon in the enclosure.
Life in the enclosure is terribly dull. This is the secret which these notes have avoided. It is boredom and neurasthenia interrupted now and then by small jolts of terror like armaments going off in the night. Every now and then the terror connects to the boredom and then one has an “experience.” This, however, rarely happens.
We have been stultified to death here. That is their secret. Their timing, their tortures, and their threats are merely packaging; the base fact of the enclosure is that it is unspeakably dull. After two and a half years here the will melts, the reflexes freeze. It is hard to believe that this evening I will try to escape. Everything has been purged from us except the knowledge we give them and that knowledge, of course, is hardly within our control. We do not know what we are speaking.