‘Him, Him’

What do I think's going to happen to me at the end?, W. asks me. Will I starve to death? Unlikely, he says, with my enormous appetite. With my desperation. He'll probably starve, W. says, and I'll be shot. – 'You'll try and escape. You'll climb a wall'. He stands up and does an impression of me climbing a wall. They'll shoot me, W. says. I'll fall down in the mud and others will step over me.

He, meanwhile, will be long dead. He'll have starved, having given up all hope, all drive. There he'll sit, a skeleton by the window, who'd hoped that things could be otherwise, but learnt things could never be otherwise.

'They'll round you up', says W. I'm the sort who'll get rounded up. They'll know straightaway. Children will point at my door. – 'Him, him', they'll say. And then I'll be shot and fall down in the mud.