Trust only yourself

“Trust only yourself” is not merely a maxim for Piet Hoffmann; it is a refrain that gathers force as he moves from negotiation into prison and then responds to the threat of exposure. The phrase recurs in slightly different forms—“Always on your own,” “Trust no one but yourself,” and “Always alone”—linking his insistence on self-reliance to the secrecy of his work, the lies entangling his family, and the isolation he eventually seeks as a means of survival. Across these scenes, being alone is at once a chosen discipline and a condition imposed by the operation.

A principle tested by promises

During a negotiation over guarantees, Hoffmann wants to leave and reach Zofia, but first insists that the assurance be stated so clearly that it can have only one interpretation. He asks for an exact summary of what is being guaranteed. The person across from him recognizes that he needs to hear the terms, rather than simply be dismissed. His demand for clarity sits beside the refrain “Always on your own”: he wants a promise, yet does not treat a promise as enough to make him safe.

That distrust is sharpened by his comparison between Wojtek and the Government Offices. The two sides of the law, he thinks, use the same words and offer promises with the same exit route. Their apparent opposition does not reassure him; the resemblance makes the assurance inadequate. When he presses to know how the guarantee will work, he is told that the matter has already been discussed three times. The recurrence of discussion produces no corresponding increase in confidence. “Trust no one but yourself” names the stance left over when repeated assurances fail to settle the practical question of protection.

Preparation carried out alone

At Aspsås Church, Hoffmann turns self-reliance into a piece of covert engineering. He takes a thin black cable and two small silver transmitters from his shoulder bag, joins them to the cable, and fixes the assembly to the outside of the balcony railing with Blu-Tack, facing the prison. He strips part of the cable’s covering to connect another length, then wires it to a small black-glass-looking object and checks that the transmitters, cables, and solar cell are properly attached. The equipment is positioned so that a person on the balcony will not notice it.

The purpose is to make future conversations on the church tower audible to someone serving time inside Aspsås Prison. The phrase “Always alone” appears beside the installation, followed by “Trust only yourself.” Their placement makes the refrain feel less like general advice than a working rule: Hoffmann prepares a means of obtaining information without relying on the people who might otherwise provide it. From the church, he looks toward the prison he is about to enter; his preparations are complete, and he knows he will soon be entirely on his own.

The cost of secrecy

The coming separation has already reached into Hoffmann’s family life. He misses Zofia after telling her what he has told her, and her silence stays with him. The narration connects that absence to the ongoing structure of his deception: a lie changes its shape and content to fit the next reality, requiring another lie in turn. Hoffmann has lied to Zofia, Hugo, Rasmus, and others for years. By the time the operation is over, he expects the boundary between truth and falsehood to have shifted so far that he may no longer know where one ends or the other begins—or who he is.

That crisis complicates the apparent certainty of the refrain. Self-reliance helps Hoffmann act under conditions of secrecy, but it does not restore a stable identity or remove the cost of keeping his family outside the truth. The principle promises no one’s protection except his own; the narrative places that promise beside the damage of a life in which even close relationships have been organized around lies. His isolation is therefore not only physical. It is also the distance between what he knows, what he can tell Zofia, and the self he can still recognize.

Isolation as a prison strategy

Hoffmann’s first entry into Aspsås Prison is a threshold between preparation and lived confinement. He has mapped the buildings from the church tower and, with Erik Wilson’s help, learned about prisoners and staff in Block G, but he has never before been inside the prison. Once there, he is processed, given prison clothes, and left in a sterile waiting room. Ten days pass. For twenty-three hours each day, he lies in a five-square-metre cell without visitors, newspapers, television, or radio. The deprivation makes loneliness newly powerful, even though he had become used to having someone near him.

When he reaches his unit, Hoffmann treats visibility as part of his entry into its social order. Before the other prisoners return, he takes a place in the television corner, where he can see each of the fifteen men and ensure that they see him. He already knows their backgrounds from photographs. Rather than hide or wait to establish himself later, he occupies another prisoner’s favored chair, takes marked cards, and begins playing solitaire at someone else’s table. During a guided tour, he learns the unit’s routines, including where to go and the time of lock-in. The refrain does not mean that he avoids all contact; it accompanies a calculated effort to enter a controlled environment without appearing afraid.

Later, when Hoffmann believes others have discovered his exposure, he recognizes that escape within a prison is limited and demands transfer to voluntary isolation. Ten members of the prison riot squad enter Block G: six remain to deter further violence, while four escort him to Block C. The isolation unit has sixteen cells and familiar shared facilities—a wardens’ room, television corner, showers, kitchen, and Ping-Pong table—but its defining protection is separation from prisoners in other units. The people Hoffmann sees there will be the only ones he meets. In this turn, the refrain becomes both a principle and a material arrangement: alone is not simply how he prepares, but where he goes when the danger closes in.