by Unknown
I was burning up with fever. My eyes hurt when I blinked. I knew I had a bowl of water beside me and a towel to dampen and put on my forehead if I needed to. But I was so fatigued that I couldn’t find the strength to get up, so I tried to cool my eyes and forehead on my cold pillows, changing positions all the time. Then, I remember the sensation of slowly falling asleep, and I thanked God for that sweet salvation even if it lasted only for a few hours. My last thought before I fell completely asleep was that the next day I would go sit under the two fir trees.
Waking up, however, was tremendously painful. I realised I had a very high fever. My mind went straight to the bowl of water and the towel. Without opening my eyes I tried to reach it, but I couldn’t even move. After a while I fainted from the fever.
These alternations between consciousness and unconsciousness lasted for several hours. And the moments of consciousness were excruciating for me. I felt like I was free-falling into an unfathomable abyss. The agony of the abyss never left me.
Amidst the dizziness of fever I remember seeing, as if in a dream, men and women standing over my head. I was aware of my situation, that is, I knew I was ill and I thought that they had moved me to a bigger city, to another hospital and that all these people were physicians and nurses. Nothing else was clear in my mind. Oh! And my mother! I felt that my mother was no longer by my side.
Then I thought I was having nightmares. “Why are they dressed like that?” I wondered. The setting around me looked completely different and unfamiliar compared to what I was used to. “No,” I thought to myself, “it can’t be a hospital.” I blinked and caught glimpses of the countryside, the sky, shades of blue and green blended together and a pink light reflecting on the crystal walls, so bright and so beautiful…
I also recall breathing the scented spring air and sometimes, a celestial melody wafting to my weary ears. It resembled a prayer sung by children’s voices. I could distinguish the sound of the harp. I had never heard anything more melodic and more extraordinary in my life and I wished it would never stop. And then I wondered, “Am I dead?” But if I was, why would I feel ill and feverish?
Another mad thought crossed my mind: when I was still at school, I had read that our beloved Earth might not be the only planet in the universe. But I ruled that possibility out after remembering the people I saw standing over my head. They were humans; they were our kind. And I had also caught a glimpse of the familiar light of our earthly sky.
All these tangled and scrambled thoughts dominated my tired mind every time I somehow opened my eyes in the midst of the feverish daze. And the truth is that they didn’t leave me with an unpleasant memory. But it’s impossible to describe the surprise that awaited me one morning when I had completely recovered and managed to get out of bed—I get shivers down my spine even writing about it. “My God! This body! This body isn’t mine!” A young man looked me in the eyes with a face distorted with terror. I thought I had lost my mind. I cried out for help. I sensed someone running towards me. I choked and fainted.
THE LANGUAGE: ENGLISH AND SCANDINAVIAN BLEND
When I came to, I saw two physicians standing next to me with a strange look on their faces, anxiously waiting for me to regain consciousness. It was if they were hanging on my every word. Everybody else had left the room. I was so nervous I could barely breathe.
“What happened?” I asked with a trembling voice, “Have I gone mad?” And I could hear my voice fading away, but I managed to utter, “Where am I?”
Then I remember crying out several times “Mother, Mother!” as though I was asking where she was.
And instead of answering my questions, these men of science just stood there, stunned and pale, as if my simple words had rendered them speechless. One of them was young, in his late twenties-early thirties. I reached out for his hand, I begged him in the name of God and his own mother, but he was shaking and obviously trying to avoid my touch.
Shortly after, the older physician turned to him and said something. “They’re foreigners,” I thought. For a couple of minutes I just looked at them talking, abashed, and struggling to reach a logical conclusion. A faraway land… Yes… Yes… That must be it. Their clothes, their manners… Look! And now the foreign language! I wasn’t familiar with that tongue. I remember that the man’s accent had struck me. Some words sounded somewhat similar to ours and had Anglo-Saxon roots and some others resembled Scandinavian words—quite familiar to me—and thus I understood the gist of what they were saying. The older physician, still pale and unsuccessfully trying to force a smile from what I could see, told the other physician that he had lost his patience. The young physician denied it by shaking his head. The former seemed deeply puzzled. He repeated my last words, stressing each syllable: “Mo-ther… Mo-ther…” Nothing else. “Mut-ter… Mut-ter…”
He grasped my hand. He spoke to me. I understood that he was asking me if my head ached.
“Now less,” I replied, “I’m better.”
Physically speaking I was telling the truth; but I didn’t say a word about what was going on in my mind…
“I want to see my mother,” I added.
I noticed that, once again, I was having some difficulties articulating words. But I blamed it on the illness.
On top of everything else I was thinking about, I was also quite convinced that if I couldn’t help myself and started crying for help, they would treat me as a lunatic who talks to himself and then I wouldn’t stand a chance of finding out more about them. But if I could just see my mother—I told them—she would help me see things clearly.
And then I noticed something about them, something that made a difference and explained much: what made them look so stunned was not what I was saying, but the way I was saying it and the language in which I was saying it. While they were talking to me, their wide-open eyes revealed the incredible thrill they felt!
The older one leaned towards me once again and, in a quivering voice, he slowly uttered a sentence in my own tongue, “Andreas Northam, don’t you recognise me anymore?”
The last words he managed to pronounce with evident effort and some difficulty still resonate in my ears, “Nicht mehr?”
“I want to pray,” I managed to reply in a fading voice.
And then I fainted again.
It’s been thirteen days. The younger physician came to my room this evening and saw my pillow soaked with tears. He tried to console me but, unintentionally, he did me more harm than good. I talked to him about my mother, who would be mourning the death of her child and he spoke to me with a completely misplaced smile about some kind of a story buried deep in the past, saying that there’s no need to fret now! Dear Jesus! I can’t believe any of this! I don’t want to see that man ever again! I simply won’t let them drive me mad! Tomorrow morning I’ll talk to the older physician and demand they tell me the whole truth!
THE NORTHAM-JAEGER RELATIONSHIP
August 20th
This morning they removed my bandages. When Ilector Jaeger visited me, my face lit up! He gave me a firm handshake and with obvious joy he praised and congratulated the older physician. I didn’t know that eighteen years ago, Jaeger had been Andreas Northam’s teacher. From what they explained to me, this now famous and widely celebrated spiritual man, this “eminent thinker”, whose work has now been widely read and whose lectures at the Reigen are attended by thousands, back then was still unknown to the public. He contributed towards young Northam’s education for four years, wholeheartedly offering him the care and affection of a spiritual father.
Then they became caught up in life’s responsibilities and they each went their separate ways.
When the superior Ilectors discovered who had stood by Northam’s side as a teacher and a guardian in his early years, they called upon him and asked him if he could dedicate some time to him again in the afternoons. And it was very moving to see the now middle-aged thinker coming alone, without the escort of an unge, a young aide, and devoting his precious time to co
nvey the same childhood learning to the same person—now a twenty-eight-year-old man—who, physically at least, resembled his spiritual son of two decades ago. What’s more, as they informed me, he had unexpectedly been resurrected—but as a completely different man, disturbed and half deranged—after his fifteen-minute trip to the land of the dead. Jaeger confessed to me how delighted he was, when Professor Molsen told him that the freezing process had been done hastily but just in time. His brain hadn’t suffered the slightest impairment.
CONFESSIONS
August 21st
Today, for the first time, Jaeger was accompanied by Stefan, Andreas’ closest friend and three years his senior. He is an earnest young man; I truly took a liking to him.
Jaeger let him observe the lesson for a while. Then I showed him my first writings. I had already started to write and I continued writing in his presence. I thought he’d be impressed by the fact that I had recovered my writing skills even from the first days, but Jaeger had already informed him about my past research on Ibsen, about which I had talked to him as well.
“This is not Andreas’ handwriting,” was the only thing Stefan said.
Apart from the superior Ilectors, only four other people knew about Northam’s unique case: the two physicians, Ilector Jaeger and Stefan. I pleaded with Jaeger to keep it a secret and not to let me become an object of curiosity in the eyes of the whole world. He promised, but he also added something that I didn’t understand: “The Valley of the Roses will have the last word; it’s up to them to decide how long this will be kept a secret from the rest of the world.”
As for Stefan, he will start coming regularly in a few days; he has much to teach me about Northam and his life. He says that I need to know all that before I expose myself to this new world. The words that Jaeger said, shortly before Stefan’s departure, come to mind: “In any case, Andreas Northam’s family and friends will seek him out. Since the news of his recovery has become known, what’s going to stop him from going back to his normal life?”
When we were left alone, I asked Jaeger to tell me what the Ilectors had been saying about all this and I told him what happened that night when the young physician saw me crying at the thought of my mother. “Try to put yourself in my shoes for a moment because, trust me, in such a bizarre and horrible situation it’s worth considering both sides. Your course of life flows normally and unobstructed, at the same pace as always. For you, Northam is the one who’s changed. For you, this is a case of ‘personality shift’ of a man who was revived after fifteen minutes of clinical death, a very rare parapsychological phenomenon associated with glossolalia. Your friend is a man who once was one of yours and now speaks a dead language. But I haven’t changed at all. What I see is a piece of the future. Taking that into consideration, how can I not think that I’ve lost my mind? That I’ve gone mad?”
I was sobbing uncontrollably. I was utterly at sea because I could not believe that in there might be the slightest rift in the solid axes of time and space that I knew. The rift had to be somewhere inside me. I had to be the paranoid one!
“Only you can tell me the truth. If it’s been two thousand years, like the young physician told me, then I’m going mad. You can’t imagine how fresh, how recent the memory of going to sleep is in my mind; it feels like yesterday. I could hear my mother’s breathing; she was sleeping in the next room. I can almost see the basin of water next to my bed and the fringed towel with the blue-green embroidery on it. It’s as if she is in front of me right now.”
I stared at him in agony, but Jaeger made no attempt to avoid my gaze. He could understand most of my German. “I don’t think,” he said holding his gaze steady, “that hiding even the tiniest vestige of truth from you will help to still your heart but, trust us, we know much more than you do. We don’t live in the times of Descartes and Kant anymore. Many things have changed. But not everything can be measured solely on the basis of the intellect and constricts of the mere human brain. Are you absolutely sure, for example, that at the time you went to sleep, as you say, Andreas Northam did not yet exist? And are you absolutely sure that, right at this moment, your mother has ceased to exist?”
His incredible response struck me less than it would have a few days ago when it would have seemed inconceivable for me to process. Now, what brought tears to my eyes was the way this great man spoke to me, in such a different manner from the physicians. And he talked to me in my own tongue…
SLEEPLESS
August 23rd
Yesterday and today were two very quiet days. I spent the day writing or talking with Stefan in the mornings and Jaeger in the afternoons, and the night-time reading. I’ve turned into a voracious reader, a proper bookworm!
The physicians believe that trying to induce sleep artificially would be futile. Moreover, lack of sleep is neither fatal nor very harmful in my case, according to them.
At night they let me read, provided that I do it resting in bed or an armchair for at least half of the hours, and in the morning I wake up so fresh, as if I’ve slept for seven hours. Little by little I’ve started picking up their language as well, the “universal tongue” as Stefan calls it or, as I call it, “broken Anglo-Scandinavian”. This language does, however, have a certain consistency between pronunciation and writing as I can now read much more comfortably though I often need the help of a small dictionary.
My long conversations with Jaeger are like a spiritual and mental cleansing for me. Under his tutelage I have ceased to seek shelter in the memories of my old life. This man has managed to sow the seed of faith deep inside my soul and has given me a new brand of confidence of which I had never thought myself capable. Because of him I’ve stopped feeling that I inhabit a foreign body. Because of him I can now look at myself fearlessly in the mirror and, strangely enough, somewhere beneath all these foreign features, I can distinguish my own expression as I have known it my entire life.
Without having mentioned anything myself, I heard Stefan share a similar opinion on the subject with me the other day. “The man I see in front of me is, indeed, Andreas Northam but, by his accent, the tone of his voice, and even the way he expresses himself and looks at me, I can tell it’s not him.”
August 24th
Today, like every other day, Jaeger tutored me in articulation, elocution and pronunciation. Next, we will start learning about the world around me. This incredible man spends a great amount of his time patiently explaining every little thing, its use and function. When I go out into the world, I will have to be able to get around by myself and not look lost.
Whenever he gets tired, we take a break and I tell him all kinds of stories: about my hometown, my life, my mother’s love for me… And he raptly listens to me, taking interest in the ways of the 20th century, asking a myriad of questions about our schools and our habits in general, even taking notes every so often. He seems delighted with my outbursts of nostalgia.
I’ve told him that I, too, used to be a teacher in my time and I’ve spoken to him about my preference for history. With these conversations I have been overwhelmed by a great spiritual thirst; the thought of an immense prospect suddenly opening up in my field helps me temporarily forget my situation and makes me quiver with anticipation. And this thirst in my heart, only some steps away from this new and unexpected El Dorado, only I can feel.
(In the middle of the night)
I’m tired. I’ve been walking around on the terrace for hours on end in the divine serenity of the night. I feel a hint of joy springing up inside me, as if I could hear my heart beating. Am I feverish again? The prospect of the new emotions welling within me meets the permanent turmoil of my mind. Will I stop obsessing over this incredible experience and slowly become accustomed to it? Will I become a normal person that finds interest in everyday life again? Will I be worthy of new excitement? I feel like an avid philatelist who has just been offered the King of England’s stamp collection and can’t wait to examine it; or like a Classics scholar who has just gained ac
cess to the Library of Alexandria.
August 25th
Jaeger said to me tonight, “Trust Stefan. He’ll lead you through everything, step by step.” I kindly requested him to give me some more history books for now, and he promised he would. He also suggested the Reigen-Swage, something completely new to me, a type of narration that consists of a simultaneous combination of sight and sound, which you do not even need to read! A voice narrates them and you see pictures come to life before you.
“Listen to me,” he told me—and I recount his words not as he spoke them but as I understood them—“When the time comes in a short while and I will no longer be by your side, rise to the challenge and do not let your thoughts be nourished only by facts. Delve more deeply into the great spiritual paths that have now been opened to humankind. You won’t benefit much from hard facts. Try not to be dazzled by them and end up spending your hours watching them unfold on the Reigen-Swage. After all, whatever happened has happened before. History repeats itself. Try to read between the lines and see beneath the surface of mere events.
He made an allusion to the “new, bright paths” that will lead to “quenching the thirst of the longing of centuries” and to the alleviation of “humankind’s metaphysical pain”.
Nevertheless, I am not entirely in a position to know if I’ve interpreted correctly all that this wise man has patiently taught me. It is us, he says, who pass by, not time. We, the human creatures with the short-lived biological destiny, come and go. The dimension of depth eludes us. Our antennas have a very limited capacity. They only form subjective impressions that are totally irrelevant to the true and objective “Great Reality”, the Samith as he called it.
