Still hanging on to one of the boys strange little notes. There are just four words: "Breathe my face out."
A prayer?
*
Woke at 3.45, the dream still very much alive. Unwillingly brushed my finger against my face, against the skin of my cheek.
Had been very near the answer.
Got up.
A strange morning fog hung over the lake outside, darkness had lifted but there was still a grey hovering caul, not white, but with a kind of reflected darkness; hovering maybe ten meters above the surface of the water which was shiny and completely still, like mercury. The birds were asleep, nested in themselves and their dreams. Do birds actually dream? Fog so low it left only birds and water to be seen, no far shore, just a black and immobile waterface, an endless ocean. I imagined myself standing on the last of shores, nothing in front of me.
The last border. And the birds, nested in their dreams.
Sudden movement; a bird taking off. Couldn't hear a sound, only saw it lash the tips of its wings against the surface, break loose, lift diagonally: it happened suddenly, and lightly, so weightlessly. I saw it take off and rise and rise toward the grey ceiling of fog and disappear. And I hadn't heard a single sound.
I stood completely still, waiting, but nothing more, absolutely nothing. That's what it must have been like when Pinon died. Like a bird taking off and suddenly being gone.
Free. Or alone. How long is eight minutes? He left Maria behind, and for eight minutes she had been alone.
*
I make a note in the diary: "The picture of the body. Suddenly he sees himself."
Signal.
*
When Brecht visited Ruth Berlau at the asylum in New York, wanting to take her home, she demanded that he should also take the rest of the inmates in her hall. He refused, and she stayed.
"Rather with the damned than the aquitted."
She lived through him alone. To begin with it was the right thing, the only possible way to live. But then it suddenly became - invalid. She didn't know how it had happened, but all of a sudden she was no more than the shedded skin of a snake, left in a forest glade. He no longer saw her. It was as though she no longer existed. She wanted people to see her. Life is possible without seeing, a blind person is still a person. But if you aren't seen you're nothing.
A human being can't go through life as a snake's skin.
Everything she had been had been through him. And that is the way she had wanted it. And he had said: when you become dependent it is no longer love.
A snake's skin, not human. Then she spat right in his face, even though everyone could see it.
*
Now making very detailed notes of every dream. Important to see changes in the dreams.
Trying to remember the old dream, exactly what it was.
I think it was this. The man in the grave of ice, I didn't know who he was, was lying with his eyes open, frozenly fixed on grey space. The melted water had run over his face and then frozen again, his entire face covered with a thin, clear, membrane of ice. Through it he saw parts of objects he felt he recognized: slabs of ice, grey clouds, and a bird, way up high, moving like a shadow; but the bark of ice was bad glass and he couldn't be sure. All of the descriptions had stopped when he died, but still he could not see clearly. When the snow came he became entirely transluscent and the details vanished: at last he was free. The Albatross up high was the last thing he saw, if it was an albatross: he thought it was a spider slowly crawling over his face.
This is the old dream.
*
K, his wife and I had appointed our meeting in his reception; we would arrange things together now the boy was dead, send the few things he had possessed to his relatives. I came into the reception, the two others were already there.
They stood in the dark, in the lighter face of the window, a constricted silhouette, embracing each other. It was on that night his wife exploded with anger at me. I can still remember her face, distorted with rage and very close to mine, a stream of words and accusations which at first made no sense at all to me.
I suppose it is true I don't understand. But I'm trying, for the first time, this is the absolute truth. If she had listened to me she may have understood. "You can't explain love", she screamed.
But if you don't try, if noone tries, then where would we be?
*
The rescue of Pasqual Pinon from the mine. The albatross circling up above, around and around, as if it wanted, at a hight of three thousand feet, to mark out the spot, be a sign. It wobbled its huge plumed head from side to side: this is the spot. Don't be afraid.
The guide had already headed on through the opening of the mine, stood just inside, making impatient gestures as if he had been very upset, or simply afraid. Shideler paused outside. He was sweating violently. In the depths of this mine was the monster, he knew this, and he was afraid. He didn't want to go down there although he knew that he would.
In the end he went. For half an hour they climbed down the wooden ladders, now and then facing anonymous shadows on their way up. They said nothing.
And then they were finally there.
At first he saw nothing. In the dim light of the miners lamp all he could se was faint shadows, but in time, in the centre, a most definite shadow, moving, almost like a creature. The light from the lamp hit a cavernous chamber, an extension of the passage perhaps four by three meters large. On the ground a booth, nailed together from planks and filled with dried grass and rags, they couldn't quite be made out. Maybe it was sheets of leather or blankets.
In the bed a creature slowly beginning to stir, sitting up.
- It's not human, the guide said.
It was a creature with some kind of head, eyes flashing in the blackness. The head was most part covered in hair. Under the head an abdomen, a horse-like chest, and extremities almost like arms ending in - hoofs or hands? Couldn't see, but suddenly he became aware of the stench, the heavy impenetrable stench that made it almost impossible to breathe.
- It's not human, the guide said.
A piece of cloth was wound around the head. More accurately: a black, sticky mess that had once been a piece of cloth. The guide stepped forth, started pulling a projecting flap, while the creature struggled in panic, pressing its arms around it's head. He held it back.
- It's ashamed, said the guide. It always does that because it is ashamed and doesn't want to show.
A piece of the cloth fell loose, then another piece, yet another. A guttural moan was heard, as if from an animal in mortal anguish, the gasp of a dying bull. Then the cloth loosened entirely and the guide held it in his hand, triumphant, letting the light from his lamp calmly and mercilessly rest on the creature which had now sat down heavily in the grey mass that might have been hay or ragged blankets.
It was obvious what it was. Obvious.
- It is the child of Satan, said the guide. Not human. We caught him when he fell.
*
Strange: still no dawn. Lake black. Fog like before. I count the seconds, almost without breathing; that's what it must have been like. The first time alone.
She was alone for eight minutes.
back to the muck