The preparations for the trip, along with all the forgotten things I decided to get rid of, showed me the way to my old library where, hidden behind the rows of books, was lying the diary I kept for three years, from December of ’18 to February of ’21. During the period of my illness, some friends had been taking care of the house, especially after my mother’s death.
Last night I sat there, leafing through it, occasionally reading some of its pages. Between the lines I rediscovered, for a second, my old self – whom I had lost somewhere between all the unbelievable things that happened to me in the meantime. I re-experienced that guileless emotional atmosphere with such a genuine, pure thrill, breathing that pure scent of loyalty in the one and only love of my life. Something so rare and random… I knew back then that it was something pointless, but still, I couldn’t do otherwise.
Many things within me are different now, changed. And at this point, being the old dog I am, I can tell you that those moments were worth it all, they were precious, even if people thought that they were nothing but traces of an abnormal temperament.
Oh my precious Ann... Forgive me. Why won’t I think of you more often? Why won’t your memory dominate my mind like it used to? But these incredible countries I went to, changed everything for me. Neither my little hometown nor my first love fit me anymore.
But this is not the reason, it can’t be! I wouldn’t deserve your forgiveness if it were… This life journey and destiny of mine reminds me of a myth I had been told when I was little – the myth of the unjustly killed man. For years and years his soul was wandering around and in the wilderness of the night, you could still hear the crawling of his chains. But after justice was served he was never heard from again.
My first days back, two months ago, my fellow villagers welcomed my healthy and changed appearance with utter surprise. Their joy felt genuine. Most of them considered me dead.
Luckily for me, however, the doctors in Zurich had an opposite view on the subject and therefore let me occupy a bed for 12 whole months-from May of ’21 to May of this year-tube-feeding me with special liquid foods.
My mother had died before I got back. She left with a pain in her chest, that unbearable pain of a mother that didn’t see her child strong again. All the excitement and joy I felt, caused by my psychological resurrection, was eliminated in the beginning by my sorrow over the loss of my mother. My Lord, forgive that holy woman and let her rest in peace.
The priest is away in Italy. I still feel ashamed about the doubts I shared with him; my unfaithfulness. Like a massive sin. On the other hand, he couldn’t have possibly had any idea about all the incredible things that followed my three-year struggle between skepticism and remorse.
I try to drive all these away using energy as an instrument, an energy I could have never imagined I possess. I’m constantly on the move. I’ve taken care of all the inheritance issues, sold my land, I work in the fields in my free time and I’m trying to keep my mind occupied all the time. But when the night comes and all my friends are gone, all these memories, so recent but at the same time so distant, come back and haunt me before I fall asleep. And when these moments come, I can’t help but thinking about what I’ve lost.
From time to time it feels like I’m a waif of a real physiological shipwreck. And I can´t talk about my vicissitude to anybody, I can’t even confess it to the priest. The things I know cannot even be conceived by the human mind. The lifeless paper is not just a lifeless paper anymore, it’s my own self. And my own self knows very well indeed the reasons of my firm conviction. And never, for as long as I live and breathe, will I be in fear that anyone will laugh about what I’ve experienced and seen with my own eyes. And I believe them with all the strength I have left in my heart.
Chronicles from the Future: Second Diary -
July 21 to August 17, 1922
July 21st 1922
The number of my evening solitude companions is dwindling. Maybe they’re right. There isn’t much left to say every other night. At this point, most of the times my companions are my books, and I am happy with that. Who would have thought that everything that went down in history since they were written, would justify the value of their contents. My own old childhood loves, Schiller, Goethe, but more recent names as well, like Einstein, Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Mann, Maeterlinck… I can’t express how strange a feeling a meeting with them would give me. I could - and I alone - tell them things on the course of the last years of their lives, on how their work would be glorified in history, on their end, things that they never knew and never could have known.
I’m sitting at the bottom of a tree, awe-struck by the vastness of the existences that I have wandering around me. And yet I feel like, from this very spot, I could cut the universe in half and squeeze into it!
August 10th 1922
Tonight I went through hell. On the one hand, I felt like talking about everything I know, getting everything out of my system, but on the other hand I knew I had to push myself to bury everything deep down inside forever!
Where are you, Mom? Were you alive I’d tell you everything! To you, everything! I know that you’d always respect what’s now the most sacred thing in my life.
August 14th 1922
Two days ago I ran into Father Jacob on the street. He had come back from his trip to Italy. I thanked him for all the help and support he gave my mother during my lethargy. I told him I would visit him the day after, which I did. We sat in his garden. How differently it felt being next to him this time! All the doubts I used to have were long gone now.
“Father, I’m not the same person as I used to be. If only you knew about the change I’ve been through…”
I reminded him of my old thought and my disrespectful conclusions and I assured him that I don’t share the same point of view with my old self anymore. At the same time, however, I felt like I had no right to talk to him more clearly. He seemed very excited that faith had spoken to me.
“I was wrong father. If only you knew all those great things there are…” I stopped suddenly.
The tone of my voice surprised even me. The priest stared at me in silence raring to hear the rest.
“Even the very toughest pain is welcomed, both physical and mental. Vindication will come in the end. Never should a sigh come out of a human mouth.”
And then came a moment of silence. The priest was now getting nervous. He looked like he was trying to make me talk without asking. Finally he said: “See, son? That’s faith!”
“No, father, no”, I replied with a calm and steady voice. “It’s not just faith that changed me.
You can’t even imagine what’s really out there. The human mind is incapable of realizing the greatness of it.”
I didn’t reveal more. But I had already said too much, more than I was entitled to…
At first, Father Jacob was patiently waiting for me to proceed. Later he started asking me, in his own casual, indirect way. Then he started begging me. He called me “son”, he called me
“brother” and he reminded me of our past discussions back in the winter of 1919. Finally he claimed that it’s a sin to believe that something can be exclusively ours to keep, ending with
how that something would eventually become a burden on my conscience. I regretted having said all that and having spoiled those sacred truths by giving them the shape of human reason.
Since last night, I’ve been thinking that something has changed between me and the priest, and that our long lasting friendship now belongs in the past.
August 16th 1922
