March 21st 1923
I’m not feeling better. I think I’ve gotten worse from the surprising temperature drop over the past few days. This cough – which in the beginning I thought would pass - doesn’t seem to be leaving me alone. I didn’t like the look on the doctor’s face yesterday. But what else is there to tell me? If I am to die, let it be. After what I’ve experienced, what else remains for me to see? For as much life as I’ve got left, that will be my prayer and that will my soul await.
April 1923
I remembered the myth of the white-haired hermit: back when he was young, his loved one took him out of the monastery after many years, and made him spend some time with her.
Before she left, she put her emerald ring on the middle finger of his right hand. The hermit, woke up again in this life, among the shrubs where he had laid down on, believing he had seen a dream and that everything he remembered - the golden lampposts, the thick carpets he was walking on, her sweet kiss – was part of that dream. But after looking at his hand he shuddered; the ring was there. The other hermits confirmed it afterwards.
I’m sitting here, staring at my empty hands and I wonder, why can’t reality, no matter how distant in time, leave behind the slightest tangible sign, when a dream once could? But these things only happen in myths and legends. If, however, I could choose what tangible sign I’d like to find on me, last May, surrounded by the physicians of Zurich, it would be neither her emerald ring, nor her picture, nor any other of her precious little presents. You can make all the assumptions you want about me, but what I’d really wish to find would be my original manuscripts. (Note: this is a reference to the diary in the future, the one he tried to remember and write anew). That’s what’s been constantly messing with my mind. What happened to
that diary? It took me a great amount of time - almost a year - and many sleepless nights to finish it. With true joy and genuine passion I put down on paper every single detail of what I had experienced during each day in the future. The memory of Andrew Northam, whose body I lived in, and of my manuscripts -“The Diary”- that I left behind, provokes a burning pain in my heart.
No, no! I must at all costs dismiss these disturbing thoughts from my mind - the belief that nothing is really irreversible in this universe and that we have no right to measure everything in the finite capabilities of our human mind. And after all, what do I have to worry about?
One day, in a couple of thousand years’ time, Andrew Northam is going to write these pages himself!
My judgment is still clear enough to point out to me that these mistaken ideas are pushing me towards idleness and submission to my fate, my doom growing closer by the second. But I won’t fall into the trap. My heart might have been sick and challenged and pained but, thank God, my brain is still strong and working properly. You, my Lord, chose a humble, unimportant man, a man that went and is still going through a severe illness, to show him a small bit of your eternal secrets. It’s you who decides what needs to be done on every occasion; I know it, I believe it. So please, give me the strength to finish what I started and relieve my burdened heart. Let the paper become my confessor and my savior!
Tuesday, April 24th
A while ago, my landlady, this amazing woman, knocked on my door to see if I needed anything and make sure everything was all right. Well, you won’t believe it, but I felt this sudden urge to take her in my arms and deliver her the great news - that I most certainly can do it! Because once again, I was given the chance to verify how excellent my memory skills are. After all the hardships and the suffering, it’s still here! I managed to put down on paper, word by word, complete stanzas of poems that I had never read or heard in my life, before Silvia recited them to me, that unforgettable night under the stars.
So what can possibly keep me from re-writing my lost pages, my memories from the future? I can definitely do it now! Any doubt I might have from here on, will merely be an unsound hesitation that I will have to fight against.
I don´t mind this cough tearing my insides apart or this fever burning this obnoxious carcass of a body. All these are not sufficient to put a shadow over the excitement that the prospect of completing my work gives me! The time might be limited but this will be my “future” from now on; and it will be the joyful re-writing of the manuscripts which were once ready but left behind… The same fate that doomed me gave me, now, in the end, this unique chance and I’m convinced that I can remember it all, page by page, if not word by word.
I stayed up late tonight and enjoyed my new “happiness”. I’m ecstatic! Nothing will be lost; from now on my short life won’t be empty anymore. I’ve got a new reason to live it!
My case has nothing to do with inspiration and creation. I was never blessed with such gifts -
and you can’t lose what you never had. My case is that of a traveler who never spoke about his adventures and who finally decided to break his silence.
I have no friends, my mother is dead. I’m completely alone in the world. So, whoever you are
- you who somehow, one day, will end up with my manuscripts, be my friend and understand me. Do not laugh and do not mock me. I’ve been tried and tested a lot in life. Everything you read, I’ve seen with my own eyes - I’ve lived it, I’ve touched it, I believe and I worship it all!
I’m not going back to my home country. I made my decision. I don’t need any obligatory, superficial relationships with the neighbors. I just want to tell my story in the most precise way possible; and I want to tell it till the end! (From here onwards, Paul Dienach re-writes the
diary that he kept in the future, trying to remember as accurately as possible whatever he had written in that diary)
Chronicles from the Future: Reborn – Aug
17 1923
August 17th 1923
It’s the twelfth day today and I’ve already started writing about it! Whatever happened to that combination of astonishment and horror of the first week, that religious awe in the sight of everything that, in the beginning, I considered supernatural? Where has the fear of losing my mind gone? All these mixed feelings lasted a lot less than expected. Here you have it then; man can, indeed, get used to anything! One will get accustomed to the most unbelievable things and will eventually return to their everyday routine.
(After a while)
Almighty God, the course that my life has taken was always planned by you and always your desire. All these days and nights, only my faith kept me from losing my mind over this incredible reality that I’ve been living in. Have mercy on me, my Lord, and don’t deny forgiveness to your unworthy servant!
(At night)
It’s been three days now since I managed to carry myself out of bed and noticed something unexpected: my pains have gone away and I was able to walk even during the first few hours.
The mirror is now the only reminder of the bandage that I still have wrapped around my head.
And if what they say is true, they’re going to remove it the day after tomorrow. Have I
recovered then? Can it be true? Am I not dead? Who could imagine and believe a miracle like this?
(Three hours later- dawn)
I even feel much better psychologically, after the soothing words of the doctors and my meeting yesterday with one of them, Johannes Jaeger. Before, my days and nights had been excruciating. The pain was nothing compared to the psychological torment I was going through - due to the inner conflict between a world of unbelievable things happening around me and the existence of another world inside me, one of different memories but nevertheless complete and clear.
My mature judgment, a result of my age, had taught me how to distinguish the real from the unreal and my exceptionally good memory was flooding my mind with images and events from my past, in sharp details, exactly as I had lived them. I was functioning perfectly, as I remembered myself. But so did all the crazy things around me…
I was certain it was me; on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but it was me! Once I was in the presence of the Ilectes* I fell down and started to cry, that’s all… And anyway, I don’t think that anyone could confidently say that they’d be able to control their nerves in such a situation. (*a term used for senior officials of the spiritual leadership, who had a special position in the social life of that future era)
