molten candle and made its home comfortable like a cat that had returned from an expedition…
A cold, wrinkled hand was on her hand. Slowly Sasha loosened her look from the flame because she feared that she could sink into the ground at any time. As soon as she awoke she felt the stinging pain in her lower arm and in her forehead. Out of the darkness simple furniture appeared tumbling: a few chairs, a dresser… Sasha herself was lying on a stretcher that was so soft that she couldn’t feel her back.
She felt as if her body only came back to her gradually.
“Sasha?” repeated the voice.
She looked on the person that was speaking and hastily retracted her hand. At the bed the old man who had driven with her on the railcar was sitting. His touch had been without any claim, neither harsh nor indecent. Shame and disappointment had made her retract her hand: How could she have mistaken the voice of a stranger with the one of her father’s? Why had the tunnel light led her back here from all places?
The old man smiled softly. He seemed to be pleased that she had awoken again. Only now she recognized the same warm shine in his eyes which she had only seen in with one other human. No she knew that she had been mistaken…
She was ashamed of herself.
“Forgive me,” she said. In the next moment she remembered the last minutes of the Pavelezkaya. With a strong move she rose up. “How’s your friend?”
She didn’t know if she should cry or laugh. Maybe she just didn’t have the strength for it.
Luckily the razor sharp claws of the chimera had missed the girl; only the paws had hit her. But she had been unconscious for the whole day. The doctor had reassured Homer that her life was in no longer in danger. He hadn’t told his own problems to the doctor.
While Sasha had been unconscious Homer had gotten used to calling her that way and sank back into his chair and she leaned against her pillow. The old man returned to the table, where an opened notebook with ninety-six pages waited for him. He turned around the pen in his hand and continued at the place where had had been interrupted by the fevering girl.
“…But this time the return of the caravan had been delayed and that long that there was only one reason for it: Something unknown must have happened, something terrible, that not even the heavy armed and experienced soldiers that accompanied them nor their long and good relationship with hanza could have prevented.
The whole thing would have been a lot less unsettling if they could at least communicate with each other. But there was something wrong with the telephone to the ring line, the connection had been gone since Monday and the troop that had been sent to the breaking point had returned without any success.”
Homer raised his eyes and winced, the girl was standing directly behind him and looking over his shoulder at what he had scribbled down. Her curiosity seemed to be the only thing that kept her on her feet.
Embarrassed the old man turned the notebook on the other side.
“Are you waiting for inspiration?” she asked him.
“I am only at the very beginning,” mumbled Homer.
“And what happened to the caravan?”
“I don’t know”. He carefully framed the title with his pen. “The story isn’t over for a long time yet. Lay down, you need to rest.”
“But you decide how your book ends.”
“In this book nothing is decided by me. I just write down everything that happened.”
“Then it is even more decided by you,” said the girl sunken in thoughts. “Am I in it as well?”
Homer smiled. “I just wanted to ask for your permission.”
“I’ll think about it.” she answered seriously.
“Why are you writing this book?”
Homer stood up to talk to her from eye to eye.
Already after his last conversation with Sasha he had realized that her youth and missing experience created a wrong picture in her mind. At the strange station where they had taken her with them a year must have seemed as two. So she didn’t answer the questions which he spoke out loud, but the ones that he left unspoken. And she only asked questions on which he himself had no answer.
He was counting on her honestly and how else could she ever be the heroine of his book if not? He had to be honest as well, to not treat her like a child and to not cover her in silence. But he mustn’t say any less then what he had already admitted to himself.
He said: “I want people to remember me. ME and those that were close to me. They don’t know how the world was. The one that I have loved. That they hear the most important stuff that I have witnessed and realized. That my life wasn’t in vain. That something remains of me.”
“You are putting your soul into it?” she put her head oblique. “But it’s just a notebook. It can be burned or lost. An uncertain place to store your soul, is it not?
Homer sighed. “No, I only need this notebook to bring everything into the right order. And so that I don’t forget anything important as long as the story isn’t finished. When it is finished, you would just have to tell it to some people. How I imagine it hopefully you don’t need paper or a body to spread it.”
“You have seen many things that shouldn’t have been forgotten.” The girl shrugged her shoulder. “I don’t have anything that would be worth writing down. Leave me out of the book. Don’t waste paper on me.”
“But you have everything in front of you…” started Homer and had to think that he wouldn’t live to see it.
The girl didn’t react and Homer already feared that she would close off to him. He searched for the right words trying to take everything back, but he tripped over and over again over his sorrows.
“What is the most beautiful thing that you can remember?” she suddenly asked. “The most beautiful?”
Homer hesitated. It was a strange idea to tell another person who he only had only known for two days his deepest secrets. He hadn’t even told Yelena everything and she had always thought that on the wall of their chamber, only a usual landscape of the city hung. Would a girl that had been underground for her whole live even be able to understand what he would tell her?
He decided that he would let it come to it. “Summer rain,” he said.
Sasha’s foreead got wrinkles, which looked strange.
“What is so beautiful about it?”
“Have you ever seen rain?”
“No” the girl shook her head. “Father didn’t want me to go outside. I climbed up two or three times anyways, but I didn’t like it up there at all. It is terrible when all around you there are no walls.”
Then she explained it to make sure that they were talking about the same thing. “Rain is when water comes from above, right?”
Homer didn’t listen anymore. Again that day emerged from the distant past. Like a medium his body let the summoned ghost use it, gazed at into void and didn’t stop speaking…
“The whole month had been dry and hot. My wife was pregnant, she had always had breathing problems and then there was the heat… in the entire clinic there was only one fan and she complained how hot it was. I couldn’t breathe well myself and I was very sorry. It was bad: for years we had tried to get children but without success and now the doctors scared us that we could receive a stillbirth. Now she was under constant watch, but it would have been better for her to remain at home. The date for the birth had already passed but the pains didn’t happen. I couldn’t take off every day of course.
Somebody had once said that if you carry a child too long the risk of a stillbirth would increase. I didn’t know what to do. As soon as I was finished with work I ran to the clinic and kept watch under her window. In the tunnels there was no cell phone network so at every station I checked if I had missed any calls. And then, suddenly there was the message from the doctor: Please call back right away. Until I had found a quiet place to think I had already buried my wife and child in my thoughts, the old, fearful idiot I was.”
Homer went silent as if he was listening to the sound of the signal from the phone, waited if somebody picked up. The girl didn’t interrupt him. She spared her answers for later.
“Then a stranger’s voice said: Congratulations, it’s a boy. It sounds so easy: It’s a boy. From the dead they had brought my wife back and then this miracle… I ran up and it was raining. A cold rain. The air had become so light, so clear. As if the city had lain under a dusty plastic foil and suddenly somebody had taken it away. The leaves shined, finally the sky was moving again and the houses looked so fresh. I ran along the Tverskaya, to the
