Questions, questions, questions, and no answers. But at least some damn clever guesses! After I had interrogated Jesaja a little while longer, a leaden weariness crept over me. I had had enough of playing detective for tonight. So I asked the Guardian of the Dead to get me out of the stinking labyrinth as soon as he could, which he dutifully did. He took me to a different shaft from the one 1 came down so that I popped up very near to our own garden. The exit this time turned out to be an out-of-order water conduit, crudely carved out of stone, which ended in the hollow trunk of an ancient tree, strangely enough. Jesaja told me that there were many more secret passages like this one, but he was the only one who knew their locations.
"Just a few final questions," I said before leaving the tree through a large knothole. "Jesaja, have you noticed anything in particular about the dead you've received all these years? 1 mean, had any, for example, been in heat?"
"They were indeed, Brother. Strangely mutilated brothers and sisters, too, came down to the Temple, and I sinned by asking myself sometimes whether Yahweh might have forgotten them."
"And pregnant females? Were some of the dead also pregnant at the time of their death?"
Now his rolling eyes filled with tears. I could have embraced and consoled him.
"Many," he whimpered. "Oh, many, Brother!"
I said a warm good-bye to him and departed. On the way, feelings of guilt tormented me since I had not come out with the truth and left him with his belief in the evil Prophet. On the other hand, I was afraid that he would hardly be able to adjust himself to the hard realities up here. He was so naïve, so innocent, so full of belief in his god's holy work that I simply could not bring myself to rob him of his illusions. The truth that was valid for me did not necessarily have to be valid for others. The reality that surrounded me did not necessarily encompass the entire world. Jesaja needed the catacombs, the temple, and the dead. It was his calling, his life's work. And the dead needed Jesaja, the good Guardian of the Dead. For who else would bring them flowers?
8
I spent the rest of the night sleeping, or, to be precise, dreaming. Actually you couldn't even say it was the rest of the night, because when I finally climbed through the bathroom window into our apartment, morning had already dawned outside. I was so hungry that I could have eaten a horse. But since Gustav was always spouting off about how he liked to get a really good night's rest "at least on Sunday" (which is absolute nonsense, because the man sleeps late practically every day), I didn't dare call his attention to my need. So I whisked off into the bedroom and settled down on the soft wool blanket girding that tub of lard snoring fearfully loud. The storm had passed. I sank rapidly into a deep, leaden sleep.
To my relief, this time I was spared any nightmares. Instead, a kind of vision:
Once again I was within a shapeless, radiant whiteness in which neither space nor time nor reality existed. But unlike the dream in which the faceless man strangled me with a diamond collar, there was no threatening undertone in this one. Now and then in this strange place, thick clouds of mist floated past, covering the whiteness here and there with pale gray shadows. I wandered euphorically through this nothingness, and the farther I went, the more a nearly unendurable, and yet pleasant, tension built up inside me. Occasionally the mist enveloped me and made me lose my bearings. But since there wasn't anything anyway to serve as a point of reference, that didn't really bother me.
The tremendous tension I felt fell away abruptly when I thought I saw in the distance both what had caused and relieved it. I didn't know what my aim was in my wandering restlessly, or whom I was hoping to meet, but when I saw him, I realized suddenly that my growing sense of expectation was geared toward this one encounter. Naturally, he was a fiction, as I knew even in my dream. For I neither knew him nor possessed a clear idea of his outer appearance. Nevertheless, I was filled in that moment with a certainty I had never known in my entire life: I had finally found him!
His coat was indescribably fine, indeed downright majestic in its silkiness, and of a whiteness of such otherworldly radiance that its mere sight hurt the eyes. Because he sat with his back to me, he blended into the likewise white background now and then—as if he were a ghost flickering in and out of existence. He was stately and bewitchingly beautiful; in short, he was such a splendid creature that the producers of television commercials would have fought over him. Little clouds of mist hovered around him, as if he were a holy mountain.
When I came to a stop a few yards away from him, a veil of mist lifted to reveal beyond him a huge cage of glittering chrome, which was the faithful and detailed enlargement of an animal cage such as those used in experimental laboratories. In it, as if possessed by a thousand demons, Professor Julius Preterius ranted and raved and giggled like mad. He was strapped into a straitjacket, and around his neck hung a gleaming bronze sign with the inscription:
PROFESSOR JULIUS PRETERIUS
AWARDED THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR
BEST SCHIZOPHRENIA IN 1981
Him, too, I had never seen before, but
