What then happened I saw as if in slow motion.
With infinite slowness, the white murderer turned his head toward me and I looked directly into the golden-yellow furnace of his eyes.
"At last I have found you," I said. In my excitement and joy, I was on the brink of tears.
"Naturally," he said with an unfathomably deep sadness in his voice. "Naturally, dear Francis. It was foreseeable that you would find me sooner or later, for you are even more intelligent than I. At some time or other, yes, at some time or other this had to come to pass. Congratulations, my friend, I am the one you've been looking for all this time: I am the murderer, I am the Prophet, I am Julius Preterius, I am Gregor Johann Mendel, I am the eternal riddle, I am the man and the beast—and I am Felidae. All of these I am in one person and more, much more."
Once again, clouds of mist enveloped him, pierced only by his glowing eyes that shone like precious stones. The Professor, meanwhile, was kicking up an increasingly louder racket in his cage, giggling crazily, babbling incoherent gibberish. Finally, he hammered his head against the bars, cutting his face and dousing the cell with blood. Then he turned his blood-smeared face in my direction and cried out:
"It reminds me of the story of the carnivorous plant that someone brought back home as a seedling and cared for until one fine day, tall and strong, it devoured the entire family."
He lapsed into his insane giggling. The veil of mist lifted to present the white murderer anew in all his splendor. He rose in slow motion from his seat, turned toward me, and gave me a faraway look, as if he were gazing at me from the mysterious depths of the universe.
"Everything that ever was and ever will be no longer has any meaning, Francis," he said, and his sad voice echoed into infinity. "The only thing that's important is that you now change sides and come to us, come with us."
I was completely confused and did not understand what he wanted to say with this enigmatic talk. I had come to take him captive and to stop his murderous activities once and for all, but instead of pouncing on him, I was suddenly confused: I felt compassion for him. Obeying a strange hunch, I finally asked him:
"Like the Bremen City Musicians?"
He nodded gravely.
"Precisely. Like the Bremen City Musicians: 'Come with me,' says the ass to the rooster, 'You'll find something better than death everywhere!' "
The huge army of my brothers and sisters in the background affirmed in unison:
"Come with us, Francis! You'll find something better than death everywhere!"
The murderer turned away from me and floated over to the others. Then he became a tiny part of the crowd and looked back once again.
"Come with us, Francis," he insisted. "Come with us on a long, wonderful trip."
Now they all turned their backs on me and wandered leisurely into the thickening mist.
"Where are you going?" I called after them.
"To Africa! To Africa! To Africa!" they called out with one voice until they gradually disappeared in the mist.
"And what will we find there?" I still wanted to know.
"Everything we lost, Francis, everything we lost ..." I heard them whispering. But they were now lost to sight; they had already become one with the magical mist.
Slowly, an unbearable sadness filled me, because I had not followed them, because I had been afraid to set out on the long journey, because I was now completely alone. Africa! It sounded so alluring, so mysterious, so exciting. Everything you ever dreamed about was there, my unerring instincts whispered to me. Africa! The lost paradise, El Dorado, the Promised Land—where once, long ago, everything had its beginning. Yet Africa was so unimaginably far away, and I was only a comfort-loving, four-legged animal used to thinking in terms of short distances. The nocturnal songs of the gods were strange to me; so, too, the hot wind of the savanna. Never had I slept under a canopy of stars, and never had I set foot in the sacred jungle. Africa! But where was Africa? In any case, not in me, not in my yearnings, not in my heart. It was somewhere else, very far from me, irrevocably far from me.
And yet:
"Take me with you." I wept quietly to myself. "Take me with you, my brothers and sisters …"
When I woke up my eyes were full of tears. I had really wept in my dream. Bright sunlight streamed into the room through the window above the balcony door, and reflected off the tools scattered everywhere. But it was the light of a cold sun. I knew that the thunderstorm last night had been fall's curtain call. Very soon, probably even before the day was over, it would begin to snow. You could almost smell the snow. Winter was encroaching imperceptibly.
Gustav was still sleeping, a simpleminded smile occasionally flitting over his face. Presumably, he was dreaming of chocolate, or of the annual refund his private health insurance company paid him. While I tried to interpret my strange dream in my half-awake, half-dreaming state, I took a cursory look around the room. In the confusion of the last few days I hadn't noticed how much progress Gustav and Archie were making with the renovation. Even the bedroom had been painted a pleasant shade of bright blue. But to my annoyance, on one wall I noticed life-sized sketches of Samurai that looked like Oriental quill pen drawings that had yet to be colored in. Stylistic touches of this
