One thing is certain: all my clocks have stopped, one at half past nine, another at twelve o’clock, and others at times I have not even bothered to note. And spider’s webs are everywhere, everywhere. The spiders have come in their thousands; where can they all have come from in such a short time, say a hundred years? Or is it only one year in the life of men outside? What do I care? What is it to me?
What have I lived on in all this time? The question seems worth pursuing. Perhaps if I could answer it I would know whether I am dead or not! I think back and, like a memory of a dream, I see myself slipping through the quiet streets of the town at night, eating in ale-houses and low taverns and running into friends and acquaintances who spoke to me. Whether I replied and what I replied, I could not say. I think I walked past them without a word so as not to reawaken my sense of loss at Jane’s death. – Yes, that must be it: I have slipped unnoticed into the realm of death, into a lonely realm. But what do I care whether I am alive or dead?
I wonder whether Lipotin is dead? – There I go again. It makes no difference whether one is alive or dead.
One thing I am sure of: since the burial Lipotin has not come to me, in any shape or form. Otherwise the picture I have of him would not be the last one in my memory: he disappeared in a crowd outside the cemetery after he had said something about the Tibetan Dugpas which I have forgotten. He drew his hand across his throat. Or was that at Elsbethstein? – – What do I care? Perhaps he has gone back to the East and turned back into John Dee’s Mascee, the Tutor to the Czar. Since then I have departed this world, so to speak. I do not know which is farther, Asia or the land of dreams where I have taken refuge. Perhaps I have only half woken up and my study looks to me as if the world outside my window had dreamed away a hundred years.
All at once I am gripped by a feeling of unease: I see my house as a nut, eaten away on the inside and covered in dusty mould, in which I sleep on like a mindless grub that has missed its transformation into a moth. What has caused this unease? A sudden memory torments me: was that not the shrill sound of a bell? In the house? No, not in the house! Who would ring the bell of a deserted house? It must have been a ringing in my ears. I have read somewhere that hearing is the first sense to waken when a person in suspended animation returns to life. And then I remember – and admit it openly to myself – I have been waiting, waiting, waiting, for how long I do not know, for the return of my dead Jane. In the nights and days I crawled around the house from room to room, praying on my knees to heaven for a sign from her, praying and praying until I lost all sense of the passage of time.
There is no object that used to belong to my beloved Jane that I have not made into a fetish, that I have not prayed to, pleaded with to help me compel Jane to come down to me, to call her back from the grave, to send her to me to save me from the pain of loss that hangs above my neck like an executioner’s axe. But it was all in vain; I have not seen nor even felt the presence of Jane, I who have been her lawful wedded husband for three hundred years.
Jane has not come ... but Assja Shotokalungin has! Now that I have awoken from my lethargy – as it now seems to me – and forgetfulness, I know: Assja Shotokalungin is here, has always been here ...
At first she came through the door and I knew straightaway that there was no point in locking the door. How should a simple door-key keep out one whom the grave cannot hold?
Now that I think back to my feelings when she first came I cannot hide the fact that her visit was welcome to me. I will confess
