It was only now that I subjected my friend Gärtner to a conscious examination. He was sitting opposite me, snug in a similar armchair to the one I was in, a smile on his face and a cigar held between his fingers; he took advantage of a pause in the conversation – it seemed to be the first since we met at the station – to sip his tea. I quickly reviewed everything we had talked about and I suddenly had the sense that the conversation had been of deeper significance than I had thought. We had talked much of our youth, the things we had planned together, schemes that had never come to fruition, of vain hopes, missed opportunities, shelved projects. All at once the room was filled with such melancholy that I looked up and stared at my friend as if from a great distance, as if he were no longer my friend Gärtner. It seemed to me as if I had carried on the whole conversation with myself, taking both parts, as it were. To put an end to such speculation I quickly asked, distrustfully, with deliberately clear articulation:
“Tell me how you got on with your chemistry in Chile?”
With a twist of the neck, which was one of the characteristic movements of his that I recalled, he glanced over the rim of his cup at me, gave me a friendly look and said:
“What is it? Something seems to be bothering you?”
A shyness spread rapidly over me like a morning mist, but I broke through and dissipated it by telling him about the sense of dislocation that had been tormenting me for the last few minutes:
“Theodor. I cannot deny it: I feel there is something odd between us. It’s true we haven’t seen each other for a long time, and I do seem to recognise many things from the past – much in you seems unchanged – and yet – and yet – – forgive me, but are you really Theodor Gärtner? You – you’re different from the person I remember; no, you’re not the Theodor Gärtner I knew all those years ago, I – I can feel – I can see that clearly, but it doesn’t seem to make you any less familiar to me, any less – how should I put it? – any less close, any less of a friend – ”
Theodor Gärtner leant forward towards me, smiled and said:
“Look at me – closely, don’t be shy! Perhaps you’ll remember who I am.”
I felt a choking sensation in my throat but mastered it, gave a rather forced laugh and said:
“You must promise not to laugh, but since you entered my apartment” – I looked round almost timidly – “I feel somewhat – disorientated. Normally this room looks, well, it looks – different. But that will mean nothing to you, of course; and to come straight out with it, you don’t seem to be Theodor Gärtner, my old student friend – but then, of course, you’re not any more, forgive me! – but you don’t even seem to be the older Theodor Gärtner, Gärtner the chemist or, if you like, Professor Gärtner from Chile.”
My friend interrupted me with a calm gesture:
“Well, you are right, my friend. Professor Gärtner from Chile is somewhere in the ocean – ” here he made a vague, expansive gesture which, however, seemed to make sense to me. “He was drowned quite a while ago.”
My heart seemed to stop for a moment: so it was true, I thought and I must have looked quite dumbfounded, for my friend suddenly laughed out loud and shook his head in apparent amusement:
“You needn’t worry, my friend. I think you don’t usually find ghosts enjoying a cigar and a glass of tea – an exceedingly good tea, by the way. But –” his face and his voice assumed their previous serious expression – “it is true that your friend Gärtner – – is dead.”
“Then who are you?” I asked in a quiet voice, but calm now, for the explanation of my mysterious condition seemed like a welcome liberation. “I repeat: who are you?”
As if to emphasise his real, physical existence, the “other” took another cigar from the box, rolled it and sniffed it appreciatively like a connoisseur, cut off the end, lit a match, rotated the end of the cigar in the flame and drew in the smoke with such simple and obvious relish that even a man more timorous than myself would have relinquished all doubts as to my guest’s bona fides. Then he stretched out in his armchair, crossed his legs and began:
“I said: Theodor Gärtner is dead. Now, you could take that for a not unusual, though rather highfalutin expression someone might use to say of themselves that, whatever the reason, they wanted to break with their past and become a new person. Assume for the moment that that is what I meant by it.”
I interrupted him with such vehemence that I felt surprised at myself:
“No! That’s not it! Your own inner being has not changed, God forbid! But it is one unknown to me; it is not that of Theodor Gärtner, the dedicated scientist, the sworn enemy of all miracles and mysteries, the man who would immediately start a tirade against fusty superstition and incurable stupidity as soon as anyone dared to start
