He was on his way home. He was looking forward to a cold beer and a rye bread sandwich with Wurst. But something made him stop riding.
He dismounted, led the cycle a bit, went off the road and stood on the grass. It was full summer. The continental heat had set in, coming early this year. Hazy clouds rested on the mountains on the horizon. In the background you could hear the city noise.
Arno looked at the football field proper. In the nearest goal was a ball. Someone must have forgotten it. It was a well-pumped leather ball. Arno got the urge to kick some ball so he leaned the bike against a shed and went out into the field. He took the ball, kicked it out to the penalty spot and prepared for a goal shot.
He wore brown leather walking shoes. Otherwise, he wore a white lumber jacket, grey-blue suit trousers and a flat cap.
This is like in Karlstad in 1938, he thought. On that day in June when I stood with my cousin and took a shot on the goal. It’s 22 years ago now. Time flies…
He gathered himself for the action and kicked. The ball shot straight into the goal. The netting caught the leather ball which then fell to the ground, bouncing three times and rolling away to come to rest in the corner.
Arno remained at the penalty spot, standing still. He had no desire to retrieve the ball and shoot again. A cerise sky watched over the stillness of the day.
Arno was about to turn on his heels and retrieve his bike when a figure came walking across the grass. The man wore a red and yellow hood, a green tunic, blue breeches and boots. What on Earth now, Arno thought, Ringo Badger here…?
He had recognised his soul guide immediately. And in a gesture of greeting the other figure now put a finger to his hood, revealing an elongated face with a long, noble nose. It was a timeless, characteristic face with deep blue eyes.
Arno felt a little confused, even disturbed. Indeed, this was Ringo Badger, the soul guide whom he had met in the Dreamworld several times. How, then, could he appear in this world, the everyday world…?
“You’re Ringo Badger,” Arno said, “I’ve seen you in my dreams.”
“Indeed,” the Badger said, “It’s me. Your soul guide, your psychopompos. Now I’m here again.”
“But this is the real world,” said Arno. “On earlier occasions, I’ve met you in my dreams. Now you’re here, in Germany, Munich 1960…”
The Badger remarked that Arno called this world “the real world” and said:
“How real is it then, if I may ask? Rather, it’s the Dreamworld that’s real, the Astral World. Your dreams are real, fairy tales are real; we can relate to their essence. The everyday world in comparison is jumbled and chaotic.”
“OK, I get it. Interesting,” Arno said. “But this is reaclass="underline" you, out of my dream, standing here talking to me.”
“True, I’m here. I live here and there,” the Badger said. “I live in Dreamland, I live on the Earth Plane, I’m living on other worlds. I go with the mist and slide with the wind; I visit parallel worlds in the Omniverse reality.”
“Omniverse,” Arno said, “this sounds exciting. Can you take me there?”
“Why not. We’ve been there before, you and I: the Dreamworld, the Astral World is part of it. So join me on a tour of impossible worlds.”
Together they walked off over the grass field. Imperceptibly it transformed into a garden with walkways between beds of exotic flowers; they weren’t in Munich anymore.
“So how are we travelling, then, in this Dreamworld tour? By car?”
The Badger smiled ironically and said:
“You might want to fly? Wasn’t it fun to fly in a biplane over the burning land?”
He alluded to Arno’s dream in Aspeboda in 1946. Arno said hastily that he preferred to walk.
“Indeed,” the Badger said. “We’ll walk. We are already in Dreamland. We travel with the force of thought, so we can end up wherever we want. Right now you seem to be harmoniously set and the environment is therefore soft and mild. It’s a garden. This is the content of your inner mind today: a flourishing rose garden.”
“Fascinating,” Arno said and looked at the surroundings: A fountain, a row of poplar trees, flower beds, shrubberies and a gravel path lined with tanks – armoured giants – on plinths, forming a monumental row, a mechanised memorial.
Again: now they weren’t in Munich anymore. This wasn’t the football field. They were in Dreamland.
In the distance was a lake and beyond, in the distance, emerald green mountains, different from the darker Bavarian mountains. Among the mountains there were castles and villas, shining like silver.
“So this is my current psyche,” Arno said. “Nice. The tank monument kind of tops it off, making it into my land, my sort of paradise. Otherwise it would have been too, I don’t know, saccharine.”
“True. And even so, you can paint it still darker and visualize barbed wire and burning wrecks if you will, with attack aircraft whizzing across a red sky and all. Ragged cats, corpses, crying babies…”
“OK, I’ll keep that in mind. But I’m not into that right now. Tanks on plinths, yes, burning tanks, no thanks.”
“But in some way you belonged there, in the world of flames and ruins. In the war, this was the mental landscape you realised.”
“I guess,” Arno said. “And I’m proud of my service as a combat soldier of World War II. I have served, I did my duty.”
They went towards a cream-colored palace in the garden. Once inside, walking along a colonnade, the Badger said:
“Satisfaction, peace and a quiet paradise. You’ve come a long way from burning ruins, gunpowder and flying lead.”
“That may be,” Arno said. “But I was calm even as a soldier: ‘enraptured in tranquility,’ as Södergran said.”
“How apt…!” the Badger said. “We ascended fellows can actually admire you ordinary people. And Miss Södergran surely nailed it with that expression, ‘enraptured in tranquility’: aroused and calm at the same time, in action but somehow quiet. She was human and she saw an ontological truth. Christ said: ‘People worship gods; when will the gods begin to worship people?’ As a virtual demigod I feel like worshiping people when I hear lines like that one, the Södergran line.”
Arno appreciated the Christian wisdom but he had never read it in the Bible. The Badger then explained that it was in an apocryphal document, a Gnostic gospel.
They walked on through the palace’s galleries, halls and courtyards in a regal atmosphere, a serene but exalted atmosphere. They were kings, they were priests, they were in a timeless state of mind in a timeless dimension.
A hall was reached, a veritable art gallery. Sculptures occupied the middle of the floor surface. The walls were hung with paintings. The Badger went up to a large oil painting with golden frame. It depicted a knight with a lance, thrusting his weapon down the throat of a green dragon.
“How do you like it?” the Badger asked.
“Grand!” Arno said. “Truly heroic. An ideal for all of us. A determined man fighting his adversary.”
“Look closely,” the other man said. “Who’s the knight?”
Arno looked closer. The knight was wearing a helmet without a visor, known as a salad. You could clearly see the man’s face, you saw it in profile. It was slim with a rather firm chin and blue eyes to go with it.
“But that’s me…!” Arno said.
“Indeed, it’s you. You’re a hero. You’ve battled the demons. You seem to have defeated the enemy – yourself. That is, your obsessions. You have fought, but you haven’t let your emotions get the better of you. When the battle trumpet sounded you heeded the call. You did your duty. But you never hated your enemies. Free from concepts of success and defeat you did what had to be done.”