It lasted a long time, during which I alone heard the sound coming closer. It was a shrill, singing, solitary, high-pitched tone, like the ringing rim of a glass, but there was something unreal about it. You’ve never heard anything like it before, I said to myself. And this tone was directed at me; I stood in communion with it and had not the least little doubt that something decisive was about to happen to me. I had no thoughts of the kind that are supposed to come at death’s door, but all my thoughts were rather focused on the future; I can only say that I was certain that in the next second I would feel God’s proximity close up to my body — which, after all, is saying quite a bit for someone who hasn’t believed in God since the age of eight.
Meanwhile, the sound from above became ever more tangible; it swelled and loomed dangerously close. I asked myself several times whether I should warn the others; but let it strike me or another, I wouldn’t say a word! Maybe there was a devilish vanity in this illusion that high above the battlefield a voice sang just for me. Maybe God is nothing more than the vain illusion of us poor beggars who puff ourselves up in the pinch and brag of rich relations up above. I don’t know. But the fact remains that the sky soon started ringing for the others too; I noticed traces of uneasiness flash across their faces, and I tell you — not one of them let a word slip either! I looked again at those faces: fellows, for whom nothing would have been more unlikely than to think such thoughts, stood there, without knowing it, like a group of disciples waiting for a message from on high. And suddenly the singing became an earthly sound, ten, a hundred feet above us and it died. He — it — was here. Right here in our midst, but closer to me, something that had gone silent and been swallowed up by the earth, had exploded into an unreal hush.
My heart beat quickly and quietly; I couldn’t have lost consciousness for even a second; not the least fraction of a second was missing from my life. But then I noticed everyone staring at me. I hadn’t budged an inch but my body had been violently thrust to the side, having executed a deep, one hundred-and-eighty degree bow. I felt as though I were just waking from a trance, and had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. No one spoke to me at first; then, finally, someone said: “An aerial dart!” And everyone tried to find it, but it was buried deep in the ground. At that instant a hot rush of gratitude swept through me, and I believe that my whole body turned red. And if at that very moment someone had said that God had entered my body, I wouldn’t have laughed. But I wouldn’t have believed it either — not even that a splinter of His being was in me. And yet whenever I think back to that incident, I feel an overwhelming desire to experience something like it again even more vividly!
I did, by the way, experience it one more time, but not more vividly — Atwo began his last story. He seemed to grow suddenly unsure of himself, but you could see that for that very reason he was dying to hear himself tell the story.
It had to do with his mother, for whom Atwo felt no great love, though he claimed it wasn’t so. — On a superficial level, we just weren’t suited to each other, he said, and that, after all, is only natural for an old woman who for decades has lived in the same small town, and a son who, according to her way of thinking, never amounted to much. She made me as uneasy as one would be in the presence of a mirror that imperceptibly distorts the width of one’s image; and I hurt her by not coming home for years. But every month she wrote me an anxious letter, asking many questions, and even though I hardly ever wrote back, there was still something extraordinary about it; and despite all, I felt a strong tie to her, as the following incidents would soon prove.
Decades ago, perhaps, the image of a little boy had inscribed itself indelibly in her imagination — a boy in whom she may have set God knows what aspirations. This image could not thereafter be erased by any means; and since that long gone little boy happened to be me, her love clung to me as though all the suns that have set since then were gathered somewhere, suspended between darkness and light. Here it is again: that strange vanity that is not vain. For I can assure you that I don’t like to dwell on myself, nor as so many others do, to smugly stare at photographs of the person they once were, or delight in memories of what they did in such and such a place at such and such a time; this sort of savings bank account of self is absolutely incomprehensible to me. I am neither particularly sentimental, nor do I live for the moment; but when something is over and done with, then I am also over and done with that something in myself. And when on some street I happen to remember having often walked that way before, or when I see the house I used to live in, then even without thinking, I feel something like a shooting pain, an intense revulsion for myself, as though I had just been reminded of a terrible disgrace. The past drifts away as you change; and it seems to me that in whatever way you change, you wouldn’t do so if that fellow you left behind had been all that flawless. But for the very reason that I usually feel this way, it was wonderful to realize that there was a person who had for my entire life preserved this image of me, an image which most likely never bore me any likeness, which nonetheless was in a certain sense the mandate of my being and my deed to life.
Can you understand me when I say that my mother was in this figurative capacity a veritable lioness, though in her real life she was locked in the persona of a manifestly limited woman? She was not bright, by our way of thinking; she could disregard nothing and come to no major conclusions about life; nor was she, when I think back to my childhood, what you’d call a good person: she was vehement and always on edge. And you can well imagine what comes from the combination of a passionate nature and limited horizons — but I would like to suggest that another kind of stature, another kind of character still exists side by side with the embodiment that human beings take on in their day-to-day existence, just as in fairy-tale times the gods took on the forms of snakes and fish.
Not long after that incident with the aerial dart, I was taken prisoner during a battle in Russia. I consequently experienced a big change, and wasn’t so quick about getting back home, since this new life appealed to me for quite a while. I still admire the socialist system, but then one day I found that I could no longer mouth a few of the essential credos without a yawn, and so I eluded the perilous repercussions by escaping back to Germany, where individualism was just reaching its inflationary peak. I got involved in all sorts of dubious business ventures, in part out of necessity, in part simply for the pleasure of being back in a good old-fashioned country, where you can misbehave and not have to feel ashamed of yourself. Things weren’t going all that well for me then, and at times I’d say things were downright rotten. My parents weren’t doing so well either. And then my mother wrote me several times: we can’t help you, son; but if the little you’ll one day inherit would be of any help, then I’d wish myself dead for your sake. This she wrote to me even though I hadn’t visited her in years, nor had I shown the least sign of affection. I have to admit though that I took this for a somewhat exaggerated manner of speaking, and paid it no mind, though I didn’t doubt the honesty of feeling couched in these sentimental words. But then an altogether extraordinary thing happened: my mother really did fall ill, and it appears as if she then took along my father, who was very devoted to her.
Atwo reflected — She died of an illness that she must have been carrying around in her without anyone knowing it. One might suppose that it was the confluence of numerous natural causes, and I fear that you’ll think badly of me if I don’t accept this explanation. But here again, the incidental circumstances proved remarkable. She definitely didn’t want to die; I know for a fact that she fought it off and railed against an early death. Her will to live, her convictions, and her hopes were all set against it. Nor can it be said that a resolve of character overruled her inclinations of the moment; for if that were so, she could have thought of suicide or voluntary poverty long ago, which she by no means did. She was her own total sacrifice. But have you ever noticed that your body has a will of its own? I am convinced that the sum total of what we take to be our will, our feelings and thoughts — all that seems to control us — is allowed to do so only in a limited capacity; and that during serious illness and convalescence, in critical combat, and at all turning points of fate, there is a kind of primal resolve of the entire body that holds the final sway and speaks the ultimate truth.