It was night again. I recognised it by its silence. A wild, sleepless night, full of self-disgust, which fled at the first glimmer of dawn. I felt myself leaving with it, piece by piece, my body jolted by muscular contractions. My nerves had become blunted; the moorings that had held me were coming loose. How many days had I been kept in this pit? Hunger and thirst made my delirium a premonition: I was dying … A funnel was sucking me into a swirling aurora borealis. I passed through a succession of rings of fire at dizzying speed. ‘Wake up, Kurt,’ said a voice from beyond the grave. ‘I don’t want to wake up.’ ‘Why don’t you want to wake up, Kurt?’ ‘Because I’m having a dream.’ ‘And what are you dreaming about, Kurt?’ ‘I’m dreaming of a world where joys and sorrows are forbidden, where a stone doesn’t mind being trodden on because it can’t defend itself or move away; a world so deeply silent that prayers subside, and a night so gentle that the day does not dare dawn … I’m dreaming of a motionless journey in space and time where I am safe from anxiety, where no temptation has any effect on me; a world where God himself looks away so that I can sleep until time stops turning.’ ‘What is this motionless world, Kurt?’ ‘My eternal kingdom in which I will be earth and worm, then earth and earth, and then infinitesimal dust on the breath of nothingness.’ ‘That’s not yet a place for you, Kurt. Go back to your fears, they are better than this sidereal chill. And wake up, wake up now before it’s too late.’ I woke with a start, like a drowning man thrusting his head out of the water at the last moment. I was in Essen, the town where I was born. In short trousers. Buried in the skirts of my mother who was taking me to mass. We were walking together along a narrow, colourless street. The church stood out against a gloomy sky. Inside, it was freezing cold. The rough vaults weighed heavily on the shadows, making the place of meditation as cold as a refrigerator. The penitent sat on rustic pews, praying. The pastor was preaching a sermon. I couldn’t remember his face, but his voice was clear in my memory. I was only six — I couldn’t remember or understand what he was saying and yet his voice emerged from deep down in my subconscious with amazing clarity and precision: ‘It is true that we are insignificant. But in this perfect body which age breaks down as the seasons pass and which the smallest germ can lay low, there is a magical territory where it is possible for us to take our lives back. It is in this hidden place that our true strength lies; in other words, our faith in what we believe to be good for us. If we can only believe, we can overcome any disappointment. For nothing, no power, no fate can stop us lifting ourselves up and fulfilling ourselves if we truly believe in our dreams. Of course, we will be called upon to go through terrible trials, to fight titanic battles that could easily discourage us. But if we don’t surrender, if we continue to believe, we will overcome any obstacle. For we are worthy only of what we deserve, and our salvation draws its inspiration from this elementary logic: “When two opposing forces meet, the less motivated of the two will fail.” So if we want to accomplish what we set out to do, let us make sure that our beliefs are stronger than our doubts, stronger than adversity.’
For a fraction of a second, the pastor’s face appeared to me, and Hans’s voice shook me like an electric shock: Stand firm. Every day is a miracle.
The hatch was raised. I covered my eyes with my hands to shield them from the sudden light and waited to recover my sight. Slowly, the configuration of the stones became clearer, then that of the walls. Something fell to the ground and rolled between my legs. It was an orange. A soft, battered orange, not much bigger than a prune. I picked it up greedily — I was aware that my gesture wasn’t exactly decent, but I didn’t care — and bit into it as if biting into life. Without peeling it. Without wiping it. When I heard it tearing beneath my teeth, when the acidity of the very first squirt of juice hit my palate, when the taste reconciled me with my senses — for all at once I recovered taste and smell and hearing — I realised that I was intact. I closed my eyes to savour every morsel. I think I took a good ten minutes, maybe a little more, to slowly chew the orange, without swallowing anything, to make the pleasure last as long as possible: a pleasure that was exaggerated of course, but which, at that moment, had the violence of an orgasm. I chewed it into little pieces, turning each piece over and over several times on my tongue until I had transformed it into a spongy paste that I began sucking again with delight; I had the feeling I was tasting a fruit that was like no other. When all that was left of it in my mouth was the distant taste of bitter pulp, Joma’s laughter brought me abruptly down to earth.
‘Stand up in there! The convalescence is over. Get out of there, and be quick about it, you wimp.’