Elsa stands next to me, running her finger along the windowpane. I note that she has finely manicured hands.
“You’re not going to like my answer,” she says, pausing slightly. “And it’s not likely to help – but I frankly don’t know how to say all this. I myself thought they were making fun of me…”
She falls silent, then turns toward me, “Well, for example… Now your head is empty, but perhaps you remember what a guest house is?”
“A house for guests. A house… We are guests…” I repeat after her. “And so what?”
Elsa frowns. “Or, maybe, you remember what a hospital or sanatorium is? Or, perhaps, a colony for plague victims, quarantine…”
As she says all this, she stretches her fingers – first on one hand and then the other.
“Hospital… So that means it’s an illness, right?” I try to look into her eyes. “Or some sort of accident?” Then a shudder runs right through me. “A colony… What is this? An epidemic? Some sort of terrible virus?”
“Oh, fuck…” Elsa says and looks me in the face. Then she throws up her hands, “No, you’d better look at this!” She goes to the kitchen cupboard, opens the door and holds out a laminated printout.
“This was lying on the table when I arrived here three days ago,” she says angrily. “Can you imagine what it was like for me? You remember what the word ‘death’ means, don’t you?”
Yes, for some reason I do remember this word. It evokes a sense of choking, the clang of iron, bad blood. Something that erases all meaning, like a damp sponge on a blackboard. A place where the sound of the copper string is lost and fades.
“The farthest point” rushes into my mind. “A cradle beyond the border…”
“Tantibus, the eternal nightmare,” I mutter, but Elsa shakes her head.
The sign is spelled out in capital letters and no punctuation:
WELCOME
YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED CORPOREAL DEATH FOR THE FIRST TIME
“Nonsense!” I think to myself irritably and read the next lines out loud.
THE DEATH OF THE BODY IS NOT AS SIGNIFICANT
AS YOU MIGHT THINK
And then:
THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR
YOU ARE IN QUARANTINE
“There is nothing to fear,” Elsa repeats with a nervous laugh. “Over the last three days I’ve gotten used to the idea. Admittedly, I wasn’t that afraid in my old life either.”
We fall silent for a minute and look at each other. Then Elsa takes a step forward and stands next to me. I can sense her breathing, her warmth.
“You died back there,” she says quietly. “It is better to accept it; there’s no hidden agenda. I know this all sounds crazy but…”
To me, it doesn’t sound like anything. A complete absurdity, the dissonance of harmonics in the unbearably sharp copper sound. And – a premonition waiting nearby.
“In quarantine…” I murmur and move away from the window and Elsa. I sit down on the sofa and rub my temple with the palm of my hand while trying in vain to understand the meaning of the words. Then I say, “Nice joke,” and attempt to crack a smile. But the smile won’t form; my jaw is clamped tight.
Elsa waves her hand in annoyance. “I knew it! I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. This is no joke – out there you no longer exist. It’s all over – finita, forever, amen. You’ll remember soon enough, trust me. And then all your doubts will vanish away.”
I can feel myself getting cold; I’m shivering. Thousands of thoughts swarm in my head but my memory is empty. No, it’s not quite empty, not quite. Something is stirring within it, some small fragment, a trifle. Something is creeping up on me – gradually, slowly. And suddenly it rolls over me – a nightmare of premonition, an inescapable horror. Choking and chilling me like a huge wave…
I squeeze my eyes shut, maybe I even scream, drowning in an ocean of fear. An image flares up behind my retinas like a magnesium flash: a man on a motorbike in a black jacket with a rider sitting behind him, his face concealed by his helmet. And the dull sheen of steel – a pistol in an outstretched hand… I remember: next there will be a gunshot and instant, terrifying pain. I can sense with every nerve that this really did happen to me. Then something else emerges – a house in an olive grove and a woman in tears; with her is a balding man with a twisted mouth. A wild jungle and a large river. The streets of an old city that I somehow know to be Bern. And then everything fades; not even a hint remains. I am sitting on the couch, my face clasped in my hands, in a strange world that no one can imagine.
Then, little by little, my overwrought mind calms down. Somehow gathering the courage, I pry my eyelids apart. Elsa is standing next to me, looking at me considerately and shaking her head.
“I was exactly the same,” she says. “Also here in the living room, but sitting at the table, not on the couch. My first memory was of a helicopter flying over the sea, and a sudden explosion. Or rather, just the beginning of the explosion, a ball of flame, engulfing me from the right… Yes, it’s not easy to get used to at first. But now do you see that all this – the quarantine – is true?”
“Almost,” I answer curtly. The thought flashes into my head: I should probably do something. Maybe I should jump up, make a break for it, down the stairs and out onto the street? To disprove and expose this deception, if it exists, to simply check it out for myself, without Elsa. Without any laminated printouts or fake landscapes… But no, I don’t have the strength to act or even to contemplate doing so.
Elsa sits next to me, stroking my hand. I can barely feel her touch, but something passes between us all the same, a certain hint of intimacy. For a quarter of an hour we stare at the wall opposite us. Then she says, “Okay. I think you’ll soon get used to it, like I did. You are a man after all; it feels foolish to feel sorry for you. And now…”
Fixing her hair, she gets up and with a gesture invites me to follow her, “Let’s go!”
Obediently, I get up, and we go toward one of the two closed doors. “Here,” says Elsa, “this is your bedroom. I don’t want to leave you, but they warned me to avoid lengthy contact on the first day. So, off you go, stranger… who goes by the name of Theo. Get your head together and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
My head is spinning; flecks of light dance before my eyes. I really want to be left on my own. I nod, open the door and close it firmly behind me.
The bedroom has the same neutral light emanating from the walls and ceiling. To my surprise, it has no bed – only a soft armchair with a coffee table standing in front of it. On the opposite wall is a large screen. My room is more like a small cinema for private viewings than a bedroom.
I go up to the window; it looks out onto a small glade in the middle of a forest. A deer stands next to the trees, sniffing the air keenly. It doesn’t interest me – I recall that it’s only an image. A deceptive image – how many more like it are there?
“How many…” I mutter and suddenly feel an acute yearning for Elsa, from whom I have only been parted for a minute. My loneliness is as immeasurable and overwhelming as my recent fear. As if I’ve been left all alone, face to face with the boundless cosmos, the scale of which cannot be encompassed by human thought. I don’t want to remember, and thinking frightens me; my only wish is to have someone’s presence near – and I am barely able to suppress the urge to return to the living room or maybe even knock on my roommate’s door. Something prompts me not to do this. Having taken a turn around the room, I sit down in the armchair and am just about to close my eyes when the screen flickers to life; a human face appears on it.