Stories similar to this that you might like too.
Deserted Berlin in the early summer of 1946. The city is only a shadow now: tall buildings half-collapsed, whole streets where there are none anymore to look upon them. Every house has been picked clean by scavenging dogs and cats looking for anything edible—a bit of bone here, a scrap of clothing or shoe rubber there; all the odd bits that still can be picked up from rubble even after all these long months without people to eat them.
It’s warm outside as well, this morning, with a light haze rising up over the town and giving it an unearthly quality. Only occasionally does one catch a glimpse through windows of the otherworldliness found within.
The broken windowpane—the yellowing of old paper lying on an office desk as someone looks at the room around him/her and listens, too—these moments of wild beauty remind us what the world would have been like had those who lived inside not given way so easily to violence once Hitler decided that they were the enemy.
Then there was nothing more than dead, rotting bodies and great stretches of gutter litter waiting for someone’s bare hands to turn it all into black dust again…
In such a place as Berlin, I can’t believe anyone would risk coming out of doors except for some urgent need. But I am glad when she does appear from somewhere at the rear of my flat. As always, though, she is dressed all in black and her eyes seem very dark beneath that hood of her cloak, despite its deep blue color.
She walks briskly across the cobbled courtyard and reaches up and rips away part of my Venetian blinds. “Come outside!” she shouts at me above the sound of the distant war that comes drifting down from the east of our devastated land. Her hand gestures wide open: “You should see this!”
And just like that everything changes. In one swift gesture, I grab her up bodily before she runs back into the apartment behind me and drags her round onto the balcony to stare outward into another reality that is as close to heaven as most people will get after the passing of this life.
There stands a huge flock of seabirds taking flight right before our eyes—where birds shouldn’t ever fly! A few crows accompany their feathered fellows from another nearby tree branch, and all three groups disappear quickly high in the sky above, along with many others flitting among the upper branches of countless trees in the center of that great cemetery that forms the heart of Berlin.
Up above that grand tombstone stretching far out ahead of us, thousands and thousands of soaring birds are flying in perfect circles without once hitting each other, a miraculous sight that should take a great deal of convincing to show this skeptical generation, for whom seeing a crow fly alongside an airplane might prove enough to convince them that something strange and wonderful lies beyond every human endeavor, especially if there happens to be blood running freely from a wound in someone’s head during the experience.
“Go home!” I shout, catching her by the elbow firmly and dragging her backward off balance towards my own flat. With effortless strength, I throw her indoors and slam the door shut hard as we go both stumbling inside. For a moment I feel sorry for her; but then again, for myself? No. She must come and live here under my roof whenever she likes.
On second thought perhaps I will buy one of those large cardboard boxes she could sleep in and carry it around everywhere, letting people know who lives in there: a rare breed. And while this woman can accept death, any amount of suffering seems unbearable to her.
If I’d tried to raise someone like that child on the Island years ago he or she would likely have killed herself soon afterward. Yes, there’s little point trying to think about these things right now, when what she has shown me is so incredibly breathtaking.
As I fall across my bed later that day I realize that I have just witnessed something quite extraordinary; and that someone who wanted to deny life itself in the aftermath of World War II managed in one simple gesture to restore hope to a nation shattered almost beyond repair. Truly remarkable.
Thank God that there exist certain individuals prepared to be role models for the rest of humankind wherever they may find themselves, for indeed how else can the common man look upon this awful, terrible past and put his faith back into being?
This experience reminds me of what Friedrich Hölderlin had written about on the subject in ‘Ode To Joy,’ which now takes on yet more meaning for me: “Ah, those immortal spirits again,/Whose hearts rise up against us from time and space, / Who wave goodbye to all our earthly loves:/ Death, as the parting we know not too soon…” (If you want proof that this idea of death moving onward to freedom from even the physical realm was intended for human beings, well there is your evidence.)
Now my reason for living will never return, however much of the stuff of everyday life I collect from where I die in order to ensure that this small piece of dust has something to pass on to posterity when the final curtain falls. What a mistake!
How little did I actually care when I started reading that manuscript hidden under my floorboards! Wasn’t that why I’d gone to fetch her, to show her what I held in my hands before I left this world behind me forever? Only at first, the realization came upon me that perhaps the only thing wrong with what I’d found wasn’t necessarily that I’d stumbled over it before dying; rather it occurred to me that whoever wrote that story was obviously still alive…!
But of course, I couldn’t trust this impression when I saw so clearly that no author ever did emerge at the end of a work that had begun to be composed half a century prior. Yet at some level, I must have known for myself whether there were any facts that the characters I’d lived through were based upon real people, albeit not precisely who they appeared to be.
This brings to mind a remark made by Stendhal: “Man does not dream to escape but rather to live twice.” But how would I be able to explain it to anyone who hadn’t been present for my meeting with this woman on top of this very building—one which so directly pertained to the story she read about in her copy? I wonder if a conventional artist would have understood.
To celebrate having recovered so many parts of himself, once more the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven became obsessed with the music of Wagner after returning to Vienna. In particular, he relished composing in homage to scenes from The Flying Dutchman as recounted in that masterpiece’s libretto (since the composer felt most comfortable singing them himself).
Two of his best-known pieces come from the score for a stage production: Lohengrin (which tells the tale of an Austrian soldier pursued throughout several centuries for murdering one of his comrades) and Götterdämmerung.
Since it seems to me that much of what I’ve seen over the course of my life qualifies as the madness of the kind to which Wagner seems to give voice, maybe such an emotional reaction should be expected after contemplating certain experiences that involve a person inextricably bound up with events way out in history’s deep past, a dimension inhabited by demons who are supposed to inhabit the actual abyss below the surface of the ocean.
The other source of inspiration to this work of art came from Goethe, although I confess here that I haven’t heard much of what he wrote outside a few poems like ‘De Profundis’—perhaps because those works have remained among mankind’s most widely accessible creations to this date (while, after all, that poem describes how a poet chooses the grave over society’s condemnation!)
Actually, when thinking of Goethe the words uttered by an English philosopher and skeptic who became part of my life suddenly take on more meaning for me as I think back on my own experience with this work called Faust:
“You might consider your soul as you choose,
But hold it up to the light of reality,
And see the imposture of the thing,
Oh yes, its deformity is clear as light.”
With regard to this tale and the book mentioned at the start of this text, a comment by another German author comes to mind here: “What are stories but just shadows from books, shapes cast onto blank paper, no matter whether the story goes along well enough, or whether the prose lacks life?”
It makes me laugh—and yet also deeply sad. For Goethe wasn’t talking merely about writers, poets, or dramatists here, but the ordinary human being who encounters a shadow projected for him by others in their creation of the story, poem, picture, or sculpture—the same way it would occur to us that, in retrospect, everything of value in our lives usually turns out to be what was born of suffering in our earlier days, or even childhood.
As can easily become apparent looking at the lives of individuals and families whom fate conspires to sweep aside without so much as offering them a second thought, the painful moments from which all of creation emerges carry their very own narrative potential for drama, far removed as it often is from the happy ending most readers desire.
Such possibilities cannot help coming into existence not least because we’re always searching for ways to live with these enduring feelings and recollections within ourselves; because they’ll always haunt us like long-forgotten voices asking questions whose answers remain buried deep in a place called ‘nowhere’ because we keep discovering anew every single time that such dark experiences do make life worth living.
This is why one day if the time seems right to us, each of us finds the strength necessary to tackle that darkness headlong and dive down again beneath the surface to search there for the shadowy form of something in the abyss where death still rules unchallenged.
Of course, there are people who will find nothing of interest here and pass on straight to the next story instead… I’m sure of it! But if this text touches a chord somewhere in someone who feels troubled at heart and has been unable ever to put his questions to rest, then perhaps he won’t feel so alone anymore, either.
So long as we dare to confront our fears and emotions without running away or surrendering before whatever hellish situations we may encounter in this life, let the story reach anyone who wants to read it as it reaches us here today while acknowledging here once again that there can be no moral in all this—only a deep belief that exists between life and death and beyond death, just as long as it doesn’t run away and surrender before any hellish situation. What remains behind is never vanquished forever by anything:
And ever, ’twill come floating back along
Just as light breaks through the cracks in clouds
As the sun descends each evening:
Love waits everywhere, even underneath the mud,
For one day, we shall be brought home again,
So why should we despair? And after all,
We’ve already been told: Love returns on its own…” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
I wish all who may chance across this tale good reading and, above all else, a little courage and endurance—not to forget that story, as long as it lasts… and that only until it ends. After it does end, the true journey begins! Let me say goodbye to everyone now, and finish off this piece, like the story itself, on a high note, since it’s important that each of the characters from our tales reaches the most beautiful part of his or her final stage of growth and maturity: a small victory gained by anyone who can stop seeing the world around him—and, by implication, himself—as mere means to an end, or worse still, as a kind of puppet on strings controlled by various demons.
An unbroken chain of words and deeds has taken shape for me during this process of writing, as I started imagining the story and decided how the tale ought to eventually unfold and then finished my tale together with the books themselves.
Perhaps I’d better explain myself before anyone starts thinking the whole lot here had been written beforehand, at which point the whole endeavor could be described as somewhat wasteful and absurd! On the other hand, though, since it can sometimes turn out quite naturally that I know exactly how a book is going to turn out even when the writing gets underway, what am I supposed to think when the story itself actually proceeds to suggest everything I need to add and then finishes the tale almost in line with those early first impressions… especially so with regard to this particular series, which has such enormous potential lying dormant within them all that it might prove difficult even to identify their precise nature until things have reached their very final conclusion!
The one thing that remains a mystery is why I wanted to bring such a series to an end; maybe, knowing me, you may be able to hazard some guesses! But do remember, it really wouldn’t serve anybody’s purpose if any hints were given away here too soon—or rather, that shouldn’t necessarily be anybody’s concern since nobody asked me any questions anyway, as I hope readers’ expectations will turn out to have turned out to be, simply because they’ll take care to learn about the general situation only when they reach the latest volume themselves.
It seems appropriate for the final lines of this section, just as there was a concluding story attached to the earlier volumes, now let me write a few short sentences or two on how to read these volumes in case any doubts exist. These last moments are no doubt perfect opportunities to invite others to enter the enchanting realm inhabited by stories with so many charming inhabitants. I can promise you this: if you put your heart into discovering where each of them ends up, I’m sure you won’t regret it…