themselves and talk of fiendish phantoms. You are thinking, how can a hand do something without its owner being aware of it? Have you never seen the tail of a lizard break off and writhe in apparent agony while the lizard stands by, in complete indifference? It is something like that.
The realm over there is just as real” (“or unreal”, he added in an aside) “as this earthly realm. Each on its own is only a half, only together do they form a whole. You know the story of Siegfried: his sword was broken in two pieces; the cunning dwarf Alberich could not forge it together, because he was a creature of the earth, but Siegfried could.
Siegfried’s sword is a symbol of that double life: the way to weld it together into one piece is a secret one must know, if one wants to be a knight.
The realm beyond is in fact even more real than this earthly one. The one is a reflection of the other, that is to say the earthly one is a reflection of ‘beyond’, not vice versa. Anything that is on the right over there” – he pointed to his goitre – “is on the left here.
Now do you understand?
That other man was my double. What he said to you I have only just now heard from your lips. It did not come from his knowledge, much less from mine; it came from yours!
Yes, yes, my lad, don’t stare at me like that, it came from yours! Or rather”, he ran his hand caressingly through my hair, “from the knowledge of the Christopher within you! Anything I can tell you, as one human animal to another, comes out of human lips and goes into a human ear, and is forgotten when the brain decays. The only talk you can learn from, is from talking to – yourself! When you were talking to my double, you were talking to yourself! Anything a human being can tell you is, on the one hand, too little, and, on the other, too much. Sometimes it comes too soon, at others too late, and always when your soul is asleep. And now, my son”, he turned back to his desk, “it’s time you got dressed. You’re surely not going to run around in your nightshirt all day?”
Chapter 4
Ophelia
The memories of my life have become like precious stones to me; when the time for observing them comes, and I have found a human hand I can bend to my will to write them down, I raise them from the watery depths of the past. Then, when I listen to the string of words as to a story from other lips, I feel as if they are glittering gems running through my fingers, and the past becomes present once more. To my eyes, they all gleam, the dull as well as the shining ones, the dark as well as the bright; I can look on them all with a smile in my heart, for I am for ever ‘dissolved with corpse and sword’.
But there is one jewel among them which I can only raise with trembling hand. I cannot play with it as I can with the others. It gives off the sweet, intoxicating power of Mother Earth which goes straight to my heart.
It is like alexandrite, a precious stone which is dark green by day but suddenly shines with a red glow when you stare into its depths in the still of night.
I carry it with me like a drop of crystallised heart’s-blood, ever fearful that it might dissolve into liquid once more and scorch me, if I should bear it close to my breast for too long.
For that reason I have shut away the memory of that span of time that for me bears the name of Ophelia and is a brief spring followed by a long autumn, as if in a glass ball in which lives the boy I used to be, half child, half youth. I look through the glass sides at myself, but it is like looking at a figure in a waxworks: it has lost all power to ensnare me with its magic.
And just as I see this image before me, awaking, changing, fading, so will I – a reporter who has left this world – describe it.
All the windows of the town are open, their ledges red with the geraniums in bloom; the chestnut trees that line the banks of the river are festooned with living, scented, white spring candles. The air
The realm over there is just as real” (“or unreal”, he added in an aside) “as this earthly realm. Each on its own is only a half, only together do they form a whole. You know the story of Siegfried: his sword was broken in two pieces; the cunning dwarf Alberich could not forge it together, because he was a creature of the earth, but Siegfried could.
Siegfried’s sword is a symbol of that double life: the way to weld it together into one piece is a secret one must know, if one wants to be a knight.
The realm beyond is in fact even more real than this earthly one. The one is a reflection of the other, that is to say the earthly one is a reflection of ‘beyond’, not vice versa. Anything that is on the right over there” – he pointed to his goitre – “is on the left here.
Now do you understand?
That other man was my double. What he said to you I have only just now heard from your lips. It did not come from his knowledge, much less from mine; it came from yours!
Yes, yes, my lad, don’t stare at me like that, it came from yours! Or rather”, he ran his hand caressingly through my hair, “from the knowledge of the Christopher within you! Anything I can tell you, as one human animal to another, comes out of human lips and goes into a human ear, and is forgotten when the brain decays. The only talk you can learn from, is from talking to – yourself! When you were talking to my double, you were talking to yourself! Anything a human being can tell you is, on the one hand, too little, and, on the other, too much. Sometimes it comes too soon, at others too late, and always when your soul is asleep. And now, my son”, he turned back to his desk, “it’s time you got dressed. You’re surely not going to run around in your nightshirt all day?”
Chapter 4
Ophelia
The memories of my life have become like precious stones to me; when the time for observing them comes, and I have found a human hand I can bend to my will to write them down, I raise them from the watery depths of the past. Then, when I listen to the string of words as to a story from other lips, I feel as if they are glittering gems running through my fingers, and the past becomes present once more. To my eyes, they all gleam, the dull as well as the shining ones, the dark as well as the bright; I can look on them all with a smile in my heart, for I am for ever ‘dissolved with corpse and sword’.
But there is one jewel among them which I can only raise with trembling hand. I cannot play with it as I can with the others. It gives off the sweet, intoxicating power of Mother Earth which goes straight to my heart.
It is like alexandrite, a precious stone which is dark green by day but suddenly shines with a red glow when you stare into its depths in the still of night.
I carry it with me like a drop of crystallised heart’s-blood, ever fearful that it might dissolve into liquid once more and scorch me, if I should bear it close to my breast for too long.
For that reason I have shut away the memory of that span of time that for me bears the name of Ophelia and is a brief spring followed by a long autumn, as if in a glass ball in which lives the boy I used to be, half child, half youth. I look through the glass sides at myself, but it is like looking at a figure in a waxworks: it has lost all power to ensnare me with its magic.
And just as I see this image before me, awaking, changing, fading, so will I – a reporter who has left this world – describe it.
All the windows of the town are open, their ledges red with the geraniums in bloom; the chestnut trees that line the banks of the river are festooned with living, scented, white spring candles. The air
Similar Books
