An Offering for the Dead Read Free Page B

room was young or old, blonde or dark. Yet if I think about it: why should, of all things, a woman's combed-out hair have preserved its color and character? It would have probably looked like a cold spider web. But those are secrets that I do not have to know.
    I believe that she was blond. I am thinking of the small, delicate canary feather that was inserted as a bookmark into a notebook. The notebook was lying on her small vanity table. It was so close to the outer edge that it was bound to fall any moment. Opening the page that was marked by the feather, I read:
    What I so often fear in deepest sleep
    Is that we might throw caution to the winds,
    Oh, pleasure sweet, that lures and tortures me;
    To die too soon, most terrible of thoughts.
    It could come in the midst of conversation
    Or outdoors, in the street: we could collapse
    If suddenly we met each other....
     
    Is that not strange? I do not mean that people wrote such verses and printed and read them. That too is strange, but I have already talked about it. I mean that to judge by these verses, the woman would have had to be dark. But perhaps that is only a male conjecture, and if another woman heard those verses, she would secretly make fun of them.
    I stood at her mirror and peered into it. There, I saw everything that was behind me and everything that surrounded me. But before me there was nothing, and I too was not in there. A human being would have cried out in shock: I am lost.
    I am thinking of a small lake high in the mountains over the border of existence, where things have always been the way they now are everywhere. The gentle deer avoided drinking from the lake, and the paths of the hunters did not lead there. The encircling peaks that were supposed to guard it acted as if it were not there and they gazed outward. Even their shadows paled and leaned away from the shores of the lake; for a different darkness flowed from its depth, striking everything dumb. In the valley, people said that the angels were afraid to fly across this lake because their reflections would be lost in it. And that once a star, weary of being only a star, had plunged from heaven to earth and sunk into the lake. That is a fairy tale. Such eyes existed too.
    Do you think I am dead? Oh well, that is a stupid question. And if you to whom I am speaking are a friend, then it is also a superfluous question. For it then makes little difference whether we are alive or dead; all that is important is that we speak with one another. But if you are a woman, then I can feel your hair at any time or graze your breasts with astonished fingers, and it will be obvious that I am alive. They used to tell us that the dead sometimes return, but they always knew that they had died, and they did not try to deceive anyone. On the contrary: they instantly warned us not to touch them, and, with a quiet gesture, they asked us to forgive the intrusion caused by their unseemly coming. They came only because they had missed something or because they were unable to part with a habit. Ah, it reminds me of the old pharmacist who had previously lived in my home. The room where I now had my bed used to be his dining room. He would come every night and go over to his sideboard to pour himself a jigger of his home-made schnapps. He made sure not to disturb me by, say, bumping into the rearranged furniture. But no matter how quiet he was and no matter how considerate, he could not prevent the floorboards from creaking slightly, and so I did notice him all the same. Later on, he gave up coming; apparently, it was no longer necessary.
    But as regards myself: If I was dead, why was I alone in the city? Where were the other countless dead who had died with me? Not to mention those who had died at some earlier point? What a teeming! No, I could not be dead. For only a living person could be as lonesome as I was. Earlier, I had had far more reason to ask myself whether I was really alive when I compared myself with others. Or