Emperor's Eyrie E-Book

Nadja Dietrich

• Herausgeber: LiteraturPlanet
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

An evening walk in the forest. Suddenly, a cry of pain comes from a hunting lodge. For the nocturnal hiker, this is the beginning of an odyssey that leads him via a psychiatric ward and a secluded mountain hut to a mysterious place called "Emperor's Eyrie". – A crime novel in diary form about right-wing nationalist networks and the manifold faces of reality.

Leseprobe

Nadja Dietrich

Emperor's Eyrie

Crime Novel

Literaturplanet

Imprint

© Verlag LiteraturPlanet, 2024

Im Borresch 14

D-66606 St. Wendel

literaturplanet.de / planet-literature.com

About this book: An evening walk in the forest. Suddenly, a cry of pain comes from a hunting lodge. For the nocturnal hiker, this is the beginning of an odyssey that leads him via a psychiatric ward and a secluded mountain hut to a mysterious place called "Emperor's Eyrie". – A crime novel in diary form about right-wing nationalist networks and the manifold faces of reality.

About the author: After living and working in Russia for a long time, Nadja Dietrich now lives as a freelance author in the Lorraine region in north-east France. The present novel is her third publication with LiteraturPlanet after Das russische Labyrinth (The Russian Labyrinth, 2008) and Murder in the German Parliament (2022, in German 2017). An interview with the author can be found on rotherbaron.com.

Cover picture: Abraham Pether (1756 – 1812): Pendragon Castle by Moonlight (National Trust / Wikimedia Commons)

Cover pictures for the four parts of the novel:

I. In a Psychiatric Ward: ID 8385: Head (Pixabay)

II. In the Mountains: Leonhard Niederwimmer: Mountain Hut (Pixabay)

III. In a Hotel Room: Armelion: Staircase at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (Pixabay)

IV. At the "Emperor's Forest" Hotel: J.M.W. Turner (1775 – 1851): Dolbadern Castle (1800); Wikimedia Commons

Foreword by the Editor

A few weeks ago, I received a letter from a notary. It informed me that one of the firm's clients, Mr. Carlo Iskalzi, had given instructions to send me the enclosed manuscript if he should pass away or disappear in an unexplained manner. In the latter case, a waiting period of six months from the day on which the disappearance became known was to be observed. As this deadline had expired, the letter stated, the manuscript in question would now be forwarded to me.

I had already heard about the case of the two missing people before. It had been quite spectacular, which is why it had been widely reported in the media. Mr. Iskalzi and his girlfriend had tied the knot after living together for some time. During their honeymoon on a cruise ship, they went ashore in Naples and did not return to the ship after a day trip. The search for them was unsuccessful and was eventually cancelled.

The mysterious disappearance of the couple gave rise to wild speculation. Many were convinced that the Camorra mafia must have had a hand in it, others rumoured that North African gangs were involved, while still others put the disappearance down to a simple swimming accident or a case of robbery with murder.

When reports appeared weeks later that the couple had allegedly been spotted in Malta, this again fuelled the rumour mill. Some now saw the couple as tax evaders who had only faked their disappearance, while others claimed that they had been included in a witness protection programme to bring mafia crimes to justice. After this wave of media excitement had died down again, I had finally forgotten about the case – until I received the letter from the notary.

What I don't understand is why the author chose me, of all people, as the potential recipient of his manuscript. I have never dealt intensively with incidents of the kind described by Mr. Iskalzi in his manuscript, nor am I personally acquainted with the author or his wife. The only possible explanation is that Mr. Iskalzi thinks he knows me better than I know him.

Nevertheless, I could not, of course, refuse the author's (posthumous?) request to arrange for the publication of his manuscript. This, however, proved to be more problematic than expected. Mr. Iskalzi was obviously particularly interested in publicising the truly outrageous events reported in his manuscript.The problem, however, is that the manuscript is a diary – and that is something quite different from a factual report.

While the latter concentrates on the key events, a diary also contains private, subjective statements, snippets of opinion and emotional snapshots, which can have a distracting effect. So I was confronted with the question of whether I should intervene editorially here, i.e. shorten the text.

In the end, however, I only decided to mark the various sections of the diary with place names and subheadings for the sake of clarity. In addition, I have italicised the documents attached to the diary in some places – but deletions have been avoided.

The main reason for my scruples in this respect was that much of what initially seemed superfluous to me revealed an underlying relationship to the events described on a second reading. Above all, though, I would have felt as if I were censoring someone else's life retrospectively.

After all, a person's life is not limited to a single story. Rather, it is the sum of the many stories it tells or of which it has become a part that makes up the unique, unmistakable signature of a concrete life.

So I hope that in this case, too, all the initially seemingly dissonant fragments of the self will ultimately flow together to form a harmonious melody.

I. In a Psychiatric Ward

1. The Path to the Psychiatric Ward

Thursday, November 3

Sometimes I stand in front of the plastic mirror next to the barred window and shout at myself. Most of the time I only make inarticulate noises – and even that only for a very short time, so as not to be grabbed again by strong arms, tied to the bed and sent with an injection into the twilight state in which all life is drowned here.

Occasionally, I also lower my voice, grasp the mirror with both hands and look myself straight in the eye. Breathing heavily, I then ask myself: "What have you done? Do you even realise where you've ended up? – In - the - psy - chia - tric - ward! As - a - mad - man!"

As I talk to myself, my eyes scan the landscape of my face: the valleys of my cheeks, the ridge of my lips, the brightly shimmering moss on my cheeks, the dark ravines under the blue lakes of my eyes, the maquis of my shoulder-length hair ...

No, it's a rather inhospitable landscape that presents itself here. I simply no longer feel like conjuring up the appearance of an inviting exterior on my face. Why should I? For whom? What's the point of radiating openness and friendliness in a hostile environment? Wouldn't I even be giving up the last bastion of self-protection with that? On the other hand, doesn't this deliberate neglect make me look more and more like the image that has been created of me here?

Yes, it's true, I've gone too far. I should have obeyed Esther. Time and again she warned me about Leppin, about the networks he uses to influence things in his favour. It was reckless of me not to let go of him, to keep trying to unmask him.

On the other hand, what else could I have done? Leppin was and is the only jigsaw piece that I could get hold of. Only through him can I get closer to solving the puzzle that I have so suddenly fallen into.

I would never have thought that someone like me, who has always detested hunting, would be so keen to find out something about a hunting lodge one day. But unfortunately, the lodge is the place where it all began, the stargate through which I was hurled into a parallel universe where everything looks the same as it did in my previous world, where I feel like the person I've always been, where nothing seems to have changed – except that the people around me see someone else in me.

It was clear from the start that I would only be able to clear up the accusations against me if I managed to track down the owner of the hunting lodge. That alone required quite a lot of digging. My enquiries to the citizens' office and the land registry office all came to nothing: "Sorry, data protection, only with judicial authorisation …"

Fortunately, Esther's boss, a lawyer, was a member of the relevant hunting League. That's how I finally got the owner's name. It was none other than Bruno Leppin, the well-known MP who had just announced his renewed candidacy for a seat in parliament.

I hadn't seen Leppin in the hunting lodge on the evening in question. It was therefore quite possible that he had nothing to do with the whole thing. So why, I thought to myself, shouldn't I just talk to him about it? Perhaps he would even be more open to my concerns than the police. Shouldn't he, as the owner of the hunting lodge, even have a special interest in the complete clarification of what had happened?

I should have known better ... Leppin turned out to be exactly the arrogant snob I supposed him to be from his appearances in parliament and on various talk shows. When I tried to confront him with my concerns after an election campaign event, he simply walked passed me.

"Please discuss this with my lawyer," he told me – and then hid behind his bodyguard wall. On a second attempt to get close to him, this wall already rose up in front of me before I had even reached Leppin.

So I finally resorted to a ruse: I phoned his office and pretended to be a reporter working for a well-known daily newspaper. This fake identity easily opened the door to the inner sanctum for me. "Yes," the lady on the other end of the line assured me with exquisite politeness, "Dr. Leppin would be happy to see you for an interview.He only asks you to submit the questions in advance."

As I wasn't planning to interview Leppin anyway, I simply reformulated his election programme into an interview sketch. Of course, this was accepted without objection. Then I disguised myself with a dark wig and rimless, slightly darkened glasses.

I actually managed to fool Leppin at first. When one of his mini-skirt hostesses led me into his office, he gave the supposed interviewer his most professional politician's grin. I waited until the little doll had served us coffee and biscuits, then I brought up the hunting lodge again.

I can still see him sitting enthroned behind his desk in his elegant office, trying to conceal his annoyance with smug amusement ... He demonstratively wiped a piece of lint off his suit, which, as always, had a fashionable touch of a folksy jacket, then grinned mockingly in my face: "I see – a fake interview ... Very clever ... But what if the interviewee doesn't cooperate? What if he simply calls the police to have the intruder taken away?"

"I just want to talk to you!" I defended myself. "I don't see what's so wrong with that. It's all just about a simple piece of information: I only want to know if you ..."

But Leppin wouldn't let me finish. "Mrs. Snyder," he croaked into the intercom, "our guest would like to leave. The interview is over."

A few seconds later, the office bunny entered the room accompanied by the bodyguard walls, and I was wordlessly escorted out. The next day, I received a letter from Leppin's lawyer, in which he forbade me from approaching his client any further under threat of various nasty things.

Thereupon Esther strongly advised me not to continue my campaign against Leppin. Instead, I should wait for the court hearing. After all, Leppin would have to give evidence there under oath. With the right questions, a good lawyer would get him to talk.

She was right, of course. But now I was unwilling and unable to back down. Leppin's patronising manner spurred me on even more to seek a confrontation with him. Now I no longer just wanted to confront him. Now I wanted to expose him. For me, his refusal to talk to me was a kind of admission of guilt. Why should he reject all attempts at dialogue so brusquely if he had nothing to do with the matter?

So my next step involved trying to arouse public interest in the incident. To do this, I specifically chose an election campaign event in a larger marketplace, i.e. in a place where more spectators could be expected. On the one hand, this would make it easier for me to approach Leppin unnoticed. On the other hand, I also hoped to achieve a greater impact this way.

Leppin basically always gave the same speech, each time using the same set pieces, which he only varied slightly and enriched with topical references. So I was able to choose a passage in advance that particularly suited my planned appearance.

And indeed, Leppin did not disappoint me. As always, he raised his voice at some point and warned with great pathos about foreign infiltration, the threat of terrorism and the loss of security of his highly esteemed "fellow citizens". From here, he moved on seamlessly to the protection of nature, which in his view was also threatened by the "invasion of foreign elements". Like the people, he argued, nature could only be protected by means of an uncompromising "eradication of the alien species" – which is why he advocated a rigorous expansion of hunting.

Right at that moment, I jumped onto the stage and held up a banner. On it, I had written in bright red letters: "This hunter is a murderer!"

A murmur went through the crowd. For a moment, Leppin was dismayed, but immediately regained his composure. "You see, ladies and gentlemen," he continued his speech, "that's exactly what I mean. Today, our democracy is threatened by elements who fight us with all means at their disposal – including violence! That is why today, more than ever, we need a firm commitment to the rule of law. Laws are there to be applied, ladies and gentlemen! With all rigour! If we do not fight extremism resolutely today, we will lose the fight against it tomorrow!"

Applause broke out, accompanied by murmurs of approval. I myself had long since been overpowered – this time, however, not by Leppin's bodyguards. It was a public event, so I was taken away by two policemen who, it seemed to me, were proud to present themselves as staunch defenders of the rule of law.

It was a complete disaster. I had achieved the opposite of what I had expected from the action. Instead of embarrassing Leppin in front of the whole world, he had managed to turn me into a kind of election campaign stunt and misuse me as an advertising tool for his law-and-order crusade. I was the one who was presented as a threat to public order – I had made a fool of myself.

This distortion of the facts completely threw me off balance. Therefore, when I was brought before the examining magistrate, I felt like losing the ground under my feet.

Moreover, what was called an "interrogation" was actually more like a recitation of the ten commandments. In every question I sensed an unshakeable belief in a reality that was not mine – and in which I consequently could not bring up the facts that would have explained my actions.

As a result, the brief interrogation ended in a scandal. I freed myself from the guards and stood directly in front of the judge. "Are you trying to make yourself an accomplice of this murderer?" I snapped at him. "What kind of justice is that? You're destroying the rule of law where you claim to protect it!"

When the guards tried to handcuff me in response to my stage-worthy performance, I completely lost my composure. I raged, I screamed – and even smashed a window pane in my desperation. Although I had no intention of jumping out of the window – after all, the hearing room was on the sixth floor and I was by no means tired of living –, my behaviour was interpreted as a suicide attempt.

This forced me to have my soul dissected by a psychiatric expert. He diagnosed a "partial loss of reality, combined with delusions of persecution and suicidal tendencies".

This was my ticket into this realm, the realm of the darkened mind, the cave world of those who cannot or do not want to be enlightened by the light of the one and only reality that is accepted outside this mental prison.

2. Expropriated Reality

Sunday, November 6

The longer I have to stay in this institution, the more I begin to doubt whether the images in my head correspond to reality. It's like looking as a colour-blind person at a painting together with 99 other people who are not colour-blind. At some point you will realise that you don't see the colours as they are in reality.

No, the comparison is badly chosen! The colour-blind person's deviating perception is based on an organic anomaly, which can be proven scientifically if the person in question insists on the "truth" of the deviating perception.

Furthermore, this case is only about a tiny nuance of perception. Blue or green, what difference does it make! From me, by contrast, all reality has been stolen, I have been mentally expropriated, so to speak, and now find myself in a reality-less space, alone with the images in my head: a castaway on the sea of the mind, gradually drowning in his inner storm surges.

After all, the colour-blind person can also take comfort in the fact that "reality" is something very relative: Do the flies see reality incorrectly because they see it differently? I, however, am not concerned with an epistemological problem, but ultimately with a question of life or death. If what I have seen is true – and why should I doubt it? –, there is a sadistic gang of murderers roaming around somewhere, just waiting for the opportunity to commit another dastardly crime.

Perhaps the murderers have in fact already struck again since my arrest. If what I assume is true – that the perpetrators cover up the traces of their crimes with an eerie (because reality-distorting) meticulousness –, nobody can know what other bloody deeds they have committed in the meantime.

The worst thing is that I'm really starting to feel like I'm losing my mind. The diagnosis of "mentally ill" is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's literally driving me crazy that I can't talk to anyone about what happened to me – or rather, that I can only talk about it as if it were the delusions of a junkie.

It's not just the fact that people think I'm crazy that torments me. Since my inner images are denied osmosis with external reality, they have developed a momentum of their own within me that eats away at me from the inside out like a mental cancer. The images proliferate, they constantly give birth to new images that take on grotesque forms in my dreams and mix with long-forgotten thoughts, feelings and events.

As a result, I emit these guttural screams at night, which make those suffering from nightmares seem like the ghosts that haunt them. Time and again I wake up breathing heavily and drenched in sweat and have to ring for the night nurse to get a sedative. A glass of wine would probably have the same effect, but of course you can't get that here.

At the same time, I know very well that the nurse will report the incident to the therapist – after all, she is obliged to record every move in a chart. Thus, at the next therapy session, I will once again be confronted with this fake compassionate I-do-understand-you grimace, which stares at me from all sides like a distorted mirror image here.

This has already made me freak out heavily a few times. Although my outbursts emphasise my status as a lunatic, they are one of the few freedoms you have when you've been officially classified as mentally ill. And since I can't change anything about the image that has been created of me here anyway, I can also benefit from the advantages that my situation entails. So sometimes I throw the coffee cup against the wall – it's only made of plastic, but when it's full it still causes quite a ruckus – or I let out wild jungle screams until the nurse comes to calm me down.

Admittedly, I only do this when Madeleine is on duty. She's one of the more progressive types of carer, who first tries out gentle methods before resorting to tablets and injections. Moreover, there is something distinctly maternal about her. With the soft fat pads that surround her body like cushions of air, she feels like a warm bed of moss that makes you forget the insidiousness of the world for a few moments. That's why it simply makes me feel good to be hugged by her from time to time.

Then I sigh from the bottom of my heart, while she strokes my head like my mum used to do when I fell to my knees riding roller skates. I think she knows exactly what I'm trying to achieve with my outbursts – even if she would probably prefer me to articulate my wishes in a different way.

But in the social environment we are in here, my outbursts are the only code that allows me to draw attention to my need for closeness. I can't just say to her: "Oh please, give me a little hug" – that's just not acceptable in this setting.

3. Esther and "Caterína"

Tuesday, November 8

A visit from Esther. She asks me how things are going with the new therapist. "Badly", I say, but she praises me anyway for not refusing therapy anymore. In her view, I am showing my goodwill this way, which could increase my chances of being released. It annoys me that she sees things so "reasonably", but I suppress my anger and say nothing.

It would indeed be unfair of me to blame her for her pragmatic attitude. After all, it was only thanks to her negotiating skills that the head of the institution agreed to my request for a female therapist.

It's not that I have anything against male therapists in principle – but I have all too often experienced that the direct encounter between two men can lead to a kind of cockfight in which one tries to prove his superiority to the other. And since I would be at the mercy of the therapist's authority, it wouldn't even be possible to have a fair discussion in this case. Instead, I would probably simply be expected to make a gesture of submission.

Of course, this can also happen with a female therapist. But at least there is no male competition here. If I'm lucky, it will be replaced by a sympathetic understanding that is far more likely to improve my situation.

Whether this is the case with my new therapist, however, seems questionable to me. Her name is Katharine and she pronounces her name in Italian – "Caterína". In my opinion, the less melodious English version suits her far better, though. In any case, the first meeting with her didn't exactly make me feel hopeful.

Not only does the fundamental problem that therapy reinforces the status of being a nutter remain unchanged. The psychologist attitude of the know-it-all, who claims to see through the deeper motives behind the thoughts and actions of other people, is also particularly pronounced in Catherine. In combination with her outwardly buddy-like manner and her informal tone, which are intended to give the counterpart the impression of talking to a good friend, this behavioural pattern seems downright sneaky to me.

Esther's helpless smile when I fall into a sombre silence after her comment about the therapy ... Sometimes I'm afraid that I'm gradually becoming estranged from her. The distance between her reality and mine is simply too great at the moment.

Of course I know that our role allocation is purely coincidental. If things had turned out even slightly differently, I would now be the one out in the "real" world looking for tactics and strategies for solving the case and freeing Esther, while she would be squeezed into the corset of madness and would react with corresponding impatience to my carefully thought-out approaches.

True, Esther is not as impulsive as I am, so the judge might have treated her more leniently than me. But ultimately, my behaviour in court wasn't the only reason I ended up here. The decisive factor was rather the doubt about my ability to distinguish between internal and external images. And in this respect, Esther would probably have shipwrecked just as much as I did. If she had remained calm, it would probably have been interpreted as "apathy" – which would have just been another way of confirming the mental illness hypothesis.

The thought that Esther is now searching for traces of the criminals all by herself – and that I even have to support her in this because it's the only way to rehabilitate myself – doesn't exactly reassure me either.

I know that the impression of fragility created by Esther's somewhat brittle voice and her slender face with the deep-set eyes is deceptive. In dicey situations, she has often shown more courage and acted more level-headedly than me. Nevertheless, she would probably be helplessly at the mercy of perpetrators like those who committed the crimes I witnessed.

This links the states of anxiety in which I toss and turn in bed after my nightmares in a frightening way with external reality: Do the criminals feel safe enough to let Esther and me stay alive? Or are they just waiting for the right moment to get rid of us?

4. In the Forest of Memories

Friday, November 11

I have no choice – I have to recapitulate once again what has happened; dive once more with full awareness into the sea that has engulfed me.

What is it that is keeping me from doing so?

Is it perhaps too boring for me to spend my time in my virtual hermitage doing the same things that dominate my everyday life anyway? Am I afraid of giving up even the last shred of freedom, of chaining myself completely to what has brought me to this place?

After all, I've already reported what I've seen countless times to the police, in discussions with the lawyer, the psychiatric assessor and in court. And the embarrassing conversations that I am forced into here under the label of "therapy sessions" are about nothing else either.

Nevertheless, maybe if I venture into the forest of memories on my own once again, I can discover something that I have overlooked so far under the eyes of others.

But is that even possible here – doing something unobserved? Perhaps this is my biggest obstacle on the way to a dialogue with myself: this feeling that someone is constantly looking over my shoulder, even now, while I'm sitting at this rickety table, trying to organise my thoughts.

Because that is precisely the aim of all the group and individual and two-person therapies, of all the sophisticated exercises and tests and meditations that are supposedly carried out "for my own good": All of this is intended to penetrate me, to turn my innermost being inside out and dissect it until only the empty shell of my ego remains. This is then filled with an instant soul with which I can be safely released into freedom – into a freedom that would no longer be freedom for me.

On the other hand, even if someone were to search my room in my absence and come across these notes – what would they reveal? So far, there's nothing in them that I wouldn't also say under other circumstances, albeit perhaps in a different form. Thus, I would hardly have any disadvantages from this. And even if I did: I certainly can't fall any deeper than the abyss I'm in.

So is it rather inner resistance that is preventing me from travelling through the shadowy world of yesterday? Am I perhaps afraid that my memories might no longer obey me and take on a life of their own, alienating me from my own past?

That's what happens when you are constantly persuaded to live in a reality that doesn't exist! This has given rise to a spirit of doubt in me, which ultimately causes me to question the truth of everything I have experienced.

In fact, this suspicion towards myself goes even deeper. It leads me to doubt my own ability of perception, to question my entire existence, as if it were just someone else's dream that would shatter as soon as this someone woke up.

But perhaps precisely this possible rebellion of my memories against my presumed sovereignty of interpretation is an opportunity for me. Isn't it exactly this independent life of the past, its way of constantly changing its forms, according to when and from which perspective it is viewed, that I have to focus on? Couldn't it be precisely this that paves the way to freedom for me?

However, those who immerse themselves unreservedly in their memories can become overwhelmed by them very quickly. And that is perhaps my greatest fear: coming across things that I have previously hidden from myself, discovering areas of League that have remained hidden until now.

Sometimes it's actually not the memory images themselves that trigger this insatiable mental restlessness. The danger often arises more from the memory gaps, these chasms into whose eternal night the travellers through the past threaten to fall.

5. The Hunting Lodge

Sunday/Monday, November 13/14

Midnight ... Now and then shuffling footsteps in the corridor, a nightmare-born scream, the lurking drip of the tap mingling with the throbbing of blood in my temples ... A feeling as if an army of the undead were inexorably approaching me, hidden under the cloak of night, on horses whose hooves are barely audible in the padded darkness ...

Yes, it's an uneasy, almost eerie atmosphere that you sink into here if you don't escape the night's palace asleep, but wander through it with your eyes open.

How different were the night-time walks through the forest that I used to undertake regularly in the past! Of course, they were also eerie in a certain way. The haunting call of the owl, the crackling of rotten twigs when a deer roams through the undergrowth, the scurrying of mice under the withered leaves ... That, too, carried me off into another world in which I was not at home – which also triggered a feeling of "unworldly" creepiness in me.

The only difference is that in the forest, I always enjoyed the feeling of strangeness. It helped me to gain distance from myself, to adopt new perspectives, to look at the world from a different angle. So the walks were a kind of refreshing cure for my mental freedom.

This was particularly important when I was working on a new painting. Only by turning away from the external images could I pave the way to my inner images and find a form for them. Even when I tried to depict real objects, I needed this kind of inner contemplation in order to develop appropriate ways of representing them. Only in this way could I give shape to my subjective sensations and perceptions, in other words, bring out that special view of reality that distinguishes a painting from a simple photograph.

Esther, though, had little sympathy for my night owl nature. Time and again she tried to dissuade me from my lonely strolls through the forest at night. In her view, this was far too dangerous. How quickly I could get lost in the forest at night! And how easily I could be attacked there!

In response, I used to ask her if anyone knew about my preference for roaming through the night. If not, there was no danger at all! Sure, if I were walking through a dimly lit city park, things would look different. There, I could well attract pickpockets and other occasional thieves. But in the woods at night, where nobody goes for a walk because an irrational fear makes most people shy away from the dark? Who could pose a threat to me there?

Esther's typical answer included an allusion to the hunters: "And what about the pistoleros of the forest? What if one of them discovers you with his infrared-boosted war machine? After all, you've never made a secret of your aversion to hunting! So you would be a much fatter prey than the usual game animals, a hunting trophy of a completely different kind!"

She was probably not entirely wrong with this fear. I did indeed have to be wary of the hunters. That's why there was something I never revealed to Esther: The danger she warned me about was more real than I admitted to her – for one of my circular routes led right past a hunting lodge.

Since the lodge was at the intersection of several paths, it was almost impossible to avoid it. I would have had to go through the undergrowth to get round it. But then I would have run the risk of getting lost in the dark. Moreover, I could have got into even more trouble with the hunters if they had caught me off the hiking trails. In this case, I might even have ended up the victim of a "hunting accident".

Most of the time, though, the shutters of the lodge were closed anyway, and the den of the human predators only appeared as a silhouette that immediately sank back into the darkness. Only rarely did I notice any life in the hut. This, however, could often be heard from afar. Apparently, the lodge was mainly used by the hunters to celebrate past prey and to warm up for future prey.

Actually, men who rely on the potency prostheses of guns should be rather meek. Strangely enough, however, the opposite is usually the case – especially when the prosthesis wearers are encouraged in their pride of their potency surrogates in the company of others. Then they feel completely unbeatable and are all the more willing to demonstrate their irresistible male power to those who no longer enjoy the support of the primeval horde.

So on the days when the lodge was full of life, I sometimes had to think of Esther's warnings after all. Involuntarily, I then quickened my pace and tried to avoid the piercing gaze of the brightly lit windows. However, the men were far too preoccupied with themselves to look out for people walking past their lodge – which rarely happened at night anyway.

Over time, the hunters' den therefore lost its threatening character for me. Although my heart still began to beat faster when the unmistakable melange of booze rumbling, turgid male chants and gents' jokes reached my ears, I paid no further attention to all of this and simply walked straight past the hut.

But then came the evening when everything changed. The evening on which I took the path that led me to this chamber. The evening that changed everything: my life, myself, the others, the whole world ...

At first, all I could hear was the usual cheering, albeit perhaps a little louder, a little more insistent than usual. The pistoleros are probably already on their second bottle, I thought to myself. Perhaps they had a special reason to celebrate.

I was already halfway past the lodge when I suddenly had the impression of hearing another noise that stood out clearly from the rest of the rumbling. Something like a desperate whimper, the wailing of a wounded animal.

My first reaction was to convince myself that I must have heard wrong. In the darkness, I told myself, my senses were probably over-sensitive to every sound and, due to the lack of a real equivalent, distorted it into a dream image that had nothing to do with reality.

Shortly afterwards, however – I had already left the lodge behind me –, the whimpering suddenly swelled into a muffled scream. Now I could no longer ignore the perception. Something terrible was going on in the hut. Could these hunters be a special kind of animal abusers who were living out their sadistic tendencies here, under the double protection of the forest and the night?

No, I couldn't just turn a blind eye to this. I had to find out what was going on inside the lodge. Carefully, I stalked towards the dark wooden palace, now a hunter myself. I crouched down under one of the windows, consciously controlling every movement of my muscles, just like in the tai chi workshop I had once attended for Esther's sake.

The window was tilted so that I could easily hear what was being said inside. The panes were steamed up from the men's breath. This meant that I couldn't easily be spotted when I peeked inside the lodge. At the same time, however, the figures inside were only vaguely recognisable to me.

A knock at the door – it's Claudia, the nurse on night duty. She asks if she should bring me a cup of tea. She's seen a light in my room, so she assumes I can't sleep. It's always the same cliché: the lunatic tosses and turns in his bed, plagued by the nightmares of his dark soul ...

Okay, I shouldn't be unfair. I'm sure Claudia only means well by me. But that's exactly the problem here: Everyone means well by me because everyone thinks that I don't know what's good for me. This constant paternalism disguised as care is driving me mad (said the madman ...).

For me, it's just been good to sit here at the table and indulge in my thoughts, and it doesn't do me any good at all to feel like I'm under observation.

On the other hand ... As I sit in front of my writing pad now, steaming lemon balm tea in hand, I can clearly feel the lines blurring before my eyes. Maybe I should go to sleep after all. I might as well continue my journey into the past tomorrow. I probably won't find the lifebuoy that will get me out of my misery anyway.

6. The Therapy Confession

Monday, November 14

After breakfast, therapy session with "Caterína". Claudia told her about my writing work at night. Would I like to talk about it?

My gloomy silence is answer enough. The therapist withstands it for a few endless seconds, then indignantly changes the subject: "Well, let's pick up where we left off last time."

She flicks through her notes, then lifts her head again and looks at me with a professional smile of encouragement. "Oh yes, we talked about your father. About his obsession with cleanliness, his taciturn nature and his emotional coldness, which was so troublesome for your mother that she once even expressed the suspicion that he was more attracted to his own gender ..."

Good Caterína makes a somewhat frosty impression today. Maybe it's because of the offence I've caused her with my silence. Or maybe my family history is simply too boring for her. Sometimes I almost feel like she's thirsting for abuse and violence, for trauma and nightmares. She just can't deal with an ordinary, bourgeois family setting. The insanity of normality simply doesn't fit into her concept.

I am more and more tempted to fulfill her expectations. To tearfully recount the fateful night, the darkest hour of my life, when my father suddenly dropped all his masks in front of me: the night when I suddenly felt his cold sceptre throbbing against my bottom. Of the tyranny that this sadistic tyrant exercised over me, his defenceless victim, from then on. Of the monster's silent complicity with my mother, who didn't dare to rebel against him. Of my nightmares, in which all the Caesars of history raped me until Genghis Khan rode to my rescue on a golden horse from the East.

Wouldn't that be an interesting constellation for a psychologist? I bet she would ask for a more detailed description of the golden horse!

Unfortunately, however, the reality is much more mundane. That's why this regular confession ritual makes me so angry. It's like in the Catholic Church: every sheep in the flock of believers has to groan under its burden of sin, otherwise it wouldn't be a sheep and wouldn't need divine help. It constantly sins against its neighbours, it looks at them deceitfully, it eats their food right under their noses, it disregards the boundaries set for it and explores other sheep's pastures.

The only possibility of redemption is the regular confession of having left the paths paved by God, combined with the solemn vow to follow the divine rules again in the future. Anyone who refuses to do so is threatened with eternal damnation. With ostracism. With exclusion from the flock. Only absolution paves the way back to the reality set by God – which of course gives father confessors a unique power.

So there is no point in fighting against the brand with which I am marked here. Anyone who has to stay in this place is in an intermediate world, in a kind of purgatory. And if God throws you into purgatory, he will probably have his reasons for doing so.

That is why I am expected to obey the rule of my mother confessor, the dragon-slaying Caterína, whose task it is to help me triumph over the dark demon within me – over that eternal adversary of divine truth who, with his deceitful smoke and mirrors, makes me believe in the existence of another, godless reality. The longer I deny the sacrilegious workings of this demon, the more clearly I demonstrate that he has a firm grip on me; the more worried the dragon-slaying therapist shakes her head; the longer I have to burn in purgatory.

This is the unwritten code of interpretation by which all thoughts and actions are measured here. The worst thing for me is when it is used to judge that fateful evening when, without realising it, I was cut off from the world around me.

I therefore try to avoid this topic as much as possible. Unfortunately, though, this proves to be extremely difficult. After all, it is part of my penance to have to atone for what I have accused others of.

7. Underwater Worlds

Wednesday, November 16

It's strange ... When I think back to the evening when I crouched in front of the window of the hunting lodge in the dark, the first thing I see in front of me is a public swimming pool. A swimming pool at the height of summer.

I'm standing in the lukewarm chlorinated water, surrounded by a soundscape of splashing, screeching and laughter. I take a deep breath, then pinch my nose with my fingers and bend my knees until the waves crash over me. I slowly count down the seconds as I – so it seems to me – suck the air out of my puffy cheeks.

"Bet I can stay underwater longer than you?

---ENDE DER LESEPROBE---