‘Yes, sir.’
‘So do you believe that we are indeed able to divide the wheat from the chaff? To detect rye mould even in new sprouts?’
‘Such is our task …’ Julian replies.
‘Yes, our task. But a person has some tasks he is sure he can do and is called to do and others which he may feel have nothing at all to do with him. Well, let’s put that aside for now. Why don’t you take a nap? We have a great deal of work to do in the next few days,’ the prince-bishop says and looks out of the window. ‘Not long ago
certain writings came into my hands in which the author argues that nature behaves solely and exclusively in accordance with the natural laws created by God, and that miracles do not exist and are, in truth, merely unusual phenomena which the finite mind of man is unable to grasp. It may well be true that miracles don’t exist, but that nature never goes mad, well, I’m not convinced. One moment it can be benevolent and calm and the very next run riot, whether in keeping with nature’s laws or opposed to them – and the very same thing can happen with human nature. Everything is fine and lovely and then, in a single moment, it skids off track … What do you think, Julian?’ the prince-bishop asks, turning again to his travelling companion. ‘Ah, yes, enjoy your little catnap. When we arrive in the late afternoon, there will be a splendid supper waiting for us. Count Friedrich is a generous and hospitable man, and he will be so even more when he hears of the nature of our visit. Hahaha, wherever you turn there’s always some sort of nature. Just one more task and my work is done. Not here … somewhere else … not as I am now … merely similar …’
Slowly, in a syncopated rhythm with the accent on the first, fourth and sixth beats, the carriage moves across the softly illuminated landscape, as the hand sticking out of the window alternately squeezes into a fist and opens again. The person opposite, his lips slightly parted, is asleep and gently snoring, unaware, the prince-bishop thinks, of how quickly his tender, youthful features will be wrinkled by time. He is unaware that man’s greatest enemy is not the swarm of dark forces hurtling through the Holy Roman Empire and flying across the Hereditary Lands of Inner Austria; he is unaware that man’s worst enemy is not the devil, who leads men and women into temptation and sin, nor the Protestant preachers who serve communion in both kinds, nor the Turks, who for centuries have been striking terror into the hearts of the local populace, nor the naked madwomen who rub their exposed loins on broomsticks, nor the simple folk who cook up potions and creams for the populace, who can’t afford even barber-surgeons let alone real physicians. No, man’s greatest enemy is time. Tossed into its mill at birth, man kicks and struggles, but all in vain. Against so powerful a foe the battle is lost before it starts – the cruel and voracious god Chronos, who sires children only to chomp them in his teeth and, in the end, whether that end comes quick or slow, he grinds them up, swallows them whole or spits them out. And young Julian, his milky-white hands swaying in the lap of his cassock, is still at an age when he believes everything is possible. Such as changing the world for the better. Yes, passion, visions and utopias – these, too, are part of that ancient deity’s dark plan, which is why a creature flush with the juices of life is so succulent, right until the juices start drying up and disappear altogether. And in the end – well, what about the end? Most people believe that only the body ends, after which there is another life. Some, a very few, believe that everything begins and ends with the body. We know what we believe – or could it be the other way around, and we believe what we think we know?
The carriage trundles on in its syncopated rhythm across the landscape, above which a dark cloud is gathering, the prince-bishop notices. Is it going to rain? he wonders as he leans slightly out of the window and knocks on the carriage frame, but the shape of the coachman sitting in front of him makes no response. It might rain, the prince-bishop thinks, or it might not. Does it matter? Did he ask the question for no particular reason, without really being interested in the answer, without thought? Is there not, perhaps, in many questions, statements and comments a certain automatism unworthy of man, who as a spiritual creature is supposed to possess free will and the ability to make his own decisions? Are we really little more than those mechanical toys that move their limbs, the ballerinas that spin when you wind them up, the metal dogs that wag their tails and yap at you?
He sticks his arm out of the window, extending it all the way, as if trying to check for rain. As if, he thinks, but is this really what I wanted to do, or did I stick my arm out and only then, after a delay, realize something that my body knew before me? He rotates the palm of his extended hand towards himself and feels the cold spray of tiny droplets in the air. He then spreads his fingers apart a little and is looking through the gaps when, suddenly, a strange scene appears to him. A miracle, perhaps? What would those writings say, which he had recently been reading?
In a meadow in front of the forest’s edge he sees an enormous stag with many-branched antlers wobbling forward as it tries with its last strength to keep its balance. The animal falters as its knee gives way and then, with all the strength it can muster, lifts itself again, and then again it lurches forward and rights itself, with ever greater difficulty. Had there been a shot? He had heard no bang. But there is a dim buzzing noise that pierces the landscape, a sound he does not recognize. Thunder, maybe a storm, he thinks, when he notices that the landscape is bathed in a metallic light, no longer orange but a dense saturation of dark red and leaden grey. What a sight! What a magnificent, majestic sight! And suddenly, the moving canvas of the landscape is rent, and in the distance, beyond the little forest in front of which the animal is struggling, he sees something else he does not recognize. A different or at least an altered landscape has folded itself through the opening. In the distance he sees something that is very likely a city, with strangely tall towers – thick rectangular boxes jutting into the sky. The landscape is criss-crossed with thin lines – could they be wires? He leans out of the carriage and is looking up at the sky – a roaring vessel is flying overhead (could that be the sound, the strange thunder?) – when, alongside the carriage, on the grass next to the road, a vehicle appears that is neither a cart nor a carriage, and lying beneath it, to judge by the shoes, is a man, while a girl, standing, leans against the side of the vehicle. She is dressed indecently, in short trousers that reveal her firm, sun-browned thighs, and her fair hair spills luxuriantly over nearly naked breasts. She sees him; from the way she looks at him there can be no doubt that she sees him. When, in a strangely protracted moment, the girl strikes her hand against the frame of the vehicle, the sound reverberates metallically. She quickly bends over, her hair cascading across the silver metal, and calls for the man to look, since she’s not sure if what she is seeing is real. She then jolts back up and covers her face with her hand; the prince-bishop can’t tell if she’s laughing, astonished or terrified. ‘I’m losing my mind again,’ the girl says, ‘I’m losing my mind; it’s been a while, but I’m getting that feeling again.’ And she removes her hand from her face, which now beams with a euphoric smile. Is that sweat, or are tears trickling down her cheeks? the prince-bishop wonders. And as the supine male figure wriggles out from underneath the vehicle, the scene starts to flash and fade and flicker out, just as pictures will flicker out on other canvases centuries later. ‘All these colours, these intense colours and sounds, it’s like they’re flowing through me and I am in everything and everything’s in me,’ he hears her say, and the scene vanishes.
What was that? Did you see what I saw? he would like to ask Julian, who is still asleep. The landscape had been rent in a single moment, and a new one, entirely altered, had lain open before him. Had he slipped into a parallel world and become wedged between two overlapping times? There is no more buzzing, no more unfamiliar sounds. And when he looks back at the edge of the wood, there is no enormous animal there, only a brown spot, which becomes smaller and smaller until it vanishes. He brings his right hand, clenched in a fist, up to his face and presses the violet amethyst against his lip. What was all this? Where did it come from? Did it take shape in my head and merge into the landscape, an optical illusion appearing as exterior reality? Or did that other landscape pass through me in some duality of time and two temporalities collide? … Did my present and the present of the fair-haired girl divide into the future for me and the past for her? Did time crack open