Chapter 43
There’s a lock on the door, it’s massive, solid, and as intimidating as the door it seals. I can’t really see it, but I sense it, feeling the door with my hands.
I pound against it, and a hollow echo reverberates against me, propagates within me, and plows its way out of me in the form of a scream.
I barely recognize my voice. I barely recognize myself.
And all of a sudden I outside myself and I see a person called Iris pound on a door and scream.
“What advice would you give to someone who is plunged in darkness and pounds against a door that refuses to crack open?” I ask her.
I see her pause, gaining conscience.
“I would tell the person to try and find some light and some tools,” she replies.
“How?” I prod her.
“One could sleep and wait for it to dawn,” she replies.
“So you assume that it will dawn. What if it won’t? How can you decide how long you must wait before assessing that it will never dawn?” I insist.
I sense Iris’s discomfort.
“I can’t understand what’s out here, blindly,” she defends herself.
“You can get an impression of the surroundings by feeling the terrain with your hands, even if the night is blinding you,” I propose encouragingly.
“Yes,” she says, and yet she is reluctant to move.
“Come on, you must do it,” I urge her.
Slowly, she starts to crawl, feeling her way through the unknown.
“Tell me, what are you touching, Iris?” I ask.
“Something cold,” she replies.
“Is it rough or smooth?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
I know she’s holding back the tears.
“Ok Iris, why don’t you tell me a story?” I say.
“A story?” she echoes, confused.
“Let me begin. She started touching the ground around her. It was black, cold, and undefinable. She felt defeated, she couldn’t believe she’d find anything. She wasn’t sure she’d survive, let alone survive and open the door. It wasn’t fear she felt, or at least not only fear. What caused tears to pool in her eyes was rather the disappointment of failing miserably after having been a promising heir. What she hadn’t done though, was dig into that black, cold, surface,” I start.
Iris stops, the shift in her mood is slight and yet perceptible. There is a moment of silence.
“The thought occurred to her in a flashing second, it gave her hope,” I continue, and I hear a gentle shuffle, the sound thin hands make when they dig through loose soil.
“You wouldn’t logically expect to find a source of light under the earth. But if you are perfectly logical all the time you can’t make any discoveries, can you? If you are perfectly logical all the time it means you are not creative,” I persist, not really knowing where this will lead.
That’s no matter though. The point is not to find an immediate solution, but to keep alive the will to try, beyond all reasonable hope.
“Right,” I insist, and Iris digs.
“If one spot doesn’t work, there’s always a chance that the adjacent one will,” I prod her.
When I myself start to wonder if I have gone fully insane, Iris shrieks “Oh God!”
She felt a foot as she dug, and a leg, and a whole body.
“Keep going!” I urge her, my skin covered in goose bumps, because it’s cold and my pretense cannot efface my fears.
Iris digs.
“What is this!” she screams, as another foot, leg, a full body emerges from the cold earth.
“Dig Iris, dig. Do not stop. All you have to do is dig,” I state, and she keeps digging.
As she scoops of handful of soil after the next, an army of bodies finds its way out of the blackness.
I’m exhausted, Iris is exhausted. Our throat is dry, our bodies limp, our minds vacillate in the indetermination of the endless night.
We are about to let go, I sense it, but we haven’t yet.
“Where do you think we are, Iris?” I ask, making a super-human effort.
“In the cemetery” she tells me.
“Are these men dead?” I want to know.
“No, we aren’t”, a choir of voices echoes, and we start.
“We aren’t, Iris. The past is never over. We are you loyal army, don’t you remember us?” they ask her, me, us.
And Iris and I become one again.