The Flying Dutchman

Chapter 7

4

Some things drop into memory’s windows, some get lost, some can be seen in a flash, but others are kept in darkness… That woman – had he seen her before? Had she been present in his past life or in this present non-life? Who knows… He tried to imagine her with a child. There are women whom you simply can’t imagine with a child, and she seemed to be one. Was she the spawn of this house, of its grey dust, its dowdy kitchen utensils, the river’s dampness? You could not think of her as a mother, nor, for that matter, as a lover or a wife. No, she was simply the woman of this house, even if she didn’t exist. Each place has its soul, a female soul.

“But what is the soul?” N. pondered, and that musing gave rise to an unpleasant ache in the pit of his stomach. And before his closed eyes, the contours of a fiery plane glowed green. “If there is a soul, then that means there must be a past. But if, as in my case, there is no past, then does that mean there is no soul? Or is it hiding, waiting for this present to become the past, for it to accumulate?”

Then it all seemed funny. Well, a house of ghosts – what better place to ponder the soul?! He had to end up here, of all places! And a rhyme came to his mind: ‘all’ – ‘bawl’… Yes, the bawl, those jaws, this was what he fled from. But there’s another rhyme: ‘all’ – ‘fall’… At that, the green fire-plane in his eyes became unbearably bright and pain seared his heart. He lay down on the sofa with its worn office leather and tried to put an end to the philosophical games of his consciousness, or his subconscious, and to think of nothing at all. The pain passed, and sleep took its place.