“Folly,” he said. “Life doesn’t hide anything. It shows off its brutal ugliness in the void between birth and death.”
But his voice trembled from soul-crushing doubts.
The events in the woods around Saint Maclou? He was young then, very sick, a fugitive in a dream world.
The gypsy dancer in L’Enfer? Fainted from fright when her partner barged in as she was lying in bed with the fox-masked prince.
At the fountain on the Champ-de-Mars? He had stumbled, hurt his head, and the water had blinded him, creating an optical illusion around the dancer’s head.
The gypsy’s hand that had led him to Josef Breuer to show him that life was a mirage? Delusions that he had turned into ‘meaningful’ patterns. He had never seen the drummer. He had only felt his presence in the Bierkeller and in Anna’s hou
