The Maze of the Past

by Albin Zollinger

translator: Michael Wooff

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

“We shouldn’t go on for too long. It’s getting late.”

“Stop. It’s a dead end. We’ll go through this archway.”

“I’d rather we retraced our steps and went back. The candles are starting to burn down.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but trust my sixth sense all the same. We’ll soon be out of here. I can smell fresh air.” They had no such luck. They blew out one of the candles to economize on light.

“Stay close to my heels. This fox’s burrow is bad news. Let’s go back, if only for the Pincio.”

“None of these saints in their sarcophagi can understand our present predicament, and even Peter with his keys repented and turned back at some point on the Appian Way according to Sienkiewicz.”

The ground was rocky, and they had, for the most part, to feel their way forward. They had started to accept the fact that they wouldn’t be seeing the Pincio after all. They swore and their mood became sombre. Their last stump of candle was burning to extinction with sadistic meekness like everything else that was pious. After it had burnt out completely, a cigarette lighter helped them to go further.

“The worst thing that can happen is we sleep here and then draw attention to ourselves in the morning from tomorrow’s visitors by shouting!”

Probably the catacombs had never heard such a torrent of oaths in all the centuries that they had existed. The thought came to them that an old dead nun in her underground cave was spoiling their fun out of envy. Now there was nothing else for it: they made themselves as cosy as they could in order to spend the night there. To stave off hunger they smoked and soon found the aura from their lighted cigarettes was not conducive to sitting still. Knowing they had hours to kill, they walked a bit further.

They sat there, completely worn out, imagining the trees, the fountains, the moon, the where-are-they? helplessness of their girls, their pert giving-up-as-a-bad-job in the end, and that they perhaps were quite at their ease somewhere else while those who had stood them up had been caught in a trap of their own making.

Up until now they had not actually felt fear; sooner or later, or so they thought, they would meet once again with the living. But they were seized by a panic attack at the unwelcome discovery that they seemed to be by no means alone here. Someone else was moving about in the darkness and this presence was air circulating in among the tombs, which came up from somewhere deep down and blew cold into their faces so that they could smell it with their noses.

They started to shiver. Had they come to Rome in spring to freeze? They could overcome the cold by moving around. Hours of stretching their legs would no doubt get rid of it. They were sick of smoking all the time, for it was proving ineffectual to stave off hunger pangs. A feeling that it might be bad for them as well stopped them doing it.

They listened to the ticking of their wristwatches. Their cricket chirping turned the night above them into hay, ruins, faraway mountains and stars. The passage of time beamed at them in miniature from phosphorescent dials on which became visible the whole of a sunny day and the bright walls of Sorrento. They fell asleep and dreamed about it.

* * *

In the morning, which once more only sparkled for them with its sunrise and glittering sea on the faces of their watches, they jumped all sprightly, with intuitive confidence, to their feet to get warm as quickly as they could. “You’ll see that we’re only two steps away from freedom. Fate likes to play tricks like that on us, boy. Bread and radishes for breakfast at Biffi’s. My zest for life’s come back to me!”

Life was good even without girls and the Pincian Hill. If anything now they were homesick for their northern clime, for their mothers. They travelled in their thoughts the way back via Livorno and Pisa, the railway line hugging the coast with a view of the sea, the lights in the graveyard at La Spezia. Hunger had taken on a strangely soft form, had changed into a state of elation. They could see before them a whole series of exploits and the leisure to accomplish them in.

But the caravans of tourists failed to arrive. It got to be midday. The sun overhead had reached its zenith. They felt their way from tunnel to tunnel. They had until now avoided crying out from an ambition to stay calm they told themselves, out of fear of repercussions for them in the real world.

After they had at first tentatively started to shout, they did so louder and more often, and suddenly a panic overtook them, wild horror came over them and shook them to the core. They dashed like spooked horses abruptly in different directions and shouted at each other: “Are you mad? We mustn’t get separated!” They clung to each other and flapped about like windblown bushes in a storm.

Their firm intention to control themselves foundered. Sometimes they ran blindly over the ground like rats, collided with rocks and fell down. Self-discipline abandoned them like a driver a vehicle. They collapsed in a heap and whimpered. Their shivers made them blow their top. The darkness had ganged up on them to bar their way out. Death had become a living entity using all its skill and cunning against them. “We’re going to die!” they panted hoarsely.

But it was not just that. The realisation of being held captive in night when it was daylight outside wafted gusts of madness over them. They screamed their lungs out, choking on the stagnant air. The oppressive darkness could not be endured. Imaginary bits of blue sky relieved them somewhat but, the very next minute, they were shouting again in their terrible dungeon.

A panic attack made the younger of the two friends run off. His gallop was audible for a long time till it suddenly stopped at the edge of night. Then all was quiet. His friend sat down, frozen stiff, his head in his hands. Then, crawling along on his belly, as if he were afraid he might lose contact with the very ground itself, he dragged himself forward, unable to contain his anguish, sat down again.

Just at that moment his friend howled in what sounded no longer like mental torment but actual physical pain. “He’ll have fallen and broken his leg. That’s all we needed,” said the one sitting down to himself. He heard the voice again and went towards it: “Yes, I’m coming.”

His companion’s accident had sobered him. He made his way with heightened senses to the chasm out of which his friend was calling. “Have you hurt yourself, Richard?”

“Don’t leave me, Helmut!”

“Is it deep, that hole you’ve fallen in?”

“Promise me you won’t leave me, Helmut!”

“I won’t leave you. Are you injured?”

“I think I’ve broken a leg. But you must stay with me, Helmut. I’ll go mad if you leave me.” And he stopped to listen. Helmut felt with his hand the edge of the abyss and promptly retreated in terror. He’d slipped. “Helmut, you dog!”

He must have slid down to a lower level. When he moved from this spot, he moved further away in this underground heaven. They were both destined to die then. Death had got the better of them, a death in which their youth had fundamentally refused to believe, as much and as little as they believed in God, whose throne they were now approaching.

If they now froze with fear, it was not a fear of heaven or of hell, but of their immediate present. They had lived thoughtlessly not so much morally but in the sense that they had underestimated the proximity of the here and now which they now felt so strongly. They were only discovering now the ocean that had borne their ship, the unutterable depths of Romanticism in which creation swam. The mythical realm of poets and priests surrounded them and brought them to the immovable darkness of this unyielding cliff.

They were calmed for a while by something like force of habit. Their fearsome adversary had lost some of its power and the two young men felt themselves grown to gigantic proportions. They were both bleeding. The warmth of life was dripping like sweat from their brows down onto their chests and hands. It tasted strangely sombre as if it were taking its leave of them. Tears sprang forth from them like rain in May, awaking their most intimate memories. They wept and thought back to their childhoods.

Then, quite unexpectedly, a quarrel broke out between them. Helmut got up and ran off like a streak of lightning. It was no act of will. His instinct prompted him. His comrade’s cries no longer breached his distempered brain. He ran and crawled and climbed till he sank down totally exhausted, at the end of his tether.

Waking, he breathed in a haze and lost more blood. Sometimes his condition filled him with specious euphoria. Feverish highpoints flashed through him; eternity exerted itself on his behalf. He saw the rocky walls and saw redemption just around the corner. He had forgotten his friend completely, making his way haltingly through a realm of darkness. Then he lay down again and wept. He felt how heavy he was. He sank down as if into a bog, but it felt pleasant to him as to one who gains relief from pain through tiredness.

Their watches had stopped. Time had abandoned them. Eternity ground to a halt in darkness. The nightmare was endless. Richard dragged his broken leg like a wounded animal from tunnel to tunnel.

Above ground, the fact that the Germans were missing had indeed been noticed, and they were looked for until, after some weeks, the search was abandoned.

Proceed to Challenge 927...