Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else by Daniela Fischerova, Neil Bermel Page B

it. It was not a genuine question, nor a genuine answer.
    M. nodded slightly, then symbolically raised a finger to his cap and left. I did not wait for him to disappear from view. Inside I found the gate key fallen into a fold in my bag.

    That night I had a dream, I believe the first one that had ever featured M. I am at the railway station in Budapest. The dream, as if focusing in on its core, rushes through several episodes until suddenly I see the empty trackyard. Dr. M. is walking along a track, tie after tie, on his hands. He has an ecstatic expression, one I’ve never seen on him, and in his eyes is the dull gleam of madness. He says something, implores me deeply, with a visionary’s emphasis on every word, except that I understand nothing. I run along the track, trying with all my strength to understand, but in vain: I hear his voice and his words make no sense. Then a train emerges from beneath the horizon.
    With this the dream takes on a tinge of terror, and of terribly ruinous responsibility. The train comes nearer, M. is still unaware of it and continues speaking in a feverish rapture. Rising through me is a sheer, violent whirlwind of horror and love, a jet from the bottomless absolute, beyond all imagination; destruction hurtles closer and closer until in a panic I shout out two words. The words are: “I know!”
    I don’t know what I know. I don’t know in my dreams, nor when I’m awake, but I must say it because it is the only way I can avert the catastrophe: everything depends on my knowing something. Except it’s too late, or my knowledge is too weak: the dream answers with a dreadful clash of matter. My own scream awakens me, I am gripped by a raging fever and an all-engulfing sense of powerlessness.
    Since that moment twice-seven years have passed. I am thirty-seven, married for the second time. I am sure that my life never had and will never again have a greater intensity than at the moment of that scream. No bliss or distress has ever seized me thatway. In concentric and ever widening circles various bliss-tresses revolve around me, but they weigh less. No one has ever been nearer to me.

    Dr. M. never called again. I did not understand. I did not know what had happened to him; I was utterly perplexed. For some reason I couldn’t feel any pain; it was more a loss of the earth beneath my feet, a vacuum devoid of all coordinates. I wasn’t lonely, I didn’t miss him, but I could not get rid of him. His absence was just a different sort of presence, like when you know that an uninvited guest has fallen asleep outside your door. I did not search for him. There or not, he became an oppressive phantom, pushing against my bubble from the outside.
    Shortly thereafter I met my first husband, we emigrated, and time — for a time — took on a different theme. I heard nothing of M. I married again, had two children. I returned to Bohemia. The wind erased my tracks. Fourteen years on, I flew off to Brisbane, in Australia, to a congress on contemporary literature.

    Fresh jet lag raged within me: two giant airplanes had overtaken time by nine hours. They had thrown me into the near future: in Brisbane it was a summer afternoon, while in me the Czech winter night rushed toward morning. I wasn’t sick, the way they had warned me, but I had the confused feeling that I wasn’t here. My wakefulness was uneasy and my body slept a narcotic sleep. I had to watch where my hand was and direct it with my sight, as if by remote control; otherwise I would miss my sleeve. As if I were not where I was.
    At the hotel I took a shower and walked into the bedroom. My roommate, a Czech emigré, was sitting on the desk, shaving her legs. So as not to watch, I switched on the television — andinstantly we were face to face again. He stared at me from the screen. He was here and not here, as always. The sound was on low and he was speaking English. For a moment I couldn’t