Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

I sat and enjoyed the light falling on her forehead, the arc of her eyebrows and the golden roots of her hair and I felt immense happiness to have my beloved of my youth at my side after so long. But at the same time I felt the grave significance of this boundlessness was not limited to the narrow confines of my poor heart, the confines of my own individual existence. It went beyond me and became a sacred promise for any person wanting to be worthy of something like this—something so unique that it defies the limits of time and space and reason itself. For it truly was a divine gift to see her, a relieving salvation from the ravages of time. It gives hope for an ultimate triumph of life over the fate of death.

And to think that without this awareness of the strangeness of my fate, without the vivid memories of my past life and the deep appreciation I feel for my new life, this relationship, along with all the other situations that I have experienced here and all the incidents that I have witnessed-might have seemed merely normal, even mundane I dare say, to me too, just like it seems to Silvia: the simple joining of two souls that share a close bond.

The next time she spoke, she said something that rendered me incapable of holding back any longer and that’s when I revealed everything.

She stretched out her hand, handing out to me the wreath she had finished making and asked me, “Will you put this wreath on my head? I think it’s time we headed home. Enough for today… Put it on my head and let’s go… I want to be wearing it on the way back…” To her, these words might have been as simple and unimportant as a drop of water in the ocean, but she had no idea what effect they had on me!

Lost as I was amidst an unprecedented thrill and surprise, I took a look around me and couldn’t believe it! I had only just realised that all this time we had been sitting at the very spot, on the very hill where thousands of years ago Anna had talked to me about a wreath of windflowers. I remembered exactly what she told me that day: “Enough for today... Let’s go back... I have to be home early. Next time we’re here I’ll make a wreath of windflowers. Will you place it on my head?” She then promised, she swore to me that we’d come back; and yet that was one of the last times I ever saw her alive…

And then I felt a spark inside me ignite and explode!

“What happened? What did I do to you? What did I say?” she asked me worried, seeing a flood of tears streaming down my pale face. I held her clasped in my own, squeezed it tightly and started kissing it all over.

“Oh my dear Anna, my lovely Anna! How many years you take me back with these words! So it wasn’t a lie then! We’ve kept our promise; we came back!”

I realised what I had just said just by looking at Silvia’s reaction; her facial expression was simply indescribable! She grew pale and unintentionally—I want to believe—she tried to draw away from me. She looked as if she was frightened of me! Initially I didn’t do or say anything because I was frozen to the spot; her spontaneous reaction had left me speechless. After I overcame the shock, in vain I tried to convince her to look around her. In vain I talked to her about her mother, her brother, her friend Amalia and the environment of her home, narrating as many facts and details as I could remember from her previous life, in order to convince her…

“Don’t you remember the orchard? The travel book? The tall poplar tree under which we sat for hours? Don’t you remember when we climbed the Two Peaks? Nothing?”

I tried everything; I called upon all my memories and all my powers to make her believe me… I mostly talked to her about the last time we met, when I sat at her bedside, in her room, a few days before she died… I urged her to make the greatest effort possible to bring back those memories, memories that I was sure still existed somewhere deep inside her; but nothing… She couldn’t remember anything. She didn’t speak at all. She only looked at me; it was a worried and searching look that she gave me. The only words she managed to utter were, “I’m cold.” And then we left…

Employing all the faith I had in her, I spoke to her as logically as I could and tried to show her that there was no reason to be so startled at hearing this true story. I explained to her that many people were aware of my situation and had thoroughly studied my case, including Stefan, Jaeger, the physician, Professor Molsen, people from Norfor, like Valdemar Esklud, Miss Koiral and many others, and even more people from the Rosernes Dal. There was no reason therefore to be scared. I even encouraged her to go find Jaeger and ask him herself whether or not I was out of my mind…

“It was true then… I knew it! I had felt it… But then again I tried so hard not to believe it…” she whispered.