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

The preparations for the trip, along with all the forgotten things I decided to get rid of, showed me the way to my old library where, hidden behind the rows of books, was the diary I had kept for three years, from December’18 to February’21. During my illness, some friends had been taking care of the house, especially after my mother’s death. Last night I sat there, leafing through it, occasionally skimming over some of its pages. Reading between the lines I rediscovered, for a moment, my old self, whom I had long lost somewhere amidst all the unbelievable things that had happened to me in the meantime. I re-experienced that guileless emotion with such a genuine, pure thrill, inhaling that pure scent of loyalty to the one and only love of my life. Something so rare. I knew back then that it was an exercise in futility, but still, I could not do otherwise.

Many things within me are different now, changed. And at this point, being the old dog that I am, I can tell you that those moments were worth it all. They were precious even if people thought that they were nothing but traces of an abnormal temperament.

Oh my precious Anna... Forgive me. Why don’t I think of you more often? Why doesn’t your memory overwhelm me like it used to? But these incredible countries I went to changed everything for me. Neither my little hometown nor my first love is big enough for me anymore.

But this is not the reason. It can’t be! I wouldn’t deserve your forgiveness if it were. This life journey and destiny of mine remind me of a myth I had been told when I was but a boy: the myth of the unjustly killed man. For years and years his soul wandered around in the wilderness of the night. You could still hear the rattling of his chains. But after justice was served, he was never heard from again.

My first days back, two months ago, my fellow villagers welcomed my healthy and changed appearance with utter surprise. Their joy felt genuine. Most of them had taken me for dead. Luckily for me, however, the physicians in Zurich believed differently and therefore let me occupy a bed for twelve whole months—from May ‘21 to May of this year—tube-feeding me with special liquid foods.

My mother had died before I returned. She departed with a pain in her heart, that unbearable pain of a mother that did not have the chance to see her child strong again. All the excitement and joy I felt, caused by my psychological resurrection, was overshadowed in the beginning by my sorrow over the loss of my mother. My Lord, forgive that holy woman and let her rest in peace.

The priest is away in Italy. I still feel ashamed about the doubts I shared with him, my lack of faith: a terrible sin. On the other hand, he couldn’t have possibly had any idea about all the incredible things that followed in my three-year struggle between scepticism and remorse.

I try to drive all these thoughts away using energy as an instrument, an energy I never could have imagined I possess. I’m constantly on the move. I’ve taken care of all the inheritance issues, sold my land, I work in the fields in my free time and I try to keep my mind occupied at all times. But when the night comes and all my friends are gone, all these memories, so recent, but at the same time so distant, come back and haunt me before I fall asleep. And when these moments come, I can’t help but think about what I’ve lost…

From time to time, it feels like I’m the castaway of a veritable spiritual shipwreck. And I cannot speak of my vicissitude to anyone; I can’t even confess it to the priest. The things I know cannot even be conceived of by the human mind. The lifeless paper I write on is not just a lifeless sheet of paper anymore; it is my very self. And my very self knows very well indeed the reasons for my firm conviction. And never, for as long as I live and breathe, will I fear that anyone will laugh about what I’ve experienced and seen with my own eyes. And I believe them with all the strength I have left in me. July 21st, 1922

The number of my evening solitude companions is dwindling. Perhaps they are right. There isn’t much left to say every second night. At this point, most of the times my companions are my books and I am happy with that. Who would have thought that everything that has gone down in history since they were written would justify the value of their contents? My own old childhood loves—Schiller, Goethe, but more recent names as well, such as Einstein, Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Mann and Maeterlinck—I cannot express how strange a feeling meeting them would give me. I—and I alone—could tell them things about the course of the last years of their lives, about how their work would be glorified in history, about their end, things that they never knew and never could have known.