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

Shortly after, the older physician turned to him and said something. “They’re foreigners,” I thought. For a couple of minutes I just looked at them talking, abashed, and struggling to reach a logical conclusion. A faraway land… Yes… Yes… That must be it. Their clothes, their manners… Look! And now the foreign language! I wasn’t familiar with that tongue. I remember that the man’s accent had struck me. Some words sounded somewhat similar to ours and had Anglo-Saxon roots and some others resembled Scandinavian words—quite familiar to me—and thus I understood the gist of what they were saying. The older physician, still pale and unsuccessfully trying to force a smile from what I could see, told the other physician that he had lost his patience. The young physician denied it by shaking his head. The former seemed deeply puzzled. He repeated my last words, stressing each syllable: “Mo-ther… Mo-ther…” Nothing else. “Mut-ter… Mut-ter…”

He grasped my hand. He spoke to me. I understood that he was asking me if my head ached.

“Now less,” I replied, “I’m better.”

Physically speaking I was telling the truth; but I didn’t say a word about what was going on in my mind…

“I want to see my mother,” I added.

I noticed that, once again, I was having some difficulties articulating words. But I blamed it on the illness.

On top of everything else I was thinking about, I was also quite convinced that if I couldn’t help myself and started crying for help, they would treat me as a lunatic who talks to himself and then I wouldn’t stand a chance of finding out more about them. But if I could just see my mother—I told them—she would help me see things clearly.

And then I noticed something about them, something that made a difference and explained much: what made them look so stunned was not what I was saying, but the way I was saying it and the language in which I was saying it. While they were talking to me, their wide-open eyes revealed the incredible thrill they felt!

The older one leaned towards me once again and, in a quivering voice, he slowly uttered a sentence in my own tongue, “Andreas Northam, don’t you recognise me anymore?”

The last words he managed to pronounce with evident effort and some difficulty still resonate in my ears, “Nicht mehr?”

“I want to pray,” I managed to reply in a fading voice.

And then I fainted again.

It’s been thirteen days. The younger physician came to my room this evening and saw my pillow soaked with tears. He tried to console me but, unintentionally, he did me more harm than good. I talked to him about my mother, who would be mourning the death of her child and he spoke to me with a completely misplaced smile about some kind of a story buried deep in the past, saying that there’s no need to fret now! Dear Jesus! I can’t believe any of this! I don’t want to see that man ever again! I simply won’t let them drive me mad! Tomorrow morning I’ll talk to the older physician and demand they tell me the whole truth!

THE NORTHAM-JAEGER RELATIONSHIPAugust 20th

This morning they removed my bandages. When Ilector Jaeger visited me, my face lit up! He gave me a firm handshake and with obvious joy he praised and congratulated the older physician. I didn’t know that eighteen years ago, Jaeger had been Andreas Northam’s teacher. From what they explained to me, this now famous and widely celebrated spiritual man, this “eminent thinker”, whose work has now been widely read and whose lectures at the Reigen are attended by thousands, back then was still unknown to the public. He contributed towards young Northam’s education for four years, wholeheartedly offering him the care and affection of a spiritual father.

Then they became caught up in life’s responsibilities and they each went their separate ways.

When the superior Ilectors discovered who had stood by Northam’s side as a teacher and a guardian in his early years, they called upon him and asked him if he could dedicate some time to him again in the afternoons. And it was very moving to see the now middle-aged thinker coming alone, without the escort of an unge, a young aide, and devoting his precious time to convey the same childhood learning to the same person—

now a twenty-eight-year-old man—who, physically at least, resembled his spiritual son of two decades ago. What’s more, as they informed me, he had unexpectedly been resurrected—but as a completely different man, disturbed and half deranged—after his fifteen-minute trip to the land of the dead. Jaeger confessed to me how delighted he was, when Professor Molsen told him that the freezing process had been done hastily but just in time. His brain hadn’t suffered the slightest impairment.

CONFESSIONSAugust 21st

Today, for the first time, Jaeger was accompanied by Stefan, Andreas’ closest friend and three years his senior. He is an earnest young man; I truly took a liking to him.