Deadly Communion by Frank Tallis Page B

correspondent situation with which you will be familiar that reflects something of my experience. When a great cathedral organ is played, you hear music — but you can also feel the pew vibrating. What I am capable of expressing bears the same relationship to my actual experience as the vibrating pew does to the music. What I can express is only a small part of an ineffable whole.
    This is what happened: I felt as though I was being watched. The impression was so strong that I turned round. But there was nobody there. Even so, this did nothing to mitigate the feeling. The evidence of my physical senses had become irrelevant. There was someone in the room — a presence. It did not cross my mind that this manifestation might be the ghost of my playmate, nor was I afraid.
    I do not know how long I remained like this — watchful, curious — it may have been for some time. My father came back to collect me. Before we left, Netti’s mother kissed my forehead. Her tears froze on my skin as we stepped out into the cold.
    Christmas came and went. The villagers were uneasy, fearful, and also ashamed after Netti’s death. They had not been good neighbours. My only pleasurable memory that December is of a market. I was taken to a Christkindlmarkt by one of the women, who bought me some small gifts: a candle and a fir-tree decoration, a wooden angel painted gold and red. I touched its wings and thought of my mother.
    January came and with it another death.
    Gerda. Poor, simple-minded Gerda.
    She went skating, the ice broke, she fell through and froze to death.
    Once again, I stood at the foot of an open casket. How different Gerda looked: how dignified, how composed, how still. I stood with my back to the door — to ensure that I would not be surprised — and touched myself. The pleasure that I experienced was intense, violent and strange. I was too immature to achieve a release. Instead, I experienced a muscular convulsion, followed by pains.
    And then, as before, I sensed that I was not alone. The presence I had felt beside Netti’s casket had returned. Everything shifted and the next thing I can remember is waking up in my bedroom at home. I had passed out.
    I was feverish and my father called the doctor. It was obvious that he was concerned about my health. I asked them if I was going to die — like Netti. The doctor said No, of course not, but he spoke without conviction. My condition got worse: sickness, weakness — I could not eat. At night I had such dreams — shadowy female figures and the sound of beating wings. I would wake in a sweat, trembling, delirious. It is impossible for me to say how long I languished in this state and I later learned that I came close to dying. And it was when my illness had taken me to the very threshold of oblivion that I saw her for the first time. Death does not come in the shape of a hooded skeleton, carrying a scythe. Death comes in the shape of an angel — and she is more beautiful than you can possibly imagine.

19
    P ROFESSOR M ATHIAS WAS STANDING by a trolley, arranging and rearranging his tools. He picked up a mallet, placed it on a lower shelf, and then positioned a knife so that it was exactly level with a small chisel; however, he was clearly dissatisfied with the result. The alignment was not quite right. Shaking his head, he picked up the offending instrument, carefully put it back, and nudged it several times until a final but barely perceptible shift met with his approval.
    Rheinhardt had long since abandoned trying to fathom the scheme which Professor Mathias employed to determine the appropriate placement of instruments on his trolley. Liebermann had urged him not to try since, in the young doctor’s opinion, Professor Mathias’s preparatory ritual was symptomatic of an obsessional neurosis.
    The old man took a small saw, reversed its orientation, and after a considerable pause placed it on the trolley’s bottom shelf.
    Mathias’s ritual was not always so lengthy