The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff

and covered himself with leaves, too weary and feverish to sleep. Late at night ethereal singing reached his ear from a very long distance away. He sat up to listen; it must be the night wind carrying the sound, as in the intervals of calm it could not be heard. Camões leapt out of the trench, and walked into the wind, stopping when it fell silent, continuing when it was audible again. But it became fainter and fainter, and it also began to rain and grew lighter and he found himself back in the same grey field. The wind had turned; even the wind and rain were conspiring against him. He spent a night in his trench. At night it began again: he pretended not to listen and gnawed a few roots; it became louder, he crawled deeper into his hole, but it continued and finally he lifted his head. There was not a breath of wind, so that the wind could not mislead him; he went cautiously in the direction of the sound, and realized he was walking along the bed of a stream. Suddenlythe sound stopped, but he continued to follow the stream and came to a high wall. He felt his way along it, but his hands found no door; suddenly the ground gave way and he found himself knee-deep in the water. He now started exploring the wall in the other direction. Again he finished in the stream, but noticed that it was not becoming any deeper; also, the moon was rising, so that he ventured farther. Finally the wall turned inwards. In the moonlight he could see a small dome, just above the water: a slender arched roof on six thin pillars, between which wound chains of flowers that occasionally twirled in the wind.
    With a great effort he hoisted himself into the dome, after which he had to lie still to get his breath back. When he stood up, he saw that his dirty, wet clothes had left the crude outline of his body on the mosaic of the floor. It was as if he suddenly saw his present appearance in a mirror; he tried to wipe away the smudge from the white floor, was unable to and for a moment melancholy overcame his dulled state of mind, before being dispelled by the urge to go on.
    An extremely narrow bridge had been built across three or four boulders to the shore, without any railings. Below, the waves were churning around the rocks. He walked unsteadily across and again was met by a wall. In the centre was a barred oval opening, with creepers trailing up the bars, and beyond was the green vista of a garden.
    He shook the bars one by one, but they would not budge. Why did he want to go inside, where it might be a prison? After all, there was no more awful prison than the hunger and loneliness of the outside world! He slipped as he was holding the outermost bar; the bars turned, and he tumbled into the garden. The gate closed behind him, branches and bunches of leaves forced him back, and there was scarcely room for him between the wall and the outermost bushes; hitherto unknown scents alarmed him like the presentiment of an existence subject to such severe conditions that he could never live up to them.

I
    I F ONE COULD EVOKE DEATH as easily as love by thinking of it, then every night many would go to bed and never rise again. But the body is too powerful: at the slightest movement, the grasping of a gun, the pouring of a few drops into a glass, it rebels and asserts its sluggishness and its attachment to the earth, perhaps most of all when grievously ill. Fortunately the spirit can detach itself, if not immediately for ever, and can cross the river of oblivion, leave suffering behind on the near shore and once back with the body can no longer recognize what it had endured in its company, in its imprisonment.
    Especially when one had just crossed an ocean, seeing and smelling nothing but water, sky and rotting wood, and had then been bewildered by a three-day storm and weeks of hunger and wandering. Perhaps among the plants growing round about there were ten deadly poisons. I didn’t pick them.
    When I finally got up again, dead leaves and clumps of earth