“Is she gone?” I blink, my eyes no longer obeying me. Above me, the birds are still singing in the trees.
Marit nods with a gentle smile. “You can open your eyes again.”
She helps me sit up, carefully, but the body I inhabit refuses to go on. The blanket slips a little, and my shoulders have grown even thinner over the last twenty-four hours. I try my best to hold a wakeful gaze. They are such kind people. Yet something is pulling me away, something I cannot escape and, truth be told, no longer wish to.
“Is she a messenger of God, or of the Devil, what do you think?” I ask. In this body there is one last stirring before it finally lies down to rest forever.
Konrad pats my icy hand. “I think she doesn’t really know herself.”
“She said she wanted to give me eternal life. That’s a sin. Only God can do that.”
“You refused?” Katja’s voice carries a near-reverent undertone.
I nod. “Yes. I don’t belong here. And the thought of living forever…” I lift my head, gaze at the sky. Everything blurs. Above me a bumblebee hums slowly, as if it carried the weight of the world. “…I would be all alone. I already long so deeply for Matthes and Alina. You wouldn’t stay either. I want to go home. Do you understand what I mean?”
Marit lays her hand on my arm. “Yes, we understand, even if it hurts. You are such a wonderful being.”
Despite the leaden weariness I manage a smile. “Pieced together like two scraps of cloth that don’t fit and don’t belong together. It isn’t real.” I want no more sorrow now, no more feeling that great injustice has been done to me. “I don’t feel… whole.”
The wind stirs softly through the leaves of the apple tree. A blackbird hops over the stones. The mist has lifted, and the light falls gently on the table with half-eaten rolls, the cold scrambled eggs, the strawberry jam where no flies linger anymore. I feel no hunger, no thirst. From somewhere drifts the scent of jasmine blossoms.
I sniff as best I can. “Do you smell it too? The scent of jasmine?”
Their voices reach me only in fragments. A rushing sound lies between us, like wind in tall trees. Sometimes a word breaks through, but I cannot tell if it belongs to me.
My hands no longer feel like mine, but not like anyone else’s either. They are light. Or heavy. I cannot say. The blanket over me is warm, yet it has no weight. My breath grows shallower, as if the air itself is drawing farther and farther away.
There it is again! Stronger this time. The scent cuts through the rushing. Jasmine. It seeps into every pore, crawls into my lungs, tastes sweet upon my tongue. I see Brother Fidelis before me, setting the little clay pot in front of me. “From the Orient,” he said with a smile. “A greeting from afar.” I want to tell him the scent is still here. But my lips do not move.
The voices have grown even fainter. Or perhaps I am farther away.
“Do you truly not smell it? All my life I have followed my nose. I smell damp summer air, the grass, and most of all, jasmine, so strong…” My voice fades. “It comes… far… far… across another, warmer sea… to me… Don’t you hear me? Why don’t you answer me?”
Something soft, something without a name reaches for me, like a cloth made of light. Someone in the distance calls my name, a whisper.