When he opened his eyes there was no light, no glow. It must have been an optical delusion. He had to lay the explosive, reach the end of the gallery, but symptoms of paralysis were preventing him. Hadn’t the explosives man given him gloves? Where were the gloves, why had he crawled into the gallery bare-handed? He waited where he was. Suddenly he remembered where the lamp that the explosives expert had mentioned was: on his helmet. Thomas cautiously felt for it. Sure enough, his fingers found something round. The tip of his forefinger found and pushed the switch until it clicked. But no light came on. The battery must be finished. How long had he been in the gallery? Was anyone calling to him? He heard words in the distance, a call quite close to him. Someone tugged at his shoes, seized his calves and pulled. Out of here! That was the man calling. But Thomas hadn’t laid the explosive charge yet, hadn’t reached the end of the gallery yet.
His knees creaked, his legs wouldn’t obey him, he was scraping over the rock, the man pulled him backwards up and out of the gallery. Warm light made its way past his eyelashes. Confused voices at the entrance to the chamber. The light was dazzling here. What was wrong with him? the men asked, one of them bent over him in concern. Another was raising his legs and took Thomas’s feet on his shoulders. The beam of a flashlight dazzled his eyes.
Hello? Hello, can you hear me? I’m Kurt, what’s your name?
Thomas moved his lips, which had turned cold and dark; no one could talk with cold lips. The palm of someone’s hand slapped his face. A thousand cells burst, his skin swelled up. He ought to say something, show that he was conscious, that he was all right. Another man took his legs, someone grasped his shoulders, he was carried and put down again, they leaned him up against the steep wall of the stone quarry and shouted at him. He opened his eyes.
Someone took his water bottle off his belt and sprayed his face with water. He had ten minutes to recover, they told him. He smelled blood in his nostrils and kept his sleeve in front of his face, so that no one would see when it began to flow. Putting his head back, he leaned against the rock and felt a fine trickle of blood running down his throat. Be brave, he heard Käthe say, he saw her before him and the glow of hope that she inspired in him.
Eyes closed, he crawled on far into the darkness. Water splashed in his face again. He couldn’t open his eyes, didn’t want to. Had he failed? Was he nothing but a coward to her? Without gloves — there was no missing the indignation in the group leader’s voice. A beginner, said other people. No guts, that’s for sure, some of the others said. Thomas kept his eyes closed, he didn’t want to see their faces. He crawled into the gallery, he tried to turn round but the gallery was narrow, he came up against stone everywhere. As long as he could hear the man behind him, it went on. He saw nothing ahead of him now, not even his own hands, he himself had become the last to cast a shadow. His own shadow pointed into the darkness, no outlines were visible. Thomas was filled with fear. He thought of Ella, who would surely be sitting in a huge workshop flooded with light, in the middle of brightly coloured fabrics, sewing tiny little bags, each prettier than the last. In spite of the gathering cold in the rock, Thomas was sweating, his sweat, wet and cold, ran down under his armpits into the fabric. He crawled on, his eyes were streaming, perhaps only because, even wide open, they couldn’t see any more light.
Someone hit the soles of his shoes, telling Thomas to take his helmet off.
In the distance, Thomas heard an explosion, and jumped.
And don’t take fright, there are explosions all the time, small, harmless detonations. Nothing to worry about, we’re all right here.
Thomas nodded again. He took off his helmet. Someone must have taken the box with the explosive away from him. Presumably another man had been sent into the gallery now, someone who knew his way around. Thomas tried to stand up. He reached for the pickaxe leaning against the rock next to him, which he thought must be his. He tried to take a deep breath of air, but there wasn’t any, or so it seemed to him. He mustn’t turn round, that wouldn’t be any help now, he was staggering. He searched his mind for lines of verse that would let him walk forward, go upright. He wanted to cross the bottom of the quarry. The blaze will die down. Perhaps his fear forced him, wouldn’t let his lungs unfold properly, he breathed and breathed, it tumbles and falls. His ribcage was moving up and down, but that wasn’t air, or not the sort he knew from the world above. He saw the other workers climbing out of the quarry. Come on out! Last call, everyone out of the pit! Only the group leader and the explosives expert were busy at the entrance to the chamber. Thomas turned his back to them. He dragged himself towards the pile of stones at the southern end of the quarry. They were lying loose all over the ground there. Debris. Maybe you could breathe without air. Ella had told him that was how she dived. While he kept his head above water swimming in the lake, breaststroke, crawl, never diving down, she would suddenly come up, and she sometimes disappeared for minutes on end in the cloudy water. She claimed that she breathed without air down there, she moved her ribcage so that it rose and fell — it was wonderful down there, she told him how dark it was and how safe she felt, not like an amphibian, like an embryo, a small child rocking in the bosom of the lake as if inside the Great Mother, weightless, aimless, without any responsibility for a word or a direction in which to go. Thomas felt gooseflesh. What Ella had described to him as beautiful, like a dream, made him feel uneasy, oppressed him, made him afraid. He thought as little of the cold as of the darkness falling, he couldn’t get any air. Detonated rock. Reaching the southern slope of the quarry, he crawled behind the heap of stone, he would find peace here, more peace than up with the workers, in the gallery, or above all in the hut among the rowdy boys, his knees and thighs met stone, sharp points bored into his chest, his hands were rough, paws must feel like that, clumsy, with a blunted sense of touch.
Would he have completed his mission with gloves on? He would rather feel the stones than the dulled, sweaty, leathery inside of gloves that left his hands with an animal smell. He didn’t mind if the stone roughened his skin, he picked up fragments large and small, he collected every stone that came to hand. Did quartzite like this have inclusions? If so, what were they? The fine rain was falling harder. The ground shook. Stone thundered, explosive force discharged the tension of stone in his ear. Thomas lay still on his stomach on the floor of the quarry, his view of the explosives chamber was blocked by the heap of stones, he was safe here. He felt the quivering, the breathing of the stone against his diaphragm. The explosives expert and the group leader had set off the charge. Rain pattered down on Thomas.
More rumbling, the earth around him was shaking, small explosions, nothing dangerous, of course, far, near, the stone preserved him, sand filled the air, gummed up his eyes, his nostrils, he had to cough, he would suffocate on the sand, on the darkness, turn to stone.
Dragonflies glittered under the willow tree, glowing red ones; where the branches bowed down, the sunlight from the Fliess shone up on the slender leaves; a swarm of red and blue, gleaming blue dragonflies; Michael lay beside him, his hair tickled, Michael’s delight laughed in his ear, his hand touched Thomas’s, the sun flashed in their bodies and eyes. I’d like to know, said Michael, his voice becoming one with Thomas’s. His own thought in Michael’s words and mouth, his own curiosity on his friend’s lips.