"Today, on the 5th of November, I begin my report." "I will write everything down as precisely as I can." "But I don't even know if today is really the 5th of November." "Over the course of the past winter I've lost track of a few days." "I can't even tell you the weekday." "But I think that this isn't very important." "I rely on sparse notes." "Sparse, because I never thought to write this report, and I'm afraid that much is different in my memory than I had experienced it." "So all reports could be very vague." "I don't write for the joy of writing." "So many things have happened to me that I must write if I am not to lose my reason" "There's no one here, to think and care for me." "I'm all alone, and I have to try to get through the long dark winter months." "I have taken this task upon me, because it should prevent me from staring into the gloom and being frightened." "For I am frightened." "Fear creeps up on me from all sides and I don't want to wait until it gets to me and overpowers me." "I shall write until darkness falls, and this new, unfamiliar work should make my mind tired, empty and drowsy." "I'm not afraid of morning, only the long, gloomy afternoons." "I'm writing on the backs of old diaries and yellowed business paper." "The writing paper belonged to Hugo Rüttlinger, a great collector and hypochondriac." "Actually, this report should begin with Hugo, because without his mania of collecting and his hypochondria, I wouldn't be sitting here today." "I probably wouldn't be alive at all." "We reached the hunting lodge around three o'clock." "After a snack, Hugo just started to doze off," "Louise suggested that he go back to the village with her." "Come on!" "We won't stay long, very early in the morning we'll go hunting." "The car key is inserted, if you want to meet us." "Come on!" " Yes." "Where is Lynx?" "Lynx?" "The dog stays here!" "The stupid dog never obeys." "Lynx?" "Lynx, come on!" "Heel!" "Come Lynx!" " Heel!" " Don't be so tight." "Lynx, if you don't want to go, then you stay up here." "Go back!" "Go!" "Go!" "At nine o'clock I decided to go to bed." "I locked the door and took the key with me to my room." "Well, Lynx?" "What's going on?" "The two must have had to remain in the village." "I was very surprised about it." "Hugo couldn't stand the short inn beds." "And he would never have been so inconsiderate, as to leave me alone in the hunting-lodge overnight." "Then I decided to go with Lynx to the village." "I couldn't explain what had happened." "I barely noticed how cool and damp it was in the gorge, because I was pondering about what might have happened to the Rüttlingers." "Maybe Hugo had suffered a heart attack." "As it is with hypochondriacs, we didn't take his state seriously." "I quickened my pace and sent Lynx on ahead." "I forgot to take my hiking boots and stumbled awkwardly over the sharp stones behind him." "Lynx!" "Lynx?" "Lynx?" "Lynx, what is it?" "What do you have?" "Did you hurt yourself?" "Have you bitten on your tongue?" "Lynx come!" "Come on!" "Lynx, what is it?" "Come on!" "Then I heard a loud knocking sound and looked around before I realized that it was my own heartbeat, that rang in my ears." "My heart had been frightened before I knew anything about it." "Hesitantly, I tried it again." "And again rested my hand on what seemed to be the glass of a window." "Suddenly I realized what had unconsciously tormented me the whole time:" "The fact that road was entirely deserted." "Someone would have raised the alarm ages ago." "It would have been natural for the villagers to gather inquisitively by the wall." "Even if none of them had discovered the wall," "Hugo and Louise would surely have bumped into it." "The fact that there was not a single person to be seen struck me as even more puzzeling than the wall." "I tried it three more times and convinced myself that three meters in front of me there really was something invisible, smooth and cool, blocking my path." "I thought it might be a hallucination, but of course I knew that it was nothing of the kind." "I had my problems accepting and understanding the terrible, invisible thing." "The first little farmhouse, really just a cottage, was just around the next corner." "At last I could see the cottage." "She laid very quiet in the sunlight." "A peaceful, familiar picture." "Sorry!" "Sorry, I" "Come Lynx." "Come on!" "We were caught in a bad situation, Lynx and I, and at the time we didn't know how bad it was." "But we weren't lost entirely, because there were two of us." "It simply couldn't be true, things like that simply didn't happen." "And if they did happen, than it wasn't in a little village in the mountains, not in Austria and not in Europe." "I know how ridiculous this thought was, but that was exactly what I was thinking, so I won't conceal it." "I woke up at six clock when the birds began to sing." "Although I had hardly moved Lynx knew that I was awake and came to my bed to greet me." "Suddenly it seemed quite impossible that I would survive this bright May day." "At the same time I knew I had to survive it, and that I had no means of escape." "I had to stay quite calm and simply get through it." "It wasn't the first day of my life, that I had had to survive like this." "The less I resisted it, the more bearable it would be." "I do not remember, what I did that morning." "Perhaps the hours that followed were so terrible that I've had to forget them." "But perhaps I only spent them in a state of numbness." "I can't remember." "I only know that I came to around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, when I walked through the gorge with Lynx." "This time I was better equipped." "Also, I had with me Hugo's binoculars." "If the man at the well was dead, then I could no longer doubt that, all the people in the valley had to be dead." "And not only the people..." "The Animals as well." "If that was death, it has come very quick and gently in an almost loving way." "Perhaps it would have been wiser to go with Hugo and Louise into the village." "Lynx!" "What's going on?" "Lynx?" "Come, Lynx!" "Lynx!" "Come." "Yes, come on." "In the meantime it had become clear to me that this cow was a blessing, but also was a great burden." "Such an animal wants to be fed and milked and needs a settled master." "I was the owner and prisoner of a cow." "I thought about the cow as well, of course." "If I was especially lucky she would be expecting a calf." "But I couldn't rely on that." "I could only hope that my cow would give milk for as long as possible." "I still saw my situation as a temporary state or at least tried to do so." "I thought of a name for my cow and named her Bella." "Actually, she didn't need any name at all." "She was the only cow in the forest." "Perhaps the only cow in the world." "Until tomorrow, Bella." "Ten days had passed, and nothing had changed." "For ten days I had drugged me with work, but the wall was still there, and no one had come to get me." "I had no choice than to face the reality." "I could kill myself or I could try to dig my way under the wall, which would probably only have been a more strenous kind of suicide." "Or of course I could stay here and try to stay alive." "I was no longer young enough to think seriously about suicide." "The thought of Lynx and Bella kept me from thinking about that." "Thanks to Hugo's solicitude I had a few provisions that might keep me through the summer, a home, a liftime's supply of wood and a cow." "I resolutely decided to wind the clocks daily and cross off each day from the calendar." "At the time this seemed very important to me." "I was practically clinging to the scanty remains of human order." "I do not know why I do this." "It's as if I'm driven by an inner compulsion." "Maybe I'm afraid that if I would do otherwise" "I would gradually cease to be a human being, and would soon crawl around dirty and stinking, emitting incomprehensible noises." "Not that I'm afraid of becoming an animal." "That wouldn't be to bad." "But a human being can never become just an animal..." "He plunges beyond, into the abyss." "I don't want this to happen to me." "Recently that's what has made me most afraid, and it is out of that fear I am writing my report." "On 30th of May, it rained all day." "A warm and fertile rain that forced me to stay in the hut, if I did not want to get soaked to the skin." "That evening the cat came to my house." "So there were four of us, the cow, the cat, Lynx and me." "Lynx was closest to me, and soon he wasn't just my dog, but my friend as well." "My only friend in a world of troubles and loneliness." "It's okay, Lynx." "Although Bella kept me tied to the hunting-lodge," "I wanted to try to have a look around." "I remembered a path that led to a hunting-lodge higher up, and from there down into the opposite valley." "That's where I wanted to go." "Lynx!" "Heel!" " Wait, Lynx!" "So now I had examined the valleys that I could reach without staying away for days at time." "I could still climb up to the pasture and look out over the landscape, but I couldn't risk going any further into the long mountain range." "Of course somebody would find me if there was no wall over there." "I had to assume that if it were possible, they would of found me a long time ago." "I could sit quietly at home and wait." "But again and again I felt driven, to do something to counteract that uncertainty." "At one o'clock in the noon, I rested myself." "The forest laid misty in the midday sun and the warm scent from the pines floated up to me." "It was much quieter now than in the moonlight night, as if the forest lay paralised by sleep beneath the yellow sun." "A bird of prey circled high in the blue sky." "Lynx sleept, his ears twitching, and the great silence descended on me like a bell-jar." "I wished I could sit here forever, in the warmth, in the light, with the dog at my feet and circling bird above." "When I had to go again, I did it with deep regret, and on the way I slowly changed, becoming the only creature that didn't belong here... a person troubled by chaotic thoughts, cracking branches with her clumsy shoes" "and engaged in the bloody business of hunting." "I find it striking that I've never noted in my diary the first time when I shot a deer." "Now I remember that it simply disgusted me to write it down." "It was enough already that I had to do it." "I called the little cat Pearl, because she was so white and pink." "In a few weeks I realized that Pearl, a scruffy little thing, was on a point of turning into a beauty." "Pearl was a little miracle, but even then I knew that she'd been born in the wrong place." "A long-haired, white cat in the middle of the forest is condemned to an early death." "She had no chance." "Maybe that was the reason I like her so much." "When I think back about the first summer" "I realise I had more concerns about my animals than about my own desperated situation." "The catastrophe had relieved me of a great deal of responsability yet, although I failed to notice it straight away, placed a new burden upon me." "When I finally realised my situation" "I was no longer able to change anything about it." "I don't think my behavior was due to any weakness or sentimentality " "I was simply following an instinct, that had been implanted in me and which I could do nothing to fight against if I didn't want to destroy myelf." "I can't see what should be dishonourable about bearing, as all animals do, this burden that is layed upon us;" "in the end, we die as all animals do." "I don't even know what honour is." "It isn't honourable to be born and to die." "It happens to all creatures and has no meaning beyond that." "On 20th of July I started to harvest the hay." "It took me three weeks to harvest the meadow." "This wasn't only the fault of the changeable weather, but also of my clumsiness and physical weakness." "I was overcome by a wave of despair, and for the first time I understood quite clearely the hard blow that had hit me." "I don't know what would have happened if responsibility for my animals hadn't forced me at least to do the most necessary things." "I don't like remembering that time." "It lasted for 14 days, before I was finally able to pull myself together and start living again." "Autumn was always my favorite season, although I never felt physically very well." "During the day I was pretty tired." "At night I laid for hours in a troubled doze and my dreams were more confused and vivid than usual." "The 'Fall disease' didn't spare me in the forest." "But the disease appeared moderated." "Perhaps I didn't have the time to notice it." "Lynx was very exhilarated and happy, but an outsider probably wouldn't have noticed the difference." "He was, after all, cheerful almost all the time." "I never saw him stay grumpy for more than three minutes." "He simply couldn't resist, the urge to be cheerful." "And life in the forest was a constant temptation to him." "Sun, snow, wind, rain - everything was a cause for excitement." "With Lynx nearby I could never stay sad for long." "It was almost shaming that being with me made him so happy." "Perhaps man's megalomania comes from dogs." "Sometimes I even imagined there must be something special about me that made Lynx almost keel over with joy at the sight of me." "Of course there was never anything special about me;" "Lynx was, like all dogs, simply addicted to people." "Yes, you're my Lynx." "Yes." "Good Boy." "Sometimes now, when I walk alone in the wintry forest," "I talk to Lynx as I did before." "I have no idea I'm doing it until something startles me and I fall silent." "I turn my head and catch the gleam of a reddish-brown coat." "But the path is empty, bare bushes and wet stones." "I'm not surprised that I still hear the dry branches cracking under the light tread of his feet." "Where else would his little dog's soul go haunting, if not on my trail?" "He's a friendly ghost, and I'm not afraid of him." "Lynx, beautiful, good dog, my dog, it's probably just my poor head making the sound of your footsteps, the gleam of your coat." "As long as I exist, you'll follow my trail, hungry and yearning, as I myself, hungry and yearning, follow invisible trails." "Neither of us will ever bring our prey to ground." "On the 27th of October the first snow fell." "The onset of winter lasted only a few days." "After that, the foehn came and licked the young snow from the mountains." "It became uncomfortably warm, and the wind blew night and day around the little house." "I slept badly, listening to the roaring of the stags, which descended during the rutting season, from the heights." "Both cats were drawn outside into the warm, damp forest." "I laid awake and worried about Pearl." "The roaring of the stags sounded sad, threatening and sometimes even desperate." "I only hoped the foehn wouldn't last too long, and the winter would finally bring us a peace." "The foehn actually lasted only three days, just long enough to kill Pearl." "Pearl was buried, and the foehn died overnight, as if it had accomplished its task." "I haven't forgotten Pearl." "Her death was the first loss I suffered in the forest." "Once...it must have been the first winter," "I saw a fox standing by the stream." "I could have shot it;" "I had the gun with me." "But I did not." "Pearl had to die just because one of her ancestors was an overbred angora cat." "From the start she had been destined to be a victim." "Should I punish this beautiful vivid fox?" "Pearl had sufferd an injustice." "But that same injustice was done to her victims." "Was I to pass it on to the fox?" "The only creature in the woods that can really do right or wrong, is me." "And I alone can show mercy." "Sometimes I wish that this burden of decision making didn't lay upon me." "But I am a human being, and I can only think and act like a human being." "Only Death will set me free." "Whenever I think of winter, I always see the frost-covered fox standing by the snow-covered stream." "A lonely, adult animal, walking his predetermined path." "It seems that this image means something important to me, as if it ia only a sign for something else, but I can't get to the meaning of it." "So." "Yes, my Bella." "Yes, you are beautiful." "Bella had become chubby again, but I still couldn't know if she was expecting a calf." "After all that we have experienced together," "Bella has become more than my cow..." "A poor, patient sister, which handles her destiny with more dignity than I do." "In the night I heared the cold creaking in the woods." "I burned a lot of wood, but I still shivered under the blanket and could not sleep." "Sometimes a piece of wood crackled into life and went out again;" "I felt sick." "I knew it was because I had to keep on killing." "I tried to imagine what a person who enjoyed killing might feel." "I did not succeed." "The hair stood up on my arms, and my mouth grew dry with disgust." "You would probabily need to be born to it." "I could bring myself to do it as quickly and skilfully as possible but I would never get used to it." "I lay awake for ages in the crackling darkness and thought of the little heart" "which froze above me in the chamber, into a block of ice." "After the severe cold, a wave of damp, warmer air set in." "Bella became restless, and I had to check on her ten times a day." "On 11 January, Bella was bleeding a little." "It was after the evening feed, and I decided to set myself up in the barn for the night." "Come on, Bella!" "Come on, Bella, come on!" "So much had happened recently." "Pearl had been killed, a little bull was born, deer had frozen, and the predators had had a rich winter." "I myself had had a lot of excitement, and now I was tired." "And when I closed my eyes, I saw snowy mountains on the horizon, white flakes dropping on to my face in a big, bright silence." "I had no thoughts, no memories, there was only the big, silent, snowy light." "I knew this feeling could be dangerous for a lonely person, but I couldn't find the strength to to resist it." "Lynx didn't leave me in peace for long." "Again and again he came and nudged me with his nose." "Sighing, I got up and set about my daily work." "Now Lynx, my friend and guardian, has ceased to be, and sometimes the desire to go into the white and painless silence is very great." "I must take care of myself and be stricter than I was before." "Lynx was my sixth sense." "Now that he's dead, I feel like an amputee." "I miss something and will always miss it." "It isn't only that I miss him when I'm hunting and following trails, and have to spend hours clambering after a deer I've shot." "It isn't that alone." "The worst thing is that without Lynx I feel truly alone." "The question of moving to the alpine pasture occupied my mind more with every passing day." "This task struck me as terribly arduous, even if I were to take only necessities with me and live quite primitively in the pasture." "Once I realized that I'd decided to move long before, when I saw the green meadows of the alpine pasture for the first time," "I grew calmer." "And on 25th of May came the day of departure from the hunting-lodge." "The path was quite well maintained, but laid in serpentine curves, and it was still four hours before our curious procession reached the pasture." "It was already approaching midday." "I was completely exhausted, less from physical effort then from nervous tension." "Something new was beginning." "I didn't know what it would bring me, but my homesickness and worries about the future slowly faded away." "I began to find the pasture beautiful, strange and dangerous, but like everything strange, full of mysterious allurements." "It was strange to be able to survey a wide area, unimpeded by mountains and trees." "And it wasn't immediately pleasant and liberating." "My eyes had to get used to the distance first, after a year spent in the narrow basin of a valley." "During my time in the alpine pasture, I wrote no diary entries." "I had taken the diary with me and dutifully ticked off each day, but I didn't even enter such important events as the hay-harvest." "The memory of that time has remained fresh, however, and it isn't hard for me to write about it." "I shall never forget the fragrance of summer, the rainstorms, and the evenings glittering with stars." "For the first time in my life I was appeased." "Not satisfied or happy, but appeased." "It was as if a big hand has stopped the clock in my head." "Sometimes, my thoughts grow confused, and it is as if the forest has put down roots in me, and is thinking its old, eternal thoughts with my brain." "Back then, in the second summer, I hadn't reached that point." "The boundaries were still strictly drawn." "I find it hard to separate my old self from my new self, and I'm not sure that my new self isn't gradually being absorbed into something larger that thinks of itself as "We"." "But even then, the transformation started." "The alpine pasture was to blame." "It was almost impossible, in the buzzing stillness of the meadow, beneath the big sky, to remain a single and separate Self, a little, blind, independent life that didn't want to fit in with a greater Being." "Once, my major source of pride had been that I was just such a life." "But in the alpine pasture that suddenly seemed to me very pathetic and absurd, an overinflated Nothing." "On the 16th of October, after my return from the pasture," "I began to make regular entries in my diary again." "For almost the whole of October the weather stayed fine." "I now made most of the promising climate and doubled my wood supply." "On All Saints' Day it suddenly grew warm, and I knew that this could only herald winter." "On 10th of December I find a strange entry:" ""Time is passing so quickly"." "I can't remember writing it." "I don't know what happened on that 10th of December that led me to write, beneath the words "New-fallen snow" and "Fetched hay":" ""Time is passing so quickly"" "Was the time passing particulary quickly back then?" "I can't remember, and can't give any account of it at all." "And it isn't true." "Time only seemed to be passing quickly." "I think time sits quite still and I move around in it, sometimes slowly and sometimes at furious rate." "I do something, things race ahead, and I forget time." "And then, quite suddenly, it surrounds me again." "I shall have to get used to it, its indifference and omnipresence." "Since Lynx died I feel that cleary." "I sit at the table, and the time stands still." "I can't see, smell or hear it, but it surrounds me on all sides." "Its silence and motionless is terrible." "Really these thoughts are quite meaningless." "I pity animals, and I pity people, because they're thrown into this life without being consulted." "Maybe people are more deserving of pity, because they have just enough intellect, to resist the natural course of things." "This has made them wicked and desperate, and not very lovable." "All the same, life could have been lived differently." "There is no emotion more rational than love." "Love makes the life of the lover and the beloved one more bearable." "We should have recognized in time that this was our only chance, our only hope for a better life." "For an endless army of the dead, mankind's only chance has vanished for ever." "I keep thinking about that." "I can't understand why we had to take the wrong path." "I only know it's too late." "This autumn a white crow appeared." "She always flies a little way behind the others, and settles alone on a tree avoided by her companions." "I can't understand why the other crows don't like her." "I think she's a particulary beautiful bird, but the other members of her species find her repugnant." "A miserable absurdity that shouldn't exist." "A white crow." "She sits there, until the great flock has flown away, and then I bring her a little food." "She can't know why she is rejected." "That's the only life she knows." "She will always be an outcast and so alone that she'll be less afraid of people then of her black brethren." "Every day I wait for the white crow and call to her." "And she looks at me attentively with her reddish eyes." "I can do very little for her." "Perhaps my scraps are prolonging a life that shouldn't be prolonged." "But I want this white crow to live, and sometimes, I dream that there's another one in the forest and that they will find each other." "I don't believe it will happen, I only wish it very dearely." "I gradually started to break free of my past and find a new way of organising things." "It was may by the time the weather really improved." "Two years had passed in the forest and it struck me that I now hardly ever gave a thought to the idea that someone might at last find me." "I decided to set off soon for the alpine pasture." "By the beginning of June I'd managed to get used to the alpine pasture, but it wasn't as it had been the previous year." "That first summer on the pasture was gone forever." "I didn't want a feeble repetition of it and therefore kept myself from succumbing once more to the old magic." "But the pasture didn't make it hard for me." "It had closed itself off to me and showed me an unfamiliar face." "I often sat, as I had done a year before, on the bench looking out over the meadow." "It hadn't changed from before, and it smelled just as sweet, but I haven't felt the same delight ever again." "I'd stopped making longer expeditions, for I'd drawn up my boundries the previous summer." "I no longer cared where the wall went." "That summer I quite forgot that Lynx was a dog and I was a human being." "I knew it, but it had lost any distinctive meaning." "Lynx too had changed." "Since I'd been spending so much time with him he had grown calmer, and didn't seem constantly afraid that I might vanish into thin air as soon as he went off for five minutes." "Thinking about it today, I believe that this was his only big fear in his dog's life, being abandoned on his own." "I too had learned a lot more, and understood almost all of his movements and noises." "Now, at last, there was a silent understanding between us." "I carried Lynx to the hut and laid him on the bench." "He'd suddenly grown small and light." "And then suddenaly, as if from a great distance, I heard Bella roaring." "She roared in fear." "I tried to calm her down." "Only then did I give another thought to the man." "I knew he must be dead." "He had been such a big target, that I couldn't have missed." "I was glad that he was dead;" "it would of been hard for me to kill an injured person." "And yet I couldn't have left him alive." "Or maybe I could, I don't know." "I didn't want to leave him in the meadow." "Not next to the dead Bull, in the virgin grass." "So I picked him up by the legs and dragged him to the vantage point." "There, where the rocks fall steeply to the scree-slope and alpine roses bloom in June," "I let him roll down the hill." "I dug a grave for Lynx in the evening." "I dug the hole deep, laid Lynx into it, covered it with earth and stamped the grass down over it." "And then I was very tired." "More tired than ever before." "Then I sat down on the bench and waited for the long night." "It was a bright, starlit night, and the wind drifted coldly down from the cliffs." "But I was colder than the wind and didn't feel the chill." "At first light I got up and left with Bella from the alpine pasture." "The next day I reasumed my usual work." "The month of October came, and I harvested potatoes, beans and fruit." "The straw needed cutting, but that took only a week." "And finally, physically beaten and broken, I abandoned my senseless flight and confronted my thoughts, to no purpose." "I don't understand what happened." "Even today I wonder why the strange man killed Bull and Lynx." "I'll never find out, and it may even be better that way." "Now I'm quite calm." "I can see a little further ahead." "I can see that this isn't the end." "Everything goes on." "Bull, Pearl and Lynx will never exist again." "But something new is coming, and I can't escape that." "Memories, mourning and the fear will remain, and also hard work for as long as I live." "Today, 25th of February, I shall end my report." "There isn't a single sheet of paper left." "It's now around five o'clock in the evening, and already so light that I can write without the lamp." "The crows have risen and are screaming and circling above the forest." "When they are out of sight" "I shall go to the clearing and feed the white crow." "She will already be waiting for me."