The Long and Spectacular Life of Agnes Magnusdottir 26

Zelig Krüger’s Diary. Pages 14 to finish. 

To understand anything we must carefully follow the steps that led us to our present destination. Think of the clockmaker. First he assembles the parts. Then he builds the clock. Then he tells the time. Tick tock on to all eternity.

    "So these reports, you read them out to Wolf in person?"

    Schubert’s eyes were as large as saucers, his face displaying an intensity I had never heretofore been in the presence of. 

    "Yes.” 

    I stammered out my reply. In another room a clock chimed mournfully.

    “Or, I did."

    "Yes?" 

    Schubert lent so close to me I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. 

    "Come on man, what do you mean? Spit out your blasted words.”

    "Recently he has been busy. For the last two weeks I have received notification at the last minute that I should go to the staff canteen, there would be two men in black suits waiting for me. I should deliver my report to them."

    "The assassins themselves!”

    It was not something I had considered, or more correctly it was not something I had allowed myself to consider, but now Schubert put it to me I realised his assumption was most likely correct. And it hit me like a train. To think that I had been sitting face to face with death itself.

    "And it is those very assassins that we will use to our purpose. Just let me think awhile. If you don't mind, can you please be quiet.”

Could it be really that it was all decided that night, the very same night in Schubert’s room when I had first made his acquaintance? In my mind, so many times have I gone over them, these events stretch out and out. How much time have I wasted analysing the details, wondering what I could have done differently. The truth is, probably nothing. Our fates are what they are, not predetermined exactly, but decided upon by so many small and multifarious factors that personal choice, at the end of the day, is of little or no consequence. 

    “Then I have it!”

    I recall how I was brought from my intense reverie by Schubert jumping up. As he did so he brought the back of one hand down with a crack on the palm of the other.

    "Ha ha. Yes!" 

    "What is it? Keep your voice down!”

     Casting my eyes frenziedly around I rushed over to the window and peered out. There was still a chance that the very men we had just been talking about would be on their way there right then. After all, I had already lingered for much longer than I had intended. 

     "What you must do is write a false report.”

    I spun around. Schubert was staring directly at me, the look of an excited child upon his face.

    “A false report?" 

    "Yes! A false report just like your others but in this one you will describe no other than Wolf himself! Don't you see? Put the finger on him as a writer of rebellious literature and he will be killed by his own assassins. Isn't there a certain novelistic symmetry to it?”

    So that, to state it here in plain language, was Schubert's plan. There was more of course, argument on his side and counter argument on mine, but what he had put so simply came to be an accepted truth. 

    Two days later I wrote the report. What else could I do? I already had the death of so many others on my hands, quite literally, in the stain of black ink that wouldn't come off however much I scrubbed. 

    As I handed over the pages to those two dark men in the cafeteria I understood also that I was passing over my own death warrant. I had no doubt that my own role in the affair would be found out.  

    And there, as I sit here writing this final entry, is my dilemma. 

    If I stay then I will surely put my family in danger. But if I leave they might be in the same danger. It is the toss of a coin. 

    I go in and look at Amelia. She is sleeping so peacefully. I love her so much. And my dear wife!

    If I were a stronger man I would take the both her of them with me. Or if I were a weaker man. 

    It is clear to me my path. I must go far away. When they work out the link between Wolf and myself and the assassins perhaps they might spare my family. 

    That is the only hope I have. 

    That is the only hope I have. 

    That is the only hope I have.

 
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