When I was very young, a man said to me: Anni, you’re so beautiful that I keep wanting to tell everyone about your beauty, but I don’t have the words, so I’m keeping your beauty to myself. This, of course, was an outrageous cheek, and I told him I didn’t want him and he should go away at once. Whereupon he walked out of town and shot himself in the head. He managed to make a mess of that as well. Instead of the thread of life, he severed his optic nerve, and was blind in both eyes from then on. But the nurse fell for him and went on to give him four children, at least one of whom would always lead him around town by the arm. He would hold his face up to the sky and smile. We no longer greeted each other, but I believe he was the happiest person I ever knew.

Basically, I understand nothing about love, and all I know about life is that it has to be lived. But at least I do now know a little about death. It puts an end to longing, and if you hold still it doesn’t hurt at all.

Love. War. God. Father. Mother. Child. The hedge and the stealthiness. The flowers and white fear. Sharpness. Brightness. Snow. Summer lightning and the stockpot. Three more laughs, then it’s over. The sun. The boat. The bird. Death.

There’s so much that becomes undignified as the end approaches. Most things, actually. The injections and the household aids. The pills and the support corsets. The struggle for the last drop of vitality. And then those gowns that flutter open at the back with every step. A wrinkly bottom is as undignified as an improvised lie. Humans are nothing without dignity. We should maintain it ourselves for as long as possible. However, as the end approaches, dignity can only be bestowed upon us. It resides in others’ eyes.

And now I’ve remembered a sentence. If I’m not mistaken, I was the one who thought it. It’s a sentence that may not be for all eternity, but it is for the moment. You can’t really ask for more than that.

First I was self, now I am world.

Hannes Dixon

The day it pleased Father Hoberg to set fire to the house of his Lord, I wrote the following headline: Church burns, God lives! It wasn’t the best I’ve ever written, but it was good. Back then I still believed in truth, and that you can influence things for the better if you’re sufficiently outraged. That fell by the wayside a bit later on. The world changed, truth always lagged behind reality, and outrage gave way to a not unpleasant sense of resignation.

Two and a half metres above me, carved in the cheapest limestone the town hall could get its hands on, it says: Here lies Hannes Dixon, citizen and chronicler of Paulstadt. This, of course, is utter nonsense. A chronicler is a pen-­pusher who records events in chronological order, and a citizen pays taxes. I did neither.