Even if the new isn’t really new, it’s always new for those who, ceaselessly, wash up on the world’s shores, generation after generation, wave after wave. So, in order to find yourself in life, to not lose yourself on the path, you must listen to the voice of duty. To think too much about yourself is to falter. Whoever understands this secret has the potential to live in peace. But it’s easier said than done.

At that appointment, I half-lied about the voices. I heard voices, but they were all versions of my own voice or echoes of voices from my past. Those voices were not, I decided, the ones she was asking about. And I lied when I did not tell her about wanting to burn myself and the cook. I lied when I did not tell her about the door that had opened: The only solution is a permanent solution. My psychiatrist did not ask if there was a seismometer in my midbrain that warned of fissures that would widen into deep chasms and, eventually, into an all-consuming abyss. If she had asked about that, I might have answered honestly. It’s difficult to say.

Living with your nose amidst death like that, every “normal” moment in the war is etched in your mind . . . but now, in the post-war life, it seems my life can never retrieve that intensity, as if the normal is now suddenly deathly. Meaningless. I yearn for the war, yes, pining for that vividness! A firmament of sorrow envelopes my thoughts.

It was on patrol. I was on the left flank, & dismounted Voska to inspect some tracks when a Tommy suddenly emerged from behind a taaibos. We were both frozen in shock, each with his loaded rifle in hand. I believe we both thought the same thought: He could be me. That was the first time I shot somebody down from such proximity. Though I recount it now, I possess no visual memory of it. Before, during & after, everything is missing. Only the words with which I am reporting here, remain.

Listen. Don’t try building a metaphysical German underground for what was nothing more than schoolgirl mice-nests. Would that I rather did my schoolwork properly! Fortunately, the everyday chaff of inappropriate yearnings cleared up like a fog at university.

Don’t know if I am getting better or dying. The children say that I keep saying the same things over and over. That’s true. But my days are so barren that I sometimes think: How in God’s name can this be regarded as a life? Is there not a way to bypass it? I drill all around me, but my life is as small and bare as a penny.