Death of Heinrich Floris

(Hamburg, 1805) It was already night and Heinrich pre-

ferred not to enter the house. His discomfort was unbear-
able, and he walked to the back of the residence without
knowing why. When he reached the dark canal, only illu-
minated by a pale moon, he stopped and contemplated
traces of his life, traces of events that could have occurred
but didn’t take place. The words depression and Samuel
Johnson echoed in his mind once more. He saw Johanna's
face reflected in the ice and felt the emptiness of a rela-
tionship that had ceased to exist. Above all he thought of
Arthur and believed that he might be his future. What
would his son, whom he loved so dearly, had inherited
from him? The night was singularly hostile, and his dis-
comfort returned again and again. Perhaps it was wisely
to end everything by simply slipping away. The ice, the
water of the canal would end the torments of so many
years.

8
On Sunday morning he woke with a start, his hands
were shaking, and his pulse was racing. The nightmare in
which he had found himself a few moments before had been
uncannily realistic. He could still feel the voices and noises
of the party in his ears, and he found it hard to believe that
it was just a dream that was causing him those unpleasant
sensations.
A celebration, of which he was totally unaware, was
taking place in his own apartment. There was a huge bustle,
and the guests were crowded but seemed to be enjoying that
situation. No one seemed to be uncomfortable because of
the lack of space or due to the loud noise. Marcela was on
the other side of the room talking excitedly to a guest. What
had happened to her rejection of all his conflicts and his

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problems? Perhaps she had organised that party to cele-
brate that she had finally took the decision to leave him af-
ter two years of a difficult relationship. She seemed una-
ware that he was also at the party, and she looked happy as
he was watching stiffly from a corner of the room.
Making an effort, he raised his arms exaggeratedly
and she recognised him in spite of the confusion. She felt
uncomfortable seeing him again even though it was all hap-
pening in Salguero's apartment. She then tried to escape
from the party abruptly but given the large number of peo-
ple in the room, she had to exert an inordinate force and the
wall behind her suddenly collapsed. Sebastián watched the
bricks shatter as she fell into the void, looking astonished
from across the room, feeling helpless and tormented. And
the party continued without anyone noticing what was hap-
pening in such an implausible way. The panic he was feeling
when he woke up was the same of that infamous meeting,
with Marcela dying in an inexplicable accident, listening to
voices of indifferent guests and with the pain of losing the
one he loved.
As he sat up, his legs felt weak. His body trembled as
he washed his face and made coffee. When he sat down to
drink it, he felt unaccustomed nausea. He thought he would
not be able to finish it and went to sit in the living room next
to the window overlooking Salguero Street. It was on the
wall orthogonal to the window that the bricks had shattered
in his dream. He looked at it carefully and saw that it was
intact.
For more than half an hour he sat on the sofa where
they had made love so many times. Quiet, very quiet, he
breathed deeply, feeling a heaviness come over him and
take hold of his body. There was something that seemed to
dominate him. It was a feeling he could not articulate in
words. He managed to change his clothes despite his rare-
fied state of mind, and as he decided to go for a walk, the

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sight of Parque Las Heras crossed his mind. He put some
things in a bag, documents, keys, and a book by Schopen-
hauer. Salguero Street was deserted, and he could walk
slowly without any stranger wondering what was wrong
with him. He walked trying to hold imaginarily on to the
walls of the buildings, the trees and the cars parked on the
pavement. It was this way of imagining that kept him from
losing his balance.
When he reached Parque Las Heras, he thought he
had achieved a triumph. As he walked through the park, he
felt the warmth of the sun all over his body. His walking
style was slow and there were few things to keep his eyes on
to keep his balance. Scattered memories flashed through
his mind. In one place he saw himself as a child, climbing a
tree while other children shouted non-stop. There was a
man walking in the distance and he thought it was his fa-
ther, and he remembered when they used to come to the
park together when he was a child. His physics classes were
in that park, and his days of loneliness and memories of
many happy days with Marcela. She was also walking in
that park with her loose hair shining brightly in the sun
while he stretched out his arm trying to touch it. His pain
became more intense, the heat continued to take over his
body and his ears were ringing stridently iiihihhh-
hihihiiihiiiii iiihhiiiiiiiihhiiiiiiiii. That day was unique in his
life, with his memories, his extreme weakness, the warmth
of the sun all over his body, the tranquillity of the landscape,
a recurring pain, and that high tone ringing in his ears
iiihihhhhihihiiiiiiiii iiihihhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.
Finally, he sat down on a lonely bench, looking in the
direction of Santa Fe Avenue. His eyesight was lost in the
vision of the high towers. His sight was absent, and he tried
to reflect, to understand how he had come to that situation,
what was the succession of events that had brought him to
a state he was not able to remember. It was somewhat

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impossible — alone and weak, sitting in a park, with his
eyesight lost — that he could unravel the source of his severe
suffering.
Despite his efforts, he was able to glimpse few ideas.
His past never well understood. His life choices, or perhaps
a myriad of other situations for which he felt too weak to
evaluate. Only the atelier of his old friend Patricio appeared
in his mind. Perhaps in the disorder and chaos of someone
trying to create beyond logic he could find some type of
answer.
Without understanding how, he reached Honduras
Street and stopped at the door of the old house where his
friend had his improvised studio. As he knocked on the
door, he thought about how he had managed to get there.
No one answered, but he kept insisting for several minutes.
Honduras Street was deserted, and the midday sun was
beating down flat. He thought his inspiration had failed, but
just as he was leaving appeared Patricio in his old
Volkswagen with a half-closed car trunk loaded with can-
vases.

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 F. A. Brockhaus
(Berlin, 1828) That day he felt that the world was falling
apart. He kept reading Brockhaus’ letter and he still could
not believe it and neither accept it. The remaining
volumes of the first edition of his capital work had been
sold as trash paper. Was that possible, or did the world
need many more decades or perhaps centuries to
understand the truth of this ill-fated world? Perhaps
people preferred to burn his work to deny the truth,
because the truth was atrocious and could make dreadful
the few years there were to live. Very few had been
interested in his work, but victory would have to come
someday, whether it was while he lived or some years or
centuries after his death. There might be a small group of
enlightened men who would come to the truth and
understand what the world was really like. He knew that
one day they would build a statue with his name.

15
Mr. Ebert did not seem to trust him, and he regretted
having made that appointment. When he saw him, he felt
that he did not look like a philosophy scholar. Moreover, he
arrived without any folder with papers. There was some-
thing that bothered Mr. Ebert. His gaze was inquisitive and
seemed to ask certain questions without him understanding
them, let alone knowing the right answers. As a precaution-
ary measure, he asked him to show him his passport on the
grounds that it was a routine procedure in the university ar-
chives. Sebastián would have two hours to consult the ar-
chive files and inventory. That was the maximum he could
give him, given that he was a substitute and had agreed to
see him because he was coming from a far-away country. It
was an act of mistrust. There was something Ebert didn't
quite like about him, given that he didn't behave like other
visitors.

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 Two hours to dig through the archive, two hours to try
to find something in that ancient treasure, valuable for just
a few but of great value to the university, which knew it had
unique and irrecoverable material. They were time-worn
documents that showed how a unique discovery had come
into existence, but of which few people were aware in his
opinion. Perhaps it would have been better to come to the
archive in a dream to see something wonderful instead of
old books and papers that meant nothing to him. Mr
Burnitz had lured him into this trap of weariness, of yellow-
ing papers and decrepit books. How to fill two hours with
his sadness? How to spend two hours with Marcela who was
beside him at that table in the archive, asking him why they
had ended in a way so unworthy of memory? Why stay in
the archive if he would rather knock on Schopenhauer's
grave and see if some echo would give him an answer to his
disillusionment with life? Why endure Mr. Ebert and his
mistrust?
He heard the door close gently and stood alone in the
room, motionless in front of famous portraits he had seen
in various biographies and encyclopaedias, and which now
stood in front of him. Illustrious pictures, antique and sol-
emn. Sebastián looked at them carefully, not knowing what
to do. Why had he listened to Mr. Burnitz's recommenda-
tion? He had simply let himself be carried away by an illu-
sory interest, for he would find nothing in that museum of
the philosopher. Although that room was more than just a
museum. It contained information that many scholars were
interested in verifying, checking, and interpreting thor-
oughly. He was not interested in interpretations; he just
needed a clue to understand his own melancholy.
Without thinking, he took randomly some books from
the shelves and placed them in a pile over the table without
even reading the titles. It was a sort of exercise to try to es-
cape his boredom and tiredness. Although he might as well

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have said that he had forgotten something at the hotel and
that he could not go on without his notes and that he would
return the next day or whenever possible. Before that des-
perate action, he tried to do something, to place the books
as an act of mysticism. He sat down in front of the old vol-
umes and took a deep breath and touched them to see if he
could get some inspiration. Time passed without any of the
things he had wished for, no inspiration, no sign. Just si-
lence and monotony. Finally, just out of curiosity, he picked
up one of those volumes and began to leaf through it, feeling
the dust of time in his hands. The gothic handwriting of the
copy disturbed him, and he found it hard to read, the letters
made him dizzy, together with the yellow tinge of the pages
and the rancid smell. Then he felt a voice calling him:
“Sebaastian... Sebaaastian,” and without getting up from
his chair he turned around, still dizzy from the gothic letters
and the smell of the old volumes, and he saw Alessandra.
Immediately he had a feeling of dread as he had arrived in
Frankfurt alone and not accompanied as in his dream. But
she was there, closing the door and approaching him. He
thought he was again in a dream or in an hallucination, and
rubbed his eyes, which he imagined were reddened by the
dust of those decrepit volumes. Alessandra had come
closer, and he stared at her, he sat up and felt the need to
hug her. She put her hand in front of him as a sign of refusal
and he had to back away, bumping into the table. The
stacked copies crumbled, and he felt a sharp pain in his left
leg and three volumes fell to the floor. Shaken, he watched
the books fall helplessly and looked at her again with an ex-
pression of regret at what had happened. He rubbed his
eyes, again, again, and again, trying to remove the unpleas-
ant dust of old and worn volumes more than two hundred
years old, and looking again he saw in a blurred vision a
woman he did not know, who asked him sparingly and
stammering for Mr. Ebert: "No... he is… not here... he… is

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coming back... in an hour... maybe two," he answered in an
agitated manner as he picked up the books. Then the
woman looked at him, looked around, and left without say-
ing nothing more.
Unaccustomed to making trouble, least of all in a uni-
versity environment, he felt annoyed at his clumsiness. Alt-
hough it had all been the result of his astonishment at dis-
covering that he had dreamt about Alessandra while awake.
The volumes that had fallen to the floor were about two
hundred years old and it was not surprising that a knock
had damaged them. Still agitated, he noticed that the bind-
ing had come loose from the spine of one of those old vol-
umes and when he closed it, he saw that it had not been left
as it had been at first. He opened it again and saw that a
piece of paper had come loose, but when he tried to put it
back, the paper remained in his hand. He looked at it with
surprise as it did not seem to be part of a printed copy and
when he unfolded it, it was a handwritten note that he
found impossible to read due to the closed handwriting. The
only thing he noticed was the year one thousand eight hun-
dred and sixty and a signature, which electrified his skin
when he read it. There was no doubt, the signature clearly
said Arthur Schopenhauer, almost the only comprehensible
thing in that brief text. It might be a worthless note, but
what was it doing hidden in the spine of a book? Rather
than being happy with his finding, he found himself in a
state of panic at being discovered with a damaged book and
a note by Schopenhauer in his hand, which, they would
think, he was trying to steal from the archive. What if Ebert
turned up at that moment and found him in that situation?
Perhaps he could be prosecuted for destruction of univer-
sity property and theft of unique material.
He heard noises, footsteps, voices, and panic began to
invade him. He thought only of returning the books to their
shelves and putting them as neatly as possible. Mr. Ebert

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had not seen which books he had taken, and possibly that
woman had not had time to read the titles in such a brief
incident. He also thought that the woman should not be an
employee of the university, otherwise her attitude would
have been quite different when she saw the deterioration of
material in the archive. In any case, it was possible that she
might tell Mr. Ebert what had happened. What to do with
the note? Return it? Would it be catalogued? Instinctively,
he put the note in his pocket as if it were an unimportant
and worthless piece of paper. The books were neatly stacked
on the shelves. How meticulously did they arrange the
books in that archive? Would the archivist who was on leave
know in detail each of those copies, their order, their slight-
est traces, their wrinkles, the marks on the pages, the im-
pressions, and the yellow haloes on the pages?
In order not to arouse suspicion of what had
happened, he sought out Mr. Ebert to greet him and to
thank him. He had to pass through various corridors and
offices, asking here and there for his location. Finally, he
found him in dialogue with another employee. Ebert looked
at him with a scrutinising face, looking at his hands and
noting that he was not taking anything. Then he nodded his
greeting without saying anything, just nodding his head in
acknowledgement that it was all over and returning to his
conversation. Sebastián continued walking briskly towards
the exit, hoping that no one would discover that a note
signed by Schopenhauer was in his pocket.

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 Philosophia Prima
(Berlin, 1828) He had realised that it would not be possi-
ble to find a new teaching position in Heidelberg neither
in Würzburg, and that he would also have to bear the bit-
ter memory of Flora Weiß's rejection, as well as the fact
that the major work of his life had not had any recogni-
tion. And in his hand was, finally, a form with seventeen
enrolled students for his course "Philosophia Prima". At
another time in his life, he would have felt this as a sign of
his forthcoming success. But there was no longer any-
thing to boast about. Nor was it necessary to walk
through the corridors of the University of Berlin to ob-
serve those students lost in the words of Hegel, that sense-
less charlatan. It was then better to cancel his philosophy
course once again and hope that his recognition would
come at some point in the future.

25
He didn't quite know what he would do with the laser
he had desperately searched for, believing it had special
powers. In that laser, he thought, was the beginning of his
recovery. That was the vision he had had in the Englisher
Garten that had become his guide and his inspiration.
The day after attempting to destroy the power unit of
the new laser, he hired an external service to change the
lock on the A24 materials warehouse that was continuous
to the storeroom where the magic laser was stowed. Only
researchers and professors who had offices close to the stor-
age area heard what was going on, but they believed it was
a safety precaution due to the purchase of expensive equip-
ment. Researchers in the teleportation group had not heard
about it, as it was taking place in a sector of the university
they rarely accessed, and few knew about the existence of
that sophisticated laser. Only Strauss had been aware of the

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laser's arrival, as he had signed for it on the day the com-
pany had made the delivery and he had also participated in
placing it in the warehouse along with two university em-
ployees. However, Strauss was travelling to Zurich at the
time, so he was not aware of the new security measures his
boss had put in place.
The janitor did not object to the lock change, pointing
out that it was necessary to improve security measures at
the university, something that the chancellor had already
pointed out in a plenary lecture held just a month earlier in
the lecture hall of the faculty. Seligman had been fortunate,
as the janitor believed that the lock change was a conse-
quence of the chancellor's words: "The university is a public
institution where also vital research work is being carried
out, the confidentiality of which must be protected, and
where problems related to theft cannot be admitted, that
would ridicule our institution in the eyes of the public opin-
ion.”
Once the technicians left the place, he retained for
himself both copies of the modern designed entry keys to
the A24 storeroom, which he looked at with approval. The
janitor noted that both access keys remained in his posses-
sion, and due to a clause in the university statutes, he made
him sign a form stipulating that, as Seligman was the sole
holder of the access key, no explosive substances could be
stored or equipment put into operation, and no lamps could
be connected to the sockets. As he gravely signed the form,
he was seized with uneasiness, and had to make an effort
not to let the janitor notice that something strange was
wrong with him, as he did not want to arouse suspicion. He
knew very well that he was signing something false as he
planned to use that place for the operation of his new laser.
A minor event such as changing a lock on a storage room
did not reach the ears of the dean or any member of his
group as that would have been the end of his new project.

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 Victims of cholera
(Berlin, 1831) Leaving Berlin, leaving her son and the few
worthwhile relations she still had. The truth was that
cholera was spreading and she might die if she stayed in
the city besieged by fear and disease. Perhaps Arthur was
not the man for her life. She didn't understand his aca-
demic background, let alone his strange ideas, but she
found him enjoyable and lively to be with. That night she
couldn't sleep after talking to him and after so much news
and proposals she hadn't expected. She was extremely
tired and yet sleep would not come. Perhaps she could
sleep for a few hours when the sun rose and the carriages
were moving through the streets, making noises in the
background, perhaps carrying some new corpse, a victim
of cholera, perhaps within a few steps of her own home.

36
Dresden was silent, a serene, impenetrable silence.
Cold. Cold that passed through annoying lattices where
Alessandra stood that Sunday night watching the deserted
streets, with the cold hitting the pavement and turning it
into shreds. She was just waiting for a sign from that land-
scape of loneliness and boredom. Loneliness, cold, silence,
and the contours of surrounding buildings. All seemed to
indicate something. It was a premonition, a moving mes-
sage that was changing slowly. That feeling would not let
her relax, and from all those signs she knew that something
was happening in Munich. Where? In Munich.
The first time Sebastián travelled to Munich together
with Andreas, she didn't think it was anything unusual,
although it didn't seem like a business trip taking place on
a weekend. On their return, they mentioned nothing to her
about the trip, only vague and unimportant remarks. There
was a secrecy that was unusual in their relationship, and
then there was that unannounced departure. It had all come

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together to touch her curiosity and make her senses more
sensitive. Her senses tried to perceive what was behind such
a concealment.
The two weeks leading up to the second trip were
marked by nervousness, two weeks in which she felt that
something was affecting her but could not understand what
it was. She concluded that something as trivial as a trip
could not be the cause of her state of discomfort. When Se-
bastián announced his departure for Munich that Saturday
— and later she found out that Andreas would also be trav-
elling on Sunday — uneasiness began to penetrate her,
causing her to feel areas of her body stiff with tension at
many moments, and she noticed that her body was re-
sponding in an unusual way, as if something was taking
hold of her. That Sunday night she couldn't sleep because
of her stresses. It was three hours of futile attempts rehears-
ing different positions and trying to think of some sugges-
tive scenes that had been successful in the past, until she
finally remembered the gift of her friend Emilia.
Before leaving Florence, Emilia had given her a small
package containing a booklet of photographs of the city and
a packet of twenty tablets with a strange name she could
barely pronounce, and as she read in small print on the back
of the packet the word sedative, she felt her heart begin to
beat faster. Her friend had glimpsed the difficult situations
that might await her when she left Florence, but she didn't
quite understand and took that strange gift with cheerful-
ness after her heart had returned to a normal rhythm. The
photobook, however, she considered a singular idea, some-
thing that would connect her to the streets of her childhood
even though she was far away from the city she loved so
much. The gift had been a perfect match, something she had
failed to interpret that day before her departure. It was the
first time in her life that she needed to take an analgesic,
hoping for a miracle from that tiny tablet in the great pond

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of the dark and silent Dresden night.
Hopelessly, hours passed with slowness of death.
With each new glance at the alarm clock, a full hour had
passed, although in her perception it had only been a few
minutes. Finally, the light of dawn began to filter through
the window, through the jalousies in the form of a spectre,
a spectre of yellow lights that blinded her. Exhausted, she
got up to look again at the deserted streets covered with thin
traces of ice. The gruff ringing of the telephone startled her
as she surveyed the landscape, knowing that nothing good
could be expected when she picked up the receiver, for she
sensed that something out of the ordinary had happened in
Munich during that drowsy, weary night.
As she held the receiver, feeling it with an unaccus-
tomed weight, Andreas spoke without waiting for an an-
swer. Sebastián had been admitted together with Seligman;
“Seligman, Seligman,” she said; “yes, yes...;” “with Selig-
man?” A strange event had occurred. Sebastián had tried
out new equipment which the great scientist was using in
his teleportation experiments, and had come up with new
ideas, ideas so far-reaching that Seligman wanted to try
them out that very day. “What kind of experiments?”
“Weird, novel, strange.” Something strange had happened,
something he didn't know about. Both had gone into shock
and had been rushed to hospital. Andreas finished recount-
ing the events in detail, but she didn't answer. So, he per-
sisted, again and again, thinking that the communication
had been interrupted, and finally he heard her voice in a
very low tone:
“First, I must talk to my boss at the institute and ask
for a few days off. If all goes well, I'll try to travel today and
maybe I'll be there in the evening. Please book me a room
in your hotel.”

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