Korridorium

♫ Mare Chronium––Contemplating ♫

---

31/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, car­ry­ing a tray with two meals. It is Coq au Vin, and it smells deli­cious.

Our guest has requested that I serve it five min­utes past mid­night. He is a nice older gen­tle­man with gray stub­ble, who has already paid for every­thing in advance. “K. K. Korian­der” he wrote on the reg­is­tra­tion form and repeat­edly con­firmed that the recep­tion at our small coun­try hotel is indeed staffed around the clock and that room ser­vice is absolutely punc­tual. The night­time recep­tion­ist and room ser­vice, that’s me, and it’s pre­cisely five past mid­night. I knock on the door of Room No. 27.

The door opens: “Come in. That smells deli­cious.” Mr. Corian­der isn’t alone. There’s a young man there, per­haps thirty years old. He’s wear­ing a suit, and his hair is slightly disheveled.

Mr. Korian­der ges­tures toward the table. I place the plates in front of them, set down cut­lery and nap­kins, and pour two glasses of still min­eral water. The young man smiles at me. I feel some­what pecu­liar. How did he get in here? I was stand­ing at the recep­tion the whole time. Or did he arrive in the min­utes when I was in the kitchen get­ting the Coq au Vin?

“Please stay,” Mr. Korian­der tells me, “in case we need any­thing else.” I nod and step next to the bed. If some­one were to unex­pect­edly need some­thing from me at this hour, there’s a call but­ton at the recep­tion.

The two men clink glasses of water, and while the young man eagerly tucks into his chicken, the older one starts ask­ing ques­tions. They con­verse in Eng­lish, and Mr. Korian­der’s guest is appar­ently Amer­i­can. As far as I can under­stand, they’re talk­ing about Mars and some life forms there.

“Tweerl?” Mr. Korian­der asks, or at least that’s how it sounds. The young man laughs and says that humans can’t pro­nounce it, so he can’t either. Mr. Korian­der is quite inter­ested in some­thing he calls non-human con­scious­ness. It’s all very strange, the way they’re talk­ing

It’s very strange what the two of them are talk­ing about — the young man, who keeps chew­ing and swal­low­ing before answer­ing, and Mr. Korian­der, who does­n’t eat at all, but makes notes in a small note­book.

They talk about this crea­ture with the unpro­nounce­able name as if it were in the room.
Mr. Korian­der wants to know how it evolved and what hap­pened to the other “Thots.” I’m quite con­fused because, on one hand, they seem to be talk­ing about some sort of bird – with a “beak” in its lit­eral mean­ing – and on the other hand, about an Egypt­ian god who is said to have taught the ancient Egyp­tians how to read and write.

The young man tosses the last gnawed bone back onto the plate and wipes his hands with the nap­kin.

“I would have liked to dis­cuss Venus with you as well,” Mr. Korian­der says regret­fully, “and the intel­li­gent plants there.” It seems very eccen­tric, what the two of them are dis­cussing in the mid­dle of the night. The young man shrugs. “Yum­mie,” he says and wipes his lips, which must mean he enjoyed it.

Mr. Korian­der turns to me: “We’re fin­ished. You can clear the table.” So, I do. I leave them the water.

It’s strange, I think, as I ride our aging ele­va­tor down­stairs. “Tweerl” goes through my mind once more. What­ever it is, it must be a very pecu­liar crea­ture that thinks quite dif­fer­ently from ordi­nary peo­ple. But then again, those two weren’t exactly ordi­nary peo­ple.

A short time later, Mr. Korian­der approaches the counter and hands me his room key. “Would you like to go out?” I ask, bewil­dered because at this hour, every­thing in the vil­lage is fast asleep. But Mr. Korian­der wants to check out. He leaves a gen­er­ous tip on the counter. I thank him and watch him with aston­ish­ment. It’s just past one in the morn­ing.

And only then do I remem­ber the young Amer­i­can. But some­how, I already know that he’s no longer in the hotel. He must have dis­ap­peared the same way he appeared.

The Coq au Vin, which Mr. Korian­der had not touched, still tastes incred­i­bly deli­cious, even when cold.

♫ Metaphrastes ♫

---

32/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor between the cells. A great honor! How I have asked, begged, and prayed to have the chance of speak­ing with the old mas­ter poets, to seek their advice, to ben­e­fit from their wis­dom! Finally, after lengthy nego­ti­a­tions, I am granted admis­sion to the Akasha Palace. Here, not only are their time­less works are safe­guarded, but also their per­son­al­i­ties from that time remain in per­pet­ual pro­tec­tive cus­tody. Noth­ing fades, not even the spirit of our ances­tors who stand ready to answer us—if we can find the way to them.

I have been allowed into the cor­ri­dor of poets—there isn’t one for short prose writers—and for those who weren’t con­fined to poetry alone, their cells are said to open onto other cor­ri­dors: tragedies, epic poems, come­dies, choral odes, astro­log­i­cal trea­tises…

But this is just a spec­u­la­tion, not a cer­tainty. The keep­ers here aren’t very forth­com­ing. In any case, it seems that the cri­te­rion for admis­sion to the inmates is the kiss of a muse. Here, per­haps, it was Euter­pe’s. I read names on the name­plates on the doors, names like Mil­ton, Dante, Bolo, Orpheus, Nei­d­hart, Brant, Shiki, Bukowski, Vergil, Yeats, Tyr­taios, Tao Yuan­ming, and many oth­ers I have never heard of. Euterpe was dili­gent. Or was it Erato?

Who should I ask here? I don’t have much time. I am allowed to ask one of the poets behind the heavy wooden doors a ques­tion. For years, decades, I have been able to con­tem­plate this one ques­tion. I know it inside and out. It is the ques­tion, the key to the answer behind all answers.

The guard already looks impa­tient. From Bukowski’s cell, a howl seems to come, but maybe it’s the wind of time trapped in these end­less, twist­ing cor­ri­dors. My gaze falls on the name­plate Rumi. Yes! He will be the one! He will know the answer and gladly tell me. Inter­nally, I rejoice as I slide the small wooden panel in the door to the side. Yes, who could give me bet­ter infor­ma­tion than the Per­sian mas­ter poet and vision­ary of mys­ti­cal love and spir­i­tual ecstasy!

“Jalalud­din?” I call into the dark­ness of his cell. Dimly, I see a man wear­ing a tur­baned dervish cap, spin­ning in place with out­stretched arms. He radi­ates an infi­nite seren­ity, beyond all descrip­tion, and at the same time, an unspeak­able joy shim­mers out from him in spi­rals, pierc­ing deep into my heart.

 don’t know if I stood there for a sin­gle breath or an eter­nity. The hand of the guard pushes the small wooden hatch to Rumi’s cell shut. He guides me back. When I finally stand out­side again and the guard has closed the gates of the palace behind me, I begin to spin, slowly on my axis, with out­stretched arms.

♫ Keep the Focus ♫

---

34/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor of slid­ing plas­tic walls. The researchers start their stop­watch. They want to test if I know some­thing I should­n’t: if so-called mor­phic fields form from the learn­ing expe­ri­ences of indi­vid­u­als, which other mem­bers of the same species can then access.

I, for my part, do not know the way through this maze. But count­less other rats wan­dered through it until they could mem­o­rize the short­est route to the food. Some of them are now dead and dissected—they accom­pany me invis­i­bly with their knowl­edge, help­ing their unwit­ting com­rade, giv­ing me impulses to go right here, left there, or to ignore forks in the path.

At the end of the course, I savor the canned meat—my reward—while the researchers record their results in a table.

All liv­ing beings have ances­tors who help them. Even the researchers. It’s just that, much like they must pro­tect their hair­less bod­ies from the cold with skins and fab­rics, they also keep all inklings at a dis­tance. Their brains have likely swollen so much for this pur­pose that none of these faint inklings can pen­e­trate into the sen­si­tive depths within.

So they often go astray, again and again, before—if they are very lucky—they reach the des­ti­na­tion of their desires.

♫ Jiǎ Píy­ǐngxì ♫

---

36/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, which was once an air duct, to reach the multi-story shop­ping dis­trict we built inside Tai He Dian, the Hall of Supreme Har­mony. Here, spread across many lev­els, mil­lions of us live. The young peo­ple in these streets and on the curved bridges regard me with a cer­tain rev­er­ence: an old man. They may sus­pect that I am a relic, belong­ing to the very first gen­er­a­tion of New Chi­nese, the pio­neers of the Great Recon­struc­tion. The idea that the For­bid­den City could accom­mo­date nearly three bil­lion of us moved into the realm of tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­ity back then; indeed, I was one of the sci­en­tists who pro­posed to the National Peo­ple’s Con­gress that we shrink our peo­ple to con­serve our con­ti­nen­t’s resources and allow our nation a long, happy future of pros­per­ity.

Although we com­pleted the New China project with great grav­ity and metic­u­lous care, I am no longer cer­tain today if that large-scale minia­tur­iza­tion was a good idea. While we—now mea­sur­ing only a thir­ti­eth of our orig­i­nal size—consume barely a hun­dredth of our pre­vi­ous resources, our plan to set a noble exam­ple for the other nations of the world has failed. With the most hon­or­able inten­tions, we have turned the giant empire of China into a king­dom of dwarves. Quite apart from the rat prob­lem we have here in the For­bid­den City—which, though hushed up, per­sists despite the pro­tec­tion of our 13,844 ancient carved dragons—not only did no other coun­try wish to join our Com­mon March to True Great­ness, but we are no longer respected or taken seri­ously. In the eyes of the world, we Chi­nese have shrunk to an insignif­i­cant and, at best, cute curios­ity.

♫ On a Secret Trail ♫

---

41/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to one of the tem­ples in the Pirámide del Adi­vino in Uxmal. The Maya were great builders, but ulti­mately, their suc­cess led to their down­fall: despite sophis­ti­cated irri­ga­tion sys­tems, sev­eral years of drought brought their rapidly grow­ing pop­u­la­tion to its knees. They left behind mag­nif­i­cent struc­tures and a com­plex cal­en­dar that—as some believe—predicts the end of our world for Decem­ber 21, 2012.

Typ­i­cally, I expe­ri­ence panic attacks in nar­row cor­ri­dors and pas­sage­ways; how­ever, since I set foot on the Yucatán Penin­sula, strange, long-for­got­ten mem­o­ries have come flood­ing back to me. The ruins appear as though I knew them in their orig­i­nal state—these inte­ri­ors do not cause me any dis­com­fort; on the con­trary, they draw me in as if by magic.

Have I lost my trou­ble­some claus­tro­pho­bia, which I’ve been try­ing to com­bat through a kind of self-treat­ment with a blog? No, a rem­nant of panic remains. But there’s a notice­able improve­ment, and my efforts to con­quer my fears seem to be bear­ing fruit. I’ll give myself exactly one more year! Then, I decide spon­ta­neously right here in the tem­ple cor­ri­dor of Uxmal, the world will end—at least the world of my lit­tle ther­apy blog, which I will ruth­lessly delete on that exact day. It will be a sign that I can now take on cor­ri­dors in nat­u­ram—the phys­i­cal ones made of stone, metal, wood, and glass. While an entire uni­verse of real cor­ri­dors awaits me, a world of imag­ined cor­ri­dors will be con­signed to destruc­tion in a sin­gle stroke. As if the Maya had fore­seen it…

♫ Hello Folly! ♫

---

44/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. It’s always a long ascent to Ely­sium, even on this Christ­mas Eve in 1930 A.D. Finally, I reach the top. As I do every year, I report to the Cre­ator.

He looks at me expec­tantly: “Well?” – “They have dis­re­garded your warn­ing, eaten from the Tree of Knowl­edge, and left the Gar­den of Eden.” – “I know, I know. Don’t always start with Adam and Eve.” – “They wage cruel wars in your name, reck­lessly exploit the cre­ation you entrusted to them, and behave in a down­right blas­phe­mous manner—short-sighted, cold-hearted, and nar­row-minded.” – “You’re quite the dev­il’s advo­cate. I’m painfully aware of all of this.”

“In any case, I think they deserve pun­ish­ment. May I… cast them into the fires of hell?” I ask slyly, wip­ing a thread of drool from the cor­ner of my mouth. “Not nec­es­sary. They’ll inflict it upon them­selves in a few years.” – “Another world war? Hm. Can I at least… fur­ther con­found their minds, so that they suc­cumb not just to stu­pid­ity, but to mad­ness as well?” I ask, try­ing not to appear too eager. “They’ll han­dle that them­selves too. They’ve just invented tele­vi­sion.”

“Tele­vi­sion? Oh. Hm. May I…? Is it pos­si­ble…? With my evil gaze, per­haps…” I stut­ter, ner­vously scuff­ing my cloven hoof and chastis­ing myself for not seem­ing more con­fi­dent and con­vinc­ing. “You’ll sim­ply con­tinue to watch over them, my dear.” – “But why?” – “Because you still have much to learn.”

♫ Nir­bas Hunt Lash­larms (Exc) ♫

---

46/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Some­how, I sus­pect the islanders want to be rid of me, and I am on my guard. I imag­ine they dis­like my large ears, my sturdy legs—my oth­er­ness. Unadorned, roughly plas­tered stone walls rise on both sides; since there is no roof, the sun streams in. I scan my sur­round­ings war­ily. Is a pit­fall await­ing me? Will spears, trig­gered by my steps, shoot from the walls to pierce me? There is a pun­gent odor here. Appar­ently, the islanders usu­ally drive goats through this pas­sage.

Care­fully, I place one foot in front of the other. Sud­denly, a shadow eclipses the sun. Look­ing up, I see a gigan­tic bird plum­met­ing toward me. In the nar­row cor­ri­dor, I can­not turn quickly enough. And where would I go, any­way? I become easy prey for its out­stretched claws, each of them as large as a full-grown leop­ard. They seize me, and with a few pow­er­ful wing­beats, the majes­tic bird soars back into the air.

Appar­ently, it wants me alive. Below me, the islanders have gath­ered in the square before the Tem­ple of the For­mi­da­ble Naked Mole-Rat; they wave their arms and dance as spir­ited drum music rises up. I trum­pet in protest.

The giant bird heads toward a moun­tain­side. I spot an immense nest where four enor­mous, gap­ing beaks reach upward. The hun­gry squawk­ing of the chicks makes my blood run cold.

♫ Thun­der­snow ♫

---

51/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. I’ve never wound up inside the Vic­tory Col­umn before. Prob­a­bly just a tourist thing any­way. There are none here this time because the homi­cide squad has cor­doned off the whole place. Uwe Albo walks up to me. “I’ve never seen any­thing like this in my life. Truly nasty. I’m gonna nail that bas­tard myself, if…” He loses his train of thought. Looks rat­tled. I help him along: “The guy? Or the woman?” Albo blinks, but quickly real­izes I couldn’t pos­si­bly know more than he does yet. “No woman would do some­thing like this.” He steps aside for me. The pho­tog­ra­pher is busy work­ing. His flash illu­mi­nates a stack of loose pages topped with a bloody lump of meat. A fresh heart, it seems—most likely human, or Albo and the homi­cide squad would­n’t have shown up, and he would­n’t have called me in so fast. Well, what a great way to end the year. I look around the cor­ri­dor, but I can’t spot any­thing psy­cho­log­i­cally note­wor­thy.

Later in his office, after wait­ing for what felt like twenty paper cups of bit­ter cof­fee, Detec­tive Albo hands me the pages. The blood has left dark red stains on them. I’m pretty glad the crime lab sealed every sin­gle sheet in a plas­tic sleeve.

“There are fifty of them,” Albo says. He looks espe­cially tired today, as if the dark bags under his eyes have absorbed even more of the world’s suf­fer­ing. “Num­bered sequen­tially.” He drops into his swivel chair. “That’s all we’ve got. Sus­pect DNA, fin­ger­prints, foot­prints: zilch.” I flip through the pages. Type­writ­ten. Short texts. Sto­ries. No con­fes­sion let­ter, by the looks of it. No love let­ters, either. “The heart?” I ask.

Albo reaches for his phone as if it just vibrated. But he must have been mis­taken; he slips it away with a barely notice­able shake of his head. “The heart, yeah. The vic­tim is male, judg­ing by the blood. No sign of the rest of him.”

I stand up and wave the stack of pages: “I’ll take a closer look at these at home.” Albo stares at me like I’ve just opened my jacket to show him a sui­cide belt. “You can’t take those! Have you lost your mind? That’s cru­cial evi­dence.” I take three steps to the copier and lift the lid. The doc­u­ment feeder won’t do me any good here with the plas­tic around the pages. Albo looks like he wants to protest. A green glow sweeps beneath the glass. Can a copier light destroy foren­sic evi­dence? Albo seems to decide that’s pretty unlikely. He slumps back into his chair. He must have known right away that we’re deal­ing with a sick mind. Oth­er­wise, I would­n’t be here.

I place the sec­ond sheet on the glass. On the first page I set aside, there’s a lot of dried blood that left ugly black con­ti­nents on the copy, like inkblots in a Rorschach test. The stains pool around the text num­bered 1 on the page. It’s just a sin­gle sen­tence. It reads: “I enter the cor­ri­dor …”

♫ Under the Throne ♫

---

55/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. The neon tube flick­ers. Albo’s office door is slightly ajar. “Come in,” he calls, “Happy New Year!” He sits par­tially bathed in the pool of light from his desk lamp. The rest of the room remains in dark­ness. Out­side, a few belated fire­works go off. It’s long past mid­night.

“Happy New Year!” I reply, although the grue­some dis­cov­ery from ear­lier today has­n’t exactly put me in a fes­tive mood.

“So?” he asks. I know what he wants from me. Albo needs to catch a killer, and I’m sup­posed to help him do it. I head for the cof­fee machine first. Its red power light guides my way. A bad habit, but def­i­nitely bet­ter than imme­di­ately reach­ing for the hard liquor.

It seems Albo is ring­ing in the New Year with cof­fee, too. I notice he’s made copies of the fifty pages as well. He’s prob­a­bly read them as many times as I have over the past few hours. They would’ve made decent New Year’s read­ing if a human heart had­n’t been sit­ting on top of them.

Albo’s head stays in the shad­ows. Maybe that’s for the best. I sit down across from him. “All typed. On a type­writer, I mean. And dif­fer­ent type­writ­ers, judg­ing by the font.”

“Fifty dif­fer­ent type­writ­ers. I already had it checked out. There’s an eBay account, SpellingErrors68, that bought fifty old type­writ­ers a few months ago and then deac­ti­vated the account. We reached out to eBay and the sellers—nothing use­ful so far, at least not what we could dig up on a hol­i­day. Looks like he cov­ered his tracks thor­oughly.”

“SpellingEr­ror?”

“Yeah, there are tons of accounts with names like that. Why?”

“Because he does­n’t make any.”

“If you think that’s a con­tra­dic­tion, it’s just one of many, isn’t it?” Albo places his palm flat on the copies with spread fin­gers, as if lay­ing a curse on them. “Some­times a man, some­times a woman, some­times old, some­times young, play­ing dumb one minute, play­ing smart the next…”

“Who says the killer wrote them?”

Albo pulls his hand back. “The open­ing. Always the same. A cor­ri­dor. Remem­ber where we found the cut-out heart? In a cor­ri­dor.”

“Hardly proof,” I say. “And besides, who says it was writ­ten by a sin­gle per­son? Could be mul­ti­ple peo­ple.”

Albo leans for­ward, dip­ping his stub­bly chin into the pool of light. “Come on, man,” he says, “I need results, clues, leads, some­thing!”

I crum­ple the empty paper cup and toss it toward where the trash can usu­ally sits in day­light.

Albo ges­tures with his hands. “Is it a mad­man? An unrec­og­nized artist? A lit­er­a­ture teacher? Some­one whose texts were stolen, seek­ing bloody revenge? Believ­ing it will get him on the front page of the local tabloids? You’re the pro­filer, so tell me.”

“If it’s an author, and if he’s a male author — which I think is both likely — then he’s some­one who likes to jug­gle with pos­si­bil­i­ties. And who appar­ently likes to play hide-and-seek.”

“What does that mean?” Albo rum­bles, as he did in his prime. “That he wants us to chase him? That this guy sees mur­der as a game?”

I purse my lips and shake my head. Albo prob­a­bly can’t see me any bet­ter than I can see him. But I need it for myself. Mak­ing clear state­ments here means ven­tur­ing far out onto thin ice. “A game, yes. Or a kind of puz­zle course through cor­ri­dors. There’s men­tion of around four hun­dred texts in total: if we’re unlucky, it will con­tinue.”

“We’ll pre­vent that. That’s why I need some clues!”

“What do you want to hear? That he’s edu­cated, prob­a­bly has a degree, is well-versed in the new Ger­man spelling, has a broad range of inter­ests, includ­ing fairy tales, myth, his­tory and sci­ence fic­tion pos­sesses a dry sense of humor, seems to con­sider him­self a poet or ‘short prose writer,’ grav­i­tates toward word play and exis­ten­tial tirades, and has an obses­sion with cor­ri­dors? That he’s forty-three years old?”

“Forty-three? Does he write that?”

“Just a hunch, because of ‘SpellingErrors68’—he might’ve used his birth year. A lot of peo­ple do.”

Albo leans for­ward again, this time to make sure I see him smile. “Well, that’s some­thing. We’re nar­row­ing it down. What about the woman he writes about at the start?”

“Could be a tragic love story. She turns up later as an anagram—I just hope the ‘cho­sen one‹’ has­n’t been miss­ing her heart since yes­ter­day.”

Albo grunts. “The vic­tim was male.”

“Right, yeah. Maybe text num­ber 50 gives us a lead.”

Albo rum­mages through the copies until he finds the right one: “The ther­a­pist?”

“Yup. That could be some­thing: trauma, night­mares, ther­apy. And the bloody heart could be a man­i­festo. Or a cry for help.”

“So I should have all the female trauma ther­a­pists in Berlin checked to see if they’ve got some­one with a cor­ri­dor obses­sion on their couch…”

“I’d actu­ally check the male ther­a­pists instead. Every­thing in these texts is twisted.”

Albo holds out one of the copies. “Who’s R. L. St.?”

I stand up and walk over to the win­dow. Rain is falling, mak­ing the street­lights out­side the sta­tion look even gloomier than usual. At least from here I can spot two shim­mer­ing reflec­tions in the dark hole where Albo’s head must be. “Robert Louis Steven­son. Wrote Jekyll and Hyde, inspired by hal­lu­ci­nated lit­tle men.”

“Jekyll and Hyde. Great, this oughta be fun,” he grunts.

“I need more time, Uwe,” I say. Albo mut­ters some­thing I take as grudg­ing agree­ment. I leave him alone. The new year is a few hours old now, and as I step out into the night, the rain stops, as if some­one had sud­denly placed a hand over the city.

♫ Beyond the Point of No Return ♫

---

65/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, fol­lowed by my squad. An infer­nal heat blasts us; the cor­ri­dor is a sin­gle sea of flames. Well, the trea­sure of all trea­sures may be well-guarded, but I’ve brought help. My two fire sala­man­ders step for­ward. They salute and ven­ture into the blaz­ing hell to reach the oppo­site side, where they shut off the fuel to the flamethrow­ers. The path is clear. We march on between walls that are soot-black­ened and still glow­ing hot.

The next por­tal and the pas­sage beyond are com­pletely filled with earth—this is a job for my mole brigade. They don their hel­mets and get to work. A short while later, we are able to pass.

We come across a stair­case lead­ing down, flooded with water. I’ve thought of that, too. Of course, the most ele­men­tal of all treasures—one that has eluded grave rob­bers for millennia—isn’t going to make it easy for us. The swamp tur­tles start their march and dive down the steps. They must find the drain quickly, because sud­denly the water level drops. A final watery belch echoes through the stair­well, and we are able to descend, though the steps are still quite slick and we have to be care­ful not to take a spill.

In the next cor­ri­dor, giant red­woods grow so close together that there is no get­ting through. I can’t even wedge my hand between the trunks. Wood? I was expect­ing air. Or Aris­totelian ether. But wood? The ter­mites dili­gently set to work. Yet, even though they give it their all, they don’t make much progress. It takes days for them to process the trees into saw­dust. The morale of the troop sinks. Some no longer believe in our suc­cess and turn back, despite my impas­sioned appeals not to give up. Now, only a frac­tion of those who set out with me remain.

The last corridor—for accord­ing to ancient lore, there can be no more than five—is filled once again. But not with air or ether; this time, it is metal. The por­tal opens onto solid iron, per­haps poured into the cor­ri­dor in liq­uid form and allowed to cool. Those of us left look at one another. This caught us all off guard. I cast a des­per­ate glance at our mot­ley crew. None of us is a match for this mate­r­ial.

A chirp. I look up. A small bird flies in, pay­ing us no mind. For a moment, it hov­ers, flut­ter­ing before the mas­sive iron wall, briefly whets its beak against it, and flies off again. At the spot where it—for the umpteenth time, probably—sharpened its beak, the squir­rel spots a tiny inden­ta­tion in the metal and alerts us with a squeak.

So, there is some truth to this leg­end as well. But now, even my last loyal fol­low­ers throw in the towel and turn back—evidently not blessed with the patience and per­sis­tence of a lit­tle bird from Pomera­nia that pecks at the iron once every hun­dred years. Only I, the last of the trea­sure hunters, sit down before the bare metal with my arms crossed. I’ve come this far. The prospect of wait­ing does­n’t daunt me any­more, even if it might take a lit­tle while.