Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happe… - Jorge Luis Borges

If Dahlmann was without hope, he was also without fear. As he crossed the threshold, he felt that to die in a knife fight, under the open sky, and going forward to the attack, would have been a liberation, a joy, and a festive occasion, on the first night in the sanitarium, when they stuck him with the needle. He felt that if he had been able to choose, then, or to dream his death, this would have been the death he would have chosen or dreamt. Firmly clutching his knife, which he perhaps would not know how to wield, Dahlmann went out into the plain.

On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He was dark, dried up, diminutive, and seemed outside time, situated in eternity.

أن تحملق فى النهر الذى يصنعه الزمن والماء
وأن تتذكر أن الزمن ذاته نهر آخر
أن تعرف أننا نكف عن الوجود، تماما مثل النهر
وأن وجوهنا تموت وترحل، تماما مثل الماء
أن تُحسّ بأن الاستيقاظ نوم آخر
يحلم بأنه لا ينام وبأن الموت
الذى يرتعد منه لحمنا، هو نفسه ذلك الموت
الذى يحدث كل ليلة، والذى نسميه النوم
أن ترى فى اليوم أو فى السنة رمزا
لأيام البشرية وسنينها
أن تُحوّل إهانة السنين
إلى موسيقى، وحفيف، ورمز