Metempsychosis, M.A. (5)

Dearest Kora

I have been trying to talk to you about it for quite some time but choosing the correct way, the adequate words can be daunting.

As far as I can be the judge of it, I have reached the final stage of what Freud used to call ego formation. Looking beyond that stage I can see only...

She stopped writing. She hated the result. She hated to be so inept in writing her last words to the person she loved the most. She also found it utterly exhausting. She could hardly focus, thoughts simultaneously letting her down and then all of a sudden streaming through her mind too fast to be of any use. One of them, more daring and persistent than others, obliged her and made itself known. For some strange reason, and for the first time, it hit her that her life had been made considerably worse by the two men who cast such long shadows over its course: her father and brother, one of them long dead, one still alive - still as awkward and intrusive despite staying, at least physically, well away from her. She realized for the first time that she knew it all the way long, but suppressed it and refused to admit it. Consciously or not, they both worked very hard to inflict maximum harm on the most subtle layer of her psyche. If not their pestering and constant pressure, if not the tone of derision, often accompanied by unrealistic demands to fulfill their patronizing criteria, her life would have been entirely different. It would have been easier and happier. Unless, the authors she revered as a very young 'girl' already sensing father's heavy breathing on her neck, were right in saying life isn't meant to be easy; that the pursuit of happiness is entirely beside the point. Life is a burden - a crisis by definition, and the only way out of it is by accepting its weight and learn how to patiently carry it on one's shoulders till the end...

This cannot be true though. She vividly remembers moments of prolonged sustained bliss, especially since Kora was born. She recalls the joy, the wonder and the beauty she brought into her lonely existence, limited only by her sister's envy and unfounded absurd suspicions. Agnes used every opportunity to separate the two perfectly innocent beings, and when Kora grew up, she quickly realized who was the chief instigator conspiring against her aunt, undermining her from a distance by telling her mother stories that were as false as they were perverse. It was indeed the reason why Johanna learned to self-apply the word "perverse"at the same time treating it with such distance and irony - it was because her brother used it so often, accusing her of conduct and practices that, despite the obvious provocation, she never, not even once took part in.

Another thought went rushing through her mind: what if, instead of writing extensively to Kora as previously intended, and instead of disposing of the diary, Johanna left it to her with just a brief note of farewell? Is the manuscript legible enough? Is it something she should read? Does it contain anything she should add or censor before giving it to her? She wasn't sure of the answers. She felt disappointed she hadn't thought of it till now, that despite planning her last day for such a long time, she kept this thing, this crucial detail suspended in the air. The diary was originally meant only as her intimate outlet of impressions that badly needed to be put in order, as a sort of an alchemist kit with which one purifies the essence, separating it from the unwanted debris of life, selecting and discarding all that's the unwanted and keeping the requisite. She considered it a necessary spiritual exercise, indispensable in coping with the flood of demands and insinuations imposed on her by Anton directly after the funeral. She needed a safety net after he violently pushed her away from the world she was at last, after both parents left her entirely to her own devices, beginning to enjoy on her own terms.

She tried to assess the material with Kora's eyes. 'It won't be an easy read...' Notwithstanding its evident faults, she knew the diary was an honest account of her inner life at the time of writing. She finished it only last year, so it is more or less up-to-date. Not much has happened since, her time and energy consumed mostly by the uneventful work leading to the tonight's final episode, and, should she still have time and if there was a genuine need for it, she could even add another brief entry summing up the period.

'If belief in rebirth was to make any sense, it is as coming to terms with here and now. Plato was right in this context: all knowledge is recollection, anamnesis. If it refers to the past, it must be. The manuscript proves I have spent a great deal of time recollecting, paying my final bills - trying to terminate accounts. Who knows, perhaps I'll have to keep on paying ad infinitum. The subscription can't be cancelled. At least that's what they want us to believe: that the accounts can never be settled – that you always owe something. A slave who can never redeem herself, who can never get her liberty back.'

Are the accounts settled? She felt the powerful urge to read the diary. She opened the desk, grabbed the notebook, went to her favoured chair, put the glasses on and begun reading.

© 2023