My wife and I leaned against a piece of furniture of some kind. It ran around the whole room. She was hurried and stiff. Next door there was more light. It shone festively through an open door. Apparently, it was my wife’s birthday. Some people were already arriving and passing to the other room without a word. My wife looked at me intently and said that she was very concerned. She had to talk to me immediately, but she would soon have to join her guests. She just wanted to show me something. Her face was gray, expressionless.

She produced an envelope. It came from her mother, who lives in Dallas, Texas. Before the letter arrived, her mother called her and said that she, my wife, should open it sitting down. It contained something unbearable, something unspeakable. I froze. My lips shrank. I took the envelope and pulled out a letter and a photograph. My fingers hardly obeyed me.

It was an old black-and-white photograph. In a huge tub filled with water there floated a naked female body just beneath the surface. Its disposition reminded me of a Renaissance painting of Jesus’ body lying limp on a stone table. Large feet and small head in sharp perspective. I could not recognize the woman’s swollen face. Her bloated body was unrecognizable, too.

Sitting in the tub beside the floating cadaver I saw myself. It appeared that I was naked, as well. Much younger, I was smiling victoriously. The expression on my face was akin to those of merry soldiers gathered around a small tree decorated with men just hanged. My wife whispered that, according to the crumpled letter in my hands, my father was an accomplice in this. He was not in the picture, though. I was overtaken with the deepest of horrors I have ever felt.

The horror woke me up. Outside, dark trees stood still. The image on that photograph was so strong, so unforgiving, that I could not resist feeling that a long time ago I had indeed done something of the sort. Even more strangely, I took as an explanation the fact that the memory of my youth is so sparse. Clearly, I thought, I repressed everything connected with the murder. That thought came in a flash, like a truth.

Only after two or three days did the horror subside. Night after night I was going to sleep with a sinking heart, fearing that the dream would recur. Even now, a month or so later, when I am trying to record this dream in the simplest of words, I feel the cold darkness that had enveloped me for days. For a while at least, I was a demented murderer.

Addendum (January 22, 2000)

I was staying in a house of Barbara Verlič’s mother at the shore of lake Bohinj in Slovenia. Back then, Barbara was still married to Jože Dekleva, my partner on many a climb in Slovenia and Italy. If I am not mistaken, Barbara and Jože were in the house at the time, and so were their children, Luka and Maruška. Marko was with me that summer and he, too, must have been in the house that night. With the exception of Barbara, we must have just returned from the mountains. I am not sure why all this is important at this juncture, but I appear to be searching for witnesses of my horror.