Читать книгу Till Kingdom Come - Andrej Nikolaidis - Страница 6

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These spatio-temporal lapses continued in the years that followed and became ever more frequent and prominent. To begin with, they occurred just after I had woken up: Lying in bed in my grandmother’s house in Ulcinj, I would open my eyes in Brussels, Paris or London and recall the circumstances that had led me there. I would return five minutes or half an hour later; it was totally unpredictable. Later the lapses became even more common, I’d say almost regular. They could happen at any time: While I was going for a walk, eating a meal or, worst of all, in the middle of a conversation. I would simply fall silent and be somewhere else. The person sitting next to me would call my name, but it didn’t work. Most of them simply got up and left. The well-intentioned and devoted ones would call an ambulance. After a few abortive calls, which ended with me coming round in front of the astonished medics and having to apologize, make them a coffee and beg them to be discreet (“My condition is certainly strange, and this is a small town – you know how it is when people find out about things”), the ambulance dispatchers learned to ignore the calls. “Just leave him,” they’d say to the good Samaritan. “Get on with your business and don’t worry about him. He wanders a bit, and then he comes back as if nothing had happened.”

I was unable to perceive any pattern in those lapses or determine what triggered them. At first I thought it might be alcohol. But abstinence didn’t help; on the contrary, it made things worse. My condition could be described as an absolute lack of interest in the present, let alone the future. My mind was constantly going into rewind because everything I cared about was in the past.