Moss by Klaus Modick

Author:Klaus Modick
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2020-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

MINE WERE THE TYPICAL SYMPTOMS of a cold—swollen nasal mucous membranes and increased production of mucus, which during the day lodged itself in the frontal sinus cavity and during the night, when I reclined, dissolved and ran down. But from the start, I had believed all this was instead an allergic reaction, of the sort that I had already become somewhat accustomed to from the climate systems in American houses. Either way, the condition was more than just an inconvenience. It created a feeling of pressurized closedness in my head; this muddled my powers of hearing and also my concentration, if I can label as concentration the considerably weakened attention I devoted to things at that time. I experienced a deadening of my entire sensorium; day after day, I had the feeling that I was packed in cotton, looking out at what enclosed me but without being able to get any closer to the surrounding environment.

It was all the more numbing since in recent weeks I believed that I had observed myself to be—half willingly, half compulsorily—in a kind of harmonious interplay with the world of appearances. I noticed these coincidental encounters with the world of objects because I began to experience that world unquestioningly, freed from the pressures of causality and logical analysis. In any case, the illness-induced sealing off of my head hindered any further advances into this domain; gradually, progressing in waves, it took over my whole body. My taste buds largely failed to do their duty, my glasses could no longer fully correct my weak vision, and even my sense of touch was diminished in a frightening way. Once I dropped a cup of tea, because I believed that I had a firm grip on it, whereas in reality I had scarcely touched it at all.

I had almost decided to consult the physician in Wiefelstede, when a technological failure presented a solution to—and relief from—these circumstances. At the onset of the heating season, I had only ever made use of the electric heating system that Franz had had installed some years earlier. Feeding the old tiled stove seemed to me too complicated and inconvenient. The electric heating, however, operates via a principle of nighttime storage and gives off heat during the day only if one adjusts it appropriately at night. One evening, I had forgotten to set the circuit breaker before going to bed, with the result that the next day the heating elements radiated only cold air. I therefore turned off the system and with quite some difficulty got the tiled stove to work.

When my coldlike symptoms did not act up this day, but, rather, suddenly disappeared, I did not at first attribute my improvement to this change in heating methods. But when on the following day I switched on the electric heating, now properly recharged, my symptoms returned with undiminished severity. In order to assure myself on this point, I turned the heat on and off a few times at half-hour intervals, and my body responded immediately.

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