Anna

 ."

The new nurse was a young student with long blond hair. Perhaps because I was feeling worse and worse by the day, I decided to tell her this story. Death was near, and the student seemed sensitive. Besides, she herself asked about the owner of the name I repeated in a whisper like the most beautiful prayer in moments when I lost touch with reality. About Anna.

***

"It's a bad life," she said one morning as we were leaving for our 20-minute, scheduled walk. That was when I heard her voice for the first time.

"Why do you think so?" I asked Anna, trying to appear indifferent, and she smiled faintly, as was her habit. I guess she knew that I was memorizing every word she said, and would then be passed on to Dr. Hinderberg and interpreted accordingly.

"I'm 14," she replied, as if that explained everything. But it didn't explain what she read in my eyes.

"I'm 14, and I already have a bad life."

"What do you mean?" I tried to be very careful. She looked at me with a slight condescension.

"You seem like a good person to me, that's why I chose you." She said it as if I'd slightly disappointed her. Disappointed that I didn't grasp her abstract thoughts immediately.

"I'm sorry." I don't know why I said that, but she simply nodded in agreement. The rest of the walk followed the usual, silent path. That's when I decided to find out everything I could about Anna.

***

"You were a nurse at a children's sanatorium?" the student seemed interested in my story. At that moment, she was probably trying to imagine me dressed in a white uniform and rubber slippers, 40 years younger.

"A lot of people just call me 'psychiatric,'" I said, making it clear that I didn't like that term and was grateful she hadn't used it. "But I've never considered children who have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality to be mentally ill." Especially those who came from dysfunctional families, with all sorts of disorders, most often sexual.

"And why did Anna end up there?"

I narrowed my eyes, pretending to try to remember something so she wouldn't think I was making it up. It would be difficult to explain that I always kept all my memories of Anna "close to the surface," that I remembered every word, every gesture, better than what I had for breakfast today.

***

"Do you know why I'm here?" She held her small hands carefully placed in her lap, staring at their thin, pale skin. She didn't wait for my answer. "No, you don't. You can't know that. No one knows that except me." I

didn't deny it, afraid she would fall back into a stubborn silence. Dr. Hinderberg had explained her illness to me in detail the day before.

"This bad life is my second-to-last. It's making me very unhappy. 14-year-olds shouldn't be very unhappy. It's not normal. That's why I'm here.

" "I used to suffer from depression myself; I know what it's like when the world seems devoid of meaning and purpose. Everyone has moments of doubt, but they come through," I took a wild guess, as she waited for some kind of reaction from me. I missed.

She waved her hand impatiently, and the gesture, so sudden, surprised me so much that I jumped slightly on the bench. She ignored it, however, without interrupting the conversation.

"David," she addressed me by name, like a mother scolding a mischievous child. I didn't even know she knew my name. "LIFE is made of MOMENTS. Each one is a golden grain of sand in the hourglass of time. Time that slips away and never returns. The point is to make the most of it, and I can't do that anymore."

For a second, I imagined a giant hourglass holding up the globe, and instead of sand, it held swarming, naked human bodies. A vision worthy of Salvador Dali.

"Are you a Christian?" she asked, unexpectedly changing the subject.

"A believer, not a practitioner," I replied honestly, a little taken aback.

"So you trust in your immortal soul," she assumed. "Tell me, where do you think it will go after your body dies?"

I didn't know where it was headed, what answers she expected. I realized that even though I'd spent the last two days meticulously analyzing her life and learning about the illness that plagued her mind, I truly knew nothing about Anna.

***

"I told her I wasn't a saint, but I was also a hardened sinner, and like most of us, I expected Purgatory.

" "What did she say?

" "To read about reincarnation.

" "And...?"

"And I spent the next two evenings preparing for a 'test' on this subject.

" ***

"David," she said, when I finished telling her what I knew about metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls.

"Yes?

" "Would you believe me if I told you that this is my eighth incarnation? That I remember everything from my previous seven lives? That I was a friend of Joan of Arc and watched her die at the stake? That I fought under Napoleon's banner, dying of cold and hunger in Russia? That I rode Nazi trains to a huge crematorium, guilty of my origins? That I had two children while living on Easter Island? That..." she trailed off, looking at me both questioningly and suspiciously.

"I believe you believe that," I blurted out, feeling safe. It saddened her. She lowered her chin like a wounded child, and I felt like a total scoundrel. I shouldn't have treated Anna like a patient. Anna was in a completely different category. Her own.

"Let's not talk about that anymore, Dawid.

" ***

"But we talked, a lot. True, she never asked if I believed her. Instead, she told the life stories of her past incarnations. They were incredibly detailed and precise. I recorded each one with a small tape recorder hidden in my pocket. I began to verify some of the historical facts she mentioned. She never made a mistake. Before she was admitted to the sanatorium, she must have been passionate about history, as she often remembered the dates of various events, not to mention the customs and fashions of the period. But I searched persistently for something that would allow me to prove to Anna that she was fantasizing. I was only a nurse, but she fascinated me. I wanted to help Anna return to the real world, though at the same time, a small part of me clung tightly to her version of events. I consulted a friend who was studying history. Sure, after listening to the tapes, he was thrilled and even asked if he could get copies of these "wonderful stories" to present in his master's thesis, but he couldn't find a hook for Anna either. Slowly, willingly or unwillingly, I began to believe her more and more.

The student listened as if captivated. She expected a happy ending, and I had to disappoint her.

"And when there was no more to tell, Anna decided to die.

" ***

"Anna!" I shouted, my heart leaping into my throat when I found her.

I'd been looking for her all day, searching every nook and cranny of the sanatorium. She was nowhere to be found; no one knew where the "mute" had gone. Fortunately, it wasn't too late.

She stood on the edge of the roof, fearlessly gazing at the concrete driveway two stories below.

"Winter is coming," she said in a thoughtful voice. "We won't be able to walk in the garden anymore.

" "We will!" I assured her, a little too loudly and a little too quickly, afraid the girl would jump. If her life depended on these walks, I was willing to stay here after hours and walk with her from dawn till dusk. I was 13 years older than her and didn't love her like a woman, but at the same time, I was willing to do anything for this pale, thin girl. It must have been magic.

"My penultimate life, David... After this death, death will be final. Nine has always been a magic number. Omega."

I felt my heart stop beating in my chest. I couldn't even imagine days without her presence.

The wind tugged at her blue nightgown. She must have been standing here since morning, waiting for... Waiting for what?

"Until now, I thought the end of everything would bring me relief. I was too tired of remembering." I saw her bare feet, blue with cold, balancing the weight entrusted to them on the edge of the roof. "But you changed everything. Thank you. I know I won't waste my last life the way I wasted this...

" "Don't do that!" I interrupted her, something I'd never done before. "I forbid you!!!

" ***

"It may sound trite now, but back then I truly believed she would listen to me, like a child listens to an older one. But she was, after all, the older one." I paused for a moment, my throat drying up.

The nurse shifted uneasily in her chair.

"She laughed. She laughed lightly and joyfully, as she had never laughed before.

***

I sat on the stairs and stared blankly at the paramedics loading a black bag into the ambulance. It didn't register that they were taking Anna away, only to bury her in the cold earth of a cemetery somewhere. Other nurses and two doctors, including Dr. Hinderberg, stood nearby, but I couldn't utter a sound. Anna's last words roared in my head like foaming waves crashing furiously against the shore.

***

"I'll find you."

The student's voice tore me from the clutches of painful memories. She might as well have poured a bucket of cold water over me. Instead, however, she smiled faintly.

"I told you I'd find you, David," she repeated softly, placing her hand on my cheek. "I'm glad you haven't forgotten anything either."

Tears welled up in my eyes. Tears of happiness and incredible relief.

"Now I'll take you for a walk," she added, and in less than two minutes she was pushing my wheelchair down the path leading to the garden.

The (happy!) end