…they carried the badly battered stranger carefully through the snow, to the farm of Mr. Rothbauer. He was the man who called the shots in the village — a village that called itself Himmeltal. His bloody robe was removed from him. The women dressed his wounds.
The men, in the meantime, wanted to wash their blood-soaked hands. But when they reached for the soap and water, the surprise showed on their faces: There was nothing to see of the blood, as if it had seeped inside their very own pores.
The hiker recovered from his serious injuries, quickly even, and they allowed him to pass the winter with them, up above, there in the village. It would have been a sin to send him away into danger. You could often see him withdrawing into the woods, where he stayed for hours — holding communion with God and the angels, he said.
He disappeared one day, once the snow had melted and the paths leading out opened. Curiously, he left behind the garment the wolves had torn, which had been soaked by his blood. It had gone missing throughout the winter and now suddenly reappeared. Even stranger, however, was that the blood in the fabric was still wet, still warm, as if it were fresh and had never seen the winter.
Since no one knew what to do, the pastor — Hauck was his name — vowed to keep it safe. He felt called to do so, wanting to commune with God as the stranger had done, to ask him to send an angel to bring enlightenment as to what he should do with the robe. One day, Rothbauer died. The villagers prepared everything for his funeral. The casket bearers wanted to carry his coffin to the mortuary — except that Rothbauer himself was sitting atop it, disgruntled and confused, as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep.
People talk about false deaths, and it could have been just that. But when, over the years, the other three men who’d gone out and saved the stranger also died and rose again, one of the women who had slept in the same house as the stranger repeated what he said during his fever dreams: That he had in fact already been dead and was summoned from his grave back to life. And that ever since he could not die and would constantly walk the earth. What seemed like a blessing in the beginning had become a curse. He’d been wandering his entire life, and now, for a very long time, he wasn’t tired. But it was a gift from God, one that he could not throw away by sinning against his own body and life. He could only ask the Lord to take it from him.
That night, the stranger had also called out his name: Lazarus.
The cleaning specialist laughed. He removed his cigarette and tossed the ominous Collected Histories back in the box, which would end up — like the entire truck load — at the dump. That’s where it belonged, anyway. Such garbage, he thought. Such utter and complete garbage.