He was a brave bastard. He knew it – no longer needed to prove it. He’d learned the trick over the years – at first unconsciously, just by instinct, then more and more through experience. Fear is only strong when it’s behind you, when it still has a chance to strike from the back. Once you turn around and look it in the eye, it shrinks and disappears. Fear is always where you are not.

Gradually, he’d grown old enough to realize that this wasn’t all a man needs in life. Overcoming fear doesn’t necessarily mean winning. Sometimes, you have to give ground to it. Only little pioneers need dead heroes – or even heroic loners. It looks good from the outside, especially on a larger screen. From the inside, it’s all grey mush and the smell of unwashed socks. Good for watching – not for consumption.

He’d avoided the hidden traps of heroism and, little by little – with a lot, a lot of help from her – had even managed to make himself into something tolerable, a kind of tiger with carefully filed-down claws. She hadn’t been afraid of him for a long time; she was used to him, and that made him feel calm. Too calm, as it later turned out. He didn’t know it yet, but he was about to learn. The clock was ticking.

He had never cheated on her. Not with other women. To him, the computer wasn’t a thing – just an opening to the world – and her incomprehensible jealousy toward the glowing box on his desk left him cold. Women don’t know the trick. Their specialty is survival. Not just their own. A noble task, but it doesn’t work without fear. That’s why it didn’t interest him.

The little ones growing up beside them didn’t interest him all that much either. He’d decided the best he could do for them was to walk upright. The rest, they’d learn and understand on their own. He had. In spite of everything. So they would too.

His life was relatively simple, if a bit dull. He knew his mission. He worked slowly, without hurry, pacing through the worlds he was meant to discover. Then he sealed them into little colorful volumes that other people found interesting to buy. Probably because, in them, the triumph over fear felt so natural, so normal. Not easy. Just normal. He sold his trick – and wasn’t ashamed of it. We all have to live.

And so, when one day she told him she’d decided to leave him, he didn’t even manage to be truly surprised. Deep down, he’d suspected this would happen eventually. He didn’t know the taste of this kind of trial; it smelled of something new, unfamiliar, and challenging. In a way – and this was only becoming clear to him now – he had wished for it, deep within, with the instinctive longing of a larva spinning its cocoon. It was part of the process. It had to happen. It was right.

And then, all at once, fear caught up with him.

***

“Starting tomorrow, I’ll begin looking for a new place,” she said while putting on her makeup in the bathroom. “I’ll need something bigger – at least four rooms.”

She had spent a long time choosing her underwear. He had watched her from a distance. She no longer bothered to hide. Not anymore.

He gave her a look of understanding.

“If there’s anything I can do to help… Maybe it would be better if I moved out instead? After all, there’s enough space here for you and the kids.”

“I don’t want to stay here!” she snapped, a little tense. Then, with a voice now under control, she added: “Too many… things to forget.”

“As you wish,” he said and turned toward the computer.

Strangely, she had suddenly begun to look attractive and interesting again. It didn’t change anything, of course – but the observation itself was intriguing.

He waited until her heels clicked across the marble hallway, made sure she had disappeared into the elevator, and then tried to get to work. It didn’t happen the first time, of course – but that didn’t surprise him. He knew himself. He would survive.

There was a strange, unfamiliar restlessness inside him. A kind of itch, an inability to stay in one place – like Rilke’s panther. That made him think of reading from the little red volume, but the magician’s poetry – usually so weightless and light – today stuck to his eyelids like cold, heavy dew. He tossed it aside, annoyed. For a second, he wondered if the easiest thing wouldn’t be to play one of his son’s video games – something with lots of gunfire and heaps of warm, smoking corpses – but quickly gave up on that. If it was going to be masturbation, it might as well be the real thing. His brain was off-limits for such games.

He lay down on the squeaky bed in the bedroom, pulled the light red blanket over himself, and forced himself to begin autogenic training. Warm and heavy, warm and heavy, everything is so warm and heavy. Gradually, he began to drift off…

***

He came to on a wild, rocky shore somewhere up north. He knew it was north – somehow it was obvious. A brutal, slicing wind was blowing, but he didn’t feel cold. He simply registered everything like a machine – like a camera or something of that sort. The ocean had pulled far back; clearly, this place lay well below the high tide line. But now it was low tide, and it was possible to walk here.

His attention was entirely fixed on a group of massive men, dressed in something that must have been very heavy and very smelly – you could see various pieces of leather and metal, all clinking with every step like piggy banks. Or safes. Whatever.

Most of them were busy with a huge pole they were trying to fix firmly between the rocks. The work was going slowly, and the tide would be returning soon. The leader of the man-beasts was clearly nervous. Once or twice he even shouted – though his voice didn’t reach this far, the wind was blowing straight at him – but the men were already working at full strength, and no one paid him much attention.

At last, they were ready. The post stood alone among the rocks – a kind of monument to madness – but it soon became clear they hadn’t placed it there for decoration. Two or three more of the same sort appeared from somewhere behind, dragging a man between them who clearly couldn’t walk. They had him under the arms and were hauling him across the stones – silent, focused, disturbingly professional.

They reached the post, stood him upright, tied him tightly, and withdrew just as silently as they had come. The leader, now visibly calmer, gave a short speech to his men, spat on the prisoner a few times, and then climbed back up the rocks, followed by his warriors. The water was already rising.

The prisoner, who hadn’t made a sound the whole time, now began gradually to come out of his trance. He tested the ropes, realized it was pointless – and then suddenly… began to sing. The wild and rough melody contained only a few tones, repeated over and over, but the lyrics were clearly endless – as was the man’s unyielding determination. He kept singing for hour after hour, until the sea at last covered his head with a merciful hand and silenced him...

***

He woke up shivering, drenched in cold, sticky sweat.

He looked at the clock and blinked in surprise – it was late afternoon, almost evening. He had slept through the entire day. The kids and their mother were already rattling about in the kitchen, probably making dinner. For a moment he considered joining them, but suddenly he felt so alien, so unnecessary, that he wanted to bury his face in his hands and run outside – as far from here as possible.

He managed to tell them he wasn’t feeling well and would go to bed early, then threw himself into the bed and pulled the blanket over his head. My bed is my fortress.

He had already dozed off and hadn’t noticed when she got into bed. He woke up to the moonlight pouring through a gap in the curtains. The house was steeped in silence, broken only by her faint snoring and the dull hum of city noise reaching them despite the distance. There was no chance he’d fall asleep again. Nor could he work – he knew that without even trying.

The restlessness from earlier in the day returned – this time accompanied by a deeply unpleasant, almost uncontrollable heartbeat. He didn’t know this sensation, but he knew his trick. All he had to do…

And suddenly he felt it. That thing was creeping slowly upward from below – and it would soon swallow him whole, of that he had no doubt. He tried to turn and face the fear as always, but this one was different – no face, no eyes, nothing to grab hold of, nothing even to touch or detect. This one was everywhere.

His breathing began to speed up against his will. A fresh wave of sweat broke out. For a moment he wondered whether singing – like the man in the dream – might help. But even that was already too late. He could feel the waves now just beneath his chin; in another moment they would overtake him, drag him under into some thick, unspeakable non-being...

His eyes filled with hot, uncontrollable tears. His throat clenched and began letting through air only reluctantly – not in gulps, but in stutters and spasms. He clenched his fists, buried his head in the pillow, but nothing helped. No, no, no…

He reached out a trembling hand and touched her. She was still asleep.

“Wake up, please… wake up…”

She stopped snoring, turned her back to him. He couldn’t take it anymore – he started shaking her gently.

“What is it, what’s wrong?”

Her nearsighted eyes blinked at him in confusion – she hadn’t fully woken up.

“Hug me. Please – hug me.”

“What’s going on with you?”

“Don’t ask. Just hold me. Please.”

Understanding flashed in her eyes.

“All right. Come here.”

She opened her arms and laid his head against her chest. The waves hesitated, then slowly began to recede.

“Tighter. Hold me tighter – as tight as you can.”

“Oh, you…” she said softly, almost scolding, but she complied.

Suddenly he felt very, very small – and unbearably, impossibly tired. His eyes closed. He curled up in her lap.

“The tide… the tide,” he whispered faintly, already being pulled under by the waves of sleep.

“Sleep now,” she said, stroking his head. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”