Behind him, the mountain gave way.
A deep rumble, a blow, then dust that took his breath away. When it grew quiet again, a wall of rock and clay lay behind the wanderer. The valley he had come from – the familiar, the beautiful, the known – was buried.
The way back no longer existed.
He stood in the old tunnel. It was cold. Under his boots lay sharp rubble that the collapse had broken from the ceiling. Above him, in the unseen vault, there was rustling and squeaking. Bats, startled from their sleep, shot closely past his face through the darkness.
For a moment, he simply stood there.
He had not chosen this place. It was narrow, it was dark, and it hurt.
Before him lay two possibilities. He could sit down here in the dust on the stones, stare at the collapsed wall, and wait until the cold crept into his bones. Or he could turn around.
When he directed his gaze forward, deep into the black belly of the mountain, he saw it. Far away, barely larger than a pinprick: a tiny, pale point.
Some would have doubted in the dark. They would have said it was only a mirage, or a light racing toward them to run them over.
The wanderer knew better. No trains ran in this tunnel anymore. That light was not coming toward him. It was waiting. It was the end of the tunnel.
With that knowledge, something strange happened inside him.
Whereas out in the light even a small pebble in his shoe had often been enough to make him tired, in here his strength grew with every obstacle. His head grew calm, his hands grew steady. He simply did what was needed.
Step by step, he felt his way forward. Where the rubble reached up to his knees, he did not curse. He bent down in the dark, gripped the heavy boulders with both hands, and cleared them to the side. One after another. His hands grew dirty and raw, his breathing heavy, but the track behind him became clear – for him and for anyone who might have to walk this path after him.
Whenever the bats fluttered around his head again, he stopped briefly, exhaled, and let them pass. They belonged to the darkness. They did him no harm as long as he did not strike at them.
He did not know what lay beyond the exit. From the depth of the mountain, nobody could tell whether the sun was shining outside or the rain was lashing down, whether a forest waited there or bare rock.
But he saw that with every hour, the bright point grew a little bit larger.
The future was unknown to him. Hope was not.
By René Jochum - LLM Translated. License: CC-BY-4.0.