PROLOGUE
A vision was in the air. Something vague, ghostly, perhaps a memory of something that will happen in the future, was lurking around, searching for a place, a nest perhaps in the sensitive school building?
Even if the undefined was not as concrete as a person or a ghost, it was still his vision.
It crept around the orange-coloured house and peered into every window.
At night, it was empty and dark here. It was a shame, really, with so much space standing empty all evening, all night and all morning, every day of the year – without children, mostly teenagers, and their headmistress, secretary, teachers, cooks, school psychologists, caretakers, cleaners.
It’s so boring here, so empty, thought the sensitive school all night long until dawn.
Because the school didn’t think: ›Wow, now I can finally do what I’ve always wanted to do.‹ No, it was just empty, standing there, waiting silently, dark and introverted.
The last day kept running through the sensitive school’s mind: with all the words that had been spoken in it – the millipede feet that had walked across its floors and climbed its stairs – all the hands that had touched its door handles and handrails on the stairs – and many a kick that had hit its walls – or balls that had bounced off its walls – chalk that had squeaked across blackboards.
But what remained for the sensitive school, besides the memories, were the graffiti on its walls, the pictures in its corridors, the teaching materials and sports equipment left behind in the yellow school lockers. That gave it hope that the children and everyone else would come back tomorrow.
After all, they still needed all those things, thought the sensitive school. So they would come back tomorrow. »Will they really come back tomorrow?« ... »Yes, they will«, she told herself every night, full of wistfulness and hope. And then she dismissed the thought again: just because they came yesterday, should they come back tomorrow? Was there any proof? Not the slightest. Sometimes they stayed away for weeks. They called it holidays. Holidays from what? From me? The sensitive school pondered this holiday after holiday.
It could go on like this forever.
At such a moment, when the night was at its deepest, when the sensitive school was sobbing and encouraging itself, the unknown came in through a crack, a tiny window left open on the second floor.
Unnoticed, it crept through the entire building to find the right place — through the large auditorium with the stage and the canteen, past the yellow cupboards and up the large stairs to the second floor.
Here it wanted to lay down its doubt, like a mother would lay down her unwanted baby in a church, or a cuckoo mother would lay her egg in another nest.
It wanted to place it in the care of the sensitive school, its little doubt that was yet to grow so big. Its baby. Because the sensitive school was receptive to doubt. It should be the suitable host to allow its baby to grow into a stately child, thought the Indeterminate.
Some Indeterminate, you must know, have babies called Hope or Confidence. They love the sun and see pure, radiant light even in the dark. But this Indeterminate here was a dark one, who saw darkness even in the glaring sunlight.
That is why the Indeterminate sought a dark chamber without windows for its little one, where no daylight would irritate it. The specialist room in the biology cabinet was perfect, thought the Indeterminate.