I don’t remember very much about the time after the light went out. I had no sense of time passing. It might have been five minutes or it might have been an hour that I spent suspended in the cold and dark, with nothing but the rasp of my own breathing, vibrating with the shivers that racked my body.
I dared not try to swim back to the wall, but in the absolute blackness I became disoriented and eventually bumped right into it. My hands closed over a stone that jutted out a little and at last I was able to hang on and gain some respite from the exhausting effort to swim in waterlogged clothing.
My thoughts, which had been racing around my brain like trapped insects, seemed to have run themselves down in ever-decreasing circles, until I was conscious of nothing but the pain of my freezing fingers clamped over the cold stone.
There were no last-minute visions of my life flashing before my eyes, no last prayers for my parents and my little brother. There was no past, no future, only the cold and the dark, and the implacable stone. The water seemed to be rising; it was no longer merely at my shoulders, it was lapping my chin. Was it really rising, or was I sinking? It no longer seemed important.
When the sounds started above me I was hardly even interested anymore. My brain registered them without understanding. Metal on stone, scraping, muffled voices. None of it seemed to add up to anything that had any relevance to me. The pain in my right arm had settled into a nagging ache and I couldn’t even feel my fingers. I wondered if they were still clamped over the jutting stone. Perhaps I had let go and drowned already, and this black limbo was all that awaited me afterward.
“Pia?” Stefan’s disembodied voice drifted down the well shaft. I didn’t reply. “Pia?” There was a note of panic in it this time. Voices murmured at the top of the well. Then I heard something whisper down the shaft and hit the water with a soft splash. Someone had thrown down a rope.
“Pia! Pia, are you all right?”
“Yes,” I croaked faintly.
More conferring at the top of the well. Then light pierced the darkness. It would have been comical in other circumstances; Stefan had let down his flashlight on a string. It hung there like a visitor from another world, the light of a submarine deep in a black ocean. I concentrated on the light, not wanting to look at anything else in the well. My neck felt stiff from turning. With one hand I let go of the stone. Hesitantly, I reached for the rope.
“Can you hold on?” shouted Stefan.
“No,” I said. I wasn’t sure I had spoken loudly enough for him to hear me. I felt too tired to care. I watched with little interest as the rope vanished upward and there were more voices. It sounded as though Stefan were arguing with someone.
I closed my eyes. It was like listening to a radio playing in another room. I tried to imagine that I was in Oma Kristel’s kitchen, sitting at the table waiting for her to finish making me a mug of cocoa, the radio playing in the background. There were scuffling noises, and then another splash as something hit the water, somewhat louder than the first time.
“Pia,” said Stefan’s voice, very close by. I felt something touch my shoulder. Then: “Oh, Scheisse.” I guessed Stefan had seen the other things that were in the well. I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut. “Oh, Scheisse, Pia. Oh-”
I wished he would shut up. I didn’t want to be reminded of what was in the water. But the feeling of his arms around me, his hands gripping me, felt reassuring. Rope slid around me and then I was going upward. I let myself be lifted like a rag doll. There was light above me and I was moving toward it in painful jerks. I thought, Perhaps I have died. I had not expected it to hurt so much afterward. Then I was at the top of the well, lying like an enormous fish on a fishmonger’s slab, my mouth opening and closing wetly. Water was streaming down the side of my face from my hair. Someone was turning me over. I looked up and in the lamplight I saw who it was and screamed.