The Lecture on Fate, II

Tiergarten took longer to reach than I had anticipated.

The tram carried me eastward, through the gray skeleton of Berlin, past iron fences and soot-stained windows, through districts I didn't know by name but could recognize by silence. The buildings changed shape—narrower, taller, more private. The air thinned. The fog rolled heavier here.

I stepped off at the end of the line, boots crunching against frozen gravel. The street signs were unfamiliar. I walked. Not far, but long enough to question it. My breath coiled in front of me. The brass nameplate wasn't hard to find. It gleamed against a wall of ivy, clean and cold.

Dr. Helene Eberhardt — Consultations by Appointment.

I stood outside her door for a full minute before knocking. Long enough to imagine what the inside would look like. How she would sound. What I would say.

The door opened before I knocked again.

A young woman, not Eberhardt, greeted me and ushered me inside. No introductions. Just a nod and a quiet coat rack gesture. The waiting room was narrow and lined with books—German titles, French theory, a few English volumes on mind and memory.

A clock ticked quietly on the wall. No second hand.

I sat. Waited.

When the inner door opened, I didn't notice at first. Dr. Eberhardt stood there in gray—sharp lines, dark gloves, pale eyes.

"Matthias Reiter?" she said, not as a question.

I nodded. She motioned me in.

The consultation room was smaller than I expected. Simple. Windowless. Warm. One chair for her. One for me. A small table between us. No desk. No tools. Only the low hum of a distant radiator, and the soft scratch of pen on paper when she sat and took notes.

She waited.

So I spoke.

Not everything. Just enough. The dreams. The clocks. The corridor. The name I didn't write.

"How long have you been experiencing these… irregularities?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. It's hard to track time when time itself is what's wrong."

Her eyes flicked up briefly from her notepad. "Do you feel detached from it? Time, I mean."

I hesitated. "Sometimes it feels like I'm not moving with it. Like I've stepped just to the side of it, and everything else keeps going."

"Does that frighten you?"

"Only when I think about it too much."

She nodded. "And this name—Clara. When did it appear?"

"A few days ago. Written in my own journal. I didn't write it."

"Do you believe she's real?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. "I don't know."

Her pen continued moving. "Sometimes the mind assigns names to shapes it doesn't understand. Especially in dreams, when something is being repressed."

I said nothing.

She looked up again. "Do you want to see her?"

I met her eyes. "Yes."

She wrote that down too.

That was the only time I lied.

***

When I left, it was nearly dark. The street lamps were beginning to hum, casting faint yellow halos on the cobblestone. The air had grown colder, and my breath came out in longer ribbons. I walked slowly, not because I was tired, but because the session had unsettled something loose.

The tram back was nearly empty. I sat near the window, watching the city slide past in dim, crooked reflections. My own face stared back at me, warped slightly by the old glass—eyes sunken in deeper than I remembered, jaw more rigid. I looked older than I had that morning. Not by years. By something else.

I replayed the session in my mind, her voice clean and deliberate. The way she asked questions without judgement. The way she never blinked when I mentioned Clara. There was something familiar in her calmness, a steadiness I couldn't quite place. It reminded me of a figure from one of my earliest dreams—someone older, wiser, seated beside a cracked clock, speaking not in commands, but questions.

She hadn't told me anything. Not directly. No theires. No diagnosis. But there was something in the way she listened—with purpose, with quiet uncertainty—as if she already knew what I was going to say before I said it.

And yet, something in her silence made me feel like I'd given something away.

That bothered me. More than it should have.

***

When I arrived home, the hallway outside my room felt unfamiliar. As if the proportions had shifted slightly. I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and paused.

The candle on the windowsill had burned down halfway. I hadn't lit it.

And yet, something about it didn't feel wrong. There was no panic. No sense of violation. Just a quiet certainty that someone had been here—a presence that didn't disturb so much as linger. Faint, restrained. As though whoever had stood in that room had known it once. As though they'd meant to leave no trace.

I crossed the room, checked the floorboards, the desk, the lock. Everything was untouched. Still, the air held a subtle weight. A stillness with intent.

I sat down at my desk and opened my journal. The page from before was still there. Clara. No new entries. I ran my hand across the paper, half expecting something else to appear beneath the ink.

I didn't write anything. I just sat there for a long time. Listening to the faint ticking of a clock I couldn't find in the room.

Eventually, I laid the journal aside and turned out the lamp.

Sleep didn't come easily that night.