Free Machine by Peter Adolphsen Page A

emitting a faint humming when she pressed a button, and put on a transparent plastic mask connected to the device via a tube.
    After a pause where only the humming of the machine and her breathing could be heard, she pulled the mask down to her chin and said: ‘They tell me I’ve got cancer.’
    I replied: ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ And not much else happened during this visit.
    Three months later she was taken away in an ambulance never to return.
    Around that time I had started to frequent a health centre in the Appalachian Mountains, whose facilities included an Indian sweat hut. It is possible that I had entertained a naïve belief that I could force my depression out through the pores of my skin and I had therefore decided to participate in a modified version of a Native American sweat hut ritual.
    Including the master of ceremony we were seven people in total going into the hut that day. Inside darkness and silence reigned, but my senses were quickly heightened and I was able to make out the faint, dark red light from the hot stones and the multitude of tiny sounds coming from the participants. The intense heat instantly made you sweat and feel thirsty. The master of ceremony threw a cup of water on the stones, which resulted in a whiplash sound and a wave of steam that smashed against our bodies. We sat in silence in the hot darkness for what I was told afterwards was forty-five minutes.
    No book in the world is big enough to contain allthe thoughts you can think in that period of time. My brain exploded with images, feelings and words, mixing them all up as it visited an infinite number of nooks and crannies from my past, my present and my notions of the future, but slowly my inner monologue acquired a sense of direction and headed for the horizon. After a while I was cleansed of irrelevant thoughts and accepted this winding path, which was matched by the sweat trickling down my body. My mental state grew denser, and I had started to wonder if I had actually fainted when I came across a creature which I immediately recognised as my totem animal.
    It was a horse, quite a small one, the size of a smallish dog, with grey and brown flecked fur and paws rather than hooves. It was visible in the darkness – not luminous, it was just there. The horse opened its mouth and started talking and I understood everything, even though it wasn’t speaking in English or any other human language. The language of the horse was one modulated sound with myriad meanings, associations and overlapping images. In my cleansed and possibly unconscious state, I understood that it was telling me the story of the fate of its heart.
    Over the past year I have tried to reconstruct andtranslate this wordless equine language, and these pages are the outcome of my efforts. It has been a laborious task, filled with frustration at my many inadequacies, but it has occupied me to such an extent that I, I now realise, have entirely forgotten to be depressed.
    Now I will go for a walk by the river.

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    Epub ISBN: 9781407013732
    Version 1.0
    www.randomhouse.co.uk
    Published by Harvill Secker 2008
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    Copyright © Peter Adolphsen 2006
English translation copyright © Charlotte Barslund 2007
    Peter Adolphsen has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
    First published with the title
Machine
in 2006
by Samleren