Gert Jonke - Awakening to the Great Sleep War

When he came back with the salami as requested, she snatched the package from him right away, opened it, took one slice of salami after another out of the greaseproof paper, and shoved it into the kitchen through the narrow crack between the locked kitchen door and the threshold, and she did so with such care that in spite of her wide arm movements she didn’t once accidentally hit or bump up against the lower edge of the door, no, she shoved one slice of salami after another very quietly through the crack in something like a rocking motion, deep into the room, and so skillfully.

When she had shoved in the last slice of salami, one could hear a very quietly approaching friendly humming behind the kitchen door, then a buzzing, as Elvira distrustfully inspected what had come in, but this soon gave way to a satisfied silence, from which they deduced that she had settled on the slices of salami.

Burgmüller’s girlfriend stayed in her crouched position outside the kitchen door, staring through the holes, but when he wanted to put his eye to one of the bored holes to see what she found increasingly captivating, what made her not want to miss the smallest detail, she pushed him away in alarm.

Please don’t, please not you yet, the reflection from your eyes, which would presumably mirror the light from the kitchen window, could make Elvira feel as if she’d been struck by lightning!

But what about your eyes, he replied, you think she can tolerate the lightning from your eyes?

She’s used to my eyes, his girlfriend replied, because I’ve been face to face with her for a while and can look in such a manner that the kitchen window would never be mirrored by the surface of my eyes.

She kept crouching outside the kitchen door until well into the evening, didn’t let herself be distracted from her observations, seemed to go almost rigid, and gave the appearance of a figure that had been sitting there forever and was in the process of shriveling away.

Burgmüller was tired, soon went to bed and fell asleep, without waiting for her as usual or looking forward to her arrival.

In the morning, he was surprised to wake up alone, without her lying beside him, and later found her sleeping outside the kitchen door.

He woke her up very carefully. She rose up in fright, and her very first question was: Where is Elvira?

She’s probably in the kitchen, where she was before, he answered, and asked if he could perhaps go in, to look for the housefly first, and second, to make a cup of coffee. He asked her to unlock the door.

No, she cried, frightened, and held both her hands protectively around the key, as if a dangerous burglar was standing across from her who would soon use force to gain entry, and as if, regardless, she had to be prepared to defend the last thing remaining to her. She only calmed down again when she was certain that he wouldn’t absolutely insist on having his way, then she looked through the holes in the kitchen door for a long time without saying a word. At last, she called out in a whisper, there, yes, Elvira is there, at last, good morning, I haven’t seen you in such a long time. .

So could he or she finally get around to making coffee in the kitchen. .

What was he thinking of, she answered, had he already forgotten Elvira again?

No, he replied, he hadn’t forgotten her, but since the creature had already been left in peace for almost an entire day, she would by now have had a chance to recover and to adjust to her new life in her new world.

No, she replied, by no means, on the contrary, it’s been too short a time, too little time has passed, not today by any means, for today at least she needs complete rest. .

And the coffee?

Coffee? she responded. He should get dressed and go down to the café, he could have breakfast there today, or why else had the café been built downstairs especially for him if he never went there on occasions such as this? And when he came back, if he could pretty please pick up the same salami from the butcher, two hundred grams again, it had been extraordinarily good yesterday, the salami, she said.

As he did the day before, he came back with the salami, gave it to her, and she opened the package right away and shoved all the slices of salami slowly, carefully, quietly through the crack under the door, whereupon they heard a friendly, excited humming again from the depths of the room they were not allowed to enter.

She spent the following days and nights as well crouching outside the locked door, refusing Burgmüller entrance on a daily basis, using the same arguments, which she presented ever more logically, and which were now making sense to him too, and she sent him to the butcher several times a day.

Sometimes he suspected that Elvira, whom he still had not set eyes on, must have grown in the meantime, and indeed to the same extent that his girlfriend seemed more and more shriveled, because she herself hadn’t eaten a thing, but was sticking everything through the door for the housefly — or was he entirely misinterpreting the situation? Did his girlfriend take her meals secretly with the housefly when he went out? Did she go into the kitchen without telling him, so that he would have no reason to go into the kitchen as well? Sometimes he even suspected that she had made a pact with Elvira to drive him out of his apartment, but he soon dismissed that as nonsense. Then again he imagined that Elvira, alone in the kitchen, was flapping her wings clear across the horizon of the ceiling, that she had grown as large as a bat and wasn’t humming quietly anymore but singing more and more loudly in a bright baritone, with a voice that made the water pipes and the refrigerator rattle.

All attempts to reestablish his relationship with his girlfriend through tender attentiveness were in vain, so he continued to spend the nights alone, and he spent most of his time during the days away from the apartment, at friends’ apartments or in bars; the only kind words that still fell on his ears were threats about everything that would happen to him if he caused Elvira so much as the slightest discomfort.

One of the things he hoped for was that the housefly might soon go into hibernation for the winter, and then everything would return to normal. But Elvira didn’t seem to hibernate, which is why things stayed as they were throughout the entire winter and into the spring.

Sometimes he didn’t just stay away during the day, but also during the night. When he returned, it was always the same sight that met his eyes: there she was still crouching outside the closed door, oblivious to all else, gazing through her holes as if into an inexpressible expanse or distance that remained hidden to him: only she could understand it, and by not letting him look into the kitchen, she was also not letting him look at her or into her; she was so deeply torn inside herself that she was puzzled by the sight of her own hidden secrets, the bases for which had until then remained unknown even to herself, and now they were causing her the greatest difficulties, but she categorically refused to confide in him. She glanced briefly and reproachfully at him and asked what he was thinking to have left Elvira so long without food; but soon she didn’t talk at all anymore, just looked at him questioningly and said nothing, whereupon he limited himself to responding to her reproachful stares by going to the butcher.

Sometimes he was concerned about the sanitary and hygienic conditions behind the kitchen door. Certainly Elvira was hardly in a position to completely devour those mountains of salami, so he feared the room was being crammed increasingly full of piles of meat and would soon have to burst; the only thing he found strange was that not even a hint of a smell wafted out through the door.

Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep at night, he sat in the farthest corner of the room, looked into the darkness that was wrapped around the roofs like rolled-out bolts of dark blue cloth, and heard or thought he heard a fluttering in the gable — was it the birds that sailed through the attic? Or did it come from the kitchen, where Elvira was fluttering from the refrigerator across the table to the window, where her wings beat wildly against the glass and set all the walls vibrating in an all-pervading roomquake?