Gert Jonke - Awakening to the Great Sleep War

Of you, she answered, and of the fact that you may only be here to keep an eye on me, that you’re betraying me, writing down information about me, furtively writing down what I tell you in secret, that you’re just pretending it’s nice to talk with me, pretending that you’re doing so entirely of your own accord; has it never occurred to you that I could deceive you, betray you, by writing down later what you’re saying to me now?

The thought only crossed his mind once, very fleetingly, he answered, but when he thought about it some more he considered it impossible.

Why did the two of us turn up in this room here, how did it happen, where did we come from, and why did we get separated from all the others? she asked, why don’t people separate us, since they must suspect we will make another attempt to break out of everything? One might almost think that they’re only allowing it so that we can observe each other. Do you understand? That’s the reason for my having doubts about us being together. Maybe someone is playing with us, and everything we do in secret is transformed into writing behind our backs, without our knowing about it, even though we think we’ve taken effective means to prevent that from happening, and that’s why I’ve asked you again and again if anyone can hear us or observe us here, perhaps through the walls. .

Again, Burgmüller assured her that the neighbors had moved out and the janitor’s position was vacant. .

Couldn’t I, she then asked, assume the janitor’s position downstairs right away, so that no stranger will move in here? Or would I be a poor janitor? Did he possibly not think her capable of coming to terms with the range of tasks required of a janitor?

He couldn’t imagine that she would be anything but a splendid janitor, he answered, an extremely competent person who would overcome even the most serious complications of being a janitor with the greatest of ease, at any time, yes, he would go so far as to call her one of the best janitors, not just in this building, but in the entire city!

Then please phone the management right away, she asked him, say that I’m prepared to assume the position immediately, tomorrow, or even today, on favorable terms, if necessary without any pay! She would take her typewriter down with her into the janitor’s apartment and would finish writing her story there, where there would be less interference than here, you could come along, she said, and while I continue writing, you could help me by cleaning the stairwell, and you could stand in for me by shoveling the snow in winter and by sweeping the sidewalk, but don’t think I’m just trying to push the work off on you, instead, it will be your new task in our story to describe the cleaning of that stairwell, to undertake an exact and conscientious description of the cleaning of the stairs of the story, please call the management right away!

He went to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and acted as if he was placing a call, of course no one answered, and he told her that he had unfortunately not reached anyone in the management. He hoped she would soon forget about her future as a janitor, but she didn’t want to drop the topic so quickly.

You’ll have to try again later, and keep trying until you reach someone! she said, because it’s important that the janitor’s apartment below us remain empty or reserved exclusively for us; since people expect our behavior to be against the rules in any case, they’ll want to install a hidden observer there, and by living here we’ll unsuspectingly play into his hands by providing new material that he can document, yes, maybe they’re just toying with us while our spontaneous experiences, and thus we ourselves, are increasingly turned back into writing, until some day soon, in the stiffness of our alphabet joints, we won’t be able to move anymore, not as we could earlier, back at the beginning, when we drifted through the air like absentminded syllables in broken lines, the last of the remaining scraps of both our words, and we have to resist that, so that our attempts at a reply, you know, our story, doesn’t become rigid, not on any coming date, doesn’t turn into an event belonging to any particular year; and yet, someone is always listening in on us, someone who wants to describe us, who takes notes on what he thinks and sees in the process; it’s just that we still think we have a few secrets left all to ourselves that’ll keep our movements limber, limber even now, at this point in our life too; she hoped he had thoroughly searched the apartment, investigated it, combed it for listening devices behind wall hangings, bugs as small as the head of a pin behind the pictures, under fitted carpets, but especially as janitor she would have many more extensive means of keeping the building free of bugs: it would be her duty then, contractually, to protect both of them, to keep their hopes secret, hopes that would have evaporated as soon as they became known.

Then she demanded that Burgmüller immediately take certain measures in that regard, that he search through the entire apartment and really give it a thorough going-over for hidden listening and surveillance devices.

He used that right away as an opportunity to take all the doors down and to oil their hinges again, it was something that had needed doing for a long time, because every room that he opened wailed, screeched, or whined at him unbearably, so that he could hardly stand it anymore, but even just in taking down the doors he ran into difficulties, because their hinges had gotten rusty, so then he spent hours in the kitchen looking for suitable oil, sewing machine oil, because a door hinge should only be oiled with sewing machine oil, with nothing else, that’s what a very annoyed, red-faced locksmith had explained to him way back when: if, instead of sewing machine oil, one oiled a door with other forms of grease, with pastes, or even boric acid lotion, Kaiser borax, it could have the most terrible consequences — so the annoyed locksmith’s tirade had ended — but now Burgmüller did find a very old sewing machine somewhere in the apartment, to his own amazement, but it was already so dried up that he couldn’t get a single drop of oil out of it, the only thing he found, in a dusty bottle in the kitchen, was the rancid remains of some sunflower oil, with which he oiled all the doors he had taken off their hinges, even though he didn’t feel very good about doing so, because he couldn’t forget that lock-smith’s bright red face and his warning about sewing machine oil, so he began to feel very guilty about it, but since he had gotten into oiling hinges now, he took all the cupboard doors off too, and oiled them, and then the casement windows, to oil their hinges as well, yes, it was good that everything could now be opened and closed so quietly, he thought to himself, because all of his rooms seemed to feel much better, as if they’d been freed, and they showed how grateful they were by giving each other friendly waves with their doors that they opened and shut again by themselves, and the casement windows smiled their mirrored sunlight at Burgmüller, danced far out from the building into the wind, and back again to the wall, as if they really wanted to go on a flight over the city, as if they were asking permission to go on a little expedition to see window friends in the surrounding buildings of the district, or even to go into the center of the city, they promised they’d be back punctually that evening. .

Remembering her original instructions and her request that he be as careful and as conscientious as possible in carrying them out, he then took all the pictures down and hung them back up again, pulled all the furniture away from the wall and pushed it back again, rolled the carpets up and laid them down again, but he couldn’t discover anything at all that was threateningly suspicious.