Gert Jonke - Awakening to the Great Sleep War

Burgmüller himself was already slowly beginning to suspect with certainty, thus infected, seized by her story. . but the fact that she and he would have saved, discovered everything for themselves at the very last moment was the one consolation of the nebulosity of his beginning dream, while he still half-heard her whispering away through her reality-creating drum machine. . as she buried memories of the present in her final description by painting over a beach with black light: its glittering waves rolled into the swaying thatched roofs of his dreams, so his thinking fluttered away like a moth with frayed wings out of this chapter of the story of his beloved, who had remained as unreachable for him as she had been before, and sank into the depths of a ransacked clothes-cupboard grotto. .

Perhaps everything up until then had really just happened in order to be written down, he thought, no, it hadn’t even happened, it had simply been dropped there, set up as a scrap-metal junk installation, which now seemed to be not only equated with the anarchy and chaos in the apartment, but also identical to it, at least with a certain final temporariness.

The chaos she had created couldn’t be dealt with without the help of workmen, but she would never have agreed to that, given her aversion to every sort of prying eye. He longed briefly for the return of even a hint of order, but she, by way of contrast, was never disturbed by the radical change that had taken place, instead, from the beginning, she considered the devastation arising from her work to be a quotidian necessity of life for the two of them. Unflustered, she crouched at her typewriter, into which she transmitted her tapped signals as usual long into the night, continuing the work on her world, in which her eyes now became a compass rose torn by its own magnetic needle, cut up as if by the letters of a white-hot cuneiform script, yes, a cuneiform script of the harbor cities that reproduced themselves incisively upon all the coasts with their power-saw boats, in the service of an endless alphabet, like a science without proofs, until the morning flickered like fire from the towers, all of which crossed her lips as usual, whispered in a low voice, while she was sitting at her typewriter as if at a steamship propelled by sewing machines, floating, drifting downstream in the room, midstream in her description, from which he could now hear something about cats with heads like ants, and palm trees with crayfish living in their branches, but that could also have had to do with an entirely different chapter of her story that had rushed on ahead, considering her work tempo he never knew how far ahead of him she was at any given time.

As if the typewriter were a reality-producing projector, he sometimes thought that the conventional present had already fallen away from him to be replaced by an entirely new existence that seemed entirely foreign, filled with images entirely other than he could expect, images that he had been fitted for by her, which she had attributed to him, described to him, made to measure, until they formed a mantle of thought, recollections of an interchangeable past that could be removed, like clothes from the body, when it got too worn, to be exchanged for a new one, newly commissioned. For her sake, he committed the years she had worked out for him to memory, more and more painfully and convincingly, so that it might perhaps become a familiar prophecy, although only for her. . for him, it remained unfamiliar. . but, anyhow.

Which was often not without consequences. Once, when he was walking through the city, he thought that the way people were behaving toward him seemed unmistakably to indicate that he didn’t exist: he wasn’t served in the pubs and cafés, and when he asked to see something in a store, the salesman didn’t just ignore his request, but also took no notice at all of his person, just as if he had never entered the store, as if the store’s door had opened without anyone coming in, yes, it seemed he had temporarily become invisible, because no one noticed him, yes, he felt as if he had been transformed into an open door-frame swaying through the alleys and streets, a frame for anyone coming toward him, a drafty doorway anyone could walk through, and was in frequent use, because people walked right through him without encountering the slightest resistance, yes, he had become the constantly, readily opened door for whatever surroundings he encountered!

By way of contrast, it seemed to him on other days that no one else existed but him: he couldn’t see anyone, or had everything become invisible, the running down of his environment at an incalculable speed was projected on the screen of air in front of him, only recognizable now by a wild trembling of the daylight that raged like a sunbeam-storm through the tides of the city, which were rocking away, while Burgmüller stood helplessly at the corner of a building, like an atlas that had ossified to an apparent standstill, supporting a column of air on his shoulders that he had to carry from dawn to dusk. .

Then, because he wanted to feel his way down into her story as deeply as possible, he finally asked her who had given this order to write, to just write everything down all the time, without speaking, without talking to each other about it, why was this order so important that, according to her, almost everyone was obeying it, or anyway still felt obliged to behave as though this was the case, the same as her, he couldn’t imagine that such a decree, which to him seemed rather abnormal, would ever be followed so unswervingly, so who had decreed it anyway, and why?

Oh, she had unfortunately forgotten that part, she replied, she had once known everything, a long time ago, or wait, now she knew it again, someone had told her recently who had made that decree ages ago, what was his name now, the name of that gentleman, yes, quite right, simply Karl , yes indeed.

Karl who? asked Burgmüller.

What do you mean who, she replied, what else should he have been called, it’s nice and short, easy to remember, Karl , Herr Karl, no one had found it necessary to tell her his so-called family name.

But he has to have one, Burgmüller insisted, he can’t be just Karl, almost everyone is called Karl today, there must have been something more to him. .?

But she, she explained, had unfortunately not yet been able to see Herr Karl herself, no one had told her anything more than Karl, presumably he himself would hardly have found the necessary time to introduce himself to her, which is why she wasn’t in a position to judge what people had told her in passing, namely that he was very, very great, which was probably in reference to his physical size, he certainly had other things to do beyond constantly becoming personally acquainted with this or that writer, but because he was so remarkably great, quite right, he wouldn’t be on record under a family name, but with a so-called epithet, the Great , yes, that was it exactly, Karl the Great , or Charlemagne as he’s sometimes called, everyone knew very well who was meant by that. .

Had her story suddenly become a historical story — or an ironically historical one? Why had she chosen Karl the Great, of all people? Because he couldn’t write and therefore had to have everything described for him by others?

Didn’t he die a long time ago? asked Burgmüller, and weren’t there a lot of other guys after him, all those Ludwigs, Ottos, Friedrichs, Wilhelms, etc.?

That’s what many people claim, she replied, but what does that mean, why shouldn’t there have been a lot of men who came after him, and yet, there has always been just him, why, do you think, would everyone otherwise still be describing everything to each other so precisely, confirming it to each other as they represent it, without really speaking with each other, or do you think everyone would have been able to continue that practice unchanged right down to the present if he weren’t personally still standing behind it. .? No, I’m certain he’s still alive. . or would you object to that?