Gert Jonke - Awakening to the Great Sleep War

Why had she taken all her luggage along to the office — hadn’t he offered to take her things to the train station too, to speed the process up for her and so make that visit as easy as possible?

Had she forgotten his offer this morning, because she felt she had to hurry — or had she suddenly thought she would somehow suffer a loss of dignity if she let anyone else, including him, carry anything for her?

A warm morning lay spread out on the square in front of the train station, and in spite of the silent sultriness of its breath, it alleviated the boredom of the neglected pay phones by using merrily trembling, glittering dust cloths of air and cleaning rags of light to quickly wipe down their receivers and polish them to a shine.

The train the two of them were supposed to take later on had been waiting patiently for them since the early morning, standing ready at the platform in the main hall of the train station. The train station personnel used massive sledgehammers to hit the cars in the intestines, to test the durability of their various hoses to see if they had sprung leaks on the last trip, or would soon on the coming trip.

How good that he had ordered their tickets far enough in advance and had already picked them up, because, back then, behind the individual wickets for pre-purchasing tickets in the entrance hall the officials were trying to sell all that remained in the way of trips, open seats, and reserved seats on the trains that would still be leaving on that day, they made every effort to lure the members of the public who were in the train station over to their wickets, to show the people the beautifully colored train tickets, which they held up in the air so they were clearly visible, yes, and sometimes one or the other of them went so far in his zeal as to leave his cubicle to go up to a gentleman or a lady in a very familiar fashion, to convince the passerby he had personally addressed to please come back with him to his respective wicket, helping the person along a little now and then with a hand motion, gently pushing, or, if necessary, if someone was simply too equivocal, grabbing the person helpfully by the arm or simply taking him or her by the hand back to the wicket in question, where the convincing advantages of traveling off on the very same day were immediately impressed on the passerby in no uncertain terms; until, because of these efforts, the urge to travel had increased to such an extent in the train station that long lines formed, full of tightly-packed people, all of whom wanted to travel away immediately, but unfortunately there weren’t enough tickets anymore, which is why, as the people who were pressing more and more forcefully toward the wickets began to be pushed aside — and some of them were already entirely wedged together — there would almost have been a massive fistfight over the remaining trips, if the ticket agents, after selling their very last tickets, had not fortunately stormed out of their wickets and immediately, with calming words, spoken soothingly to the remaining people, tangled up with each other, disappointed, in need of travel, unsatisfied, the ticket agents helpfully pushed the remaining people apart with their hands, consoling them on that day in the train station hall, back then, by telling the crowd about the even more advantageous offers there would be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and as a closing tonic for the very last of the people who always remain sitting in vain in the waiting rooms, they recited by heart the poetic litanies of all the train schedules, complete to the last detail, several times, as a means of saying farewell.

Why didn’t she come at last, she should have been here a long time ago, it was high time, all aboard, thought Burgmüller rather desperately, because he heard the whistling of the locomotive, it’s calling for her throughout the entire city, and wasn’t it also trying desperately to draw her through the streets and alleyways, dragging her luggage along, into the train station and onto the platform at last, where the train would only remain standing for a short time longer, as if it had just been waiting for her and for him, for the two of them to get on, yes, because wasn’t the conductor waving at him now across the entire hall, as if he personally wanted to encourage them to hurry, since the entire train was now really waiting for no one else but the two of them, yes, he was keeping the doors of the train car open for them, right up until the last moment, oh dear, because now he shut them with a bang, after he had jumped inside; then the train windows floated past Burgmüller’s eyes, gliding faster and faster out of the hall, waved at by the red track manager’s cap that hopped through the air and together with the green signaling disc shooed the last car away.

Through the gaping, open hall Burgmüller stared after the train for a long time, watching it get smaller and smaller, more indistinct, very far away, where the valleys evaporated, valleys whose trees, hills, and huts had only recently flowed down from the sky.

Winged letters of the alphabet swam through the air like hummingbirds, helplessly buzzing around, completely covered with soot, and the wind tried in vain to line them up into a meaningful message (well, it’s possible that this day just didn’t have very much to say, nothing new, nothing to add, almost nothing at all).

Far off in the distance the poplar trees were hanging around like tall, sad, slack exclamation marks set up as warnings not to glide too far off into the region beyond.

He kept on waiting. Even if she came now, which was admittedly too late, he thought, they could still try somehow to get away on the next train out.

His longing for her was driven on by all this waiting, as strongly as the current of a river that had lost its way in the clouds while looking for the valley that bore its name but that it could never reach.

On the way home, he saw many houses on the outskirts of the city standing ablaze in green flames, their exciting flickering stemmed from the icy torrents of light that had flung that hot summer day down from the mountains and wanted to hide in the rampant ivy on the city walls, which was goaded on more and more nervously until the leaves, spraying in little blindingly sprout-green bursting bubbles of plant-fire, in explosion-splashes, rocked each other away, increasingly high, far away over the ridges of the roofs and out into the countryside.

He wanted to continue waiting at home. In her room, there was only her story, she wasn’t there.

Finally, the telephone rang.

Just imagine, we can talk to each other without having to write it down! she called to him on the other end of the line, without having greeted him first, just think, we can have all the secrets we want, because all the mysteries of the world have been explained at last, we’re able to act freely, what do you say to that? It had been explained to her in detail at that office today by competent people who were definitely in the know.

He had waited at the train station, he replied. Why hadn’t she come in time for the departure, it was a pity their tickets had expired.

Don’t you know, she replied, it would have been absurd to travel away, a vain flight, it wouldn’t have led us anywhere, we wouldn’t have been able to go away properly at all, we would just have embarked on another endless travelogue, what a stroke of luck that we didn’t let ourselves in for that, because — and now she spoke of a sort of superior authority, he couldn’t quite follow — she had been assured there in that office that the whole world, its so-called history, everything was invented; while her story, by way of contrast, was true, her assumptions had proven to be fully legitimate, and that’s why the world, as described by her, was also her very own invention, because everything was behaving now as it had in that large room, if he remembered, with those figures at their typewriters who thought they were experiencing everything but were actually only describing it, were so engrossed in their descriptions that these became what they experienced, which is why they noticed nothing at all of their true situation, and that was a good thing, that was how it was meant to be, because their descriptions were sketched out for them, laid down in advance, any deviations from their prewritten lives were inserted by the figures at the typewriters second hand, so to speak, and always in only the most unimportant details, though Herr Karl was of course no invention, but the question was whether people had placed him at the head of everything in a sort of supervisory capacity, or had they simply made him believe that he was overseeing everything, because he himself was too stupid to write, to describe, could never learn how to do it, and so, in order for him to be able to immerse himself believably in his illusion, he therefore had to dictate everything, which is why he’s the dictator , get it? because he is completely lacking in imagination!