Gert Jonke: Awakening to the Great Sleep War

At the entrance hall wickets, officials tried one by one to sell all that remained in the way of trips and open seats and reserved seats on the trains that would still be leaving that day, back then: how selflessly they exerted themselves, how admirable was their zeal; they knew just how to draw in the many people who had arrived to swell the ranks of their train station audience, how to entice them over to their respective windows; at first they only used cautious beseeching, then imperiously demanding hand gestures, and then head shaking accompanied by facial expressions from within their glass train-ticket sales-center cubicles — for example, they often held a few of their tickets up high in the air for all to see, so that they could immediately explain to even the undecided customers at least the most obvious qualities of their offers, how one could travel without delay, thither, where one had always wanted to go, yes indeed; and some of these officials behind their glass wickets even went so far in their zeal as to wave from their windows to a particular gentleman or a lady, at first in a friendly fashion, but then stepping out and going toward the person to persuade her or him to please come back to his respective wicket, and sometimes, with a carefully pushing, helping hand, they even grabbed the lady or the gentleman good-naturedly by the arm, or best of all took her or him by the hand and led the way without delay to their respective wicket, employing by and large the subtle power of gentle benevolence, which seemed particularly appropriate and suited to those people who, even if with difficulty, had come precisely to be persuaded for the first time in their lives of the only happiness possible, and who, at the very last minute, were still able to ride away at last. Yes, and as soon as such a train-wicket official had properly flattered a lady or gentleman over to his ticket window, he immediately described the various persuasive advantages of one trip or the other from thither to hither or both together and back again, everything explained with absolute precision, with the utmost emphasis, by way of a vivid brochure that he wielded winningly and lovingly, using the dazzling seductive power of all the available colors found upon a competently equipped painter’s palette. Yes, and back then the urge to travel had already increased in the train station to the point where suddenly there was an invasion of endless lines of tightly-packed people in front of the wickets, fully convinced by the train station ticket-selling personnel, all of them suddenly wanting to go away, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough space left by this time for all the additional people who had now suddenly made up their minds to travel, so that a few of them were certainly forced to remain behind, back then, in this other city, it was just a question of who, and who else as well; after all, it wouldn’t have been good if, back then, everyone had suddenly gone away at the same time, without at least a few remaining behind. Yes, and the pushing and shoving this way and that and the other by all the people who had now been shoved partway into one another, trying more and more insistently to get to the wickets, almost gave rise to a mass fistfight in the wild rush for the last of the still-remaining tickets and trips that could be purchased; only prevented, at the last minute, by the ticket agents themselves, after they had really sold their very last ticket, because right after closing their wickets in the hall, back then, they rushed out from behind their glass booths and with calming words and carefully appeasing hand gestures put the remaining people off until new offerings were made the very next morning. Yes, and for the very last of those people who’d been hurt in their longing for the faraway, and for the most pitiful of those who were always waiting in vain in the waiting rooms and as before were left empty-handed, to reinforce what they had said in closing, the ticker sellers recited by heart the first-rate poetic litanies of the train schedule, which in their own way were perfectly beautiful and complete, and they said them several times more in farewell, sometimes continuing their litanies uninterrupted all through the following night, because more and more frequently there were several railway officials becoming more and more fond of the habit of never leaving their familiar, homey railway station halls even when they were off duty — why go back to the loud desolation of a sublet room in the suburbs, where they were plagued with loneliness and everything was strange to them, when, after their working days were over, they could spend their nights as well under the protection of the huge umbrella dome of the train-station-cathedral, in the waiting rooms and in the entertaining company of the passengers who often waited there through the darkness of the nights, often their whole lives long, for the infinitely postponed departure of their trains, and didn’t lose their patience at all, quite the contrary; first they felt somehow obliged to look for their trains and then if they eventually found them they didn’t need patience anymore because there was absolutely nothing else for them to expect, yes, and some of them had even gotten used to bringing their bedding along into the waiting room so that they could spread it over the benches before they disappeared under their fluffy down-filled duvets into one of their waiting-room dreams that the train-station ocean-going hall-steamer crossed on high seas on heavy seas.

From the light surf of the sun tide, the time that was yet to come pulled many colorfully shining schools of fish to shore with its nonce nets, while the blossoms on the bushes and trees in the parks began to sing, also to hum like birds or make a sound like swarms of insects, but it was really the plants themselves that were making music with their calyxes and flower bells — there wasn’t an animal in sight — and now the leaves along the avenue began to flutter more forcefully too, no, they weren’t moved by any wind, this day was completely calm; instead, the proud avenues were waving to each other with all their leaves from all their twigs right up to their highest branches, as if to give the two people strolling below them some really rather rustling applause, or to announce that the departure of the flowers could begin at any moment, lifting off together from all the stems: they would glide up like a huge swarm of leaves from the surface of the city, rustle away and possibly leave all the parks and gardens leafless on that hot afternoon, but then, back then, they weren’t yet ready to do that yet, the petal-swarms of dragonflies were still hanging in the light; only now and then individual hummingbird-leaves were whisked up into the sky and out through the harbor, glowing as they went, and only in a few small gardens did bare plant stems show that an early autumn interlude must have broken out over them, it had lain there under the wallflower-gray air, as if to hide itself from this summer’s heat.

Then the whistling of the locomotive called after the two of them, searching for them throughout the city, finally catching them, pulling them back through the streets into the hall and toward the platform; the conductor waved at them vigorously as they came in through the train station entrance, asking them to hurry, as if the entire train had just been waiting for the two of them, it would be the two of them or no one at all, yes, and didn’t the conductor also hold the door open for them, welcoming them with a friendly nod, almost as though to say that he would be back later on, after the departure, to greet them personally, and at greater length, shaking their hands of course, and he begged their pardon for the entirely unnecessary request that he be allowed the privilege of inspecting their tickets in advance, but unfortunately the urge to do so simply overwhelmed him, it came over him again and again, incessantly, and the courteous expression on his silent face revealed that he really had tried recently to shake off this bad habit once and for all, but without success, because the irresistible urge came over him again and again, almost like an addiction, he just had to look at other people’s tickets; every attempt to stop himself had been in vain, so they should please be lenient with him.