At this point he stopped and asked himself whether anyone who knew anything about his past wouldn’t immediately identify him as the ghost he was describing. But who could possibly know anything? He himself knew virtually nothing. And hadn’t this phantom always lived solely in his papers, even back in the town?. . This was the thought that had to be saved: his earlier life was a paper fantasy and had to stay that way; all other thoughts had to be silenced one by one. It couldn’t be said too often: that I from back then was a literary character. . and according to a not-unfounded hypothesis, the boss concurred with this point of view!—W.’s memories were sufficiently telling: ‘I’, raising his head again and again from the tabletop. . and when the light of the kitchen lamp begins to seep into his brain and reality regains its foothold in his thoughts, the question looms inescapably: Where was I just now? — What is the place from which I’ve just returned. . which streets had he roamed, in the light of which window had he crept up to hold his ear to the private parts of strangers’ voices. . ah, they’d all remained equally blurry, these private voices in the fog. — The question was nonsensical, his skull had merely slept amid a dense fog of letters (Was that so? Yes, the boss would have replied). . forehead bedded in a thick layer of papers, buried by a whirl of words and phrases, delivered up one winter long to the voices of his imagination. .
The question was nonsensical. . it was only in his stories that he’d eavesdropped on them all! And he’d never eavesdropped on himself! Now it was time. . now he could eavesdrop on this spy, this product of his text fragments, now he could pursue this draft of himself that had seized his essence, this sleeper roaming the fog at the outskirts of town in his sleep, betrayed by sleep all winter long, the phony panting of the papers in his ears. .
Now and then the doorbell rang. . and each time he was too feeble to get up and see who’d rung. Just once he’d gotten up, gathered the interrupted manuscript from the desktop, folded it several times to form a slim, longish bundle, and stuffed it into the crack between the cushions of the red armchair, the narrow, deep hiding place between the back and the seat. . after all that, the ringing had already stopped; he’d lurked to see if it would return, but nothing came. . in the evening he fell asleep and woke with a start — the ringing had returned. . he was just hearing things. — The room’s bed was a so-called daybed, red plush, just as greasy as the red armchair; it cost him an effort to ignore the dark, slightly sticky streaks which marred the daybed’s edges (of course this sleeping fixture had constantly been used without a sheet), so he slept in the armchair whenever possible, his feet stuck out over the seat of the wooden chair he placed in front of it, usually fully dressed, which wasn’t a problem for him (he’d slept that way often enough during his night shifts in the boiler room) as he’d acquired the habit of consuming large quantities of alcohol in the first half of the night while trying to write. And he slept in a similar position on the daybed: on his side, stabilized by the seated pose, his head tilted back on a pillow, his lower arms crossed over his chest or clamped between his thighs, his legs bent and sometimes drawn up nearly to his stomach; this, he fancied, was almost the shape of a foetus about to slip from the womb (it was no wonder, he said to himself, that he was plagued by dreams of childbirth). . and each time the ringing signal at the door sent him back into this irresolute posture, or he doubled up still further; his first thought was always that the lanky guy was leaning on the doorjamb outside. . it was as though his earlier life were ringing at his door. — Regularly it was a single ring, not repeated, and thus typical of the ‘probationer’, the gutless wonder (or so his boss had characterized him). . at the start of his time in Berlin W. hadn’t been able to shake the strange sense that the lanky guy would crop up one day; it would be a miracle if he didn’t, he said to himself. — For some reason the longlegs was the bogeyman of the game, precisely because he looked so harmless at first glance. . he was the bringer of bad news. . this clearly gave even his boss the willies. Fear was a vital factor in this show, it always had to be available in sufficient quantities — and it could change hands very quickly.—W. had thought about making the ‘probationer’ a background character in his story, one who could crop up unexpectedly at any time. . in his mind’s eye he saw the lanky guy looming over a dense congregation of people, for instance, on a bridge over the S-Bahn rail tracks, and the sun transformed the tall thin figure into a smoke-coloured silhouette, for the interim. . till the time had come for this overlong shadow to stick to the narrator’s heels. .
But one time W. did open the door, and a different person stood outside in the stairwell, rather lost, hovering indecisively near the switch for the timed light. — Sorry, the person said, using the English word, I don’t think you’re the person I wanted. . or are you? — The last part of the question was spoken into the darkness, since the light in the corridor had just gone out; there was no way the visitor could have had another look at him, W. thought, and behind him was nothing but the weak glow of his desk lamp. . Who are you looking for? he asked. — At short intervals a cigarette could be seen flaring up in the darkness, pulled at hastily and audibly; he smelt the smoke, it had to be a very odd, foul-smelling brand, or a cheap cigar exuding acrid, almost sulphurous fumes. . the embers fell to the ground and were trodden out with a crunching sound. — Maybe you have some idea, the other said, whether a certain Harry Falbe lives here?
The visitor made no move to press the button for the light, remaining instead in the dark. — No, said W., he doesn’t live here. And I’m certainly not him. — Do you know him? the person said. — I said no, W. returned, I don’t know him. And who are you, are you from the registration office? — At that he finally turned on the stairwell light; the other man squinted, seemed surprised by the brightness. . From the registration office? He gave a short laugh. No, not that, but maybe we’re something along those lines. Why do you ask, do you need a new flat?