Nevertheless, he kept trying to make up for things he hadn’t done that might be the cause of their failing relationship, maybe it wasn’t entirely too late. He even described to her, although she wasn’t listening to him, his newest project, the working out of spaces of complete silence, he patiently gave her lectures about the absence of sound, he explained total silence to her, even though it was unfortunately an impossibility, because, first, there were natural noises inside every conventional ear and it was impossible to avoid the circulation of the molecules and atoms that unfortunately were what existing matter was made of, and that presumably caused considerable, if microscopic noise, and then, second, by way of contrast, hypothetically silent matter that was built elsewhere, that didn’t have noises of its own, would hardly be perceptible by our heads, even within Burgmüller’s most silent spaces, because the body itself represented a considerable source of sound, and then he described to his girlfriend the acoustic activity of the human body and its organs, he spoke of an incessant rustling of the flesh, accompanied by the hissing of a ceaseless glandular spritz, and it was a good thing that a conventional human being didn’t normally hear the sounds of his anatomical power stations — though in that regard there were people, regrettably, who suffered from illnesses that forced them to listen to everything all the time, whose heads were almost bursting because the sense organs were no match for the burden of their own barely tolerable bodily noises — yes, Burgmüller gave his silent girlfriend a theoretical explanation of his research into silence, while she tried to crawl even farther away from him into her silence behind the locked kitchen door by holding both hands over her ears.
What could she still have against him, since he was making an effort as never before, he asked himself, she was listening to silence while he was trying to explain silence to her, but her silence seemed to captivate, so wasn’t her silence a much more substantial sound-lessness than his?
As he kept thinking about how he had neglected and failed her, it occurred to him, yes, maybe I should have taken her to concerts more often, he had only been at a concert with her once, at the time he was studying absolutely silent space, yes, and he remembered how happy she had been there, how well she had felt, what an unforgettable impression that experience had made on her, yes, he thought, maybe if I had taken her to concerts more often that would have been the solution, and he remembered how her eyes shone with expectation as they entered the concert hall, went to their seats, and sat for a long time, together with the rest of the audience, in quiet expectation, just as the orchestra on the stage waited silently for the conductor to appear, and he did come at last, was immediately greeted with thunderous applause, then he lifted his baton to indicate that he was now ready to begin, and finally the music began, yes indeed, the slow introduction to the symphony, and during the exposition of the themes of the piece, the listeners suddenly felt effortlessly calm and were soon so completely relaxed that they began to wave at each other, and there was a friendly fluttering of handkerchiefs throughout the entire concert hall, after a while the audience members generally made up their minds to get up from their seats to go and shake hands with each other, to embrace each other in greeting en masse, to get to know each other, while it’s quite conceivable that the conductor was doing a fine job of leading the orchestra pleasantly out of the exposition and into the development of the symphony, whereupon at long last the doors, all the entranceways to the hall opened to let the drink carts be pushed in from the foyer, to admit them, as had been long awaited, together with a rich selection of various things to eat, the hot sausages, sandwiches, and seasonal salads that people had been waiting for, and then, with the climax of the development of the symphony being unquestionably introduced by the brass section, the whole hall had started to beat time along with the music using the popping of champagne corks, and then everyone got up again, and all the listeners were standing there with glasses in their hands, deep in the most animated conversations with each other, laughing in the side aisles, and also in the center aisle and between the rows of seats, and toasting each other, calling loudly and happily to one another and embracing each other as the orchestra then gradually did reach the recapitulation at last, the culmination of the concert piece, until the concert-hall personnel urgently asked the audience to return the plates, glasses, and all the cutlery, because couldn’t one hear, they explained calmingly, that the symphony was now beginning its coda, softly, accompanied by strings. And then, when all the gastronomical personnel had left the hall again, taking their buffet carts with them, and had closed the doors behind them, the concert piece lit up again with the whole brass section for the triumphant conclusion, causing all the visitors to get back into their seats, to sit down again, so that after the last chord had died away they could sit there together as they had before the music had started, being very quiet, not moving, not daring to cough, no rustling of paper, no creaking, no scooting around in their chairs, everything as if it were frozen, a holy silence, yes, it was this silence after and between the pieces that were played to which the people at the concerts abandoned themselves for so long a time, often an exaggeratedly long time, sometimes only a quarter of an hour or half an hour, sometimes entire evenings, or half way through the nights, a silence inside which the listeners let themselves be locked up, and a silence that, because of the playing of whatever piece of music, was of course varied from work to work, this type or that type, always something different, it was often difficult for the audience to wrest this silence from the musicians, and people would abandon themselves to it until the conductor, whose absence had hardly been noticed in the meantime, returned to general acclaim in order to lift his baton for the beginning of the next piece.
Yes, that had made a great impression on her, Burgmüller remembered, and he should have taken her to such concerts more often, but his time was so strictly limited because of the inevitable, hopelessly piled up work to do with his studies of silent space that he had hardly had the time anymore to exchange a word with her, yes, so they’d started being silent with one another a long time ago, perhaps simply too silent for too long, but couldn’t she have gone to a concert by herself, to let the silence brought about by the pieces of music being performed distract her from his and her silence, to let herself be entertained — he would have bought her the tickets — or was it that she’d have been afraid to go there alone, afraid that she wouldn’t find her way there by herself?
Would you perhaps like to go to a concert with me this evening? Burgmüller often asked now, naturally he didn’t receive any answer because she didn’t even notice him anymore, didn’t perceive anything more of his person, it was increasingly clear that she had turned away from her environment, nothing more of it was present for her, she had grown weary of her entire environment, not just of these rooms in his apartment and of that city, but of everything, until she had succeeded in forgetting herself, presumably with Elvira’s help, because it was the fly’s arrival that had facilitated Burgmüller’s girlfriend’s being lost to the world, the better to climb into an entirely other realm; although she still, as before, gave the appearance of remaining in his apartment, she was as good as gone, transported into a far distant, remote region that presumably began right behind the locked kitchen door and had only been installed into the rooms of his apartment by Elvira’s arrival.