Burgmüller’s descriptions for the actress of the flocks of birds got more expansive, because in his explanation he was soon standing in the middle of the plain and looking up into the air with his mouth open. Not that he was looking for his own silhouette up there, but he wanted to organize the movements of the flocks of birds that filled the sky above him and around him so completely that the beating of their wings immersed the entire day in a feathered twilight, just imagine that! Except that no flocks of birds were present, so he had to ask her to imagine the birds in the sky as he was telling her about them, yes, then he called out commands in various pitches and at different volumes, aiming them upward, into the ceiling of the hall of light, so that even those birds who were not present would, as he assured her, definitely take note, yes, the birds would be moved by the sound waves of his calling, she could see that, surely, and by way of the sound waves of his commands, all the animals would now, with a jerk, be flushed simultaneously into a direction chosen by him, and would steadily be called to that place in the air that he had calculated would be their terminus, and although there weren’t any birds there, she seemed to enjoy his work, which made him give her even more detailed explanations and teach her how to call them, because just shouting wasn’t good enough, there was a certain secret knack to his calls, you had to get the hang of it, as he had found out, if you didn’t have this secret knack and hang not a single bird would pay any attention, and then he showed and explained to her right away the necessary knack and hang, he taught her how to call up into the sky the right way, using both the knack and the hang to move the birds, because with just the hang without the knack or with just the knack without the hang, not a single bird would be moved, let alone several of them, which were unfortunately absent on that day, but that didn’t bother her, instead, she called into the air too and sent commands to the horizon, she steered invisible flocks enthusiastically through the scaffolding of the day, she was really blissfully concentrating on the sky, completely absorbed in what she was doing, as if there had really been birds there, but then, wasn’t there a day when the birds suddenly came back, because the air had started to tremble and vibrate and rustle and whistle, unless that was just her joy at controlling the dome of daylight, for her calls and orders had gone humming into the air and were at last absorbed by it, was it her bliss at having understood the knack and hang of directing that feathered wing traffic through the sunlight? — but she shouldn’t divulge this knack and hang to anyone else, Burgmüller impressed upon her, just as he wasn’t going to tell anyone but her, it had to remain between the two of them, because otherwise anyone and everyone would come along, all the people in the city would start wanting to conduct the flocks of birds out here with a mass application of both knack and hang, then everyone would soon be fighting with everyone else over which bird belonged to whom, who had which bird up there when, and woe betide anyone who tried to pinch someone else’s bird, or who crossed its path, and everyone would try, with as many knacks and hangs as possible, to get as many birds as possible for himself, and they’d start all kinds of intrigues, people would start yelling at each other in general, and the birds up there would be helplessly exposed to all that screaming, and people would sic their flocks of birds on each other, and that sort of thing was just inconceivable. (This is also the reason why this section will contain no specific information about said knack and hang, because it simply wouldn’t do to have every Tom, Dick, and Harry willfully hindering birds from migrating to the south, or from returning, or in the autumn to have a wine-grower overly concerned about his harvest send the starlings from his vineyard to his neighbor’s, and so on.)
Although the birds did not return in the coming days and weeks, the two of them continued their walks, which were ever more intensely filled with their enthusiastic conversations and theories, almost as if nothing else in the whole world could happen to harm the two of them, because as soon as they perceived a threat, they could have themselves wrapped up by a flock of birds, Burgmüller explained, or they could have the approaching threat hacked to pieces by the beaks of a feathered sky; so the two of them conversed in their newly discovered language of images of flocks of birds drawn in the light, so that sometimes the horizon seemed like a single wing that flapped at them or rushed away, and its zephyrs had begun to send the two of them gliding up and down through the country as if on ocean-going rowboats on this ocean that flowed up toward the sky, and now that the seabed had opened up, the mantle of air had sunk down into its deepest fissures, and as though it were a huge, rich fishing ground, flocks of swimming birds passed through it.
But at some point the birds had come back again, at least he suspected they had, or remembered it, or it’s how he imagined he remembered it, because, yes, on a day that was so hot it seemed they were in a desert, a bird-flock sunshade had indisputably spread out over their heads, right, and he had suddenly made the birds form a feathered garland of spring sunbeams around her neck, after which she had the birds in flight weave a blindfold around his eyes. .
Sometimes, in the evenings, they sorted all the flocks of birds in the streets into a net that formed a dome over the city, so that the rooftops were wrapped up in it as if in a swaying ocean fishing net that was fluttering over them. Then a shrill whistle from the mouth of the acoustic interior designer burst the feathered cage apart like a fireworks mushroom of black light rays spreading out in all directions, the names of which were forgotten again right away, and for some time, weren’t they?
The inhabitants had manufactured the city’s autumn themselves, and then found it was still sticking to all the house doors and windowpanes well into the spring and summer, like greasy, dirty, tinfoil that had been wrapped around butter, so I showed them, Burgmüller explained, what it might be like if the steppe-like plain around the edge of the city had completely rolled itself up, with only shreds remaining to still tumble through a now unknown region like bundles of moth-eaten old clothes. .
. . in which at least not much more could happen to her and to him, even in the most extreme cold, because then they would wrap themselves up in a bird-flock pelt, in which they could comfortably and submissively melt into each other. . couldn’t they?
No, it wasn’t entirely like that.
Although he always accompanied her right to her door after their almost daily walks, he unfortunately never got any farther, for weeks now he had hoped every day that she would invite him in, but in vain — he longed to begin exploring the last inscrutable secrets of their being together, but she didn’t want that, and she didn’t go to his apartment either.
The two of them still had to discover one another she said, or had she said invent; or had she meant that because they still hadn’t discovered each other, they would now really have to invent themselves?
And in connection with this, she spoke, on the one hand, of a frame, a decorative setting that she definitely did not want to describe: perhaps around a picture that shouldn’t be framed too quickly because its edges weren’t clearly defined yet, because the plan was that it would grow out still farther, would spread out over its surroundings, which would cause any frame to burst apart, as an overflowing fish pond bursts its dam; on the other hand, however, she also spoke of a picture that she didn’t want to describe: surrounded by this protecting frame, it would cause the prematurely installed frame to burst apart by flowing out over its edges, like a rainbow bursting the mantle of air and possibly causing serious damage to the sky, or something like that, and she asked him, particularly in this regard, for forbearance and patience; it would be worth it, he would see.