How was Burgmüller to understand that?
Nevertheless, she was at last letting him into her story as a sort of backup because, during the previous night, she had fetched Burgmüller’s typewriter out of his study and brought it into her study where she set it up beside her typewriter, along with a chair, and now invited him to write the story along with her as her backup; but even though he had been invited from now on to be caught up with her in the narrative work of her description of this world, he was still just barely tolerated, as before, still as good as locked out of her life, her life story.
Yet he began describing everything together with her, and he assisted her with the invention of her world, giving her suggestions, helping to drive the story along.
Burgmüller was happy, because he thought he was a little closer to her again.
Since she had turned up at his place, he still hadn’t had the opportunity to look her right in the face, because she kept avoiding his gaze; so he asked her now, very directly, to look into his eyes again at last; or else, why did she think it would be advantageous for her to remain so hidden from him throughout their future collaboration?
Now? she asked almost in shock, you want us to look at each other now, isn’t it still much too soon, did he really think this was the right time for that, wouldn’t it indeed be disadvantageous and bring them bad luck if they looked at each other now, wouldn’t it be better to wait?
Wait for what?
By the way, she said, she had quite forgotten what his face looked like, and not just his face, his entire body, it was ever so far away at the very back of her memory, she explained, she had only retained his build in her head as something rather dwarflike, shriveled up, sunk in on itself; or had he in the meantime perhaps filled out, gotten really fat, puffy, so fat that he filled the room; or had he instead become thin and scrawny and shot up like a telegraph pole standing lonely and forgotten on the plain; or, if not that, what?
But, she went on, she would look him in the face, quite simply, then she’d see.
She looked.
And what do you see? he asked, longing to know.
What I see, she replied uncertainly, is actually nothing, or almost nothing, your outlines are almost entirely blurred, almost all enveloped in mist, clouded over, or, wait, the form of your face, of your head, I can make it out, if fleetingly, something like a lowercase a. . or no, rather like a big O! am I right?
He was surprised to have his face compared to a letter of the alphabet, didn’t want to accept such a description of his external features, had she perhaps been trying to imply that he was an egghead? But he didn’t let it show: instead, by attempting to describe her face in return, he wanted to demonstrate to her how the description of someone one has grown very fond of might be more aptly phrased, so in that context he tried to describe certain flowers — some lilies, or bluebells, or even rare types of daisies — whereupon she interrupted him right away:
Flowers? He was comparing her face with flowers? That was really rash, recklessly random, the flowers had long since died and dried out, like straw-flower letters of the alphabet, even their names were forgotten in the scorched gardens of greenhouses that had gone dull, like the dried-up streams, the bushes reduced to steppe, the lakes in the meadow and grassy hills eaten up by dust, it had all happened so long ago, only the shadowy remains of the words of their conversations about these things were left, yes, it was all a long time ago, and she asked if he didn’t remember it, people had described it all to the two of them when they had gone to school together, did he still remember? no? oh wait, yes or no? and once the teacher had brought a bluebell to class and showed it to all of them, look, a bluebell, then he had also explained what a daisy was, look, a daisy, but perhaps all those flowers, even back then, had just been made of wires and paper twisted together into clever, silky, star-shaped fabrications for the carnival, who knows, and who would still be able to know the answer today with certainty, no, did he remember nothing from that beautiful time, because even then, according to her memory, watchers had always stood behind them, making sure that they’d really taken notes on everything, while making their own observations in little notebooks — is it true that you really remember nothing of that time. .?
No, he answered, he couldn’t remember anything. A common childhood?! They went to school together?! What was she talking about? Unfortunately, to the best of his knowledge, they had never had the opportunity either to grow up together or to go to school together, but that played no role in the story she was developing, presumably she’d just found it advantageous to invent a common childhood for the two of them (a fabrication, he thought quickly), a time together in school, and he thought she’d succeed in describing it until he himself was not just able to believe it, but would soon be forced to believe it, was her future memory capable of becoming a threatening prophecy about the past. .?
So she began to invent a new memory for him, made to measure, so that he would fit into her story, and who knew what way would seem best to her to describe his new past, he still knew nothing about it himself, but it made him very curious about all the things he would soon have to accommodate in his head about the made-up childhood he was supposed to have lived through (together with her), he was really very interested to find out what sorts of thing would be attributed to him in his new past, how the personality of his deepest new inner nature — about which he still had no inkling — would be portrayed, because that’s how it was, he was about to get his own most secret intimacies spelled out for him by her, knocked into him by her typewriter, a new counter-world would be placed before him, almost as if his body was being fitted with a new shadow, but would he have to cast off his old shadow to accommodate it, the shadow that until then had been part of him, or might it be possible to move his body through the neighborhood with two shadows at the same time, why not, it was probably easier to fly over the countryside with two pairs of transparent wings than with just one, or would he in future attempt — before entering the zone of her story as told to him — to take off the old, conventional shadow he was used to outside, so that in her story he would use only the one she had just begun to manufacture, and wouldn’t make a nuisance of himself and unnecessarily delay the rapid development of her story by dragging with and after him a shadow that didn’t belong in there at all. . but when he stepped out of her story again, then wouldn’t he likely forget to change back, exchange the new shadow she had made for him with his old familiar shadow, to unscrew the one and screw on the other, or would it happen that he frequently wouldn’t really know anymore which shadow he was wearing at any given time, and would he then start to confuse his new memory, which had been conducted into his head, with his old, traditional past, which had been with him up to now, until at some point he no longer knew which of them he was supposed to recall, should he cast his thoughts back: the past that had been his up until then, that had always been more or less familiar to him, at least until recently, or the memory of this new invention from the future, soon coming his way, that he would only be able to experience in a future memory, spread out before him, the memory of an invented future, the past of an invented future, an invention of the future-past, the future of a past invention, an invention of future-memory, etc., and, oh dear, thought Burgmüller, what would happen in the future if he started confusing the invention of memory with the past of invention, or the invention of the past, or the memory of invention, and whatever else there might be, oh dear, so it was already starting, no, no, he would soon become accustomed to it, soon get the hang of it, it was just that he would have to practice until he had a certain level of familiarity with not only one previous life, but with two, one that he thought he had perhaps really or primarily experienced and another that for the most part was presumably invented by her and foisted on him for the purposes of her story; but if the latter happened to suit him better than the former — so well, in fact, that from now on he only wanted to remember the common past with her that she had invented for him, and was himself tempted to make his previous past disappear — would he then be just as lost and locked into her story as she herself was, or perhaps even more lost? He really had to pay attention now, especially if the existence that he thought he had really experienced up until then might possibly also turn out behind his back to belong to the shadowy realm of a counter-world of an invention that had been made to measure for him a long time ago by someone else entirely, for then he would have to take care that the two invented presents and pasts that had been custom-made for him at different times didn’t get mixed up with each other or with his quite different respective environments — but now, she should get down to business and finish inventing the new past that he was supposed to have spent with her, then he would see how best to proceed; if she didn’t, he might soon want to start exchanging his still unknown future for the still unknown past that he had spent with her, so the best thing would be for her to finally begin!