What? Everything again from scratch?!
Yes, because you unfortunately didn’t find anything, but I already know almost exactly what I’ll have to find here, and approximately where, you’ll see, it’ll be an eye-opener for you, you’ll thank me for it someday.
Fine then, everything from scratch again; and how could he best be of help with the additional search, asked Burgmüller.
You can’t, she said, or wait, yes, you can, by leaving me alone for about two hours, because I’m best able to concentrate when I’m all by myself.
On the stony cataracts of the flights of stairs outside the buildings in the city, the stairs began to flow, yes, the steps flowed into each other until the waterfalls of the stairs came crashing down, yes, even the stairwells pressed forward out of the entranceways and onto the streets and lanes, where the raging torrents of marble piled up on top of each other, forming barricades that blocked the streets!
When he got back two hours later, he saw what she meant by seriousness and determination. But how could she possibly have managed to do all that? In his opinion, it would have taken at least five people, but she assured him she had accomplished it all on her own. And that with a very limited number of useable tools and supplies. Nevertheless, somewhere in the apartment she had found a quite powerful hammer, and also a very solid crowbar or sledgehammer, he hadn’t even known that he owned such a thing, and with it, she had carefully pried open all the slits in the wall along the electric wires, the telephone wire, and of course the water pipes. Naturally, all the carpets had been torn from the floor, and its boards pulled up. In two hours, she had done what would take two ordinary workmen at least a day.
She had torn all the wallpaper down from the walls; it now fluttered toward him through the corridor as mildewed scraps, like dead indoor-night-birds that hadn’t survived the day, thrown from the stars of the ceiling onto the floor, but that fact was only peripherally still worth mentioning, let alone that all the wall sockets had been unscrewed, and of course all the clothes cupboards emptied, their rolls of fabric organized into rag heaps that were crouching here and there, all around, lost, lurking helplessly, ready to pounce, and he was surprised at how many clothes he apparently had that he knew nothing about, when had he bought them all, this complete wardrobe for an elegant gentleman that he never used at all, but frankly what astonished him most was a tremendous collection of hats and caps that had come to light, among them, in all colors, an almost complete collection of Borsalino and Panama hats, all of them actually in his size, as he could see for himself: bought, as Burgmüller read on their inside labels, in the best and most expensive hat salons of London, Rome, Paris, Florence, Madrid, Milan, and New York — only one, recognizable by the shape of its brim as a cross between a Stetson and a traditional Mexican sombrero, had been bought in Wroclaw, of all places.
Where had she found these hats, Burgmüller asked.
In the clothes closets, of course, she answered, each one of them carefully packed in its individual hatbox.
It was a mystery to him how there had been room in his clothes closets for so many hats in such large hatboxes, especially since Burgmüller really didn’t like hats and never wore one, not even in the highest summer heat, to protect him from the sun, let alone a cap or a pointed hat, not even when there was a sharp frost, because no sooner did he feel a covering on his skull than he was overcome by a terrible fear that his brain might be squashed at any moment, no, he never put anything on his head. Yes, these hats were, as he saw for himself, entirely new, never worn, clearly unused; had they been smuggled in behind his back as a sort of delayed student prank — not old hats passed off on him, but brand new ones for a change? But then, by whom? Besides, for a joke, that was a much too expensive business, because hats of such quality cost a fortune, each one of them, in Burgmüller’s opinion.
But even more amazing than the clothes and hats spewed out of the cupboards, items of clothing he had neither known about nor worn, or at least hardly ever, was the fact that she had also unearthed three new rooms in his apartment, rooms he hadn’t even known were there — at least the landlord hadn’t said anything about them, or had forgotten to show them to him — and indeed, as she explained to him, they were behind a barely visible door, at least a door that was easy to overlook, because the door handle was missing, and if you didn’t look right at that spot, you could mistake it for an irregular, dark, moist stain on the wallpaper, as if a cupboard had once stood there and had left the outline of its door-wide shadow sticking to the wall.
Burgmüller was shocked at first, and reproached her for having mistakenly forced her way illegally into a neighboring apartment that belonged to someone else, even if it was empty, but she was able to calm him down by pointing out that every separate substandard apartment normally has its own kitchen, its own bathroom, or at least its own toilet, and most certainly its own entrance door, or had he ever been in an apartment without an entrance? aha! it’s just that the door handle was missing, which is why it had never occurred to him to open the door to his own rooms that until then had remained concealed from him.
But she too found it a cause for concern, in quite a different way: This was deliberate, she said, people had been observing us and listening to us from in there, they’ve been after our secrets for a long time, do you finally understand?!
Not only new clothes, but also used clothes, worn-out clothes that were no longer usable, and piles of rags had been brought to light by her diligent fingers, and with them came masses of moths that swung merrily through the corridor. When Burgmüller returned, she was in the process of catching some of them, examining them closely, and letting them go again.
His apartment had been crumpled up into a mountain of rubbish, whose highest detritus-peaks looked down upon the clothes-forest foothills, from which the rugged plain of torn-up floor-boards stretched from the window-horizon to the ceiling-sky, across which flocks of swifts drew their flight paths. All the rooms had been karstified, become a walled, almost dead steppe, a dreary, hollowed-out country full of ruined spaces as though in an abandoned mine, all locked into the building, shrouded by the waterproof hat of the attic-atmosphere and its tyrannical thunderstorms, below which the laundry rooms quivered and quaked.
As he surveyed the new continent of his apartment, Burgmüller felt a growing despair about her destructive work; at first he’d been on the verge of hiding his despair in a fit of rage, but concealed it as best he could without this measure, because otherwise he would have threatened her narrative, her story, which had turned into a narrative war against him. So he just asked her if she had found what she was looking for.
Yes, she had found something, a pin, of all things. Otherwise she had completely deciphered their living space, as she put it, only this pin had struck her as highly suspicious and had to be examined more closely, she pointed to a barely visible, strange bulge on the head of the pin, she absolutely needed a microscope, right away, she said, where did he keep his.
If she hadn’t found one here in these rooms, he didn’t think there was one.
Then he should get one as quickly as possible.