Please stop! she interrupted him, his report was causing her physical pain, maybe you’re entirely right, she said, or at least it’s a very good invention of yours, but what you’re maintaining has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with the menacing nature of our inexplicable situation, we aren’t Saxons, or are you perhaps a Saxon? no? you don’t know? oh dear, I’m not entirely sure if I am either, but I rather think I’m not, and so what you’re asserting has nothing to do with us, and it also doesn’t explain how and why we come to be here, what was supposed to be communicated to us by that, by having us somehow brought here while we were unconscious after that journey back then, which would presumably have gone on forever if we hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion, but how did we get here? presumably, as I’ve already said before, we were thrown in through this window, do you understand, without our having the slightest idea what we’re supposed to do or to look for here, yes, I think we were simply thrown in through this window, without our noticing it, or did you perhaps notice something?
No, answered Burgmüller, he hadn’t been able to notice a thing about being recently thrown in through the window there, no, and he hadn’t been thrown out through it either, very definitely not, he knew that for sure, never in his life had he entered this room through this window, he knew that with the greatest certainty; haven’t you seen, my dear, with your own eyes, that I never come to you through the window, that I always just go in and out through the door, or can you remember my coming in through the window there even a single time — no? — well, you see, the most that could happen would be that I might soon disappear from the room through the window here, if things keep on for much longer the way they have been (if something crucial doesn’t change soon, he thought), you understand, and anyway, even then, I wouldn’t be thrown out at all, or would you perhaps throw me out this window? you see, no, I don’t think so either, instead, it would happen that I, you understand, as now, would first take a look out the window, look down, and then suddenly climb up on the window, here, you see, on this window ledge here, and then go out the window and afterward jump, if things continue on like this much longer. .
While he was still standing at the window and looking out, she went over to him and looked out the window too.
So you think for sure we weren’t thrown in by way of this window, we didn’t turn up in this room through this window frame as through a picture frame? well, that’s no longer so important now, what’s much more important is to find out how we’re going to get out again, do you understand? no? but didn’t you yourself say just a while ago that you wanted to get away from here at last? and so do you think the way out might be through this window, would that perhaps be a good possibility? that’s what you mean, isn’t it? or?. .
She had crouched on the window ledge and was looking into the distance, far beyond the edge of the city, trembling like the shadow of a bird before it takes off.
Come, he heard her say, let’s go, you’ve convinced me that we have to get away from here, far away, you’re right, it’s our last chance, perhaps the very last, for the two of us, we won’t find such a handy escape route again any time soon, let’s finally begin our life together as we did once before, a long time ago, the moment is advantageous in a way that seldom occurs, no one can see us, no one can secretly observe us, let’s simply disappear, come along!
She had taken him by the hand, wanting to pull him up to her on the window ledge, but he didn’t want to do that, instead, he tried to bring her back down from the windowsill into the room, and he pulled her in quick as lightning, so that she almost plunged right down onto the floor — but fortunately not down into the city — she hadn’t expected that because, of course, she thought he would come up to her, would crouch beside her on the window ledge and go out the window with her, out and away, instead of suddenly holding her back, when he had otherwise always wanted to go away with her, except not now, but why not anymore? with the strength she was able to summon, once she made up her mind to do something, it was hardly possible to hold her back, instead, she would have dragged him out, down, and away with her, all it took was for her to imagine such a thing, and now she felt accordingly deceived by him, he’d made a fool of her, pulled the wool over her eyes, he’d thwarted the plan she had so carefully thought out for their future life together; at first she was speechless, quite flabbergasted, as he shut the window and placed himself in front of it.
She slowly got up and asked him despairingly to let her out, alone, if he suddenly no longer wanted to come with her, he would in future have to get along by himself here, without her, without her help; if it hadn’t been for her, he probably would never have gotten as far as this decisive point in his life; she tried to push him away from the window, but he stayed there as rigidly as an atlas who had to support the roof. She burst into a ragingly desperate fit of tears, beat her fists against the wall as if she might succeed in breaking a hole through the concrete, and when she couldn’t do it with her fists, she tried with her head, pounding it frighteningly against the wall in an accelerating rhythm.