Why didn’t she come at last, she should have been here a long time ago, it was high time, all aboard, thought Burgmüller rather desperately, because he heard the whistling of the locomotive, it’s calling for her throughout the entire city, and wasn’t it also trying desperately to draw her through the streets and alleyways, dragging her luggage along, into the train station and onto the platform at last, where the train would only remain standing for a short time longer, as if it had just been waiting for her and for him, for the two of them to get on, yes, because wasn’t the conductor waving at him now across the entire hall, as if he personally wanted to encourage them to hurry, since the entire train was now really waiting for no one else but the two of them, yes, he was keeping the doors of the train car open for them, right up until the last moment, oh dear, because now he shut them with a bang, after he had jumped inside; then the train windows floated past Burgmüller’s eyes, gliding faster and faster out of the hall, waved at by the red track manager’s cap that hopped through the air and together with the green signaling disc shooed the last car away.
Through the gaping, open hall Burgmüller stared after the train for a long time, watching it get smaller and smaller, more indistinct, very far away, where the valleys evaporated, valleys whose trees, hills, and huts had only recently flowed down from the sky.
Winged letters of the alphabet swam through the air like hummingbirds, helplessly buzzing around, completely covered with soot, and the wind tried in vain to line them up into a meaningful message (well, it’s possible that this day just didn’t have very much to say, nothing new, nothing to add, almost nothing at all).
Far off in the distance the poplar trees were hanging around like tall, sad, slack exclamation marks set up as warnings not to glide too far off into the region beyond.
He kept on waiting. Even if she came now, which was admittedly too late, he thought, they could still try somehow to get away on the next train out.
His longing for her was driven on by all this waiting, as strongly as the current of a river that had lost its way in the clouds while looking for the valley that bore its name but that it could never reach.
On the way home, he saw many houses on the outskirts of the city standing ablaze in green flames, their exciting flickering stemmed from the icy torrents of light that had flung that hot summer day down from the mountains and wanted to hide in the rampant ivy on the city walls, which was goaded on more and more nervously until the leaves, spraying in little blindingly sprout-green bursting bubbles of plant-fire, in explosion-splashes, rocked each other away, increasingly high, far away over the ridges of the roofs and out into the countryside.
He wanted to continue waiting at home. In her room, there was only her story, she wasn’t there.
Finally, the telephone rang.
Just imagine, we can talk to each other without having to write it down! she called to him on the other end of the line, without having greeted him first, just think, we can have all the secrets we want, because all the mysteries of the world have been explained at last, we’re able to act freely, what do you say to that? It had been explained to her in detail at that office today by competent people who were definitely in the know.
He had waited at the train station, he replied. Why hadn’t she come in time for the departure, it was a pity their tickets had expired.
Don’t you know, she replied, it would have been absurd to travel away, a vain flight, it wouldn’t have led us anywhere, we wouldn’t have been able to go away properly at all, we would just have embarked on another endless travelogue, what a stroke of luck that we didn’t let ourselves in for that, because — and now she spoke of a sort of superior authority, he couldn’t quite follow — she had been assured there in that office that the whole world, its so-called history, everything was invented; while her story, by way of contrast, was true, her assumptions had proven to be fully legitimate, and that’s why the world, as described by her, was also her very own invention, because everything was behaving now as it had in that large room, if he remembered, with those figures at their typewriters who thought they were experiencing everything but were actually only describing it, were so engrossed in their descriptions that these became what they experienced, which is why they noticed nothing at all of their true situation, and that was a good thing, that was how it was meant to be, because their descriptions were sketched out for them, laid down in advance, any deviations from their prewritten lives were inserted by the figures at the typewriters second hand, so to speak, and always in only the most unimportant details, though Herr Karl was of course no invention, but the question was whether people had placed him at the head of everything in a sort of supervisory capacity, or had they simply made him believe that he was overseeing everything, because he himself was too stupid to write, to describe, could never learn how to do it, and so, in order for him to be able to immerse himself believably in his illusion, he therefore had to dictate everything, which is why he’s the dictator, get it? because he is completely lacking in imagination!
Incidentally, it was a very good thing that these histories of the world were only described, that they never actually had to happen, that reality was such a good invention, so sophisticated, because if it had really happened, it would have been a catastrophe, headed right down the drain, and everything would long since have ended again, everything would have been arbitrary and might possibly have been even worse than what was in any case already wholly thought out, and then nothing else would ever be able to happen in the world, because the people would have destroyed not only themselves but also the entire world with their own destructive powers of invention. .
She also tried to make clear to him that the march of time could be thought of as a recurring cycle of terrible library fires alternating with incessant library reconstructions and expansions, which then led again to new library fires.
The two of them had recognized all that and so had been separated from the other writers so that they wouldn’t cause any great unrest among them. But from now on, as far as we’re concerned, we’ll be able to invent and construct the world, a new world, so that it suits us, she went on to say: the people at the office, from that bureau, had given her a very firm promise of that! Listen, we’ll finally be able to think up everything for ourselves and to talk with each other so that everything will apply directly to us! Finally, we can begin our actual story, doesn’t that please you?
What people were those, from which bureau, from which office, who had been pulling her leg like that? She sounded so sure of herself, it was as though she’d just gotten her official certification from some sort of Weltgeist Planning Committee; moreover, they weren’t even going about it properly, it was at best a Platonist attempt to make sense of things by referring to Bagel and Schopenglower; hopefully she hadn’t gone completely mad now, he was very concerned about her; who knew what kind of unscrupulous charlatans had caught her in their net or still had her at their mercy?