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Didn’t you go almost daily from bridge to bridge along the shore of the river, dear Burgmüller, undecided about the place where you should cross the river once a day, whereupon at the middle of the bridge selected — wasn’t it usually the so-called “Bridge of the Newest Republic”?—you leaned against the railing for a while to look down into the eyes of the river flowing below, and before continuing your walk, didn’t you spit into the water?
And you were very sure, weren’t you, that you by no means spat into the water from the bridge because this is supposed to bring good luck — according to the simple rules of popular folk wisdom — but rather as a substitute for your not having spit your entire self, to the full extent of your bodily dimensions, down from the railing of the vault of the sky?
This morning too, very early, it was five o’clock at the latest — you’d been wandering around all night long, being pushed around, staggering through your story — you roamed again as usual through the meadows by the river, and by and by naturally wanted to undertake one of those river crossings that had already become traditional, that had always seemed to you, incidentally, as frontier crossings of a sort, which usually led to your coming right back again, but this time, and you were certain of it, you wouldn’t spit pars pro toto into the river anymore, but would spit yourself down at last, in your entirety, as long as you succeeded in climbing over the bridge’s railing first, but you’re not all that uncoordinated, so this time you were resolved to fall down or to let yourself fall down into the river, to sink in right between its countless gray water-eyes, thus making this the first time on which there would be only a single, one-way crossing of the frontier, just one crossing over, no?
But when you then finally reached the bridgehead, Burgmüller, didn’t you notice right away, with displeasure, that a mob of people had assembled there? no, that didn’t suit you at all, to be exposed in the process of carrying out your intentions to the curiously gawking onlookers of what looked like some kind of newly founded sunrise-observation society, but how could you have anticipated such a thing in order to prevent it in time, no, you couldn’t have done anything more to prevent it, my dear man, because when a crowd like this suddenly turns up in such numbers to form an extraordinary general assembly for the purpose of inspecting the sunrise, it has to be a very special sunrise! At first you hadn’t even classified this sunrise assembly as a mob made up of human members, but rather as an overgrown thicket of river-valley shrubs that somehow got caught on the bridgehead, a proliferation of bushes from the previous night, and you started to work your way through this mass of bushes, secure in the conviction that you would soon set foot at last on the “Bridge of the Newest Republic,” and that you would climb over the railing about midway over it, still being waved good-bye to from the distant inner city by the skylights of the wings of several roofs, by the sheets hung out to dry in the attics there, what a help they’d be, energetically waving you on your way, you and that body of yours, which seemed sadder then than ever before, and then the buildings would take to the air with their winged tile roofs, and crossing over you to the other side of the river, they would hover until making the crash landing that you assumed would happen soon afterward, in dust-geysering, wall-crumbing rooftile clouds, yes, but just as you wanted to step up to the bridgehead this morning, to throw yourself down into the river and so into the ocean, you found out from the murmuring of the crowd that the Bridge of the Republic, which you had wanted to walk out onto, had collapsed just a few minutes ago, had fallen in on itself; the bridge had cracked, gone right down into the river, and was now flowing downstream; of course it was a shock at first, not so much for that rubbernecking assembly of the dawn, gripped anew by every catastrophe it comes across, as though it’s always the very first time, but above all for you, Burgmüller, you who naturally felt double-crossed, your plans thwarted by that bridge, triple-crossed even, crossed out, it’d made a fool of you. . You decide to throw yourself off the bridge into the river and thus into the ocean, and just when you’re about to do so, before you can reasonably put your plan into action, the bridge itself crashes down into the river right in front of your nose!
By the way, the bridge from which Robert Schumann jumped into the Rhine — Schumann, with whose life and music you once occupied yourself as intensively as your inner state would allow, and in a very scholarly manner to boot — that bridge still spans its river in Düsseldorf today as it did back then, but the bridge from which you wanted to jump fell away of its own accord, right in front of you; it simply shut you out, made itself scarce, ran head over heels away from you at the last moment: it wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with you!
No, no, dear Burgmüller, don’t be unjust, especially when, really, you’re much better off because of this, just think how Schumann’s plan went awry — Schumann, your most remarkable, your dearest colleague, with whom you were also fundamentally joined together in a deep personal friendship right down through the intervening centuries — his planned trip to Holland, to a quiet hut in the Rhine delta, or farther on through the mouth of the river into the North Sea, all interrupted right at the start by that bridge-keeper-ferryman who found the poor man suspicious right away because he didn’t have any money with him and so paid his toll with his handkerchief, presumably not even clean, blown full of snot, and that excessively good-natured waterfront official at first let it slide, but after Schumann had really and truly leaped from the middle of that bridge into the Rhine, hadn’t the bridge-keeper followed him right away in his boat, and hadn’t he brought the defenseless unconscious man back to land, where people felt obligated to lock him up behind the rusty hedge-maze fence of a high-security foolproof-madhouse?
Aren’t you almost sure that the “Bridge of the Newest Republic” would by no means have collapsed at five a.m., would still be standing unchanged now in its old place, if you hadn’t formed the intention this very morning of throwing yourself into the river from it, if instead, as usual, you had just spat from the bridge down into the river, which, basically, is why you’re actually the guilty party here, the one who caused the collapse, isn’t that exactly what you’re thinking? but take care not to tell that to anyone, neither today nor tomorrow, but no, you’re not that stupid, no, no one can really think you’re that stupid.
Or had the bridge caused such problems for this main continental artery that the river had begun to wash away the base of its foundations; were those steel trestles gripping into the sand-bed so painfully tight that the whitewater-weals on its pitiful body had already swollen up to the point of being unbearable — who knows exactly what was going on? — or had the river gotten disoriented at this point in its passage through the land, had it been blinded and confused by the light of the rising sun and then unable to get its bearings again over the course of the day, dear Burgmüller? no, no, this had presumably just been another of those unreasonable Republican Bridge whims, at whose mercy one will suddenly find oneself, to one’s surprise, and without being able to defend oneself!
What’s supposed to happen now, you ask yourself, Burgmüller — a difficult question, which can hardly be answered from this side of the river now, have a little patience, so you’re at a loss? well, that’s understandable, it’s hard to know what to say, what sort of advice to give, but it might be best, you know, yes, it’d probably be best if you just sat down, not much can go wrong then, you know, the best thing to do would be to sit down there on the stairs of the bridge embankment, take a rest, you really need it, and that’s probably also the only thing that anyone from this side can advise you to do at the moment, take a rest, rest, that’ll do you good, you’ll see. .