Among the most extraordinary places in the world — said Atwo — are those Berlin courtyards where two, three, or four buildings flash their rear ends at each other, and where, in square holes set in the middle of the walls, kitchen maids sit and sing. You can tell by the look of the red copper pots hung in the pantry how loud their clatter is. From far down below a man’s voice bawls up at one of the girls, or heavy wooden shoes go clip-clop back and forth across the cobblestones. Slowly. Heavily. Incessantly. Senselessly. Forever. Isn’t it so?
The kitchens and bedrooms look outwards and downwards on all this; they lie close together like love and digestion in the human anatomy. Floor upon floor, the conjugal beds are stacked up one on top of the other; since all the bedrooms occupy the same space in each building — window wall, bathroom wall and closet wall prescribe the placement of each bed almost down to the half yard. The dining rooms are likewise piled up floor on floor, as are the white-tiled baths and the balconies with their red awnings. Love, sleep, birth, digestion, unexpected reunions, troubled and restful nights are all vertically aligned in these buildings like the columns of sandwiches at an automat. In middle-class apartments like these your destiny is already waiting for you the moment you move in. You will admit that human freedom consists essentially of where and when we do what we do, for what we do is almost always the same: thus the sinister implications of one uniform blueprint for all. Once I climbed up on top of a cabinet just to make use of the vertical dimension, and I can assure you that the unpleasant conversation in which I was involved looked altogether different from that vantage point.
Atwo laughed at the memory and poured himself a drink; Aone thought about how they were at that very moment seated on a balcony with a red awning that belonged to his apartment, but he said nothing, knowing all too well what he might have remarked.
I am still perfectly willing to admit today, by the way — Atwo added of his own accord — that there is something awe-inspiring about such uniformity. And in the past this sense of vastness, of a wasteland, brought to mind a desert or an ocean; a Chicago slaughterhouse (as much as the image may turn my stomach) is after all quite different from a flower pot! But the curious thing was that during the time I occupied that apartment, I kept thinking of my parents. You recall that I almost lost contact with them — but then all of a sudden this thought came to me out of nowhere: They gave you your life. And this ridiculous thought kept coming back again and again like a fly that refuses to be shooed away. There’s nothing more to be said about this sanctimonious notion ingrained in us in early childhood. But whenever I looked over my apartment, I would say to myself: There, now you’ve bought your life, for so and so many marks a month rent. And sometimes maybe I also said: Now you’ve built up a life for yourself with your own two hands. My apartment served as some amalgamation of a warehouse, a life insurance policy and a source of pride. And it seemed so utterly strange, such an inscrutable mystery that there was something which had been given to me whether I had wanted it or not; and, moreover, that that something functioned as the very foundation of everything else. And I believe that that banal thought concealed a wealth of abnormality and unpredictability, all of which I had kept safely hidden from myself. And now comes the story of the nightingale.
It began on one evening much like any other. I’d stayed home, and after my wife had gone to bed, I sat myself down in the study; the only difference that night was that I didn’t reach for a book or anything else, but this too had happened before. After one o’clock the streets started getting quieter; conversations became a rarity; it is pleasant to follow the advent of an evening with your ear. At two o’clock all the clamor and laughter below have clearly tipped over into intoxication and lateness. I realized that I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what for. By three o’clock — it was May — the sky grew lighter; I felt my way through the dark apartment to the bedroom and lay down without a sound. I expected nothing more now but sleep, and that the next morning would bring a day like the one that had just passed. And soon I no longer knew whether I was awake or asleep.
In the space between the curtains and the blind a dark greenness gushed forth; thin bands of the white froth of morning seeped in between the slats. This might have been my last waking impression or a suspended dream vision. Then I was awakened by something drawing near; sounds were coming closer. Once, twice I sensed it in my sleep. Then they sat perched on the roof of the building next door and leaped into the air like dolphins. I could just as well have said, like balls of fire at a fireworks display, for the impression of fireworks lingered; in falling, they exploded softly against the windowpanes and sank to the earth like great silver stars. Then I experienced a magical state; I lay in my bed like a statue on a sarcophagus cover, and I was awake, but not like during the day. It is very difficult to describe, but when I think back, it is as though something had turned me inside out; I was no longer a solid, but rather a something sunken in upon itself. And the air was not empty, but of a consistency unknown to the daylight senses, a blackness I could see through, a blackness I could feel through, and of which I too was made. Time pulsed in quick little fever spasms. Why should something not happen now that normally never happens? — It’s a nightingale singing outside! — I said half aloud to myself.
Well, maybe there are more nightingales in Berlin than I thought — Atwo continued. At the time I believed that there were none in this stony preserve, and that this one must have flown to me from far away. To me! — I felt it and sat up with a smile. A bird of paradise! So it does indeed exist! — At such a moment, you see, it seems perfectly natural to believe in the supernatural; it is as if you’d spent your childhood in an enchanted kingdom. And I immediately decided: I’ll follow the nightingale. Farewell, my beloved! — I thought — farewell, my beloved, my house, my city. .! But before I had even gotten up out of bed, and before I had figured out whether to climb up to the nightingale on the rooftop, or to follow it on the street down below, the bird had gone silent and apparently flown away.
Now he’s singing from some other rooftop for the ears of another sleeper, Atwo mused. — You’re probably thinking that this was the end of the story? — But it was only the beginning, and I have no idea what end it will take!
I’d been abandoned, left behind with a heavy heart. That was no nightingale, it was a blackbird, I said to myself — just as you’d like to say to me right now. Everyone knows that such blackbirds imitate other birds. By this time I was wide awake and the silence bored me. I lit a candle and considered the woman who lay next to me. Her body had the color of pale bricks. The white border of the blanket lay over her skin like a lip of snow. Wide shadow lines of mysterious derivation ringed her body — mysterious even though they must of course have had something to do with the candle and the position of my arms. So what, I thought, so what if it really was only a blackbird! The very fact that an ordinary blackbird could have such a crazy effect on me: that makes the whole thing all the more extraordinary! For as you well know: While a single disappointment may elicit tears, a repeated disappointment will evoke a smile. And meanwhile I kept looking at my wife. This was all somehow connected, but I didn’t know how. For years I’ve loved you — I thought to myself — like nothing else in this world, and now you lie there like a burnt-out husk of love. You’re a stranger to me now, and I’ve arrived at the other end of love. Had I grown tired of her? I can’t remember ever having felt sated. Let me put it like this, it was as if a feeling could drill its way through the heart as though through a mountain, and find another world on the other side, a world with the same valley, the same houses and the same little bridge. In all honesty, I simply had no idea what was happening. And I still don’t understand it today. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to tell you this story in connection with two others that happened afterwards. I can only tell you how I saw it during the experience: as a signal from afar — so it seemed to me at the time.