Monat: Oktober 2015

233

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Then, as our baby lies, happy and concentrated, on his red blanket with the white lilies, and we are sitting silently on the couch listening with astonishment to the modulations of his sounds, we (you, I) conceive the same thought: with the baby, a voice was born to us. A voice in which language practices itself – the language that came into the world together with the baby. But it isn’t practice, we realize then, it is a second birth (beginning with the conclusion of the first), and that birth goes on and will continue to go on for a long time (just as it goes on and will continue to go on for a long time in us). Maybe this is why: it is not the first birth of language, even though it sounds that way.

232

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And then deep at night I stand by our hotel window gazing out at the empty street. I look at the blinking green light of the cash machine’s card slot and at the little red traffic light and the same red light on the bollard that bars unauthorized persons from entering the street. This red has such a strong effect on me, it makes me happy and elicits a rare (complete) desperation. I scarcely dare to turn away and look at the bed. And yet it happens. There lie our baby and you, with your heads leaning against each other, the straight bodies at an acute angle to each other: a living 1, with a gentle breath flowing through it. And indeed (I guessed it already) a downward glance reveals it to me: I am floating. Not by much, a hand’s breath at the most, but I’m floating.

231

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Again in the rich city, I suggest we dream together. You agree without hesitation and instantly we enter the next coach to the residential palace. Our baby cheers when he sees the two horses, and cheers even more when their manes start flying in the air stream. Arrived at our destination, we decide it would be better to leave our baby with the coachman,for he gives no indication of being in the mood for dreaming. But the horses, I say, how old and exhausted they are, how tired and sullen. At that point you cry and I don’t know why. We wanted to dream and now you are crying, but it is not possible to dream with tears in one’s eyes. How can we ever dream, you sob, if the baby is not with us? What should we do, we shout (at the coachman up in his coachbox, who is trying to put a green hat like the one he is wearing on our baby’s head)? What should we do, since we have only a little time left before the dream ends.

230

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An entire day in which nothing happens. Nothing. Not a trace of a happening. It is not easy to even notice this (we notice). We don’t even know how or by what signs we notice it. A day with our baby like all the other days and yet nothing happened. No sooner have we thought this than an event tries to sneak into our thoughts. In the past, without the baby, there were never any days in which nothing happened. Now, with the baby, there are such days. Then we think: Something is happening at every moment. And there’s something we nearly overlooked: our baby put his index finger on his lips.

229

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In the evening we (you, I) get together to talk about our baby. He is in the bedroom, lying in his crib, which lies attached to our bed like a bay. There lies the sleeping baby, here sit the talking parents. Our talk feels to us like part of his sleep. He postpones our own sleepiness a little. And if from time to time, in the resonance of the day, we close our eyes, it is only in order to stay awake. Do you remember (you ask me and I ask you)? We enjoy talking about our baby, even though our memory of what happened today is so weak. The best thing is to remember without there being any time before the remembering (did you say that, I?).

228

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The uncanny idea that the connection to our baby could be severed. Doubly uncanny because we know that is impossible. The self-evident fact (we are connected) does not spare us our daily practice (of staying connected). We look at the baby’s hand (again and again he tries to join the tips of his fingers). And look further at his wrist. At the rings of fat and the dark crease between them. The connection of the hand to the lower arm is obvious. And yet, it is only thanks to the crease that we see what is connected. Untiringly our gaze now rests on this (so softly bedded) crease.

227

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The desire to touch our baby knows no interruption. We are believers who are not content to believe with our hearts and minds – touch alone makes our belief real. We worship the baby and do not refrain from speaking about it (that is an element of our faith). Worship without a living being on whom we can lay our hand (on his belly, which is so soft that the hand touching it loses its form) seems meaningless to us. (In the past our prayers were without substance: no wonder years transpired between prayers.) Maybe it is the other way around and our baby is a believing baby: the grip of his hand seizing our arm is, at any rate, hard and firm.

226

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And then, when it is almost evening, the same (dreamed) voice tells me: You will never dream again! I am standing above in the art gallery of the residential palace and I feel the warm breath of the small panting white dog at my throat. Restlessly I look at pictures in which the stories of Jupiter, Salome, Judith, Callisto, and other famous characters are told, none of which I understand. I read one or two lines in the explanatory notes and have already lost the thread. And the little dog is panting. At that moment you come out of the neighboring room and immediately start reproaching me severely: How could you swap our baby for this ugly little dog? I reply: But all these myths and Biblical allegories are wrong, don’t you see, this whole masquerade is just . . . Without waiting for the end of my sentence, you run back into the neighboring room and immediately return, laughing, with our baby. „That’s pretty daring, I’d say,“ I say loudly. We look at the wondrous pictures together until late at night, while the little white dog plays with our baby on the floor. Then we all fall asleep.

225

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I always dream in this rich city (it can’t be prevented). On the white gravel of the parade grounds of the residential palace there lies a small blackish-brown heap of dog feces that must come from a very small dog. It casts a spell on me (the baby is sitting in the carrier). I can hardly turn my gaze to the triple arched portico or the Hercules fountain. No matter how hard I try, it keeps sliding away from the calm baroque façade to land on the dark little heap. I decide to go back to the marble gateway, just as a class of school children surges onto the parade grounds. The students gather around their teacher and listen to his explanations. Now the little heap is even more on my mind, and when the school class enters the residential palace, I immediately look for it. It has vanished. Not a smudge of it is left, not a crumb is to be seen. And the baby at my breast is also gone, and in his place is a little white dog that is licking my face. A voice tells me: This is a dream from which you cannot awake.

224

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Our baby travels for free (a small unpaid trip. The world, usually so calculating, doesn’t know what to do with the baby. There are no train tickets for babies. Is this some kind of quirky insult? When a person travels by train without paying and without being held liable, is he not being treated as if he did not exist? After all, the baby takes up no space for which a price could be estimated! The paid seats of the mother and the father – these are sufficient remuneration for his trip. So friendliness and forbearance are not the motives for denying him a ticket of his own. Our mistrust is not lessened when we invent a secret respect for the baby, even awe, as if for a god. Who would dare to sell a ticket to a god, if he wants to travel with us? The baby does not follow our profusion of thought for so much as a moment: he is used to traveling for free).