were almost always terribly overheated; it was clear that one couldn’t treat the old stokers the way they’d been treated previously, but that one there, yes, that’s the one, please take a look, that one there is a young man, isn’t he? yes, probably the son of an old stoker, possibly his successor, well couldn’t these damned stoker children have found their calling in the district heating plants that had been built in the meantime?! unfortunately not, more’s the pity,
because the railway stokers have very little, actually nothing at all in common with the resident city and state stokers, there’s no comparison, although: things get heated in both workplaces, but over the course of the centuries, the traveling stokers have become so accustomed to being almost continually underway—this trait passed down through the generations—that every longer stay begets a dangerous illness; they can no longer stand still, sit still, lie still, let alone sleep, but the worst thing is that they’re struck down by a puzzling, life-threatening loss of appetite that forces itself on them almost like a hunger strike, and the only thing that can help them is running, yes, yes, to run away from it, to run uninterruptedly for days through the cities, villages, and forests, the traveling stokers then run around everywhere; and after such a running cure, two days of which was usually enough at first, they felt somewhat better for a short time, but even then they couldn’t stay anywhere very long, they just took short rest periods and then continued on like that for the rest of their lives! yes, yes, they just needed to be moving, being on a train was enough, then they didn’t need to run and they still stayed healthy, because then their appetite wasn’t just satisfactory, it often increased almost alarmingly with the speed of the train, yes, yes, in recent times some of the trains have gotten so fast that the stokers riding in them have fallen victim to a shameful gluttony, just look at that one there, his bloated face, unshaven, that sadly sagging stomach pouring out unrestrainedly over his belt, from which one can nevertheless draw the sure conclusion that one is riding in an extraordinarily fast train; yes, yes, over the course of the centuries these traveling stokers have really gotten increasingly peculiar, and if the planet weren’t always being obviously pulled away from under the soles of their feet, like a carpet rolling itself up, then they would have to urge it on and make it hurry with the kicks of their jogging feet, and they would have to hop around on the earth until the world deflated and turned into a pair of bellows in outer space, where we could no longer get an overview of it, the stokers were always very afraid of getting their feet caught in the mooring ropes of the meridians, which in their opinion were hidden everywhere, and when the ground under their feet didn’t swim away of its own accord, then they would have to make it get a move on and try to take the continents for a ride . . .
I’m not keeping anything secret from you, Burgmüller explained to his new girlfriend. The reason he was urgently needed right away in HITHER was because he was an acoustic interior designer by profession, and he spoke of threateningly lined-up concert dates beckoning him ever closer, but she, on the other hand, why didn’t she come along with him HITHER, and what sort of good opaque thither reasons was she perhaps keeping secret from him?
Wait, she replied, until we have arrived THITHER; then maybe we’ll be able to see farther hither.
But just look, and we’re only noticing it now, and isn’t that the absolute limit, that really takes the cake, look at that man over there, you know, him, he’s completely covered with dirt,
he’s got soot on him, yes sir, soot, quite right,
and he’s dressed as if he’s still sincerely going about his work as a stoker, just like in the old days, he looks the very thing, although that can’t be right at all,
how someone could lie so boldly just by wearing certain clothes, oh yes, or maybe the clothes aren’t deceiving us after all, maybe it’s his actual uniform that he’s wearing while on duty, as he is right now, according to regulations!
But that’s ridiculous, don’t you think? There’s nothing for him to heat, but he’s still dressed as if he’s continually exposed to thick smoke, that’s really too much!
Or maybe he’s tending a secret, private little fire hidden away somewhere, unsuspected?
Up front at the bar, as if to signify the end of their conversation, while both of the men were nodding their heads at each other, the head cook had stuck a cigarette in his mouth. Just as he realized he had neglected to offer the stoker a smoke from the package that was almost back in his pocket already, a conspicuously sparkling-clean and lit cigarette lighter glittered at him from the stoker’s hand.
May I give you a LIGHT? people now heard the stoker say, quick as a flash, loud and clear.
I knew it right from the start, you could almost hear people sigh with relief through the dining car.
Then the stoker walked back through the dining car and disappeared somewhere to the rear, whence he had arrived a short time before.
He actually wasn’t a stoker at all.
No, back then it had already been a long, long time since stokers had ridden along in the trains.
But the night outside had gotten as black as the nostril holes of a ship’s stoker.
That one night in the sleeping car. That only real night in his life, basically, Burgmüller thought again and again, that darkness decorated by cracks of light, corridors of hot air, in the rhythm of their shared trip, regulating their pulses, subordinating them both to an identical beat during the deep exchange of their embrace, mutually deeply united in each other, as if they were busy mutually battering down each other’s doors, again and again, and more and more intensively, or as if they were alternately banging their back doors open and shut, with such force that each one’s individual presence was forgotten in their mutual transformation, as if they were saving each other’s lives, because each was respectively getting lost in the other, and he could only still find himself where she pointed the way along the route to the center of her happy dream-sorrow, and she could only still find herself where he pointed the way to the innermost room of his dreamy sorrow-happiness.
Their bodies had become far distant foreign lands to each other, familiar but exotic, vast areas quite near to each other, neighboring, but diametrically opposed: they brushed their provinces around each other’s faces while they sank into the enchantments they had constructed around each other, him feeling the impression of her feelings bursting on his skin cage, penetrating inward, while the wings of his feelings soared up until all his imaginable senses could melt into her, as if painted on, could surface on the ocean of the mirror-walls of her disguise; finally the two of them were as wrapped up by their train compartment as a landscape is by its sinking ceiling of air, until the waves of their bodily surf slapping together had completely closed around him, like a homecoming back through the vast rooms where he had strayed, returning to himself, as if, by giving himself away entirely to her, until her devotion too was entrusted to his ecstasy, he had finally found the way back to himself after a long time away; what was new was a space that was completely diffuse, but that he could comprehend as a place he could grasp playfully, yes, a region that distributed itself around her with hopeless bliss, while he, certainly strengthened, had entirely dissolved in her.
He didn’t think of their union as a penetration on his part into a female body, which is how he had thought of similar intimate acts until then; instead, he suddenly felt certain that he was going across a bridge with her, slowly and safely, a bridge over the entire Pacific Ocean, and which they crossed relatively quickly, as if it were only a somewhat wider river, its midpoint decorated by the equator, while the highest point of the steel girder bridge frame arched over the international date line, behind which a completely new epoch spread out: in the most hidden reaches of his mind, it was rising up from the pools of her eyes and coming toward his field of vision, until the shores of the continents touched one another, simply pushing aside the ocean’s towering spring tide, while the merging coastlines piled up, folded upward to form a mountain range, sank together, and fell back onto the seabed of the night-darkness that was flooding past.
Yes, indeed, the ocean, swept aside, has towered up like a spring tide to form a waterspout tube spewing out toward the cosmos, and after its heated collapse, with its hot clouds of steam hissing, its continental laundry tub boils