You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

There’s nothing in the world that stays the way it is.

The way they let the wind carry them, as effortlessly as if flying were the norm, as if it took hard work to stay on the ground.

why does it say Get away there? I didn’t write that. That wasn’t me.

why does it say Get away again there? Think logically. If she had written it in your notebook, then how could it fit in the line like that, wouldn’t she have been able at most to write it in the margin?

You should have left. Now it’s too late.

the term World Mountain comes to me. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, but I can’t push it away, because that’s what it is; that’s what I saw.

I seriously asked myself whether I had gone crazy. But how could you know that, how could you figure it out? Wasn’t the very fact that I asked myself the question proof that I hadn’t?

No, I thought, it’s not that simple. The fact that I’m thinking about it proves nothing.

I pushed down the handle, the door was locked. It took me a moment to remember that I had locked it myself last night. The key was in the lock, I turned it, we went out. Esther squealed with surprise. We were back in the living room. Indeed, we had left the living room, but the door through which we had gone had led us back into the living room.

The comparison with the ant isn’t good. A better one would be with a creature that is drawn on paper. If it could live, it would live entirely on the paper, on its surface. Now imagine there was a mountain on the paper. If the creature made a circle around the mountain and measured the enclosed area, this wouldn’t help it understand what it had in front of it. There would be much more paper than, according to its reason, could fit in the circle. For this creature it would be a miracle.

Strange that I used to find the sight of the stars soothing. I once read that a lot of astronomers think the universe might be infinite. Full of stars, full of galaxies, going on and on and on, going on literally forever.

And this infinite universe might be only one of an infinite number of infinite universes, each with different laws. One is unreachable from another, they are strictly separate. Normally.

We actually did make it into the hall: wooden floor, white walls, on the left the door to the washing-machine room, next to it a half-open door, which I had the feeling hadn’t been there before. As we went by, I peeked in. The room was empty, on the ceiling hung a naked lightbulb, in the corner was a wooden chair, which was missing a leg.

For a moment I was overcome

with the confusingly strong desire to go in,...

There’s someone in the house, she said.

For a moment the size of the building was completely unclear; it projected far into the distance, pointed and gigantic, but not upward, rather in a direction that I hadn’t suspected existed.

seized by the image of a woman who would stand at the window in several years or had perhaps stood at a window a long time ago and watched paralyzed with terror as two specters, a man and a child, receded hand in hand into the night.

For a moment I still hoped with all my strength that it was only a resemblance and therefore a mistake: the pointed roof, the wide front door, the empty parking area in front, and the large, illuminated window through which you could see the long table and the kitchen and the open door to the hall. But it was no mistake. We’re back, I said.

A short while ago there was a man in the room. He didn’t look dangerous, more tired. He wasn’t the man from the framed photo, because he didn’t have a beard, but I think he resembled the woman with the narrow eyes. I couldn’t really tell, because he wasn’t standing on the floor but on the ceiling, and he was looking down at me as if he wanted to ask for help. But he was here only briefly, and I’m so exhausted that I might also have imagined him.

It’s the place itself. It’s not the house. The house is harmless, it’s simply standing where nothing should stand.

The thought makes your head reel—not a fictitious but a real infinity, filled with things and creatures and galaxies and galaxy clusters and clusters of galaxy clusters and so on and so on, without an end in either direction. And now and then spots where the substance gets thin. Words. They don’t capture how it really is.

The place isn’t evil, but it’s a trap—like a crevice out of which you could at first climb, but you see the sky above you and think, it’s not dangerous, and so you dawdle and look around because there are interesting crystals there, and when you finally do want to climb out, you realize too late that every movement brings you down deeper.

I understand the thing with the angle better now too. It’s not easy to put into words. At least not these words. With new words it would be possible. But why bother? If I say that in addition to the three dimensions you have to imagine another three from the other side, or actually from within…But to whom am I supposed to explain this? To the others who are here forever too? They’ve known it for a long time, they already know far more.

But maybe I can warn him,

maybe call to him through undulating time: Get away. Shout at him: Get away, before it’s too late, whisper it, yell it, that he should stop worrying about his movie and open his eyes and see where he is.

She’s gone. I’m alone, my God, she’s gone. Now it’s time to wait.

When we looked at each other, I felt split into two beings. The knowledge that I would never see her and Esther again was unbearable. But at the same time they were both so far away from me that I didn’t know whether I would have even wanted to return to the place to which I could not return.

I can see the room very clearly in the reflection again—the long table, the cabinet, the kitchen, the door. There’s no one in the room reflected there. But there’s a notebook on the table.