Miserable observation which again is certainly the result of something artificially constructed whose lower end is swinging in emptiness somewhere: When I picked up
the inkwell from the desk to carry it into the living room I felt a sort of firmness in me, just as, for instance, the corner of a tall building appears in the mist and at once
disappears again. I did not feel lost, something waited in me that was independent of people, even of F. What would happen if I were to run away, as one sometimes
runs through the fields?
These predictions, this imitating of models, this fear of something definite, is ridiculous. These are constructions that even in the imagination, where they are alone
sovereign, only approach the living surface but then are always suddenly driven under. Who has the magic hand to thrust into the machinery without its being torn to
pieces and scattered by a thousand knives?
I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner.
24 November. Evening before last at Max’s. He is becoming more and more a stranger, he has often been one to me, now I am becoming one to him too. Yesterday
evening simply went to bed.
A dream towards morning: I am sitting in the garden of a sanatorium at a long table, at the very head, and in the dream I actually see my back. It is a gloomy day, I
must have gone on a trip and am in a motorcar that arrived a short time ago, driving up in a curve to the front of the platform. They are just about to bring in the food
when I see one of the waitresses, a young, delicate girl wearing a dress the color of autumn leaves, approaching with a very light or unsteady step through the pillared
hall that served as the porch of the sanatorium, and going down into the garden. I don’t yet know what she wants but nevertheless point questioningly at myself to learn
whether she wants me. And in fact she brings me a letter. I think, this can’t be the letter I’m expecting, it is a very thin letter and a strange, thin, unsure handwriting.
But I open it and a great number of thin sheets covered in writing come out, all of them in the strange handwriting. I begin to read, leaf through the pages, and recognize
that it must be a very important letter and apparently from F.’s youngest sister. I eagerly begin to read, then my neighbor on the right, I don’t know whether man or
woman, probably a child, looks down over my arm at the letter. I scream, “No!” The round table of nervous people begins to tremble. I have probably caused a
disaster. I attempt to apologize with a few hasty words in order to be able to go on with the reading. I bend over my letter again, only to wake up without resistance, as
if awakened by my own scream. With complete awareness I force myself to fall asleep again, the scene reappears, in fact I quickly read two or three more misty lines
of the letter, nothing of which I remember, and lose the dream in further sleep.
The old merchant, a huge man, his knees giving way beneath him, mounted the stairs to his room, not holding the banister but rather pressing against it with his hand. He
was about to take his keys out of his trouser pocket, as he always did, in front of the door to the room, a latticed glass door, when he noticed in a dark corner a young
man who now bowed.
“Who are you? What do you want?” asked the merchant, still groaning from the exertion of the climb.
“Are you the merchant Messner?” the young man asked.
“Yes,” said the merchant.
“Then I have some information for you. Who I am is really beside the point here, for I myself have no part at all in the matter, am only delivering the message.
Nevertheless I will introduce myself, my name is Kette and I am a student.”
“So,” said Messner, considering this for a moment. “Well, and the message?” he then said.