Before things came to a confrontation, I sprang down from the terrace directly onto the window ledge. He halted in the middle of the terrace to enjoy his triumph.
And once again the old parrot babbled on: "My territory! My territory! …"
As far as I was concerned, I was now completely fed up with the new neighborhood.
"Take your territory and shove it where the worms will soon be having the time of their lives!" I told him, and strolled back into the apartment through the bathroom window. It would have been a cinch for me to have given that old fool the beating he so well deserved. But why? What would have been the point? The world was a vale of woe, and anyone who failed to realize this and worried about something as meaningless as territorial boundaries was a sad clown indeed.
What else could I do in these hostile and ugly surroundings except creep back once again to that mausoleum of a bedroom and nod off to the soothing sounds of the divine Mahler …
… and dream.
It was a bizarre, really scary dream. I dreamt I was strolling leisurely through our new home, which—wonder of wonders—Gustav and Archie had finally finished renovating. But the result of their labor was more than just peculiar. Like a funeral home, jet-black velvet curtains covered all the apartment walls, and gloomy wall lamps not only failed to illuminate the rooms, but made them seem even darker. The furniture, too, that without exception seemed to go back to the time of some eccentric French king, had been lacquered either in black or in the darkest of shades. Black silk scarves were draped over the bed and sofas, and even small accessories, like the vases, ashtrays, ceramic figures, and picture frames, which every house needs to become a home, bore the color of death. In short, it looked like an extravagant family tomb, particularly with the raven-black marble tiles.
I was standing in the hall, and had an unobstructed view of the living room through an open door; need it be said that the living room had also been given the "black magic" touch? Gustav and Archie were dressed ceremoniously in tuxedos and were dining at an oversized, black marble table. They were surrounded by innumerable, huge candelabras, with thousands of flickering candles casting a ghostly glow on their faces. Using costly silver cutlery, whose piercing tinkling echoed into infinity, the two of them toyed with black, fur-covered clumps on their plates. They cut small, shiny bites out of this indefinable mass, gracefully conducting them to their mouths. When they noticed me, they stopped, turned toward me, and stared at me with vacant expressions.
At that very moment, the apartment door flew open and slammed against the wall, letting in a strong gust of wind. I heard a strange sound, a mixture of wailing and weeping, which seemed to come from far away.
I tiptoed to the doorsill and tried to determine the direction from which the weeping came. Although it sent a shiver up my spine, I couldn't resist the temptation of following it. Some unfathomable impulse, partly morbid curiosity and partly suicidal courage, made me slip out into the gloomy hallway and creep very slowly up the rotting wooden stairway.
My heart pounded frantically in fear, and when at the halfway point the stairway made an abrupt 180-degree turn to the right, I nearly returned to the apartment. Something was extremely odd: the higher I climbed the stairs, the brighter the dark stairwell became.
Finally, I got to the first floor where I found myself in front of a half-opened door. A glittering light poured out from the doorway onto the stairway, and made everything as bright as day. The strangely distorted howling became louder and stronger.
Now that I had come this far, it seemed my fate to have to trudge on into this white nightmare. No other choice remained, so I mustered my pitiful reserves of courage and entered the apartment. Unlike the one below, it consisted of only one large hall, no, not really a hall, but a simple nothing, a blinding white nothing. I found myself in an otherworldly realm of whiteness in which neither borders, dimensions, nor reality seemed to exist. Now and then, glowing points of light blinked in the distance like mysterious stars in a white universe. The outlines of objects that were similar to highly complicated technical equipment became moving silhouettes that could only be perceived for seconds before vanishing. In all this whiteness, a whining voice echoed, shrill and piercing, and suddenly I realized the heartrending pleadings for mercy were being made by one of my kind.
In the midst of this strange scene, a man in a long white coat suddenly appeared out of nowhere. What terrified me, however, was not his abrupt appearance: when he turned his head toward me, I saw that he had no face.
He held something in one hand that looked like a leash or a collar, and it shot out even brighter flashes of light than the glittering stars around it. Fascinated by the strangeness of my own dream, I approached the man without a face who had begun swaying the gleaming collar back and forth like a pendulum. Then, with a gentle voice that could have belonged to the gentlest of angels, he began to speak. It was a captivating male voice, as smooth as the finest silk, as pleasant sounding as a chord struck on a harp. Although my deepest instincts warned me about this unreal voice, I was all too eager to let myself be hypnotized by the voice and do what it commanded.
"Come here, my little one," the man with no face said seductively. "Just come over here to me and see what a nice thing I have here for you."
I remained standing in front of him and stared up at him, mesmerized. In his
