forward as if to kiss Jeremy, but she did not. She let her hair graze his cheek, and when she whispered, “I think you’d make a great sidekick,” the sweet smell of cinnamon bloomed into the air.
She touched a finger to the tip of his nose and stood smiling at him. “
Au revoir
, Jeremy Jeremy Johnson Johnson,” shesaid, and disappeared into the night, leaving her spicy scent behind.
“Whew,” Jeremy said, though whether to himself or to me was uncertain. Then he climbed through the window and fell safely inside, or so he believed.
Jeremy laid the broken thong on his bedside table and stared for some moments at its fancy knots tied tight by his grandfather. Thereafter he began to ready himself for bed.
Doubtless there are specters who do not respect the privacy of mortals, but I am not one of them. At day’s end, I kept Jeremy company only until he said, “Good night, Jacob,” and then I took my leave. Sometimes, when he was feeling solitary, he would delay saying good night and we would talk before he fell to sleep. When his spirits were low, I would remind him of one of the day’s pleasant occurrences—a kind word from a teacher or the sight of a gliding nighthawk silhouetted by the moon. Such thoughts sometimes helped him slip into the sweet arms of sleep.
This night, however, Jeremy was ready for slumber. Still—I could not help myself—I reminded him that we had not finished our vocabulary study.
“Wake me early,” he said. “We’ll study then.”
Of course
, I said.
“Good night, Jacob.”
Good night, Jeremy
.
After retiring from Jeremy’s attic, I made my way to the belfry of the white church built by the town Lutherans. Here I passed my solitary evenings no matter the season, for while I might behold the beauty of snow, I was not chilled by it, and though I might hear the buzz of the summer’s mosquito, I was beyond its bite.
I stretched my vaporous legs and gazed out at the vast prairie and sky and thought my disquieting thoughts. Distractions occurred—a star might shoot by, a browsing mouse might rustle a dry leaf, an owl might swoop from a nearby tree—but my apprehensions always returned.
The thing undone
.
The unknown yet unmet desire
.
This riddle is my prison; I am trapped within it. The answer—
the thing undone
—is the door that might release me from the
Zwischenraum
, but if I could not find the door, how could I open it?
What could it be—this thing undone? The
Deutsche Wörterbuch
, the monumental dictionary that Wilhelm and I undertook to compile, was of course undone. This was my first thought. When Wilhelm died, we were on words beginning with
D
. At my death, the work was in its seventh volume, and yet I had gotten only to
F
. But this could not be the thing undone, for it was a thing I could not do. From the
Zwischenraum
I could not continue our work on the great dictionary, or even encourage others to take it up. So it was not that.
Had Wilhelm and I been alive, we would have discussed thething undone, approached it with reason, determined its nature, devised a method of correction. But I was alone in the
Zwischenraum
. I had no advice and no answers and no methods. I had only a tender, terrible yearning for my absent brother.
I wondered if the
Zwischenraum
was not a riddle to be solved and escaped from but, in fact,
Hölle
—hell itself—or
die Hölle auf Erden
—a living hell. And with that came the nagging fear that the maid in Steinau had been right, that Wilhelm was not here because he had passed beyond to a better place, a place I had no way of reaching.
The thing undone
.
The unknown yet unmet desire
.
Finally, I remembered how, one night in a meeting hall, an aged traveler regaled Wilhelm and me with tales of faraway places, the Russian steppes, the Ganges and Nile rivers, the Great Wall of China, the Canadian Yukon, the American Badlands, on and on, each place more fascinating than the last.
That night, as we had walked home under a cold
She touched a finger to the tip of his nose and stood smiling at him. “
Au revoir
, Jeremy Jeremy Johnson Johnson,” shesaid, and disappeared into the night, leaving her spicy scent behind.
“Whew,” Jeremy said, though whether to himself or to me was uncertain. Then he climbed through the window and fell safely inside, or so he believed.
Jeremy laid the broken thong on his bedside table and stared for some moments at its fancy knots tied tight by his grandfather. Thereafter he began to ready himself for bed.
Doubtless there are specters who do not respect the privacy of mortals, but I am not one of them. At day’s end, I kept Jeremy company only until he said, “Good night, Jacob,” and then I took my leave. Sometimes, when he was feeling solitary, he would delay saying good night and we would talk before he fell to sleep. When his spirits were low, I would remind him of one of the day’s pleasant occurrences—a kind word from a teacher or the sight of a gliding nighthawk silhouetted by the moon. Such thoughts sometimes helped him slip into the sweet arms of sleep.
This night, however, Jeremy was ready for slumber. Still—I could not help myself—I reminded him that we had not finished our vocabulary study.
“Wake me early,” he said. “We’ll study then.”
Of course
, I said.
“Good night, Jacob.”
Good night, Jeremy
.
After retiring from Jeremy’s attic, I made my way to the belfry of the white church built by the town Lutherans. Here I passed my solitary evenings no matter the season, for while I might behold the beauty of snow, I was not chilled by it, and though I might hear the buzz of the summer’s mosquito, I was beyond its bite.
I stretched my vaporous legs and gazed out at the vast prairie and sky and thought my disquieting thoughts. Distractions occurred—a star might shoot by, a browsing mouse might rustle a dry leaf, an owl might swoop from a nearby tree—but my apprehensions always returned.
The thing undone
.
The unknown yet unmet desire
.
This riddle is my prison; I am trapped within it. The answer—
the thing undone
—is the door that might release me from the
Zwischenraum
, but if I could not find the door, how could I open it?
What could it be—this thing undone? The
Deutsche Wörterbuch
, the monumental dictionary that Wilhelm and I undertook to compile, was of course undone. This was my first thought. When Wilhelm died, we were on words beginning with
D
. At my death, the work was in its seventh volume, and yet I had gotten only to
F
. But this could not be the thing undone, for it was a thing I could not do. From the
Zwischenraum
I could not continue our work on the great dictionary, or even encourage others to take it up. So it was not that.
Had Wilhelm and I been alive, we would have discussed thething undone, approached it with reason, determined its nature, devised a method of correction. But I was alone in the
Zwischenraum
. I had no advice and no answers and no methods. I had only a tender, terrible yearning for my absent brother.
I wondered if the
Zwischenraum
was not a riddle to be solved and escaped from but, in fact,
Hölle
—hell itself—or
die Hölle auf Erden
—a living hell. And with that came the nagging fear that the maid in Steinau had been right, that Wilhelm was not here because he had passed beyond to a better place, a place I had no way of reaching.
The thing undone
.
The unknown yet unmet desire
.
Finally, I remembered how, one night in a meeting hall, an aged traveler regaled Wilhelm and me with tales of faraway places, the Russian steppes, the Ganges and Nile rivers, the Great Wall of China, the Canadian Yukon, the American Badlands, on and on, each place more fascinating than the last.
That night, as we had walked home under a cold
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