...of vagueness

The vagueness was underlined by a blind window, to which my gaze was now drawn as to the centre of the world. It was fairly high up the slope on the sunny side of a large house, which I fancied to be the manor belonging to the porter’s lodge across the border. It stood by itself; in front of it there was only a single spruce, whose fur-brown bark brought out the massiveness of the yellow facade. A steep stone stairway led across a strip of meadow to the entrance. A child was on the stairway with his back to me; one foot a step lower than the other, he seemed hesitant; the steps were too big for a child. The slope was hatched, so to speak, with grass, whose fine shadow pattern was repeated in the oblique grooves of the facade. This made the house behind the spruce look more like a yellow rock than like a building. It seemed uninhabited. The child on the steps was in the entrance not to a house but to a playground.
The blind window was, far and wide, the only one of its kind. It owed its effect to the absence of something ordinarily present: to its opacity. Thanks to its extreme vagueness, it reflected my gaze; and the muddle of languages, the confusion of voices within me fell silent: my whole being fell silent, and read.

[Repetition, Handke, P.]