killing time softly

Lately Otto has been waking up with insomnia. The other night he woke up at 4 and lay in bed sleepless until almost 8. Waking up with insomnia is not as bad as going to bed with it. Thoughts tailing dreams float, but chasing sleep they rush breathlessly, repeatedly tripping on jagged stones of panic. Insomnia is a disease of the lustfull.

When Otto awoke with insomnia this morning, he was relieved to see that it was already 7:30, when normal people were already up, he thought. He knew that if he got up then he would be tired all day, but with luck it would be dazeful and pleasant, like the empty stare of a fat old woman sitting on her front step following the whole world shuffle by.

By 10 he had finished all the work he had wanted to do for the day and then wondered if it was too early to go have his hair cut. Remembering that he still had to shower and dress offered unusual relief, even though Otto always overestimated the time that would take. In Otto's mind, radical transitions gulped down time much more ravenously than, for instance, stupor. And what worse sequence of transitions did one suffer everyday than going from being clothed to naked, dry to wet to dry again, and then clothed again? Otto never knew whether in the end he would be, like after his afternoon coffee, invigorated or exhausted.

As Otto was going down the stairs in his building, he wondered whether the barbers would still be too sleepy to concentrate on his hair. Ever since hearing once that later in the day barbers become sloppy from fatigue, he's never had his hair cut after 2:30 in the afternoon. But in Berlin everyone was still just waking up at lunch time, and it was precisely in the very late afternoon that people started to get in the swing of things. He remembered mornings where his hands were too heavy to heave up over the keyboard. In the courtyard unlocking his bike, Otto told himself he was too tired now to think about things like that.

Once done with the haircut, Otto looked at his watch and was disappointed. The small Vietnamese place nearby where he wanted to have a hot noodle soup was still closed for another fifty minutes. He remembered that on the way was a photo automat, somewhere in the intersecting tunnels of an U-Bahn station, where he needed to have his photo taken. Suddenly, however, Otto felt tired and cold, and the idea of navigating through the commuting crowds rushing in different directions at all angles seemed impossible. On the other hand, he told himself, he would have to go for the photos sometime within the next two days in any case, he would literally be passing over the automat, and he had time to kill.

When Otto got to the automat, he was surprised to see that someone was already in it. Not wanting to pressure her to hurry, he walked away, first toward nothing in particular, then, feeling as if he were attracting the attention of the drug addicts and alcoholics, to a large map of the city. The map of the city was much more interesting than the U-bahn plan, but Otto wondered what kind of person would look at it so purposefully, and he stared in the direction of the U-bahn map instead. The woman was still in the photo automat, and Otto started to think she was incompetent. Finally, she got out and took her photos. Otto waited a moment and went to the automat, not as quickly as to seem he was waiting, but quickly enough to get there before someone else.

Ruhm. Ein Roman in neun Geschichten

On the way home from the bank the other afternoon, I decided, after some hesitation, to stop by the small bookstore specializing in books on post-modern culture and usually full of cigarette smoke. (It was there that I found a book of personal narratives from South Koreans who went to Germany in the 1960s and 70s to work as nurses, and stayed. The book was called "Zu Hause" ("At Home")). I had hesitated because their literature section, which consisted of only about 5 shelves about a meter and a half wide, was usually uninteresting. But, after about two and a half steps in a divergent direction, I remembered being told that all the workers there aren't paid and decided to go after all. Besides, I had about forty-five minutes to kill. I also considered that, because the peron working there sits partially hidden at a desk on a mezzanine behind a wall, one doesn't feel obliged to say hello upon entering, or even goodbye upon leaving, which suits my New Yorker's fundamental preference for anonymity. As I was glancing at the books on the display table in the middle of the small room on the ground floor, however, one of the workers came down and said hello, giving me a smile. Then he went back upstairs, and I turned around toward the literature section where I saw a new novel by Daniel Kehlmann and thought, "my God, he's written another one already," or actually, "Mann! Der hat schon wieder eins geschrieben." All five hardcover copies were wrapped in plastic. After looking at the cover and reading the title, Ruhm, ein Roman in neun Geshichten (or more exactly, "ruhm ein roman in neun geschichten"), I turned it over to see the price. It was more than I'm usually willing to spend for a book, but then I remembered being told by a running friend of mine for whom I'd been thinking of getting a late birthday present that he thought another book by the same author was good. The fact that it was to be a gift seemed to justify an exception to my general reluctance to buy hardcovers. I also remembered once reading that authors earn money only from the sales of hardcovers, although now I wonder how this could be true. Somehow the relatively quick but nonetheless reasoned decision to buy the book made the decision to buy another for myself self-evident. When I went upstairs to pay for the books with the lady sitting at the desk, the man who had come down to say hello asked if I wanted to have a look inside the books, and I said no, I wanted to buy them. He took the books from me and went behind the desk, commenting that the books were quickly becoming their new bestsellers. He said just that week one or two had been bought, and now two at once. I explained that one was for me and one was to be a gift. Then, after wondering whether I should say anything at all, I said, "It's amazing how much he's written," or, more exactly, "Es ist erstaunlich, was er alles geschrieben hat." The woman said something like, some people just have it in them. Then the man said that his father was certainly some professor and his mother something-or-other which I didn't understand. The woman then said that her mother was also a something-or-other, and the man said, "No! Really?" Having nothing to say myself, I looked at the books on the shelf to the left of me. They were the kind of books about post-modern theory that, like some exquisitely beautiful but utterly useless object found in the gift shop of a conteporary art museum, I have to make an effort to resist purchasing. After the man returned my bank card to me, he gave me back the books with a smile, I thanked him with a smile, he asked me if I needed a small bag, I said no, "es geht so," said goodbye, and left. On the way home, I thought of Daniel Kehlmann, as well as the man at the bookstore.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Once, I had to have the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, I wanted to read an article on Mozart’s Zaide, which had appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and since I could get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, as I had thought, only in Salzburg, which is eighty kilometers away from here, I drove to Salzburg, to the so called world famous festival town, with the car of a friend and with the friend and with Paul, all for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. But in Salzburg I couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Then I had the idea of getting the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Bad Reichenhall and we drove to Bad Reichenhall, to the world famous resort town. But in Bad Reichenhall I couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either and so we all three of us drove more or less disappointed back to Nathal. But just as we were approaching Nathal, Paul suddenly thought we should drive to Bad Hall, to the world famous resort town, because there we would surely get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the article about Zaide, and as a matter of fact we drove the eighty kilometers from Nathal to Bad Hall. But in Bad Hall we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either. Since it was only a skip and a jump from Bad Hall to Steyr, twenty kilometers, we drove to Steyr too, but in Steyr we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either. Then we tried our luck in Wels, but in Wels we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either. We had driven altogether three hundred fifty kilometers only for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and in the end we had no luck. So then we went into a restaurant in Wels completely exhausted, obviously, to get something to eat and to rest, as the hunt for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung had brought us to the edge of our physical abilities. With much hindsight, I think now, when I recall this story with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Paul and I are pretty much the same. If we had not been completely exhausted we definitely would have gone to Linz and Passsau, perhaps even to Regensburg and Münich as well, and actually we would not have minded just buying the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Zürich, since in Zürich, I think, we would have gotten it for sure. Because we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in any of these towns that we had driven to and where we had searched, since even in the summer it isn’t there, I know that all these towns we had driven to are miserable filthy towns, which deserve their undistinguished names. If not filthier. And even then it became clear to me that a thinking person cannot exist in a place where one can’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. To think, I can get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung even in Spain and in Portugal and in Morocco anytime of year in the smallest towns with only the loneliest hotels. Not where we are! And because of the fact that we didn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in all these presumably important towns, not even in Salzburg, all our rage blistered against this backward, narrow-minded, hick, and simultaneously repulsively megalomaniacal country. We should live only where we could get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, I said, and Paul agreed absolutely. But then in Austria there’s only really just Vienna, he said, since in all the other towns where it would seem one would get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung one as a matter of fact cannot get it at all. At least not every day and just when one would want it, when one absolutely needs it. It occurs to me that even now I haven’t gotten to the article on Zaide yet. I’ve long since forgotten the article and I’ve naturally also survived without this article. But at the time I had thought I had to have it. And Paul supported me in this absolute demand, and, what’s more, as a matter of fact he led me through half of Austria for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Thomas Bernhard
(translated from the German by Robert Kim)

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

Almost as soon I got out onto the street this afternoon I started whistling "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás," but at the time I thought the chorus was "que sá, que sá, que sá," which is probably meaningless. When I had crossed Skalitzer Strasse and was walking in front of McDonalds, still whistling, I found myself behind a blond young man carrying a package in one arm and a folder in another. Imagining that he was listening to my whistling, I became conscious of the tune and wondered why I was whistling it at all. Up until then whistling it had been as gratifying and irresistable as patiently scratching the itchy end of a thickly calloused toe. Then I remembered that just before leaving the apartment I happened to glance at the cover of a CD of Bach Cello Suites performed by a relatively unknown French musician whose name my flatmate had asked me earlier that day to correctly pronounce. I had always found French difficult to pronounce, and especially when I'm mostly speaking German, so I paused, sounded it out in my head first, and said, slowly: Queyras.

Later, I searched for the song on the internet but couldn't find it because I didn't know what it was called or that it was sung by Nat King Cole, and instead of googling "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás" I googled, first, "que sa, que sa, que sa," then "que çà, que çà, que çà," then "qui ca, qui ca, qui ca," and finally "qui sa, qui sa, qui sa." I quickly ran through the song in my head searching for whatever text I could remember but found nothing. I vaguely remembered that it was in a film by Wong Kar Wai, but I couldn't remember which, and I wasn't even really sure that it was. The idea of googling "Wong Kar Wai soundtrack" exhausted me. My last desperate thought was to sing into the computer with google's homepage open.

Eventually my flatmate came into my room to chat and, after about 20 minutes of talking about different things, I suddenly realized that I could hum the tune to him, and I did. When I got to the part that went "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás," I was relieved to see a spark of recognition in his face. I continued humming, even with a little swing, and he said he didn't know what it was called but that it was on the soundtrack of Wong Kar Wai's film "In the Mood for Love." He had the CD and brought it to me. Had I not figured out the title of the song, I'm not sure how I could have written this post.

getting to know you....

While walking home through Görlitzer Park the other afternoon, I thought, "there are so many things I still haven't figured out about Otto." Then I realized that there will always be things I can't figure out about Otto, despite the fact that he's only a creation of my imagination. I was pleased but I'm not sure whether by the idea that Otto was in his ultimate inscrutability as human as a real person or by being reminded of the ultimate inscrutability of humans.

"Alma" Means Apple

One story of Otto began in the kitchen of a groundfloor apartment in the Kazakh city, Almaty, formerly called Alma-Ata. During a previous trip to Almaty I learned that in Kazakh "alma" means "apple." Years later, standing in the kitchen of a house in Hungary, I noticed the word "alma" on a box of apple juice and remarked that in Kazakh "alma" means apple. Someone responded it means apple in Hungarian, too. My first impression, the one that preceeds an actual thought, was wonder at the coincidence. When I eventually realized that the word must have traveled, or spread like bands of wild horses, I broke into a long, satisfying smile. The story that began in that kitchen was called "My Hungarian Brother." Otto was then the Hungarian. As far as I remember, I stopped working on the story the moment it dawned on me, like a bone-chilling mist, that actually I was my Hungarian brother. But I was not Otto.

Otto Malik

Otto Malik is the name of a character I've been thinking about for roughly a decade. In the beginning, his name was Otto Oderberger, after my then-favorite street in Berlin, then Otto Ödemann, because Otto was öde. Since then, he's probably had a few other names as well, but I don't remember now. Malik I got from the Russian word for boy, "malchik," which is what strangers called me on the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1992, 1993 and 1996-97, when I was 18, 19, and 22, respectively. "Mal" being the root meaning "small," the diminutive "malchik" means "little small." Malchik became Malik to sound less Slavic, like it came from a part of the world where names shift as readily as the political borders, somewhere between Hungary and Slovakia, for example. It was partly the ambiguity of the name that inspired the rumor that Otto's father, having been sent as an Austrian soldier during WWII to the Russian front, stayed in search of his roots, leaving Otto fatherless. Fatherless is how I first imagined Otto. Little did I know that "Malik" is actually an Arabic word meaning King, who almost by definition is fatherless.