Raw Cut | Rudi Krausmann | Travel Diary 2/9

This very night I promised M that we would leave as soon as possible, probably the day after next, with or without interview.
Next morning I thought I would be making my last walk around the lake when I saw on the edge of the forest an old man in a grey rather shabby overcoats gathering wood. On his head he wore a green hat with a Gamsbart the beard of the mountain goat. As I approached him, he shied away a little, only after I had shouted the local greeting Grüß Gott he looked in my direction.
"Where do I get if I branch off through the forest?" I asked.
"Nowhere," he mumbled.
"One always gets somewhere."
"Not here. And don't walk too close to the lake."
"Why?"
"Not so long ago a tourist was drowned."
"How could this happen?"
"A cow pushed him in. The water was icy and the tourist must have died through shock." He gave me a malicious smile and to annoy him I walked through the forest. When I came out, I saw two farmhouses in the distance. They were made out of concrete, painted white and dark wood. Surrounded by brown fields with occasional patches of snow. From the higher mountains in the background only the peaks were white.
Some black clouds had gathered near the pine forest below the peaks, the sky was seldom clear here and even the silence was threatening.
Suddenly I thought about Hans who was probably already having his first beer in one of the Guesthouses. I hoped only vaguely that the star-actor had meanwhile arrived. At least he was always in the process of doing so according to Hans. When I passed the Schneiderwirt I spotted him behind the double framed window waving at me. I joined him and ordered a beer.
"You are lucky, Klaus has arrived last night."
"Did you talk to him?"
"Yes, I arranged the interview in two weeks, in the New Year."
"You fool, I won't be here then."
"Klaus is always sick of the world when he comes back from the States. You will have to wait."
"Happy New Year," I said and left the table.
"Wait, what about the sloppy jumper you had promised."
There and then I took the jumper off and threw it at Hans across the table. The whole table round was laughing.

Next morning we were picked up by a relative of mine from Salzburg in a car. I asked him to stop in the centre of the village to get some souvenirs. At a tobacconist I bought some postcards showing the Loser mountain and a reproduction of a painting by Loder, showing again the Archduke Johann rowing his dear Anna, he standing, she seated across the lake. The shopkeepers wife, dressed in a traditional Dirndl costume, advised me to buy a bottle of the local Schnapps, called Enzian, the name of a mountain flower.
"You will not regret it," she said as I looked nostalgically through the shopwindow in direction of the pub. "Since people are looking for our wildflowers by helicopter now, they are unfortunately dying out, but our schnapps-production is increasing and has remained, like everything else in Altaussee, first class."
Driving to Salzburg we passed the Wolfgangsee and had a glimpse of the 'White Horse Inn' immortalised at least in Austria by an operetta of Franz Lehàr. In Fuschl am See we saw a deer crossing a slope as if it was on a Sunday walk. On this misty morning the whole area had a fairytale atmosphere about it. If the castle of Fuschl would not have been converted into a fashionable hotel, one could have imagined it still being occupied by Snow White and her seven Dwarfs.
Our cheap pension in the Linzergasse in Salzburg was somehow enhanced by being situated opposite the Church of San Sebastian whose cemetery still held the remains of the alchemist Paracelsus and Mozart's family. In Salzburg one can't help living partly in the past and partly in the present. Walking down the Linzergasse to the river Salzach -- from the old town to the new town so to speak -- I was reminded by a Rondel by Georg Trakl, the once decadent poet who died young and had lived in shame and guilt but whose poems are now engraved in pink marble throughout the city.

'Gone is the gold of the days
the brown and blue colour of evening
the soft sounds of the flute by the shepherd
have died like the blue colours of the evening
gone is the gold of the days'

What was not gone in Salzburg were the tourists, even out of season. They arrived in bus loads from all over Europe, roaming the narrow streets in moonboots as if they had come from outer space, and sucking up a hundred years of history in a few hours, eating hot dogs, Leberkäse and drinking Coca-Cola in between. The latest hit were video cameras capturing mediaeval walls and baroque churches in an instant, perhaps to be digested on screen later. In a town like Salzburg, where the focus of interest is the past its contemporary artists become like shadows. Fame can only be achieved by interpreters of culture, like the conductor Herbert von Karajan, who acquires a status like Mozart. A talented writer like Peter Handke for instance, choosing to live there in order to escape the noise and chaos of modern cities, only discovers there an impossibility of being.

On our last day in Salzburg we visited our friend the writer who lives in a house on the Mönchsberg just below the castle Hohensalzburg. At the doorbell he had replaced his name, no doubt jokingly, with 'Earl Grey', the letters being a cut-out from a package of English breakfast tea. He took us to his study lined with books and a view over the valley.
"I noticed the change of your name." I said.
"If you can't change your address, you can at least change your name." He laughed. "You see I never felt really at home here, perhaps I should have been born an Englishman, I may have had better luck."
"What is your bad luck?" asked M.
"That my books don't sell under my original name. You know the story of the real Earl Grey? He had sent a special mission to China, to safe the life of a mandarin. In gratitude the mandarin sent him a gift of special tea and its recipe, of which he gave later permission to be used for retail purposes. Would you like a cup of Earl Grey?"

Next day we were driven by car to a village called 'Mariapfarr' in Lungau, which had become a centre for cross country skiing. It was situated on a high plateau and advertised as the sunniest village in Austria. We took a room with bed & breakfast in a farmhouse on whose balcony M liked to sunbathe while I made excursions on hired cross-country skis into the mountains and surrounding villages. The Loipen, tracks in the snow were well prepared and one afternoon I saw an elderly lady gliding comfortably along beside a mountain brook with a black poodle.
Grüß Gott," I said. She smiled shyly. "It's a little isolated here."
"That's why it is still beautiful,": she replied rather harshly.
"How far does this track go?"
"It goes on forever and ever. I have never got to the end of it. But do you know what is so horrible in this country. By law I am not permitted to take my poodle along. Can you imagine?"
"No."
"What harm could my poodle do here?"
"That is beyond me, madam."
"Yes, yes, you are quite right, it's beyond me too. You have no idea what one has to endure in this country. If I would be younger I would emigrate."

The few days we spent in Mariapfarr were indeed sunny and quiet and gave us the peace we had been looking for in Altaussee but could not find there. The Guesthouses were open for meals and had occasionally invited a dance group to entertain themselves and the tourists, in short there was a pleasant mixture of locals and visitors. The waiters would at times sit down with the guests and exchange their opinions on all sorts of issues. Politics and environment were the main topics. The absence of down hill skiing, at least for us, was a blessing.
In the back of my mind I was still thinking of going back briefly to Altaussee to do the interview, but whenever I mentioned it M became irritated. "If you go back there, you go without me," she said.
"And where will you go?"
"I'll go to Munich"
"You mean we will split up then?"
"It's possible."
"I need the money. One can always sell an interview with a star."
"What you want is to continue drinking with the locals at the Stammtisch in Altaussee."
"That is not true" I replied, but knew she had a point.
Finally we left on the morning of the New Year. It was 10 degrees below zero as we waited at the bus station holding in our pockets the little marzipan pigs the farmer's wife had put on our breakfast table. It had been a most enjoyable stay at the farmhouse and at the same time the cheapest accommodation in the village. Yet there lay a shadow on our departure. I had decided to return to Altaussee to make the interview while M was travelling on to Munich where we intended to meet again. The bus was travelling from Mariapfarr to Radstadt and finally to Attnang Puchheim to connect with the railway. En route we saw beautiful steep mountains close up, the ones we had admired from the distance. Despite of the fact that parts of them had been made accessible for downhill skiing, the rocky peaks had remained grandiose and aloof. At every stop holiday makers crowded into the bus, most of them from eastern Europe whose borders had recently opened. They could be easily recognised by the bad quality of their clothes and the radiance of their eyes. It was obvious that they opened their eyes wide to the affluence of Austria and hated to return to their home countries. Their conversations circled around food, sex and romance, while surrounded by the majesty of the mountains.
"I wonder if I see these mountains again?" I said to M.
"Do you also wonder if you see me again?"
"Of course."
"We may both disappear forever from your horizon."
"You only if you make yourself invisible in Munich."
It was in Attnang Puchheim that we took a train each in different directions, but planned to meet again in Munich at the airport a few days later. Alone, the winter landscape took on a sombre tone and I hardly looked out the window. 'The outer world is the inner world is the outer world' was the title of a narrative poem by Peter Handke and its message seemed to prove itself on this train journey. While I looked gloomily at the young passengers who had come into my compartment a gentle snow fall seemed to me the only sign of hope in the external landscape. I left the train in Bad Aussee, the nearest train station to Altaussee, being the only passenger who had arrived there. As I waited in the snow for a taxi a young dark skinned girl wearing rubber boots and a black cap with the inscription Salzburger Nachrichten -- die Zeitung der Salzburger was waving a newspaper in the air.
"Happy New Year!" I shouted. She did not respond but later called out in a sing song voice with a foreign accent:
"Salzburger Nachrichten."
I bought a copy and asked her if she had seen any taxis or a bus this morning. She shook her head as if she did not understand the German language at all. She could very well have been the daughter of a foreign worker trying to sell a newspaper she could not read herself. She moved on sadly but courageously in her rubber boots through the snow while I returned to the waiting room of the station. The thought occurred to me to ring my old schoolfriend who could possibly be staying in his villa in Altaussee. It was a young girl's voice who answered.
"Hello, to whom do you want to speak to?"
"Your daddy."
"Wait, I am not sure if he is up already." A few minutes later he was on the phone. "Surprise," I said, "I am only a few kilometres from you, at the station in Bad Aussee."
"What did you come back for?" He seemed annoyed.
"To make the interview with you"
"We have a full house, I can't put you up."
"Could you pick me up?"
"At this time of the day?"
"Don't worry," I replied and hung up. Not much later a taxi did arrive at the station. The driver rubbed his eyes and looked as if he had not slept at all the previous night.
"Where do you want to go?" he asked.
"Altaussee."
"Where in Altaussee?"
"I don't know?"
"You don't know?"
"No."
"No, you better go back where you come from, since the snow arrived at Christmas Eve the whole place is booked out."
"Do you know Hans?"
"Hans the drunkard?"
"Well."
"He can't put you up, he has only a room as big as a toilet."
"Take me there, anyway," I said. While we drove the driver told me the life story of Hans. How he had fallen in love with a blond tourist from Germany and had followed her to Munich. A few years later he had come back divested by alcohol and drugs. From then on he had been too weak or disordered to keep a job for any length of time. "Why would one want to leave such a beautiful place like Altaussee, no woman in the world is worth it," the driver explained. "Look at Hans now, his house totally mortgaged and he himself not much longer to go. But I can tell you where Hans is now, I saw him walking into the Schneiderwirt as I drove past fifteen minutes ago. He is having his first beer in the New Year, surprised that he survived the old one."
"Take me to the Schneiderwirt, " I said.
"But they have no beds, only beers there," the driver said and laughed.
His verbal joke was very much in the spirit of that region. I thought, if Germany is a master of death, then Austria is a master of words. Someone told me once that after the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, which reduced the country to a fifth of its territory, nearly a tenth of its population -- from 50 to seven millions, yet having to maintain the capital Vienna like a waterhead on it s body, what could the Austrians do? Crack a few jokes! From then on Austria lives in a psychological crisis, their culture is no longer based on a reality, but on words.
It was quiet on the road from Bad Aussee to Altaussee this morning, the fir trees were heavily covered in snow and occasionally a branch shook off the burden. The road went along a brook and finally we crossed a bridge.
"You are my first customer this year," the driver said.
"How was New Year's eve party?"
"Terrible, you see I don't drink, but I could not sleep either." He sighed. "Where do you want to go now?"
"The Schneiderwirt. "
"And the luggage?"
"Leave it out in the snow."
"If the waitress is in a good mood she may put you up for a night in her bed," the driver said and grinned.
When I entered, I saw Hans sitting at the Stammtisch with a few cronies, a large beer, a Weizenbeer, a pure brew, in Front of him. He was wearing the sloppy jumper I had given him with the Sydney-Hobart race badge on it. I had the feeling he was not very pleased to see me, perhaps he was afraid to loose the jumper, if the interview is not taking place after all, although I had no intention to take it back whatever happened. Beside Hans sat a tall man in a traditional hunter suit, made of deer leather, who was also wearing a felt hat wit a Gamsbart. There were two other men, with red faces, in ordinary suits with ties.
"Prosit Neujahr," I said, "how was the party?"
"Sit down and have a beer before asking stupid questions," the man in the hunter suit said. Then he took out a knife with a horn rimmed handle which had stuck outside of his trousers and played with its blade with his thumb like on a guitar.
"This pocket knife is all I had inherited from my father," he said to me. "He went to war when I was still a child and never came back." He then threw the knife with great force across the table passed Hans into the wooden panel. The blade vibrated a few seconds and made a strange sound.
"This knife sounds like Mozart," the man in the ordinary suit said. They all shook with laughter.
"Hans, get me my knife back."
"I have not got time, I have to drink." Hans replied. He lifted his glass and emptied it.
"Hans, I mean it," the man in the hunter suit said.
"I also mean it, that I have only time to drink, and for nothing else." Hans replied fearlessly.
"This knife belonged to my father who died on the front, it is my most cherished possession and I don't like to see it making music on the wall"
"Would you like to get it?" he said to me.
"Sure," I said. I took the knife out from the wooden panel and handed it back to him. He slid it back into the side pocket of his leather trousers.
"Would you like to go hunting?" he asked me.
"Where?"
"Around here, we have the best hunting grounds of Europe. Six months ago I saw a mountain stag and I have been on his heels ever since. I know all his movements and have been out seventeen times to get him but as yet not succeeded. Once I nearly froze to death waiting for him. It is the most beautiful and cleverest animal I have seen. Perhaps you bring me luck if you come along."
"I have no desire to see him shot," I replied.
"If I don't shoot him, someone else would." He hit the Stammtisch with his fist. "I love this stag and that is why I want to be the first to get him."
"You can only have him dead."
"Dead or alive, what does it matter!"

As Hans did not mention anything about the interview I walked out into the streets and walked aimlessly around. My luggage was lying in the snow in front of the pub. I did not care anymore what was going to happen. At this moment I was not concerned if I find an accommodation or if the interview was taking place or not. Altaussee had become crowded, masses of people were moving about everywhere. Most of them went towards the lake. I asked a child which was carrying ice-scating shoes across the shoulder.
"Where are you off to?"
"To the lake of course," she replied hastily, "don't you know it is completely frozen?" And off she went, wriggling herself through the crowd towards the frozen lake. I should do the same, I thought, but as I looked across the street I saw a sign Pension Brauer painted on the brick wall.
I rang the bell and a bearded man wearing a white shirt and long bulky Lederhosen opened the door. "I am looking for a room," I said.
"Haven't you got any luggage?"
"It's at the pub."
"You are lucky, five minutes ago someone cancelled his reservation."
I took the room without looking at it, rushed back to the Schneiderwirt and collected my luggage which was lying there as I had left it. Within half an hour I entered the guest room of the Pension Brauer relatively relaxed. All tables were occupied by elderly people having quiet conversations while discreetly observing each other, except at a corner table sat a middle-aged single man with dark rimmed glasses eating ham and eggs and watching the scene nervously. I introduced myself and sat down opposite him.
"My name is Carlo," he said, "and I am sentenced for the rest of my life to be silly."
"How come?"
"Because I had taken life too seriously. God punished me for that."
"What happened?"
"Nothing, my dear friend, what does not happen to most of us in slow motion. Only in my case it happened suddenly. I wanted to become a big shot but ended up an imbecile. In short I had a car accident and ended up in hospital for two years swinging between life and death. When I came out of hospital I was sour for six months until I realised that I too could still have a mission in life. Instead of making money I sit around and crack jokes (he used the Austrian expression blödeln ). Perhaps I was lucky after all." He laughed. "And what brings you to Altaussee?"
"This time to make an interview."
"You have been here before?"
"Yes, two weeks ago."
"Your German is rather good," Carlo said, "although you have a strange accent."
"I was born in this country but have spent the last 30 years in Australia."
"Australia," Carlo repeated slowly, "it sounds very new to me."
"The architecture is new, but the continent is very old."
"Whatever the case, it seems that people, who go to new countries always like to come back to the old countries. The new get boring, doesn't it?" He chuckled. "Look at this gentleman with white hair sitting over there. I was told he had a very successful academic career in Chicago. Now he is trying to buy a house in Altaussee. Once he is settled, he wants to write a biography on Hugo von Hoffmansthal. What an absurd idea."
"Why?"
"People today is no longer interested in subtle and complex writers like Hoffmansthal. I told the professor to write a biography on a Chicago gangster, which has much more appeal to contemporary readers. But he waved me off and doesn't want to talk to me anymore. I don't care, as he was full of cliches anyway."
"Altaussee seems to have attracted artists and Nazis," I said.
"And now it attracts the riff raff," Carlo replied and offered me a cigarette. I declined and said that I would rather go for a walk and asked him if he wanted to join me. As I stood up and glanced at the room I realised that everyone was watching us and probably tried to listen to our conversation.
"No thanks, I rather stay indoors." When I had walked to the door Carlo had shouted to me.
"What's wrong with the new countries?" I stood perplexed for a few seconds and did not know what to answer him.
"Perhaps they are not so new, after all," I said and left the room.
As I was standing again in the streets of Altaussee not knowing if I should head for the lake or the Loser mountain I questioned my second visit to this place. I had to bring this interview off as soon as possible but as yet had no appointment with the star, had no phone number, and did not even know where he lived. Besides I had no contract with any magazine, or radio station. All I had was a vague promise from a lady whom I met the last night in Sydney at a dinner party.
I remember the hot summer night as we stood at the window of her apartment which looked out on Rushcutters bay. I told her that I was going to Europe, the United States and possibly to Peru. On a shoestring.
"Why don't you make some money while you are travelling?"
"How?"
"By doing some interviews with international stars!"
"In which area?"
"The arts in general. Get me a famous painter."
"Picasso is dead," I said. She laughed. "Get me a writer then, from Austria I would be interested in Handke, from Mexico in Marquez and from Peru in Lhosa. "You have excellent literary tastes," I replied. "Yes, and I pay well if you get me the right people." She handed me her business card, it showed that she was the editor of a fashionable monthly magazine. But anyone who has lived in Sydney knows what such a verbal agreement with someone one had met by chance is worth. And how reliable was my connection with Hans. He had not said a word about the interview when I had seen him again. He had probably lied to me when he told me he had arranged the interview. And I had come back here at great expense, had even endangered my relationship with M. What will she do all by herself in Munich? With bad luck we will miss our rendezvous. These thoughts went through my head while I was glancing at the cloudy sky in Altaussee, a sky which promised more snow and a profitable winter season. I walked through the village and then turned off into a lane leading up a hill. I saw neat, wooden little houses with balconies fitting perfectly into the landscape and appearing as innocent as doll's houses.
I walked further up nearly reaching the treeline and saw already clearly the rocks of the Loser mountain. If my running shoes, made in Taiwan, had not soaked through, I would have climbed to the top of the mountain. Coming back to the village, I encountered Carlo standing at the corner of the main street. Instead of a wintercoat he was only wearing a blue jumper and a Scottish scarf slung around his neck. With both his hands in his trouser pockets he looked contemptuously into the crowd.
"Are you not feeling cold?" I asked.
"I feel nothing at all," he replied and laughed. "Have you been up the Loser ?"
"Not quite," I sighed. "Do you know the house of Klaus-Maria "
"Not Brandauer."
"Yes, Brandauer."
Carlo moved away from me, with shaky legs and gesticulating with his arms. It was obvious that he had great difficulty even to walk slowly.
"Is there something wrong with Brandauer?" I shouted after him.
Instead of answering my question he shook his head. He probably does not like Brandauer, I thought, until I realised that his head moved continuously from left to right, or right to left, as he walked.

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