Raw Cut | Rudi Krausmann | Travel Diary 4/9

CHANGE PLEASE

After I had packed my bags and paid my bill in the Pension in Altaussee I went downstairs and waited in the Gaststube to be picked up by a friend from Salzburg. One of the guests, Carlo, sat at a table drinking a cup of coffee and joined me. He realised that I was prepared to leave.
"What are you going to do now?" he asked.
"Travel."
"Where to?"
"First to Munich, then to London, from there to Denver and finally to Seattle."
"What for?"
"To drive down the West coast of the United States in order to get to Mexico."
"And then?"
"I don't know yet." We stared at each other in silence. "In Mexico I want to see the Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon and the Street of the Dead."
"Streets of the dead you can see everywhere in Europe," Carlo said in a mocking tone. "I for one am one of the dead."
"I am more interested in the prehistoric dead than in the living dead."
"By the way," Carlo said, "in Mexico there is no Street of the Dead. What the anthropologists took for tombs were in fact temples and as a consequence the connecting street left no dead behind."
"It does not matter. I don't want to know everything. It would stop me from travelling. And what are you going to do, Carlo?"
"I shall fall in love again," he replied with a sigh. "Last night I fell in love with a waitress in Bad Aussee. She is eighteen and I am over fifty. But as I can't make love anyway, that is no problem." He giggled.
At this moment my friend from Salzburg arrived. I said goodbye sadly to Carlo as I realised that all he had left were words -- and words, according to Beckett, are blind. With my friend I went for a last walk on the lake, which turned out to be a walk on ice. But the rays of sun, reflected on its surface, gave a brilliant spectacle. Additional to that, in the distance one could see the snow capped peaks of the Dachsteingruppe, a mountain range. In my youth I had crossed it's glaciers with my father. I looked at them with a certain nostalgia.
"This is a magnificent country." I said to my friend.
"Only as far as the landscape is concerned," he replied. He fell into a lament about the deteriorating life in his country, manifesting itself as much in human relationships as in its political and economic structure. Where I saw everything wrapped in prosperity, he saw everything falling apart. I distracted him from his gloom by mentioning our bicycle trips to Carinthia in summer when we were still in high-school and also talked about the girls we used to know then.
"Remember the night we came back with the car of your aunt, which we had used without her permission?"
"Oh yes," he beamed. "She gave me a beating afterwards."
"Is she still alive?"
"No, she died last year."
"And the blond girl from St.Gilgen you were in love with?"
"She married someone else and is now divorced."
"At least you had an interesting job travelling around the world first class and setting up agricultural plants."
"The countries I worked with or represented for this Chicago company, the Eastern European countries, had no longer a first class. And when I worked in South America, things were not so pretty either. The best thing I did was to buy myself a hacienda in Uruguay. I shall retire there, by the way."
"Not in Salzburg?"
"Salzburg belongs to the tourists, not to its citizens. I feel like a stranger there."
When we later passed resorts and isolated farmhouses in his car, lakes and mountains which were still familiar to me from my youth, I realised now how little of its beauty I had appreciated then, or perceived, being mostly preoccupied with my friends at the time. This idyllic landscape was taken for granted by me in my youth and only now seemed to reveal itself to me. But it was too late.
At the railway station in Salzburg my friend hit another car as he attempted to park and already being late for my train I had to say good bye to him in a hurry while he was still arguing with the driver of the damaged car.
"We must stay in touch." I shouted as I turned around once more before entering the station. Pushing my luggage on a trolley along the platform at Munich's railway station I was thinking of M. We had separated three days ago in Radstadt and were supposed to meet tomorrow morning at the airport. But where was she now?
When I passed the kiosks and restaurants at the station and smelled the odours of Weisswurst and beer I was tempted to stop but even more anxious to get to the airport. This was quite irrational. Nevertheless I took the last airport bus and found myself being the only passenger. It was still before midnight but Munich was, except for some advertising neon lights and some illuminated historic buildings in darkness.
"Not much nightlife in Munich," I said to the driver. He nodded his head in agreement. "Why am I the only passenger in this bus?" I queried and sat closer to him.
"No planes go out, only planes go in," he replied with a heavy foreign accent.
"Are there any cheap hotels near the airport?"
"Munich nothing cheap," he said. It took me a while to find out where he originally came from. He said with some pride that he was a Gastarbeiter (foreign worker) and finally that he came from Yugoslavia. When I asked him if he liked Germany he replied:
"Germany okay but tired." He probably meant that he was tired, which was obvious when one looked at his pale, grey, exhausted features. I did not force any further conversations with the driver and mused instead about the fate of foreign workers in Germany and in a sense tried to compare it with the immigrants of Australia.
Both pay the high prize of losing contact with their home country and their language and having to live in a state of alienation. More money and better living conditions may make this modern exile acceptably for most but what if it results in the loss of spirit?
Only in our language are we really at home, and only in our language can we retain our true spirit, I had read somewhere.
The driver put out my luggage for me and found me a trolley. Then he pointed in the direction of the departure lounge. He put both hands against his cheek and said:
"You sleep airport tonight? Gute Nacht." He was right, I had already made up my mind to sleep at the airport and save the money. It would be uncomfortable, but perhaps more interesting? But as I arrived at the bar in the departure lounge it was just closing, five minutes before midnight. I could not believe it. Was there really no more plane departing from Munich the same night?
"Where can I get a drink?" I asked the barman as he just closed the cash register. He too was a foreign worker, a Greek, and his complexion under the neon light was even paler than that of the Yugoslav driver. Does Germany put them all into the pale, instead beyond the pale, I wondered.
"Other place drink," said the barman and no doubt he meant the arrival lounge. He waved me away with his two arms, having lost any feelings for the passengers, at this time of the night. Again I moved all my gear on a trolley into the arrival lounge, and installed myself at the bar. My intention was to stay there until dawn. This time the barman was a Turk. Since my arrival in Munich I had only talked to foreign workers. Were there no more Germans in Germany, I thought.
"I hope this bar is open all night," I said to the barman, who also looked very tired.
"Don't hope," he replied.
"What do you mean?"
"This bar closes at two in the morning and opens again at six. I need some sleep."
"Don't tell me you open the bar at six?"
"I do," he said. "I only need a few hours sleep."
"Why don't you let the Germans do some work?" I said.
"Germans no time for work, Germans have to fly." He pointed to a group of elegantly dressed passengers, pushing through the arrival lounge door. And grinningly he opened another bottle of Löwenbräu for me before I had finished mine. At this moment I was his only customer.
"Why doesn't anyone stop for a drink?" I said.
"They are always in a rush, coming in a rush, going in a rush."
"Like in Turkey?"
"No, in Turkey we have time," he grinned. "But no money."
I chatted to the barman until two in the morning drinking a few more bottles of beer and then returned to the departure lounge trying to sleep in one of the leather chairs. After an hour I succeeded but was soon afterwards waken up by a man in grey uniform who no doubt was a German.
"What are you doing here?" he said touching my arm.
"And what are you doing here?" I replied angrily.
"I am on patrol. Have you got a ticket?"
"Of course," I fished it out for him, really annoyed at being waken up.
"Sorry," he said, "but we have often people sleeping here without being booked on a plane. That has to be avoided." As I looked up, I saw a middle-aged lady sitting up stiffly in a chair, looking like a 19-th century statue. She closed her eyes as soon as she became aware that I glanced at her. Further on a young man with a rucksack beside him was reading a book. Twenty metres to the left I saw a whole brigade of women in overalls cleaning the floor. They were chatting and laughing. No doubt also foreign workers. Who else would be in such good spirits at this time cleaning the airport?" When I walked later over to the toilets I saw a man wearing torn blue jeans escorted out of the building by the uniformed patrol officer who had waken me up. It was hard to imagine what would have attracted him to spent a night in this desolated airport. I tried in vain to fall asleep again in my leather chair. All I had achieved was to save 100 Marks. I wondered where M was sleeping? Finally I started to read a book my friend the writer had written during his stay in China, called Der Ohne Namen See. (The lake without a name.) He had given it to me by saying at the door of his house on the Mönchsberg in Salzburg. "As I have cancer, I doubt that we shall see each other again."
At five o'clock in the morning the first passengers arrived for check-in. One had the feeling of watching a fashion parade. These were the best dressed air passengers I had ever seen. Most of the men wearing inside furcoats, women outside furcoats. A nineteen-century romantic tale 'Kleider machen Leute' meaning that dress makes people was acted out here in full swing. No wonder the patrol officer was identifying me as a hobo. At this moment M was coming through the glass door. She too was wearing a new coat, although modest looking compared to the others.
"Guten Morgen," she said. We embraced and exchanged our experiences in the last few days. The thing she enjoyed most during her stay in Munich was a painting, a female nude by Granach. Three times she had gone back to the Pinakotek to see it again and again.
"Here I have become an art lover," she said.
"And what about the people?"
"I don't understand them."
We were happy to be together again. Two hours later we had boarded a British Airways plane to London only to stopover before proceeding to the United States. Sipping a gin and tonic and watching the landscape of Germany submerged in white clouds I slowly recovered from a sleepless night. The service on board was so efficient and friendly that one regretted not staying longer in England.
"The British Airways must have had a face lift from Margaret Thatcher," someone commented behind me.
"If Maggie would serve the drinks it would be like being in paradise," an old English gentleman was joking.
"And hell for those who can't afford to fly," an unhappy looking girl said in passing.
As we arrived in Gatwick and were departing next day from Heathrow we found a room with bed & breakfast in Ilford, a small village. Even between airports there is a village tucked away somewhere in England, said M, who rather liked the countryside. Ilford had one pub called The Plow and an old cemetery with a 12-th century church. It even had a little theatre which produced classical plays, which was closed this time of the year. This village seemed a friendly, complete little world only threatened by the aeroplanes. We had some drinks with the locals and later at night visited the cemetery. And at breakfast you could choose between ham and bacon and eggs, porridge or muesli, all sorts of juices and various teas from Chinese to English breakfast or Earl Grey. The owner of the boarding house, a Canadian, gave you a free ride to the airport. Everything was splendid, except the prize. 30 Pound Sterling each. As an old bearded man had told us in the pub the evening before. "It's the old gravestones and the ghosts which have made the place so expensive."
Seeing the confusion at Heathrow airport next morning we wondered why anyone bothered getting out of good old England. On our cheap ticket we also had the misfortune of no longer flying British Airways. No longer polished smiles and free gin & tonic, I thought. By the time we had located Continental Airways it was so crowded that it was impossible to get near the check in. Only first class could book in at leisure. It was an American passenger who first raised his voice in a broad Yankee accent.
"What the hell is going on here. Why can't they put their act together? I hope they are not looking for a bomb again?" It was true, there was no movement at the counter whatsoever. The queue was so long that it even blocked other passengers to get passed us. Some purple haired ladies were actually getting into a panic.
"The English don't care about us, they only care about the queen," a young American hippy said.
"After all, the queen is still holding the British Empire together."
"Used to, there is no longer a British Empire."
The crowd started to amuse itself at the expense of the royal family, by making all sorts of funny comments. Then came the announcement over the loudspeaker.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are very sorry for this delay, but for security measures the aeroplane had to be checked before allowing any more passengers on board."
"Hypocrites, why did the first class get in. The ground personnel must have had a drink too many. Did not turn up in time, eh?
When the counter finally opened, someone behind us was pushing as if it was a matter of live and death to get onto the plane.
"These Americans are still barbarians," an English gentleman complete with umbrella whispered in my ear. He had always been standing behind me, yet so quiet, that I had not noticed him.
"Where are you travelling to?" I asked.
"To Denver, but I can assure you I am not looking forward to this journey at all."
"Why are you going?"
"On business, America is not a country, it's a business."
When we arrived in Seattle, after an overnight flight, the first American I came in contact with was a bearded man with penetrating light blue eyes who was standing in the centre of a super elegant, air-conditioned terminal trying to sell a low circulation newspaper denouncing in every article his country and its way of life. After I had paid him a dollar for his paper he engaged me in a conversation and asked me to join a club to save the United States from ultimate destruction. A donation of a couple of a hundred dollars would be appreciated, he added.
"All I can afford is to buy your paper," I replied. He unfolded one and held the front page in front of me. It read: 'Corruption as never before'. The paper was called 'The New Idealist'.
"You must read this," he demanded.
"I will," I said, "but not now, I am tired, I just arrived from Europe." It was five o'clock in the morning and what we really needed was not a newspaper but a room to sleep in.
"Do you know a cheap hotel near the airport?" I asked him. He ignored my question and said.
"If you can't afford to give a donation, there is a publication I can sell you for a couple of dollar which is essential reading to understand what is happening to our country."
"I get this later," I lied, and moved away from him. This was the first American whom I had met in his own country and he was so obsessed with the idea of saving his country that he seemed to have lost any sense of reality. Yet his face, intense and suffering, immediately appealed to me. But, like most of the other passengers, I had to ignore him. Meanwhile I was looking out for M who was moving around trying to find an information desk. Strangely enough, in this super elegant terminal everything was still closed. Only 'The New Idealist' was awake. Finally we discovered an illuminated board advertising various motels in the vicinity. All you had to do was to press a button and you were picked up in a shuttle bus. We chose the Shadow Motel, which was the least expensive. In the reception of the motel was a huge basket of Californian apples -- with the compliments of the management -- and the receptionist was a young girl in a track suit looking not unlike Marilyn Monroe. The bill had to be paid in advance. In the motel there was a continuous coming and going and nobody seemed to trust anyone. We were pleased to see a small birch tree planted in front of the room. Watching its leaves moving in the early morning breeze we fell, exhausted and jetlagged, asleep.
Sometime during the following night I woke up by a nightmare. At first I did not know where I was. I walked to the window and saw the birch tree bathed in neon light. The rest of the cityscape existed of motels with the airport buildings in the background. A shuttle bus was moving along slowly on a highway, I could not see a single natural object in the whole environment, except the birch tree in front of our room. It must have been left here by mistake, I thought, and it seemed like a dream. As M was still asleep I got casually dressed and walked out into the corridor. A man in his pyjamas was carrying a basket with his washing in it. He looked furtively at me. I walked into the reception and saw the same girl in the same track suit behind the counter. All the apples except one had disappeared from the basket. I took it and bit into it.
"You owe me money," the girl said in a high-pitched voice.
"What for?"
"Your room. When you booked in yesterday after midnight you only paid for one night. Now it is already the second night. You are lucky I did not wake you. Nobody is allowed to stay here unless prepaid."
"Do you accept travellers cheques?"
"Only cash."
"Where can I get it?"
"I don't know. Maybe at the airport."
"There is no place open to change the money at the airport now."
"The airport looks grand but ain't so grand," she said.
"What am I going to do?"
"Well," she said in a drawl and smiled faintly, "you folks should know what you are doing when you are travelling. I'll let you wait till the morning but my boss won't like it."
"Why is this called Shadow Motel ?" I asked.
"Because it is pretty dark in here," she replied and laughed. I bit once more into my Californian apple and then returned to our room. M was still asleep. Opening the curtain I saw the first light of dawn and for the first time a part of the United States in natural light. But in this part of Seattle there were only motels and some buildings of the airport visible. Planes were already flying in and out. It was a landscape dominated strictly by and for business. Not far from where I was standing the jumbo jets of Boeing were manufactured and many other industries would be connected with it. The Shadow Motel was indeed only a transit place. As I could no longer sleep I took out of my suitcase a book which I had bought in Lourmarin in the Provence. Lourmarin is a village where Albert Camus and his wife are buried up on the hill amongst the peasants and the shopkeepers. Their grave was so modest that M and I could hardly find it, and, perhaps because it was winter, no flowers had adorned it. We had come to Lourmarin by chance and it was also by chance that we discovered that Camus had lived there. He came there mainly to work and to absorb the silence and the light of the Provence. Now I read about him in the light of dawn in Seattle. Camus used to come in the evening alone to the local hotel to eat his dinner. He smoked the Gauloises, the French cigarettes, but preferred to drink coffee instead of wine. By the owner of the hotel, Madame Hirtzmann-Ollier, he was addressed as Monsieur Terasse, in order not to be recognised by the tourists.
He was liked by the workers and peasants of the village, as he himself was a great but also a simple man. He rarely talked about himself or mentioned that he had tuberculosis. Only once he shocked Madame Hirtzmann-Ollier when he had said "Les choses doivent être dites brutalment." Things have to be said brutally.
The book I was reading behind the curtain in the Shadow Motel had been published 25 years after his death. Camus had died early by a car accident. The book contained the speeches given during a colloquium in Lourmarin by writers, journalists, philosophers, friends and local residents, to commemorate or to reconsider or rediscover the world of Albert Camus. It was strange to read here a sentence by Camus like (in my translation ):

'The road which leads from beauty to immortality is tortuous but certain.'

The sound of the French language, Camus' profundity of thought, his precision of expression, his passion for the physical and metaphysical world but ultimately his concern for the human condition seemed to be here, on my touchdown in the USA somehow out of place, nearly carried no meaning. As another jet was flying over our motel room, I was thinking of a note by Camus in his North American Journal:

'At the corner of East 1st Street is a little
bar where a loud juke box smothers all the
conversations. To have five minutes of
silence, you have to put in five cents.'

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