history lesson, hotel sacher vienna winter 2003

history lesson.

It had snowed overnight. the snow patrol  was doing it´s best to extinguish the waves of white on the pavements, and the cars did a good job in turning the rest into a dark grey mush. 

I trotted down the gumpendorferstraße. it was completely empty, but for a lonely bus passing by every now and then. It was freezing, the wind bit through the layers of my clothes, my breath froze onto my scarf. I played with the notion of pretending to be on some kind of Siberian expedition. 

The excursion at first was rather trivial however, i ended up at an Aida conditorei for coffee and cakes. The Formica interior felt comforting, womb-like. The waitresses in their pink outfits  looked like nurses who would bring chocolate and cream as if it was prescription medicine. I sat there and noticed that Aida sold bonbons in Klimt styled packaging. „the kiss“ and „danae“ where on the boxes. I had to think of the Klimts in the Belvedere museum again.

By that time Austria was in a legal dispute about five paintings of Klimt. They were seized by the nazis from the Bloch Bauer family, together with all asset the family had. Castles, the sugar-factory, porcelain, and all their bank accounts.

The dispute between the rightful heirs of the masterworks and the Austrian government was taken to the supreme court in the United States. Austria kept maintaining that Adele Bloch Bauer had expressed her wish to keep the paintings in Austria after her death. 

The Bloch Bauers were rich. both came from grand industrial families, Adele Bauers father was a banker and the director of the Orient Express.  Ferdinand Bloch was more wealthy even, his sugar factory made money like rain. Their love was a match made in heaven, their marriage was one of  true companionship. They made their love life very public, even to the extent that they put both of their last names together, very uncommon in those days. Ferdinand Bloch became Ferdinand Bloch Bauer. His brother married one of Adeles sisters, and they did the same. 

Ferdinand was much older than Adele, but he worshipped her intellect and her love and knowledge of the arts. Together they decided that Gustav Klimt would be commissioned to make seven paintings for them. Two of the paintings where portraits of Adele, and they struck the personality of her meticulously. She could appear so stern and austere, like true royalty. And royal he painted her: gold was used to the excess, the ornaments in the background reached back into the time of the pharaohs even.

Adele was often taken ill, but she carried her times of illness with almost more grandeur and passion than her healthy times. She would completely succumb into the quixotic idea of suffering for great artistry.

Seemingly without any effort would she slip back into the role as poised and dazzling hostess of their Salon.  The couple was the centre of Vienna's jeunesse dorrée. They were the sun of the new century by any means. They held the salons in their home, where the high society would meet up with the great artists of the new time, and party. I could almost see Adele, the proud hostess, smoking her cigarettes, a so not-to-do thing for a lady of her class back then. Having conversations with her consort Stefan Zweig, or listening to the newest piece which Mahler had just conducted. Her dearest friend was Klimt. It was even rumoured that both had a love relationship. Many Viennese saw erotic connotations in the elaborate ornament that he painted around her, and they were sure that his very erotic work called Judith was in fact another camouflaged painting of her. The rumours were encouraged when Adele had one room in their palace solely dedicated to his art. 

Adele Bloch Bauer died of pneumonia in 1925. Ferdinand turned the Klimt room, as it was called, into a shrine for Adele. Fresh flowers were put under her portrait every day. 

In her will she had stated that the Klimt paintings should go to the Belvedere museum after her husband Ferdinand would die. 

In 1938, the national socialist party put all of the estate of the Bloch Bauers under "protective custody", by the false pretext that Ferdinand had tried to evade taxes. It happened to many wealthy jews, some were even held hostage, like baron von Rothschild. the same happened to Ferdinands brother. he was taken to a concentration camp, and to have him released, they had to turn over all their assets. immediately after his release, the Bloch Bauer family left Austria. Ferdinand fled to switzerland, his brother and Adeles sister to the United States. 

By 1945, when Ferndinand was still in exile, he changed his will, revoking the wishes of his wife. He died in Switzerland, just months after the second world war, completely impoverished. 

For years and years the Bloch Bauer family in the United States tried to get the paintings and other belongings back. 

The government of Austria had Adeles testament, which so clearly mentioned that the paintings should be at the national gallery, and used it as an argument constantly. They did not feel the need to discuss a legal matter, which, in the governments view, was a non issue. the heirs had no legal means to claim their belongings back.

This changed when Ferdinands revised will was discovered in the late nineties by a journalist who was investigating the case. 

A lawsuit was filed at the U.S. supreme court by Maria Altmann, the last surviving heiress to the Bloch Bauer estate.

Austria then simply stated to be immune to any US lawsuit, being a foreign sovereign country. The claim should be settled in Austria. 

Maria Altmann tried to come to an agreement with the Austrian Government. She made numerous proposals for a reasonable settlement. Each and every of her offers was declined by the Austrian Government. Her final bid was that the paintings should be returned in her ownership, but she would allow Austria to lend two paintings to be permanently exhibited at the Belvedere museum. Austria would have to pay for the estimated value of the total five paintings however. This offer was not taken by the Austrian government either. 

The supreme court then ordered arbitration, and Austria acceded. 

And there i sat, in Aida, having my cake, looking at these chocolate boxes. Making money with their decorative gold and ornamental lusciousness, wondering what would happen to the real stuff. 

I remembered that i still had to buy crayons for the drawing session with R. and left once more to the gumpendorferstraße. I had seen a couple of shops there. One of them obviously sold flowers, as the sign said: „blumen“ another one said "fleisch" and a third one said "papier". This was solid shopping advice.

the crispy blue cold of that morning had made way for a dark and shady fog. even the coloured buildings in the streets faded to grey. The few people that walked the streets had themselves deeply covered in dark coats. all colour had gone. And the snow had been diminished to big heeps of brown debris at the edge of every sidewalk.

i walked to the shop. Just before it  i stumbled on some tiles in front of a building. they were made out of bronze. 10 square centimetres each. every tile had a name on it:

Hedwig Freund. Irma Kaufman. Max Freund. Leo Spitzer. Rudolf Ambes. Max Rosenzweig. Erna Beran. Valerie Ambes. More and more names. And their birth-dates. these all differed. The year of death was the same with each and every tile: 1944.

The shop was closed. I had no stationary for our drawing session and would have to go back to the hotel without having accomplished my errand.

hotel Sacher, Vienna, winter 2003

art history lessons

i was accompanying R. to Vienna this time. I decided to arrive one day before him. Now i was on rather well-known territory, it was the first time i would not feel lost. I had been to Vienna a lot as a little girl. When travelling to Switzerland to visit my grandparents, we would sometimes cross the border to Austria. My parents always joked that they needed a getaway from the holiday. I liked Geneva, where my grandparents lived, but Vienna always felt like the real treat, for my parents finally relaxed there. Some of my Swiss friends had moved to Vienna, and we went to the kunsthistorische museum.

a Chinese woman was in the room with the paintings of the Dutch masters, accompanied by her son. the woman and the son were both wearing the same lime green parka coats. the woman was sitting on a red plush bench in front of a painting. it was a seascape by van Goyen. the boy was bored, he just kept walking circles around the bench. 

the mother did not notice her son, nor did she notice anything else around her, as she was sound asleep, her head resting on her chest, barely any movement of breath at all. it was a weird situation, as the museum was so crowded. the son tiptoed around her, sometimes bringing his index-finger to his lips as if to hush himself, not to wake her up. i looked at them for a while, and then noticed that there was a strip of medication next to the mother. the leaflet was taken out of the box, as was the strip. there were two or three tablets left in the strip. the tablets were just a notch of a different colour than the limegreen of the mothers coat.

my friends and i walked on. when we had finished visiting all the artwork, admiring some and ignoring other pieces, we came through the same room. nothing had changed. loads of people, the boy walking circles and the mother sound asleep. the boy sat himself next to his mother and sighed. 

i got a very eerie thought: what if the mother had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and was now dying? what if she had decided to kill herself and had wished for two things near her when coming to her end: her little boy and that painting?

it was a turbulent work: a couple of ships at a very wild sea. dark colours, splashing waves. i could imagine wanting to look at a picture before you die, but the boy sitting next to her made the whole image less appealing. i dared not go over to the woman and shake her. that could be so silly if she was just resting. so, me and my friend just walked out of the museum, but somehow the mother and son had clung themselves onto my mind.

that night we had dinner at another friends place. i told the story there, including the lime green matching raincoats. but i could not stop worrying. what if the woman had really decided to kill herself. how long would it take for people to realise it? would she sit upright till closing and would one of the guards find her? or would she all of a sudden just slide of the red velvet couch? or would the boy start crying at one point? first the art lovers in the museum  would respond irritated to that most likely, then they would slowly realise what had happened. would they panic? and what about the boy? what would happen to him?

as dinners go this story was soon replaced by another one, and as the wine and wodka did their work i slowly forgot about it.

On Sunday i was getting a little nervous, the time i could spend in my real life just dwindled away. I was not looking forward to the evening. This was the easiest job i had ever had, in theory. Go to a room, tell a story, get money, travel. 

The intimacy of the deal started to bother me. Or maybe it was the lack of true intimacy. I had to conjure op new images and stories, dig into my memories with the sole purpose to entertain. It made me feel corrupted. Things that were dear to me now lost their value, as they were not truly shared, they were dished up, consumed, and left at that. I had not even dared tell my friends why i had ventured to Vienna. I didn't have the feeling they would understand. 

They took me to the Belvedere Museum, to look at the klimts. The kiss, the Adele Bloch Bauer portrait and my favourite forrest painting, „buchenwald“. i had seen the klimts many times before, and soon started dwelling through other rooms.

One particular painting just struck me completely. it was by Lovis Corinth. A woman sitting next to an aquarium, reading a book. painted at the beginning of last century. you can still feel the slow pace of that century, the quiet. but the future is waiting to happen. the way Corinth used his brush, the speed, like he was anticipating, wanting to leap into the time that irrevocably was to come, was such a difference to the relaxed Sunday afternoon atmosphere he painted there. 

i fell in love with the image. and i remembered the Chinese woman of the day before. i thought, that it i would ever feel like passing away, i would want to do so in front of this very painting. not in a suicide situation, but just taking a nap, and not waking up. it is such a happy and careless picture, a good thing to look at before leaving this world. there was no comfortable couch in this room of the belvedere, so i just sat down on a small blue chair. and looked and looked. the room this picture hung in had been fairly empty. but now, because i was sitting there, studying the painting so intensely, other people started noticing it too. that was funny.

when my friends had finished with the klimts we went outside into the palaces' gardens. my friends and i discussed the painting and whether we would want to die in front of it. all of a sudden, around the corner, came four lime green parka's. the mother and son, the father and a girl. 

i was relieved to see them safe and sound, and hoped the woman would find some rest in the  Lovis Corinth painting. i smiled at them when they passed me, but of course, they did not know who i was or why i smiled at them.

At the hotel, R. still had his glasses on, looking tired. I asked him how he was, if he needed rest. He did need rest he said, the more east his business took him, the more difficult it became. „they don´t seem to understand how it works, that it is give a little take a little in what we do. they always think we try to double cross them. I just want everybody to be happy at the end of the day. Well, the happy end isn't here yet.“ I asked him what exactly the meeting here had been about. he held up his mobile phone. "this". he pointed at his i-book. "that". i make all this technology possible. i find the right people for the right job, and let them work together.  it is simple. new products need to be invented, so that they can be sold. that is one party. then you need the raw materials. the plastic, the copper, the lithium. i interrupted him. "isn't lithium a drug?" lithium is one of the materials you need for a mobile. indium, rare one too, selenium. and you need factories. and those factories need energy. and then there is the transport once the product is finished. i bring all those parties together. that´s what i do. 

i make these products happen, by making the parties involved happy about finding one another. or by getting parties to see that it would be best if they became one company. if that works out, i am the happiest of them all. from now on if you call any of your friends, you can think of me as the guy who made it work for you. satisfied?" he got up and went to the bathroom. when he came back he sat down on the bed. "and you, what did you do?" i told him i had seen art. "there is art here too, in this room." he pointed at a painting on the wall. i had to laugh. and for the first time i let him in on a secret: 

art

i don´t know exactly when it started. but it must have been on one of my filming trips somewhere. same kind of hotel as this one, actually. but as i slept there for more than the usual one or three nights, i started to really be aware of the surroundings, to totally get involved in the atmosphere. not so much the sounds of the hotel, the same guest arriving back to their room at the same time every night, it was a couple. he would brush his teeth first, only running water. she would talk to him incessantly whilst he did is one and a half minute ritual. the woman had an electric toothbrush, so no talking there. it weren´t  those specific occurrences that i felt enthralled in, it was much more the stuff that tends to go really unnoticed. like the wallpaper, the curtains, the ceiling. and all of a sudden the painting that hung opposite to my bed started to severely irritate me. 

it insulted me by being there. it was not uglier than most of the hotelroom paintings. it might even have been a nice picture originally, but as it was a copy it felt very cheap to me. i just did not want to look at it anymore. have you ever remembered one single painting you saw in an hotelroom? i know i haven´t. i think they are designed to leave no impression whatsoever. they should be neutral. undemanding non-offensive, sterile. Flowers, landscapes. Sometimes, especially in these trendy ´design-hotels´ it are nondescriptive and very low profile modern pieces. the more of a businessman hotel you prefer to stay in, have a less personal approach in the choice of the painting. cheap hotels may sometimes have the benefit of the taste or lack of style of the owner. an exception are of course the hotels of mr. Steve Wynn in las Vegas, they have cool art. real Picasso´s. 

i was now in the hotel for the fourth night. the painting was intruding my every thought. at first i had just tried to ignore it. looked the other way. but as the days went by i just got fed up with that stupid picture. i hung a towel over it, but that just made me more aware of the painting underneath. the painting was staring at me. viciously and mocking. as if it was saying: " i will be here long long after you have checked out, you may not approve of me, no body does. but i don´t care. i belong."

the next night i took it down. i was fed up. as long as i was in this room, the painting would not be. that felt much much better. in the morning, just before breakfast i put the painting back on again, i did not want to disturb the cleaning ladies in any way.

that evening, as i took down the painting, i realised that this was not the most handsome  solution to my problem. i like art. and now the hook on which the painting used to hang had such a lonely feel to it. it had become abandoned, useless, it had lost its purpose its reason to exist in that place.

i knew that a lot of crew members took pictures of their loved ones with them, and had them on their bedside tables. i had none of these memorabilia with me.  straightaway, i felt bare myself.

i decided to make my own painting. nicely under the hotel one. and i did. i don´t recall what i drew. i used the hotel stationary pen and my eyebrow pencil. every night i would add some more to the drawing. and every morning i would put the hotel painting back in it´s place. 

i felt so good about it. the room had become mine, but nobody would ever know. from that moment on, it became my own private ritual. as soon as i would get into a room i would take of the picture and make my own.

then, about three years later a thought struck me. i cannot possibly be the only person alive who does this. there must be someone else who once had the same idea. and maybe this person has once slept in the hotelroom i will sleep in eventually. i will take the picture down and discover someone else's. 

i am still waiting to check in to that room.

„did you do a drawing in this hotel too?“ i told him i hadn´t had the time yet. „you want to make one here, for me? And that i watch you whilst you are doing it?“ i said that this would be too personal for me. Then i thought it would be nice if we would do one together. He jumped up and walked to the painting. He tried to take it off, but it was screwed to the wall. „i have to get a drill tomorrow. I want that painting off! I want our masterwork there.“ I asked him if it wouldn't be noisy if he started screwing that painting off. „you´re right, i will do it by hand. We have to do one! It will be fun! You buy pencils tomorrow i will organise the screw driver, and some drinks. I need to be drunk to do this. And go all Dennis Hopper but more act like him did he paint? or whatshisname who did all the splashy paintings?“ i asked him if he meant Jackson Pollock „that´s the one, the action painter. I want to go wild. You want to do that with me? Ah. This will be the best night ever. How am i ever going to sleep now? I will go crazy thinking about tomorrow. I have to call my wife. Sorry.“ 

I left. Dumbfounded. He had a wife. What on earth was i doing here? He was married. Why didn't he take her along? And what would she say if she knew i was there? Even my boyfriend didn't know exactly what i was doing away all the time. I had told him i had to help with research and translation for somebody, all very vague. My boyfriend was abroad all the time himself, so he never asked how or what. But a wife. Why hadn´t i noticed his wedding ring before? Did he actually wear one?  I sat in my room. My painting was also screwed to the wall. This happened more and more often lately. Maybe there actually had been more people with the same idea, and the hotels didn't like it. I could not imagine that people would actually try and steal the paintings, like they seem to do with blowdryers. The man was married. This was something my morals had severe difficulties dealing with. 

Club Exclusive, night before check out, the majestic hotel, Barcelona.

tonight he was different. i could sense it right from the beginning. he opened the door, and smiled at me. "i am so very glad you are here you don´t know how glad i am that we do this, how much it means to me to have you around." i nodded. he continued "you have no idea it can be so hard to find a way to relax. i wonder how people do that, really relax. i can´t understand that a holiday works that way, do you like holidays, well you must, otherwise you would never have agreed to accompanying me all over the planet. i hate holidays i hate travelling i despise most of the people i have to deal with, making them happy giving them what they want, let the mergers take place at the costs that we never see back in the balance sheet of any bookkeeper as they are the costs of the quality of life"

he stopped in the middle of that sentence and looked at me. "you wanna do the story here, or shall we go to a bar, i feel like going to a bar, shall we have a drink at one of the bars in the street or just in the hotel?" i told him that i had seen enough of the streets, staying inside would suffice.

" let me put something casual on then, i don´t want to be overdressed next to you."
i didn't know how to take that last remark, was i underdressed, or did he just want to get rid of his suit? i waited, the door to the hallway was still opened, whilst he changed. there was a group of businessmen walking passed the room, they stared at me whilst passing.

R. had put on jeans and a t shirt and did no longer resemble the corporate image i had seen for so many times. he no longer was a much more grown up and smart man. i asked him how old he was. he said he was 42. that was 8 years older than me. i had a lot of friends who where that age. but none of them had flourishing businesses and travelled, hardly any of us had even a car.

we went to the bar, and i dared to ask him another question. i asked him how he had relaxed before he met me. "i hardly could, that was the point of hiring you. i would go back to these hotelrooms and just lock myself in, in my thoughts. or i would crunch numbers, look at files, and add all the numbers the companies gave me. just add every single digit they fed onto their paperwork. and see what would come out. or multiply or whatever. it worked, but not as good as you do. i like your life. you don´t take anything in consideration. you just react, you never act, you are one of the last true bohemians, you should have lived in the sixties, ah, no, if you had lived then, you probably would have died on an overdose, or worse, have survived it, and then would have to live with the consequences of that for the rest of your life." 

i took it in. i asked him in what time he rather had lived. "I live in exactly the right time. but enough about me now, tell me another one, you flowerpowerpuffgirl you."

i told him that i had been a punk-goth-garage girl, and no way a hippie, but that i had lived in a house with hippies.


it was dreadful. they were stoned all day, listening to frank Zappa and John Lennon and Yoko Ono who were also stoned and screamed that they wanted to be Eskimos in the deadly yellow snow.
the house had a ground floor, and two upper floors. the ground floor had been empty since forever. the hippies lived on the first floor, we, the punks lived in the attic. when the landlord kicked us out, he renamed the attic to a loft and could thus charge a six times higher rent for exactly the same space.
the hippies ate macrobiotic food cooked up for hours in a Römertopf. it smelled ghastly and i only tasted it once.

we punks only had money for instant soup and canned ravioli.

the kitchen was the only place our two worlds would occasionally collide, i tried to evade the hippies as much as i could, as they could be trusted to make some remark about my karma being affected by all the black i chose to wear.

there was one other common space: the bathroom. it was a place i tried to avoid entirely, nobody ever cleaned it. it smelled of piss and vomit. and it looked the same. there was no toilet paper, everyone was supposed to buy their own, take it with them, and then take it back to one´s room. but some of the tenants never bought any. it never struck my mind that i could clean the bathroom myself either, i must admit in hindsight.

i would try and go to the toilet in public places as much as i could, and also brush my teeth there. i would go by friends houses or ride my bike back to my parents´ to have a shower or a bath.

it was my big-hair period back then, i needed at least three hours to get my hair upright in exactly the correct fashion. first i washed my hair. then i back combed it. I heated the babyliss waffle iron, waffled my hair, and back combed it again. the most important thing was the hairspray though. in the beginning, when i still lived at home i tried old housewives stuff: egg whites, beer, soap. nothing worked, it smelled, and if it would rain the sediments would run into my eyes, and ruin my make up. then came a new product: gel. it was sold in transparent jars, and it was either fluorescent blue or yellow. it was a big step forward on the big hair scale, a true revolution. the hair became bigger.

Then one of our scene discovered an obsolete product: Wella Forte. hairspray. the can is best described as non-design: a black and white chequered background, green letters, and a red rose on it. but the forte truly was fabulous. there was no longer any excuse to have little big hair. in the hierarchy of this crowd, the bigger your hair was, the higher you moved up the ladder.  i remember one night, i think it was for a concert of "the birthday party" i had spent even more time on my looks than usual, and the rain just poured down incessantly. i took a garbagebag and put it over my hair, and rode my bike to the club. the closer i got to the venue, the more people i saw peddaling their way to the concert. it was a sea of bags. garbagebags for the big hair, normal shoppingbags sufficed for the little big hairdos.

the hippies in the house and i only spent one afternoon together in a semi peaceful manner, and this was what i told R:

club exclusive

and one day, oh, that was a sad day in a way. it must have been about one in the afternoon, early spring, but not a particularly nice and sunny day, more of the murky grey kind. a day that doesn't want to be remembered so it hides itself behind the clouds.

now imagine that colour grey on a woman's coat. and the same mousy hue, only with a slight touch of iridescent blue, for this womans hair. and the colour of her skin is just as ashen as her outfit and hairdo. she looks as if she herself was washed too long on too high a temperature.

and notice, from your bedroom window, as i did that afternoon, this woman walking to your door and ring the doorbell.

i went down and answered the door. The woman did not introduce herself. She said hello, and i helloed back. she started to delve deep into her handbag and took out a black and white photograph of a man.

she held it out to me with a very knowing look on her face, as if i got the picture just by looking at it.

at first i thought that she might be a member of some kind of religious cult, trying to get money off me or to get me to one of their salvatory meetings, so, i was ready to close the door on her.

but then she asked me a question. she asked me if i had seen the man. now, he was a man that you would never notice. bleak and completely identical to all the other office nestlers our city seemed to harbour in the million-fold. therefore: no, i had never seen him. she was not in the least deterred by this, and pointed at a Datsun that was parked five meters next-door. "that is his car" she said, as if that finally explained everything, i felt she became a bit impatient by my complete lack of understanding the ever so obvious.

"i know he is in there." she said. and then it started to dawn on me. although she was standing with her back to the building across the street, i realised.

we lived opposite to this brothel, called "club exclusive". nothing really exclusive about it, a sad place, with only the word "club" in neon letters. probably because the word "exclusive" was too expensive to have done in neon as well. the idea that anyone would ever want to have a party there, was a very sad notion. for the party in this place was over for a long long time.

i never saw any of the girls who worked there. however, i did always know whenever the owner was drunk. he would then play the same song over and over again. it was "if you could read my mind" by viola wills. and if he was in a really jolly mood he would sing along, the whole night long. but most of the time, the place seemed completely desolate, no business was their business as usual.

"he is in there, that is his car" the woman said again. and i had to assume that she was right. "hasn't come home last night, and that is his car." i asked her whether she had asked at the club itself. she shook her head, stared at me for a bit, waiting for more information. i just stared back, i did not know what to say anymore. the woman shrugged and said good-bye, and walked to our neighbour. she was calm, determined to find the assurance she didn't want to have.

i went upstairs, but i was just too curious to find out whether she would be able to confront her husband. I saw her take the picture out at four or five more homes, to no avail.

she stood there, on the sidewalk, holding the photograph in her hands.

all of a sudden her movements became a bit more agile, and rather determinedly she crossed the street. She held the picture in front of her, as if it was her shield of armour, and rang the bell of the club. The owner opened up, and tried to look surprised when she shoved the picture right in front of his eyes. he started to play dummy in a far too obvious way, the woman kept pointing at her husbands car, the owner just smiled demeaningly.

he then went back inside the club, shutting the door in her face. the woman shrugged again, turned around and kept walking from the club to our house for some time. Then she turned to the Datsun, with a briskness she had not shown before. at that moment i was sure she was going to wreck it up. but she did not. she put the photograph of her husband underneath the windshield wiper, and walked on to her bicycle, got on it, and rode away.

by now my hippie flatmates had joined me behind the window to watch the events, and we thought that this was the end of that afternoons entertainment. each of us made some comment about it and wanted to go back to our own rooms. just then, two houses next to Club Exclusive a door opened. the owner of the club stepped out, looked around, and gestured to the husband that the coast was clear. the husband ran to the car and drove off. he hadn´t even noticed his own picture, clinging to the windshield, that now accompanied him on his way home.

the edge of heaven, the majestic hotel, barcelona

it seems as if in this city, summer is always there. it forces itself upon you, like that or not. after the letter, i still had three days of work left. three days of sunshine, which was meaningless, the beach felt completely fake, the streets overcrowded with ugly people. i tried some swimming, i managed to do a little money spending, i ate some food. strange city it was to me. if you take a pencil and draw a straight line from Barcelona, you can connect that city with Paris and Brussels. neither of them are cities i feel comfortable in. it seems to be a bad longitude for me.

all around me the tourists were busy doing what tourists do, a vocabulary of leisure completely unknown to me. so i walked the streets. and started noticing that my stiletto heels got stuck in the sticky tar pavements. it felt like i left my footprints all over the city. a good way not to get lost. so round and round i went, repeating the same route over and over, trying to find myself back on track.

late in the afternoon i as i had just sat down for a coffee, two men came to an adjacent table and sat beside me. father and son. they sat for at least an hour. the father must have been around fifty, the son fourteen or so. neither of them said one word. the father ordered two beers. a large one for himself, a smaller one for his son. the boy tried to gulp his drink in as quickly as he could. the father drank his beer in a far more seasoned way, and then another one. with the third beer, he ordered another small one for his son, who did his best to empty this glass as soon as he could too. sometimes the father would light a cigarette, and inhale. the son sat, slouched over, and looked at the smoke dwindling. he seemed like a sensitive boy, the way he observed his father, somehow as if knowing that a conversation was not to be had. i wondered if the father was divorced and if this was his way of spending some sort of quality time with his child. but there was no quality in the actions he took. just drinking. and smoking. i felt so sorry for the kid. he was so lost there. i so had the urge to go over to his table, put my hand on his shoulder, maybe even sit down next to him and hold his hand. i wished i could tell him all would be better once he was grown up. i didn't. first of all i realised that the both of them would be at least completely scared by this action and would doubtless think i was insane.

but a deeper thought withheld me. no matter how much i wished for this boy to give him some kind of consolation, some hope of a brighter future i knew that there was no assurance that this would be the case. probably his life would never get any better at all. my stomach turned. it was sad. this was all there was. the big holiday, the highlight. hereafter he would go to school, if lucky finish it, get a job, and drink alcohol. and be silent. and sit next to his father, or, later, next to his friends. it would be so cruel to tell him all would get well in the end. this fake Hollywood ending which i wished upon him so dearly, was probably way too far a goal for him to ever achieve. there was no promise of good times in his expression, and no solace in the appearance of his father. it was sheer emptiness that lay ahead for the both of them, steering clear of too much trouble and hassle would be enough of an achievement.



I went back into my room. there was a card, R. had taken the liberty of giving me a gift. a massage at the spa on the top floor. i felt strange about that. whenever i would go into his room, to tell the story he wanted for the night, he barely seemed to acknowledge me. he hardly looked me in the eye, just lie down on the bed. and sometimes he would even start rummaging through the room, organising his papers. or walk in to the bathroom, and change his attire. if i would stop in the middle of a story, he would respond immediately saying i should continue. i was passed the feeling he wanted sex or anything by then, i thought he was not attracted by me at all. this gift however, was, very physical, by proxy. the lack of sleep of the night before made me decide to take the massage anyway. i could use some soothing.


when i went to his room that night he sat at his desk, eating a pizza. he gestured me to sit down. "have you had dinner, would you want some?" i told him i was not very hungry. he kept pushing more slices into his mouth, hardly chewing. "so what will it be tonight, have you lost the game of backgammon?" i told him i had. "no more games then, for the time being, how was your massage, i had one too, just after you, great guy, really works your muscles through and through."

I thanked him for the massage, and said it had been nice.

"I want a short story tonight, or a poem, do you know some good short poetry?" i said i felt more like a short story, or i could sing him a song, if he liked, although i warned him my singing voice was terrible. and then i remembered a story about a song, and we settled for that version.

the edge of heaven.

this happened almost 15 years ago, and it didn't happen to me. but every now and then i have to think about it. and i wonder if there is any song in this situation that would suit me.

my friend Laurence lived in Los Angeles at the time, working for some glossy photographers studio, and he decided to drive to Las Vegas to take some pictures there on one weekend off.

he drove through the desert and got enchanted by the beauty of the landscape. the nothingness, the different greyscales blazing in the sun, the solitude, it just got to him. so, he took an off route, and made some really nice photographs. probably he had been out in the sun for too long, minor sunstroke like, for he fell asleep behind the steering wheel. he lost control, and crashed his car in a ditch.

he woke up in the rental car, and was stuck. he couldn't move anything. not one hand, his legs were stuck, he could only slightly move his head. he was not injured, but he was fixed into place between his drivers seat and the steeringwheel. this in itself must have been very unpleasant. but it got worse. the rental car was equipped with the state of the art technology of the late eighties. so there was a cassette player in the car which had the newest tape deck, that automatically would start the tape again, once it had ended. oh yes, we were all so thrilled about that invention back then! i am talking the time when sending a fax would sometimes still take half a day.

Laurence's that time sweetheart had given him a cassette of Wham! with only one single version of the song: "take me to the edge of heaven" on it. it was, as she called it "their song".

in the six hours he was in that car, anchored to the steeringwheel, the only song he heard was this.... 3 and a half minutes of it. the song would slide into his ears, like a thick stream of mud, unavoidable. the tape would: click-clack enter the backside, quietness, only the sound of the spools turning and turning; with every turn announcing the inescapable literal turning point: click-clack. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley sat beside him in his car, like Beelzebub and son. they were his sole companions, grinning their maniacal words into his ear:


I would lock you up
But I could not bear to hear you
Screaming to be set free
I would chain you up
If I'd thought you'd swear
The only one that mattered was me, me, me
I would strap you up
But don't worry baby
You know I wouldn't hurt you 'less you wanted me to

It's too late to stop
Won't the heavens save me?
My daddy said the devil looks a lot like you

and of course the rest of the song. then it would start all over again. at some point the silence would become the worst part of the tantrum, for in this silence the words echoed more and more deeply into his brain. there was no redemption here, no edge of heaven. Laurence tried to sing other songs he knew. but with every tape turn, he lost the tune and the lyrics of the original. all the songs he knew became corrupted by the hit of the dynamic duo. and the tape would turn once more and wham bang the song would hit him without the least holdback. he tried to sing louder than the tape, to set his mind free from the harassment, to do difficult math, to name all his former class mates in kindergarten, but nothing worked.

the tape would start again and over and again. Laurence just prayed that the battery of his car would die, so that he could embrace his own death in quietude and dignity. for the longer the song played, the more convinced he became that this was the end of his life.

52 times he heard the song, before another car drove by, but this was not the complete release he so strongly needed. The driver of the car got out. knocked on the window of Laurence´s car. "are you ok in there, son?" Laurence sort of nodded yes, as far as the steeringwheel would let him. he mumbled a soft yes. the driver tried to open the car door, but it was locked from the inside. The song started again. the man walked around the car, trying every door, none would open. he walked back to the window where Laurence was sitting. "your doors are locked, must be one of those new models you have here." the man shouted over the song. "you injured?" Laurence muttered a weak no. the man bellowed to him that he would go for help, and drove off before Laurence could ask him to at least try and unlock the car´s battery so that the song would finally stop.

and there he stuck, thirsty, tired, and waited. 12 times more he heard the song before the rescue service arrived at last, and got him out of the car.

you can imagine that whenever Laurence hears this song, he goes slightly insane.

and things didn't work out with the girl either.

movie script, the majestic hotel barcelona

The Majestic hotel, Barcelona, 2002


I started to get used to the travelling and to the storytelling. but boredom overtook me everytime i was in a strange city where i had no other reason than pouring out words. If i asked any personal question to R. he would evade immediately. it was not part of the deal. the deal should be all that we took care of, in his opinion. i would make up a story, or tell a true one, he did not care so much either way. i would pour out my words, and then leave.
I had a boyfriend at that time, who had a lot of other girlfriends whilst having me. And now I was taking the liberty of an affair too. As i was going to be in this super hotel in Barcelona anyway, i decided i would have him accompany me, so that i had someone to return to after my job was done. He was a guy I knew pretty well, we were actually rather good friends. And during that friendship an attraction had become more and more evident between the two of us. He had enough of money, working as a logistics organiser for big events, and had to work on a really huge deal in Barcelona the same time that i was booked there. He had a girlfriend at that time too, and she would come over the next day, so we knew that if we wanted anything to happen between the two of us, today would be the time. We had made the appointment months before, but thank god his girlfriend was stupid enough to tell him she would come over. So one night was all we had.
In those months, when we started planning our affair, we figured that it would be funny enough to both book a room. Whilst making this affair up, we started to steal an occasional kiss. Or we would all of a sudden find ourselves holding hands as we walked on the street figuring out the details. We promised ourselves that after this night we would never see each other again.


so when i checked in to the Majestic, i knew he would be there soon too. The Majestic was huge, with this really overpowering entrance hall, a bar with a live pianoplayer and it had a terrace on the roof, swimmingpool and massage included, from where I could overlook the whole city. And that is all that I saw of the city that time. I do not think that Barcelona and I will ever be close friends.


After checking in and checking out the room, i went downstairs to reception to see whether my affair had arrived. he was not there, only a note saying he had to work till late in the afternoon.

There was another note by R. he would be in meetings untill at least ten o clock, maybe later, as dinners could go on for hours in Barcelona, but I was free to do some shopping, this note was accompanied by an envelope filled with the amount of money that I myself normally used for a whole month to live by. I think I only spent a little money on some tea, and from my own money I bought some make up.

It was a really really hot summer day, cool make up was needed.

i felt very strange. meeting two men in the same hotel for different reasons, and having my boyfriend at home.

it was my first ever affair and i was not quite sure how to handle it.

it so odd to wait in such a hotel room, even for a couple of hours, if you have been anticipating the moment of cheating for months already. You sit on the bed, admire the crispy soft white bathrobes, brush your hair with extra care. You put your make up on just perfectly. And there you are. Alone. And all of a sudden it is no longer just a room. It has become a place that is waiting for that which is about to happen. All the obvious hotel things become grotesque during the wait. The fake gold overindulgence that is so common in these luxury hotels, seen through in the extreme. The totally uninteresting magazines that are layed out on the coffee table in a most esthetic fashion, offered to you to be leafed through with no goal to inform you of anything what so ever, the empty gestures, the unpersonal perfection.

I had imagined myself to be the really stunning temptress secretary, and wanted him to be my tattood rock and roll hero popstar. He had a magnificent body, and it was covered with beautiful coloured tattoos. all through summer he wore a thight sleeveless shirt. That was my fancy, my fantasy. unfortunately, he had had an other idea, and was wearing an expensive designer blouse, which covered up his tattoos. Bummer. it turned out that we both had had our expectations, some of which where partly fullfilled, but they never exceeded the original dream. Allthough it had been fun to ride the elevator up and down the hotel fifteen times, because that was how long one of our kisses lasted.

We lay on the bed and talked a little, watched some tv, and kissed some more. Then i rushed to R.s room to tell him his story. but i had my affair in mind all the time. i had to be carefull, i felt, i did not want to give my secret away. this tale had to be as neutral as possible.

i decided it would be a moviescript. R. agreed on this, saying: "but i do want you to also do different voices and gestures during the dialogues"

Scene 1.
Interior evening/night
We see an entirely red room. it is a hotelroom, but different from most. these hotels are getting rarer and rarer in europe. the ones that have their own kitchen, and suite. this is one of those. it is a nice warm evening, we know, because we have seen a young man walk down the street before. he wears a t-shirt. outside the people are parading their best summer attire down the allyway and they mix with the pavement so well. The walls are red, the ceiling is illuminated by red Chinese lanterns, the floor is covered with lush red carpentry. The room itself is furnished rather sparingly, however, the furniture that is there is obviously of very high quality, expensive antique Japanese laquerwork. There is one painting in the room, it is sort conflicting with the rest of the interior design. It is a classical Dutch painting. not of one of the Great Masters, not a Rembrandt or a Vermeer, but it could easily be a Ruysdaal or a van Mieris. It is a portrait of a girl, she must be seventeen, and she is looking at us directly, inquisitively.

Our protagonist (the main character, whom the audience should identify with, so mostly the good guy) - let's for the fun of it call him Stef, enters the room, whilst the antagonist, in this case a girl, and no, her name is not mine, dont forget it is a story i am telling you, is sitting on a couple of velvet blood red cushions on the floor.

we get the feeling that there has been conversation going on, it was paused, and will now be resumed. their conversation seems to be in an impasse. The body-language of the boy tells us that he has never been in this room before, he has far from conquered the territory he has entered. he does not feel comfortable. He is almost anticipating in his moves, he is focussed on the worst to come. He stands opposite the girl, and behind him we see the entrance to the kitchen.

It is rather dark in the kitchen, so it is hard to see what goes on there, but it is obvious that the kitchen has an entirely different atmosphere. We see empty boxes, piles of dishes, at least 23 garbage-bins, fruit-flies doing their daily flight, that kind of mess. A complete negative to the austere cleanliness of the living room.

The girl smokes. Very thin filter-cigarettes. In front of her, there is a tiny table, and on the table is a miniature tea set, of the finest bone china you have ever seen. She picks up one of the cups, and takes little sips of the tea. the tea is starchy and very very black. Black as moonless nights.
How shall we call her, and when will you stop thinking it is me I am writing about? Do i have to alter her looks in a way that you have to be sure? give her red curls, and good cleavage then. Blue eyes and a cherry mouth. We will call her Franca from now on.

Franca
Yes, but the question was if you realise how bad it is to loose. How devastating.

Stef
I hardly ever loose

Franca
I only lost three times, not counting the times i thought it wiser to loose. If I win all the time, nobody will play with me anymore..


Stef
So you seriously just had me come over to play a game of backgammon.

Franca smokes, and stares Stef down.

Franca
You have played backgammon before, have you ?

Stef
What do you think?

Franca
Oh, probably very seriously even.

Stef
And that's the only reason you woke me up with your phone-call at fucking three o clock at night.

Franca
i did not have the impression you were indeed sleeping.

Stef
No, i wasn't but normal people do sleep at three.

Franca
(scolding)
and you are so normal.

Silence. Franca starts pouring from the teapot again, highly concentrated. First her own cup, then his. The tea seems to be sirup, it pours so slowly, the blackness is shiny as if the tea where made of glue or lacquer instead of liquid, water. She throws a lump of sugar in each cup.

Franca
against the bitterness.

She smiles at Stef. Her big blue eyes pin him down, she does not blink. Stef seats himself on the other side of the table. he picks up a cup, and takes a sip. The tea is obviously still bitter, as he has trouble finishing the cup. All that time Franca is watching him precisely. After his third sip, she takes a ebony briefcase. the briefcase is inlayed with mother of pearl. It is a backgammon game.

Franca starts to put the stones on the board. The stones are made of bone and ebony, they are not perfectly round, they seem to be hand carved. The felt on which the stones are put is of course, red.

Franca
so you want to win?

Stef
that is not the goal

Franca
then what is the goal to you?

Stef
The game, the tactics, the moves you make to distract the other from that which is really important to you.

Franca
Everybody wants to win if they play against me, because i never loose.

stef
(interrupts her)
the element of chance, if you only have bad dice, i win.

franca
(ignores his remark)
we play for 64 points. and you are the one to decide how quickly we get there. Each of us is free to double the stakes at any time. If you really think you want to win at a certain point, you are allowed to double.


It is obvious that stef is irritated. He is not in the mood for a game that could take hours. He still cannot believe that she sent him over just to play a stupid game. He is moving uncomfortably at his pillow and looks rather galled at Franca. His eyebrows go up, he does not have a clue of what she is getting at.

Franca
Ahh, but it is not just a game. We still have to decide the prize for the winner, and the punishment for the looser.

Stef
punishment


Ahh, does the conversation now take a turn that stef is not pleased about at all. Reward, Punishment, that is only fun if it is a game indeed. Franca is way too serious. He distrusts her smile. But he keeps mum. He tries to observe her moves, as to find out what she wants.


franca
This is an incredibly old backgammon set. Did you know that the game has been played for centuries and that the rules have hardly ever been changed?

Stef
nope, i only know that backgammon is played in coffee-shops by people who are way to stoned to do anything else.

Franca
Too true, but those guys only play to win. I want us to play to loose.

Stef
So that we can receive punishment

Franca
one of us will be punished

Stef
and who decides what the punishment will be?

Franca
ohh, the looser gets to choose his own penalty.

there it is again: her sweetest smile. she takes another sip. Stef takes another sip.


Stef
you are beyond weird
and your tea tastes like piss.

Franca blinks her eye to stef. but reaaaallly slowly. as in slow-motion, more of a grimace. There is no kindness in that gesture.

And Cut. The director of the movie has to step in now. the scene is way to static there is no advancement in the scene, it is not working. But the scene will have an end one day. I can even tell you how it will end, i have a feeling that my prediction is pretty accurate as well. It will be far from an happy ending. But it will be a pretty one, aesthetically. These two will start playing. And she will play to loose. She has a good reason for that. I have a feeling that the game will take weeks, and that she will not be defeated easily, even if her goal is to loose. The punishment she will inflict on herself is that she will become his.


And the tea? Opium of course, you silly!




R. rolled over on the bed and gestured me to hand me a cigarette. i gave it to him. He smoked it. "so, you take drugs, and you like to play games with men?" i answered that i used to take drugs, but never too many, my only addiction ever had been the cigarettes. "but you like games?" "not unless you mean the backgammon, it is just a story" R. said he felt that this story was a goodbye story to someone i did play games with. i said it was a make believe, a moviescript. "this story is true. i can feel it. you are playing, and you know you have lost. anyway i have to sleep. see you tomorrow same time."

i went back to my room. all had changed. i did not feel comfortable anymore. maybe R. was right, and maybe this was the moment i was loosing the game.


My affair had been waiting. we took a bath, We and we made out, but we didn´t make love. During the night I willed myself to be in love with him, but it just didn’t work. And in that one expensive night, we lost our friendship. The whole precious mild erotic summer that had cherrished and embraced us so tenderly had evaporated. We were now balancing most uncomfortably between awkwardness and contempt for the other. But that night, as I lay beside him, watching him sleep, i knew it was over. I woke up some time during the night, and saw him sitting at the desk, he was writing something. In the morning he had gone, and i found this letter, written on the stationary of the Majestic hotel. And I think that two years later we once met on the street and just said hi to one another.



Dear Fräülein,

But it is strange. I don’t know why exactly, still can´t put my finger on it. This afternoon and night was a kind of dream. Very nice, sweet, but I don’t know who you are anymore. I would have wanted the whole thing to be just casual and nice fun, but I think that it was too important for me in hindsight to say it was just that. And now, I can just feel the loss of our casualness and niceness. It will never be just fun again. The innocence has dissapeared forgood. Something is now between us and that naivity. Now, I cant stop thinking that from now on you think that I and I think that you think, but I know myself, and I do know that in a couple of weeks I will be me again. So please let´s just agree that you will not think I feel bad about the whole thing, or that you start disliking me as in: oh dear, there he is again, feeling bad about what happened. Because then I will start avoiding you, and that would only make you think etcera etcetra and so forth and on. I am sure I will be my good old self in a couple of weeks, we can hang out together again, drink cheap lambrusco and play cards as we always do. I still just want to be your pall. Want us to laugh about stupid people wearing the wrong kind of shoes and watch star trek the next generation..

The whole night we have now spent, you have not once said my name. Not when i stroked your hair, not when you kissed me. I really felt a lot for you. This summer, you were one of the most important people I have met in a long long time. I fell in love with your body, your sense of humor and your way of looking at things.

Very attractive, but I am not one to play with fire.

So, it is au revoir ma cherie.