I.

Stop! said the barman, not so hasty there!
when I’d already grabbed the glass which he’d placed
so casually on the counter: A Guinness,
that takes time, it’s still alive when drawn
from the keg below, don’t you see yourself
how it’s churning – ash-grey, startled –
before it settles? Another three, four
minutes and it’s set, quite black
in the glass, quite white the froth, no higher than
half a priest’s collar and so solid that a mouse
could trot across, leaving not the slightest
trace. Not until then! Yes, then it’s ready,
then you’ll have the perfect pint! But until then:
reflect.

II.

Abashed I looked around: eight hundred years of thirst
concealed in dark wood panelling; and
when my time had come, the barman used the tap
to carve the outline of a harp into the froth,
the logo of his brewery. But: Stop! says he
as I was reaching for the glass again, for he had
realized I was a stranger to his town and thick
besides: Not quite so greedy there! Take every swig
in moderation so that eventually you’ll have one
booze ring after the other inside your glass, a precise
measure of your thirst and, on top of everything,
a parable. That so? Of what? He wouldn’t say. Come on,
then, cheers!

III.

There I stood. In front of me the glass, and in it
black smoke and mist, a smell of turf, and song …
the whole of Ireland awaiting me. The barman
at the far end of the counter pointing out to all
and sundry that he’d almost ruined
some moron’s thirst: him over there,
that stranger! Who now, most cautiously, reached
for his glass at last and, instead of gulping it,
just sipped.

Naked, the sea bulges, ugly and ancient,
waiting
for nothing,
least of all for you
and for whatever, on seeing it, you might like
to suck as honey from your fingers.
It doesn’t care a fart
whether, in rapt contemplation,
you hit upon a metre of your own accord
or, dumbstruck,
long for the next sunrise

: The old sea and the man :

For all that, there you sit
staring at the lapping wave,
listening to its last-gasp heave,
and wait for a morrow
that you never before
even dared to imagine

All bright things fade;
darkness is lasting. As Broder Broschkus, declared enemy of all forms of Caribbean merriment, perspired his way up the steps to the “Casa de las tradiciones,” behind him a woman whom, after thirteen years of wedded bliss, he had all but forgotten, he still had only two words of Spanish to his name: “adios” and “caramba,” not counting yes/no, left/right and the numbers from one to ten. Dumbstruck with indignation at the brassy fanfares blaring out at him even here, he let his mind race through the hours remaining to be suffered through before their flight home, and felt tempted to give the bouncer not the expected tourist dollar but a good kick in the pants; naturally he had not the faintest inkling that he was to plunge to his death upon this very set of steps a mere two hours later. This package tour holiday was coming to an end, the suitcases already packed, and it was just before twelve on a Saturday afternoon beneath a colorless sky.
But how cool it was inside, a twilight haze! Although the percussionist was belaboring a horse’s skull with gusto, making the jaw emit a violent rattling sound, although the bass player had placed his lips to the curve of a jug so as to pluck sounds from its mouth with his thick, dark fingers, although the rest of the band was blowing into their axes with great fervor, the locals lay slumped in their rocking chairs, sipping from white plastic cups and smoking cigars that were being rolled for them by one of their number at the center of the room: When he raised his head to get a look at Broschkus—all the others seemed oblivious to his presence—the wrinkles fanned out across his coal-black face. Only a few small children—insofar as they weren’t busy playing hide and seek among the cowhide-covered stools and behind the squat rum barrels that served as tables—only a few children were dancing, right out in front of the musicians, their faces indifferent, their gyrations anything but. So this was it: the most famous bar in Santiago, whose praises Kristina had sung, citing the guidebook, in the most grandiose terms: crowning counterpoint to palm trees, water and sand, and she was doubtless about to declare it all “awesome” or “totally thrilling!” There was a smell of putrefaction, probably coming from the courtyard, chicken thighs or a dead cat rotting, there was a smell of spilled rum and sweaty shoes, with the occasional note of deep-frying or heavy perfume, and a fine thread of urine, acrid and precise, led the way into a back room where domino players were staring mutely at their tiles. If a warm breeze hadn’t just then come in through the window openings, Broschkus would surely have retreated on the spot.
As it was, however, he had scarcely traded the barman a pair of circular gestures of his index finger for a gap-toothed grin, had scarcely carried a mojito (for the señora, sí sí) and a surprisingly cold Cristal past a row of white-painted columns to the first available corner seat when he sank into a stupor. Beneath the music’s steady drone, the pink wooden walls with the photographs of famous singers—and even one of an enormous Jesus who towered up behind the in-the-flesh singers complete with a mitre and a snakelike writhing sword—dissolved into a diffuse Latin melancholy; only at great intervals were there little flies to be shooed, a sip of beer to be taken with half-closed eyes, and since the ceiling fans grated with such regularity, it would have been a simple matter for him to fall asleep, exhausted from two weeks of Caribbean sun and the silences accumulating on both sides. But before Broschkus dozed off altogether, he made a quick trip to the bar, whose countertop was nothing more than a barrel, sawed down the center lengthwise and splayed open, whose concave halves, he imagined, hid the peso bottles reserved for the locals; a second barrel had been split open in similar manner and mounted on the wall behind the bar, each half-torso fitted with a shelf for the official dollar-a-shot rum. Another? The gap-toothed barman grinned at him, apparently the only white man in the place, already with the bottle in his hand. Another, Broschkus nodded, already holding the dollar bill folded between index and middle fingers, almost as casually as a local.
Then he saw her.

Saw the two friends,
though hadn’t they caught his eye long before, sitting there giggling atop their stools, swapping secrets? Certainly they had, the younger one in particular: So young! he’d recoiled in shock, as pale brown as, who knows, what? Honey? Call it dark honey as far as I care, pretty damn dark—Broschkus had emerged completely from his stupor—and now look away.
Present, quite present she was all the same, the one with the honey-brown skin, with the long black ringlets and the shiny-toothed smile whose brilliance reached all the way back to the farthest corner of the room, the hiding place of the Broschkus couple; and lit up the entire region around the bar itself, where husband Broschkus was just dawdling over his exchange of an empty can for a full one. In order to note, just out of the corner of his eye: that this woman, whom one could no doubt still call a girl, that this girl, whom one could no doubt call, just barely, a woman, was dressed in a shabby pair of bicycle shorts, striped yellow and black just like her bustier, that her sandals were primitive, with soles probably cut from old tires, oh yes, even this detail Broschkus felt sure he had grasped. Nonetheless, the girl was transformed the longer she was gaped at in this stupid, surreptitious fashion—transformed by her laughter alone into, devil take it, into the purest grace, that’s right, Broder, for once the word is fitting, growl-grumbled Broschkus, and now beat it.
No wonder he couldn’t quite make himself remember the second of the two women later, just that she was much larger, above all in girth, not exactly fat, just substantial, downright muscular, alarmingly muscular, and—of this he would be quite certain after this fifth day of January—that she was much darker, as dark brown as . . . perhaps as the cigars the frail old man was rolling with such solemnity? That she was bedecked with blue-and-white and red-and-white necklaces, and where the hair should be had a dyed brownish clump of curls, a mop, whose natural black pigmentation was showing at the roots, and she also wore a rhinestone heart on her belt, didn’t she?
But now, now they were dancing.

Right away the horn players picked up the pace,
the drummers drummed with a bit more abandon, harder, the glistening skin of the two dancers was outdone only by the flashing white of their teeth.
Oh Lord, Broschkus thought, can’t someone do something about—
But no, no one seemed inclined to intervene, least of all Broschkus; the two women were dancing with such matter-of-factness that no one would have dared interrupt them, they were dancing so confidently with movements spawned from the very center of their beings, so complacently, so pleased with themselves down to the tip of each limb, with such undeniable self-love, even the darker woman, even she was glowing, and with her heavy flanks striking decidedly feminine sparks. And then the lighter, younger woman—oh, how dreamily she raised her arms above her head as she revolved around her own axis, watching her, it was difficult to take a sip without spilling. Her honey-hued skin, there was a light shining on it here and there as though the sun were shining indoors for her alone, now it lit up her thighs, now her belly, now her arms, constantly these spots of brightness were swirling around her body, the worst was when they crisscrossed the naked expanse of her shoulders.
As Broschkus set the can down, it seemed to him his eyes had fleetingly met hers, and when, a moment later, it was time to reach for the can again, and, feeling intimidated, he glanced in her direction surreptitiously, he felt a warm breeze pass through the room, felt it slip through the open door, crossing the dance floor to the back room and then out into the courtyard making his tongue strike his palate: Had she just gestured to him with her hand, a scarcely perceptible come-hither? Broschkus focused his attention on the man in the straw hat, the one standing next to him with two different shoes on, and finally the cigar-maker: He was wearing a necklace of little white plastic what—beads? Seeds? And how could the beer can be empty already? Or wasn’t it that little hand gesture again which could not have been meant for anyone but him, him of all people? The lightness and ease with which this—this person—was moving her hips, the directness with which she was openly smiling at him, the boldness of her two hands that kept grasping at her eternally flickering narrow hips, that slid up her body, slowly crossing her waist to meet in the middle, upon her naked belly, but then did not continue their upward journey to her breasts, no, that’s just what they didn’t do! instead they intertwined again only when they had reached her hair, ostensibly putting it in order, sweeping it up to one side so as to raise herself up and, proudly confident, commenting for quite some time on the dancing of the rest of the body with a splaying of the fingers: surely only for him, the stranger seated in the corner who was continuing to gape at her, was he not, continuing to smile at her, was he not, to whom above all others she was continuing to display herself? While she even made so bold as to prance a bit in his direction, playfully, in a moment there’d be a pirouette—
Broschkus choked so violently it made him start coughing.

The pirouette
he’d been waiting for, it didn’t come, instead—the cigar-maker, didn’t he have a white bracelet around his wrist as well?—she came parading through this light, through this noise, walking up to him quite openly, already he could see her protruding pelvic bones, the concave contour of the abdominal wall between them; he barely managed to put down the beer can before she had him by the hand, she pulled him from his stool like a little boy. Her gaze, emanating from the moist depths of coffee grounds shimmered-through with green, with a delicate light-brown, honey-brown rim, don’t keep staring into these eyes, don’t keep staring. As he stumbled off, Broschkus registered that the big girl, the girthy, heavy one, had approached the table as well and grabbed hold of Kristina—so the two were in cahoots—and already all four of them were in the middle of the room. Whereupon the band really started playing, a horse-skull-rattling diabolical spectacle, a few of the locals emerged from their stupors, there was some clapping along, some singing along, even the cigar roller briefly raised his gray-and-white frizzy head with the curve of the ears sticking out. Salsa!

Of course it had to be salsa,
which Broschkus detested. In a perfunctory way, he set his legs in motion, more the representation of a dance than the dance itself, he wanted to focus on the silvery toenails before him, on the brown feet in their cheap sandals, on the ankles, sinews, calf muscles; but the girl, swaying in wondrously soft motions, made him a gift of her long black tresses that snapped back and forth in syncopation with her every move, and when Broschkus dared to raise his eyes all the way, she laughed at him with dark lips, a miniscule black gap between her incisors. When she spun away from him, her hair flew into his face; and when she spun right back toward him, she let herself be spiraled in even closer than before, so close that she—reached for him as if in alarm with her long narrow fingers to avoid crashing into him outright, this, too, part of the same fluid motion, and of course her naked brown hips knew what they were doing when they swished against the hips of Mr. Broder Broschkus in passing and—only then did she glide past him, the girl, he felt her breath in his ear. Wafting about her was not some cloying perfume, as Broschkus noted with flared nostrils, but rather a powerful and unadulterated tang as she went on swaying to the beat as if she were all alone in the world and not located in rather dubious proximity to a slightly padded, slightly graying tourist. Oh how hideous Herr Broschkus found himself, how pale, how ungainly, and nonetheless he saw clearly before him the gentle slope of a pelvic bone, saw the sparkling hollows above and below it, perceived a sudden thickening of sound, it was either the beer in his head or a delicate whirring noise, for the fraction of a second he recognized Kristina beside him, Kristina whose properly suited limbs, under the guidance of the dark, heavier woman, had commenced a merry skipping about. Later he claimed to remember above all the way her neckline in back was sitting askew, this of all things, and in the next fraction of a second—? Was that a bite he’d just felt on his earlobe, a tiny bite? Or perhaps more a kiss?
Or just a coolness brushing past him at downy-hair’s-length, already the girl had pulled her head away—but why?—once more she was transformed into pure rhythm, an intricately accentuated pulsation about the midriff that left Broschkus a dumb and dizzy idiot, one moment the trumpet was thruting him forward, the next he was shoved back again by the brief solo on clay jug, now the bongos sent him lunging after the girl with enormous steps, now the guitar tore him away from her, and when, out of breath, all he could manage was to lurch this way and that, she just gave him a look, the girl, looked at him with such innocence, her cheekbone a slender shimmer, a smile upon her lips, that it had most certainly not been a bite, not a kiss, not even a random touch. She looked at him so hard, this girl, that her nostrils quivered, so nakedly, so directly was she looking at him, so ungirlishly all at once, she was all woman now, looking at him with her girlish, no, womanish eyes, something shone green in them, not as a hot promise but as cold desire that completely knocked Broschkus off the beat. Then he discovered it: the hairline crack in all the gleam, a colorless pale crystal embedded in the green of her iris, a millimeter-wide line traced in the left eye from the outer edge of the iris to the pupil, or rather the right eye, that’s right, the right eye, a fleck.
Any second now! —Broschkus didn’t actually think this, though he was certainly feeling it: Any second now the earth will split open and I’ll tumble down to Hell. How loudly the chorus of singers was calling to him, how mercilessly the brass players clamoring for him, how heavily his breath rattled in his chest! But then the woman, right in the middle of her gaze and the trumpet solo and who-knows-why, seized one of his awkwardly dangling hands, she was now all girlishly demure again, and without a word of explanation, led him to his seat.
Where no one was awaiting him, not even Kristina.
When Broschkus had sunk back onto his stool, finding no beer can he could have reached for, the girl bent over in a parting gesture and—kissed, no: bit him gently on his neck? The instant her teeth buried themselves in his throat, gooseflesh prickled up all over his body, I’m going mad, going on-the-spot here-and-now mad! But while he, blind from this surplus of happiness, dared not lift his eyes, he had already been left on his own again. Left sitting beside a properly coiffed lady who, wondrously, had reappeared at just that moment, before a beer can that was empty but, wondrously, back in its place again.
When one of the men seated near them clapped him on the shoulder, Broschkus did not feel it, but he accepted the proffered cigarette without a word of thanks. And smoked it down to a nub in a single drag, he, the self-proclaimed non-smoker, while laboriously attempting to remember where and what he was, surely he had remained an expert in economics (Ph.D.)? A time-tested department head and specialist for downward speculation and short sales? Or was he just another pasty-faced tourist incredulously fingering his throat with crumbs of tobacco stuck to his lips? The ceiling fan, even now it was swirling a tangy scent in his direction, or at least a breeze, the shirt was clinging to his chest, which was violently rising and falling, a disgrace. How greedily the little flies kept flitting about him!

That at some point he had wound up near the exit,
after an additional Cristal presumably and behind an elegant lady whose neckline dipped down in back occurred to Broschkus only after it was too late. Searchingly he looked around, but could see only the cigar-dark woman who appeared to him, now that she had plopped her necklace-laden weight onto one of the stools, who appeared to him, now that she had poked a pair of sunglasses with blue lenses shaped like butterfly wings into her frizzy mop, who appeared to him downright repulsive, yes, everything about her was too liver-spotted, too broad-nosed, too overstuffed, from her cheekbone to her brow she had a scar, and even when she was not speaking, her mouth thrust forward, a moistly glistening obscenity.
Your friend, where is she? Broschkus looked her in the eye, a wedge-shaped opening appeared in the dark-skinned woman’s face, a bright pink tongue-y laugh mixed with a rough torrent of syllables gurgling up from the depths of a rusted watering can. Outside, on the landing, stood the lady, who now turned around, reproachful—oh, of course, it was Kristina—, the horse-skull-rattler took a step in Broschkus’s direction, probably he was going to try to hit him up at the last possible moment. Where is she? Broschkus glanced over quickly at the cigar maker, but he didn’t even look up, just kept rolling tobacco leaves between his hands. Where? Broschkus looked at the barman, who grinned at him, rubbing his two extended index fingers together, Broschkus looked back outside. Kristina had meanwhile made her way down the stairs, clearing the way for a view of—a girl: So casually she was leaning up there against the railing beside the bouncer, so casually, a silhouette in the harsh light from the street.
Herr Broder Broschkus, at once he was filled again with a delicate whirring noise, anything and everything kept drifting into this gentle buzz; but as he spoke only two words of Spanish, not counting the numbers, he set himself in motion and, treading heavily, advanced towards, and then past, the silhouette. As he was already placing the tip of one shoe on the first step—how cool it suddenly was even outside!—he thought “¡caramba!” and said, no, mumbled, for his tongue remained affixed to the roof of his mouth: “adiós.” Then he fell down the stairs and to his death.

Well,
nearly. What had saved him, at least for now, was his wife; when he reached the bottom, ten steps further down, with a twisted ankle presumably and with Kristina, who had been knocked off her feet by the momentum of his stumbling, the sky was white.
“What a . . . conclusion . . . holiday!”
Now she even took him by the hand and dragged him away, into the middle of the street, in full view of all onlookers. What sort of conclusion was she talking about, what holiday?
“Everything . . ., Broder?”
Without awaiting a response, she started walking. But as Dr. Broschkus, the time-tested department head, reluctantly beginning to move, wanted to give a quick sidelong glance up the stairs, he stopped short where he was: Running down towards him two steps at a time was not the bouncer, no-no-no, but the girl, as if he weren’t standing there beside another woman, she came running toward him through this light, this noise, waving some paper money at him. He scarcely had time to twist free of Kristina’s solicitousness before she was standing there before him, trembling down to the flesh of her belly:
Could he please change this for two fives?
The numbers, Broschkus did know them, he understood them at once, there was no need for her to show him her long fingers, five fingers on her left hand, yesyesyes, and five on her right. All the same it was no simple matter to fish the desired bills out of his trouser pockets, it was impossible to look her in the face while doing so, concentrate, Broder, look at the ten peso bill, look at her fingernails, they aren’t silver, they’re white, and try not to breathe for a sec.
When he was finally able to hold out the two fives to her, he breathed all the same—once more inhaling the odor streaming from her body or, at the very least, the world, sank into the green of her gaze such that he had to steady himself by seizing the closest hand in reach, clearly visible was also the matchstick-thin line, the pale fleck in her right eye or rather, not-that-it-even-matters-anymore, her left.
“Hrmph, all this joie-de-vivre around here, this . . . isn’t it all a little . . .”
That had to be Kristina, who was holding him there, now it was time to chime in with a word of agreement, now it was time to just-grit-your-teeth, the joie-de-vivre, it was a little too what?
Listen, Broder, Kristina was pressing him. Didn’t he want to lie down for an hour before their flight “after all this”?
A few moments later, Broschkus was halfway back to the hotel, limping slightly, his right hand on his wife’s shoulder, in his left a crumpled ten-peso note, and his mouth was on fire.

So on fire
that at the next batido stand he didn’t hesitate for long, they had already crossed several alleyways in which there was not even a dog to be seen, and now finally here was something that would unstick his tongue from his palate: banana-juice-milk-and-sugar-water, on ice.
No-thanks, Kristina shook her head, these batidos were packed with indigenous products, she was going to stick with the precautions.
To a Broschkus, all such considerations were of no concern, and a batido the only thing he had developed a taste for over the past weeks. Only after he had emptied two pink plastic cups did he notice, but by then they were already passing the entrance to the cathedral where beggars lie in wait for one with their leg stumps, did he notice that he was now holding in his hand not the ten peso note but an assortment of coins.

And still was holding them
as Kristina already lay beside him on a slack-springed bobbing hotel bed where he was able to wonder in peace and quiet, had to wonder, why the girl had chosen him to hit up for change, when she might have gotten it from the bouncer or in fact from anyone else without the least effort—?
The Caribbean light was seeping in through the slats of the window blinds in long stripes, a constant screeching squealing honking cursing shouting, barely muted, forced its way in and, suddenly, an instant of silence—all the dully incubated misfortune that had been manifesting itself in Broschkus’s life and now, on a smaller scale, on this holiday was now swept away in a single instant, in a flash he was sober again: How could he have been so stupid! How sweetly Kristina lay there beside him with her fussily streaked hair that was in truth utterly unblond, how cluelessly sweet and fragile she looked, how very distant!
Broschkus felt horrifyingly certain he’d just committed a huge error: for possibly on the girl’s ten peso note he would have found everything he had been waiting for, not perhaps for all his life but certainly for the past few years: a name, a phone number, a confession. Even the mattress was beginning to oscillate with the intensity of his comprehension. How strange and white and soft Kristina was, lying there beside him, unapproachably proper even in slumber, it was enough to make a grown man weep.
But this time Broschkus wasn’t even thinking of resigning himself to his displeasure, on the contrary, he would set the error right again. At least this was his firm intention, from out of doors came the din of life, from outside the hotel room life was laughing and coaxing and calling him, already he was out of doors himself, hobbling along filled with determination. And in fact he was able to locate the drink stand without the least trouble.

Ordering himself another cup of batido,
he asked the vendor, a sluggishly shuffling black woman who was supplementing her housekeeping money out of her living room window, asked her with an energetic circular motion of his index finger, to hand over the bundle of ten peso notes she had earned that day, yes-that’s-right, every last one of them, I’m paying in dollars, I’m a collector. When she had at last understood what this madman was after, she certainly had no objection, with great presence of mind she fetched other banknotes from other rooms, shouting for reinforcements all the while, and in the end Broschkus became the owner of all the ten peso notes that she and her neighbors and her neighbors’ neighbors had been able to come up with on such short notice.
Elated, Broschkus betook himself back to his hotel, a sizeable hunk of paper in his hand that felt sticky with sweat and utterly fabulous.

To his wife’s astonishment, he drank
a double whiskey the moment they boarded the airplane.
Broder, what’s gotten into you?
Hm, he didn’t really have the answer to this either, but in fact somehow he knew, and it felt pretty excitingly good—felt good in his chest, leftright, in his loins, leftright, even in his back pocket, here’s to you, sweetheart!
After the meal he had another whiskey, how pleasantly the airplane hummed as he drank, how pleasantly the dimmed-for-the-night lighting shimmered, finally Kristina pulled two plastic pillows out of her hand luggage to blow them up:
Listen, Broder. She found it slightly degoutant how relieved he was that their nice little holiday was over.
As Broschkus was making his way to the toilet, he had to steady himself on the back of nearly every seat. When the brightness flared up upon his shutting the door, he started in horror at the sight of that person in the mirror who kept staring at him, pasty-faced and wrinkled, and then went on shamelessly staring as he fingered his Adam’s apple, beside himself, but then started pulling peso notes out of his pockets with seventeen determined hands, carefully eagerly greedily studying them front and back. Staring as he once, twice gave out a little whistle, then a third one, whereby these whistles merely registered random scribbles on the banknotes, Lord knows nothing out of the ordinary.
Lord knows nothing, did he hear right, nothing out of the ordinary?
Clutching the three ten peso notes in his hand, Broschkus waved them around in front of his mirror image, his evidently clueless mirror image, just look, if you have eyes to see, here they are, ¡caramba! Even more than I was expecting, more than perhaps is necessary.
As his mirror image was clearly a bit slow to comprehend, he was forced to make himself a tad clearer: These notes are options, man, they’re—!
He dabbed at the base of the neck of the guy in the mirror with the corners of his three banknotes: A sort of business transaction, off-market trading, if you will, pretty bloody off, a matter of futures, if you prefer to put it in such terms, that is—what in the world are you grinning about?
“For once in your life follow your gut feeling, JUST ONCE!”
Broschkus flinched almost as dramatically as his mirror image, had that really been him just now, he who always handled his conversation partners with kid gloves, with the dispassionate manner he had worked for years to cultivate? At present, by contrast, everything was creeping away from him, threatening to slip off to the right or the left, why was everything so off-kilter all of a sudden? Why were the banknotes giving off such a stench? All right then:
“For once in your life set your sights high, get it?”
And then in a whisper:
“And above all make sure you act!”
And now uttered only in thought, thought as quietly as could be, as otherwise everything might have started spinning:
It’s about time, too.
How easy it was to make the three banknotes vanish from sight, how easily the notes that remained were dispatched with the aid of the toilet flush lever, no one saw a thing, no one suspected, adiós.
When he had found his seat again, Broder discovered an inflated cushion and next to it a woman already half asleep in her own ruff, oh, that was Kristina:
“Listen, Broder! I haven’t seen you as drunk as this in as long as I can remember.”
Whatever happens, don’t answer. As Broschkus was slipping the plastic pillow around his neck, he attempted to keep smiling straight in front of him—how paltry was everything he had experienced with Kristina! How paltry everything he had experienced without her! Except that, except that, except that which was now quivering in all his muscle fibers and the tips of his hair and his nerve endings and now lay in his wallet in the form of three banknotes, except—Broschkus felt the longing surge up in him so powerfully that his ears buzzed. He didn’t even know the name of the girl, not even one-two-three syllables he might have daydreamed deep into his interior. Kristina? What else did she want from him? Or was it the stewardess who was making some announcement, was that the visibly outraged voice of the stewardess? Who had discovered, regrettably, that it was necessary to request that a bit more respect be shown for the currency of Cuba, it wasn’t so lacking in value that it need be flushed down the toilet, that just plugs up the pipes, thank you. By this point, if not before, Broschkus was smiling, dreaming of a girl who gazed at him with eyes. Dreaming of eyes in which there was a fleck, and when he looked back like that, in his dream, he saw the fleck on her cheek as well, on her upper lip, her neck, the entire body of this girl was dotted with these flecks, a honey-brown body flecked with black, yes: With a smile on his face, Broschkus was dreaming.

On September 16th, 1996, I received a phone call from a certain Gerald Giesecke. Innocently, he asked whether I could see myself writing my next novel – as a so-called “Novel in Progress” — on the Homepage of the German public TV-Program he was working for.
“We’ll take care of the rest,” he promised.
I fell straight into the trap.
Of course, I was a long way away from any “next novel” in 1996. I was still in the midst of working on “Weiberroman” (in English perhaps “The Book of Women”), the life- and love story of Gregor Schattschneider, which was published in July of 97. Because of its three parts and the three women with whom unhappy Gregor as a teenager, twenty-, and thirty-something engages in rather difficult relationships, the press characterized the book as “Weiber-Tryptichon” with all its typical Westernized “mythical” connotations.
However, “Weiberroman”, “The Book of Women” was originally conceived in four parts: “Kristina,” “Tania,” “Katarina,” and “Marietta.” Throughout the years, I had already collected material for “Marietta,” Part Four. Collecting “material” in this case merely meant gathering individual sentences and individual scenes, since I already knew the story itself anyway – or so I thought. I had furthermore decided that this fourth part was to begin with Gregor’s fortieth anniversary – which I considered to be a “magic” date.
Whilst working on “Weiberroman,” it became obvious that this “fourth part” would by far exceed the concept and frame of the novel, which is why my publisher suggested that I make it into a separate, “next novel.” So when Gerald Giesecke first appeared at my home in Hamburg, roughly half a year after his initial phone call, and soon revealed himself as “Dschereld Dschisaiki”, I didn’t need to think long for a topic. But, to write a novel on the Internet at that time seemed to be about the farthest thing from my mind. Of course, no one expected an actual “Internet-Novel,” consisting mainly of Hyperlinks, nervously flashing buttons, click-here and click-there icons, moving images, and as little text as possible. Quite the opposite, I was supposed to write a tedious regular novel which had to be written as a tedious regular text. Since nobody wanted me to produce any kind of “Cyber-Avantgarde,” or, worse still, Internet-Literature, but rather Literature on the Internet, and since the project of the public TV program seemed to result in some kind of a mixture of reality-TV and literary archive, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t take a chance.
Three weeks later, Gerald Giesecke appeared again, this time accompanied by a network graphic consultant and a network technician who took possession of my mouse and would not let go of it, until I had finally realized that from now on, things would not only change drastically on the hard drive of my Computer, but also inside me.

A Traditional Writer Goes Modern

For someone who usually writes in green ink exclusively, the strain imposed by technology is considerable.
So, why did I do this?
Certainly not because I wanted to dispense with my ink. I always wrote and still write every word on paper first, because I believe that you can tell from most texts whether they are purely “hand-made” or not. You can tell from the tiny and tiniest of details, like from originally properly placed filling words, which can quickly turn into needless, missing, or bothersome links, after the text has been cut and pasted a few times. But you can equally tell from the flow and “breath” of sentences which, I believe, can only be created through an organic, wholesome writing process, and not by pressing individual buttons. When working on building sentences it is rather a bother to have automatic hyphenation and a fully flushed paragraph on screen.
And since we’re talking about language – which of course means, writing in my native language, here is the first result of my going online:
The first change, as though it was the famous drop in the famous bucket, was of a linguistic nature: I now hate every word in English.
Not every English word, of course, but every English word in German. I hate every English word which has become part of the German vocabulary, if – and this is important! – there is no adequate German equivalent. The emphasis here is on adequate, since sometimes there truly IS no German equivalent, in which case I fully support the use of Gerglish. Most people, however, use English vocabulary in German in order to profile themselves and their supposed cosmopolitan nature, which I find utterly repulsive.
By the way and contrary to expectation: My writing style or my relationship with language has not changed at all, even after many experiences with “Cyberslang.” Why should it have? When I bought my very first PC, it also didn’t affect my punctuation. Besides, the Internet is an aesthetic, NOT a linguistic drug. It changes the way we see, not the way we write, and its linguistic range is rather poor, consisting only of a minimum of emoticons, abbreviations, and other emergency tools. To try and represent this in my new novel does not mean a change of writing style per se, but rather an addition of another form of artistic representation.

It’s Nobody’s Fault!

While virtual adventures seem to be the last true adventures of our time, as a beginner, one can only survive them if one is willing to consistently engage in new beginnings, or “re-starts.” With me, this is what happened: Whenever things seemed to go really smoothly, for instance when my search engine systematically turned out long lists of possible search results, or when I found myself in the midst of downloading some really flashy new software, “the bomb” appeared: The black symbol of a bomb with the delightful subheading “System Error 11” – which meant to go back and “re-start” from scratch.
Nevertheless, and without the help of any kind of network consultant, I finally succeeded in installing “Netscape Communicator 4.5” on my hard drive, and ever since then, my life is almost back to normal.
And this is where the second change caused by the Internet comes in. It is neither of a linguistic nor of a conceptual, but rather of a sociological-slash-cultural nature: With my cultural and social conditioning, probably consisting of relentless indoctrination some 40 years ago, survival on the Internet was all but impossible. I am referring here to the notion of always looking for all fault in myself.
“Quite the opposite, it’s NEVER your fault,” is what a friend kept reassuring me, when the people from the TV station could never read with their PCs what I had tried to send to them with my Macintosh. “It’s never your fault, it’s always the software’s fault.”
This short sentence changes everything, every outlook on the world, the digital as well as the physical one. I would even go as far as to say that we are dealing with nothing less than a major paradigm shift: From self-defying appropriation of the world towards a cool & relaxed laissez faire philosophy, from at first trying to fight all obstacles towards a more and more carefree letting-go, adapting to any situation: Zen or the art of smiling at a computer crash. While we in the 20th century were still under the impression of “we can do anything,” we are now at the beginning of the 21st experiencing a first glimpse of “anything does,” a curious state, this “anything does,” which we can only defy with an increased play instinct.

Eleven Mariettas

Excuses to not even begin writing turned out to be plentiful. Gerald Giesecke had scheduled the casting of the female main character for October fourth ‘97, only two months after he had first appeared on my sofa. Eleven students from an acting school in Hamburg presented themselves. Up until that fourth of October, I had been fairly certain about “my” Marietta, about the way she looked (including the most delicate details), about her so-called character, about all her ticks and secrets, and of course about her charming personality, which she showed off so well when talking; in short, I was pretty certain about everything and thus put a brief description on the Website:

1. [first] She does not have a pierced nose
2. [second] A foot of hers is a foot – and not one of those sad, lifeless beings
3. [third] She chews coffee beans between her Whiskeys
4. [fourth] Her Tamagotchi’s name is “Percy”
5. [fifth] Kashmir could mean something to her
6. [sixth] On the phone, she sometimes sounds as though she were wearing glasses…

… and so on, up to point number 38, so that the readers of the “Novel in Progress” were already somewhat informed on her half Italian descent, her half-functioning marriage to a Professor of German, all the neurotic little habits of a thirty year old living a somewhat problematic life of luxury on the banks of Starnberger See just south of Munich, someone who is basically predestined for the non-conformist aspects of extra-marital affairs. After all this, the colorful Marietta-being was reduced by Giesecke into a snappy six-line slogan. “You are chatty? Bright and sunny? An intellectually playful work of art? Appear elegant – without giving in to aesthetic cliches? Then you are the woman we’re looking for!” Each of the eleven candidates had one film scene to translate this into – well, at least 38 points. What she did and how she did it was up to her; the TV station caught everything on camera, and then put eleven short video clips on the Website. Within a month, users could vote by Email for the one they wanted to be my main character.
And I? Abstained. I could have had eleven thousand Mariettas to choose from, but the one who came into being over the years, in front of my so-called “inner eye,” would not have been among them. Instead of this one fictitious Marietta that I was so certain of, I now knew eleven pseudo-Mariettas, who in the course of one single day of casting and filming had managed to shatter my original figure: So many new sentences, glances, head positions, that now the story could definitely no longer be told.
Has this ever happened? An author who actually meets his main character, and in eleven versions, before he has written one single line of the affiliated novel? I do not mean situations in which an author finds someone incredibly inspiring for one reason or another, and thus creates a novel around that person afterwards. No, in my case I already had the figure, and now – because of those eleven real-life versions – I had, and this is the third change, much more and much less than before: Everything was up for grabs again.

The Effects of One Straw Hat

Of course my writer’s block was not alleviated by the fact that the winner had been chosen by the end of the Leipzig book fair in ‘98: It was Maike Schiller, 23 years old, blond, and from Hamburg. However, as soon as we started shooting at the banks of Starnberger See, from May 21 to May 23, the crisis revealed its creative value. (By the way: The films were later put on the Website as Video Clips, and a short movie was shown by the TV station). Not only did Maike try everything in order to “become” all the 38 points of Marietta for those two days (for instance: she colored her hair so it would be closer to the north-Italian red blond of the description), she also contributed much of herself to the role, points 39 and following so to speak. Among those contributions was a pink straw hat, which she happened to have brought with her, and which instantly appealed to us. The next day, a bright, sunny, typical May day at the Starnberger See, she not only convinced us, she truly entranced us all: Gerald Giesecke, the camera man, the sound man, and … the author, who thus had no other choice: This pink straw hat would have to appear in the novel, would in fact have to take on a central role, perhaps even as a leitmotif. All this despite the fact that in all those years I had, and I swear, not even one single time thought of a pink straw hat.
And whoever may think that this fourth change of the original writer’s impetus is only marginal, does not fully understand what it means to write. Writing lives off such spontaneous, intuitive images, which is why this abundant supply of images from real-life was the best thing that could have happened to my writing process, even by way of an Internet project. But beware! here comes a trap for literary critics: I do not mean any kind of deeply embedded meaningful motive or structure, which may be very useful for an interpretation of the text as a whole. When I show myself to be this impressed with a pink straw hat, it is neither because it could be a symbol for, say, the innocence of the person wearing it, nor because I want to point to some hidden subtleties in the text. The reason is that it is a pink straw hat which has a pink silk band around it, whose pink ends reach into Marietta’s collar, and sometimes a light breeze coming from the lake playfully blows the two ends of the silk band, and then you can almost smell it, the summer – and this is the reason why.
Of course the pink straw hat was by no means the only thing that Maike added to her role and thus to my main character. Sometimes, we used to meet after shootings, and she would suddenly say or do something I had to write down. Of course, I was again not working on the novel, but at least the collection of material grew, plus there was something special in the fact that I, the author, could just go and meet my main character. Though, I have to admit that I could never forget my very own half-Italian Marietta-creation.

Parallel Forums

With Giesecke’s first visit, we also decided on establishing a so-called parallel forum, since projects on the Web are supposedly interactive, through User-Feedback, so why not also via the possibility of spontaneous co-authorship. Although the novel itself was not supposed to be changed into some unruly exercise in self-sacrifice, into some kind of literature on the Net where the original idea gets changed and split so often that in the end nobody knows any more what is going on and what is being told, let alone why anything is being told. No, this kind of democratic “everyone –competing–with everyone” was not what we had in mind. The actual “text” of the novel was – rather conservatively — supposed to remain the domain of the author alone, whereas the Users had their own space which in turn I was not able to interfere with or impose on. This was the “parallel forum,” in which anyone and everyone could follow along the narrative strands of the actual novel — or counter them, as often and as extensively as desired. Anything was possible: the only rules for both forums were a detailed outline of the actual events of the story, an explicit description of the two main characters – Gregor and Marietta. To my surprise, already by the time of the book fair of ’97 a good number of parallel-writers had come forth. It wasn’t long before they struck, violently, fast, and anonymous, coming from the depth of space and disappearing into the depth of space. Only on the Internet did I discover how paralyzing to one’s own creativity other people’s creations can truly be. Of course you also KNOW as an Offline-Writer that behind every third German apartment-door there is some typing going on, from morning ‘til night, our 80 000 new releases every year do have to come from somewhere, after all – but to actually SEE it with your own eyes – is quite another story.
Despite all of this, four main narrative strands from the parallel forum took serious shape. There were, first, the observations of Marietta’s maid, Ernestine, then, second, those of a private detective, whom Marietta’s jealous husband had spying on Gregor, as well as, third, comments of a future editor of the book, and, fourth, the major outrage: The diary of Gregor’s child born out of wedlock, who had started out on a journey to get to know her biological dad. What?! Gregor was supposed to have a daughter, to top it off, by the name of Laura? And this Laura would want to start working as a maid at Marietta’s of all people? This certainly could not be true!
But it became true, and it became more true every week. The creator of Laura’s diary seemed to have made it her special project to take vast strides with her text. Gerald Giesecke, in the meantime, did not miss an opportunity to enthusiastically inform the press of the “creative pressures” that the co-authorship from hyperspace supposedly had on me, and which was supposed to turn me, the author, into some kind of stage director rather than an author-authority. In reality, however, I was consumed by a rather non-creative vacuum, a kind of an “I’ll see-where-this-is-going-to-lead”- attitude, an “I-first-want-to-watch-this-from-a-distance” –kind of feeling. While my innate desire to procrastinate was thus reinforced, my waiting was not at all unproductive, since some of the details that my co-writers came up with were certainly inspiring. For example: “On the phone, she sometimes sounds as though she were wearing glasses” – this is how it appeared, and this is how it now stands in my 38 points describing Marietta. To top it all off, one day there was — and still is — in the parallel forum, sub forum “Laura’s Diary,” something about a letter that Marietta was supposed to have written to Gregor, and then there was Laura’s comment: “From the way she writes, I immediately thought that she must be wearing glasses.” And whoever may think that this is again just a minor detail, may be reminded that the entire novel after all consists of such minor details – pink straw ones and those with glasses. What else could be made of that superficial idea from back then? If one would take a quick look into Marietta’s handbag, or, from Gregor’s perspective, sniff into Marietta’s handbag, while she had to excuse herself for example, would it perhaps smell as though she was wearing glasses? And what about her wardrobe? And finally her skin: Would it taste as though… well, I hope not!

In the meantime, by the way, the four who in the end stuck to the parallel forum and I already have delivered some communal readings, and I am looking forward to the day when they will be presenting without me, where I will perhaps sit in an armchair at the edge of the stage, and they will demonstrate to the audience, how the thing “itself” grew with and out of the parallel forum, the actual novel!
But first, and despite all of those hopeful perspectives, change no. 5 remains: Writing on the Internet occasionally brings on co-writers who not only raise a painful awareness of one’s creative limitations, leading to insecurities, but also, as with the unexpected daughter of Gregor’s, arouse doubts in the conception of the whole. All this comes at a time when one’s own fantasies are still in a delicate state and even one’s spouse can only correct them gently and with utmost care. In short: Writing on the Web brings on the whole brutality of another mind’s fantasies – and thus a first measure for the staying power of one’s own.

Virtual Work, Virtual Author

And other than that? This literary exhibitionism, necessarily part of the “Novel in Progress” project, leads into “The Great Wide Open,” into a formerly unknown shaky feeling of in-between, change no. 6, which I never encountered when writing the traditional way. It hits immediately, though, as soon as the first draft section of text is being thrust into the open of a potentially worldwide audience. As soon as I received the first comments by Email, it got even worse: The feeling of publishing something which was not yet meant for publication – at the same time, the feeling of not “really” having published it, only virtually. After all, on my Mac at home I didn’t really notice the 5000 hits per week that the “Marietta” Homepage was receiving. Of course things got very serious once I suddenly discovered the name of my editor among the entries in the electronic guest-book, and the next day that of my former publisher. Things got even more serious when invitations to lecture were not based on the publication of my last novel, but rather I was invited to read from a novel of which not one single line actually “existed!”
Those absurdities reached a new high as the “Novel in Progress” went from the Internet into other media, such as German weeklies and dailies. There, it was reviewed and criticized as though it were a finished product. “This is how mainstream is made,” one critic claimed to know, and another daily even believed that the self-presentation of the eleven Mariettas on the Web was my own fault, and added: “He probably wouldn’t have dared to write this on paper!” Another critic from an extremely prestigious German weekly even thought, and – attention! two mistakes in one — I had created my own Website because I was addicted to the Internet.
Well, I am not quite there yet, as I have not even gotten used to my own virtual existence, but if things had continued this way, I would have had to ask myself whether writing books was actually still worth it. Perhaps for some readers, it might be more interesting to write about what one would write if one ever got to it…

Digital Scraps

Contrary to common assumption that the Internet makes our lives faster, more efficient, and more goal-oriented, for me, it lead to a rapid decrease of the writing process, to a long-lasting period of waiting, of not moving forward. Of course, it never came to a complete standstill. Oh no, even I wrote – although not in the forum “the novel,” which for a long time didn’t grow beyond the initial few pages.
Before I can ever get myself to an initial draft, I usually spend years collecting notes – after all, I somehow know what I would like to write in the big scheme, I just don’t know how to resolve all the details. Instead, the outside world knows: By delivering sentences, or even entire scenes, which sometimes, at the very moment when I witness them, are just perfect for this or that particular sequence of the planned novel. Sometimes they are actual sentences I overhear, often sentences and ideas are inspired by scenes I observe.
All this is noted, collected, and … finally adds up to a rather large pile of scrap pieces: the raw material of the novel to be. And then? Individual scraps will be arranged and sorted according to the overall outline of the novel. When I finally write my draft, it often turns out that not all the scrap pieces are being used at the exact place they were meant for, but used they usually will be — up to 90%.
The reader, in the end, of course does not notice anything of this scrapbook technique. However, with a Novel in Progress (while everything was already in progress except for the novel itself), I thought it should not be missing, since it does contain the smallest individual piece of creative fantasy. In a certain sense, these individual scraps really contain more of the novel than the novel as a whole could ever be, since the final text has to be concerned with length and coherence. Also, a writer has to know a lot more about his subjects, places, scenes, etc. than that which will in the end be documented in the book.
Thus, we encounter the seventh change of the former writing process, and this is a significant one: Normally, I would read an individual scrap piece, attach it to a certain point in the outline, and only come back to it once I reach that particular point in my writing. This time, however, I had to come back to my scraps right away, since they had to go on the Web, and for that reason I not only had to type them, but also make sure they could be understood. This forced me to change the tiniest splinters of my fantasy, which I had on paper, into not-so-tiny-splinters on the Internet. Which in turn altered the unwritten, unspoken, and diffuse parts of the original splinters, the creative aura, so to speak, into very precise ideas once they were formulated. For example:
“Has a drink, Whiskey,” it said on one of these scraps, “has a drink, Whiskey,” that was it. To whom was this referring? When in doubt it is usually Gregor, our main character. Did this still match his character, now that I already knew him much better than back then, God-knows-when-I-had-this-idea-about-having-Whiskey? Why not, although he had profiled himself in the meantime as a beer drinker. But, why not. So, when could he…? I decided on point 4 part b subsection 4 on the outline. After an uneventful evening at several bars Gregor comes home and – does NOT go to bed immediately, like he normally does, but instead decides to have a Whiskey. Which is something he would normally only do in the company of others, and therefore rather infrequently. So why does he pour himself one that particular night? Because – he has turned forty in the meantime! This is how the novel starts, this is what it is about, and this will also be its title: “Turning Forty.” So what could it mean for someone like Gregor to suddenly turn forty? For instance: To try something, that would never have occurred to him during the previous forty years. Or something that he would have rejected before? Or simply something he never did, no matter why. So Gregor comes home, sees the dusty Whiskey decanter, and says to himself: Great, now I am finally old enough to drink, even by myself, even when there is no occasion.
Perhaps you yourself can actually do something to nicely round off days like this one – instead of waiting continuously for something to happen – take matters into your own hands. We’ll see.
The fact that this will turn out not to have been his very best idea, is already another story, a bad-morning-story, including a little hangover, and belongs to point 4 part c point 1 of the outline.
And all of this I have to take down tediously as an Online-writer in order to portray approximately what it was that I wanted to remind myself of with “has a drink, Whiskey.” And by doing so and posting it on the Web, I suddenly find myself with a small, perhaps not too unimportant scene: A scene, in which Gregor understood something important about his development. Of course he only grasped it in his action, not on an abstract level, and not on a level beyond drinking Whiskey. And therefore, some other evenings, he could perhaps again … exactly. This could already be the next leitmotif.
This I could never have imagined, had I stayed with my usual habits of ordering the scenes, the way I used to. The pressure of documenting every step, which the Internet creates, forces the novel gradually to reveal its little secrets, and this at a time when it would never happen without the Internet.
And there, under http://novel.zdf.de it could be found a long time before its publication, in its small and smallest particles. In order to read it, you just had to make the links between the individual points of the outline in your mind, and put together the big picture. For those who know how to read like this (and who would want to!) the online-version is with all its 50 scrapbooks and in its 496 pages of total scrap pieces so totally filled with all kinds of thoughts and fantasy-splinters, some of which the published, shorter version “Turning Forty” could never contain.
This idea, however, the idea that the printed and bound version of the novel could never catch up with the promise of its digital pre-stage, this knowledge is so very disheartening for somebody who was in love with green ink for 30 years that, in keeping with Gregor’s character, one really cannot talk about it. Instead, one has to remain silent.
Let’s remain silent, then.