209

Without sun, the cliffs on the eastern shore of Lake Uri
are grey-white, and grey-white and white are both colours.
All is calm, all is bright. Later the cliffs receive a little sun,
and from then on they are greenish and blue-grey, white
in some places. All in all, the mountain flanks have a range
of restrained colours.


                    210

Vivid pale brown next to umber or black. Matt grey beside
deep dark blue. A light earth brown, beautiful next to black
or dark green. Mountain air and Alpine air can be substituted
for indigo. The sky is temporarily white, extremely pale.
Towards evening the silhouettes of the mountain ranges are
almost black, neither dark grey nor dark brown but almost
black, the multitude of grey areas remarkable; I could talk
about the grey-rich Alps and skip the green on the lower
levels. Orange is not present. I should emphasise the shades
of grey as a record of the colours. I have not mentioned tur-
quoise. A comparable colour is mined inside the mountains,
as emerald. A little emerald trickles out of the Alps via the
rivers, all the way down to the Danube.


                    211

Then there are mountain crystals, their colours a challenge,
thus forming a parallel to diamonds. Forming is a good word,
especially with reference to colours.


                    212

Almost monochrome; more monochromatic the closer you
get to the border. Dun would be the right word. The closer
the border gets, the more dun. Yet another border. Every-
one must stop, descend into dun silence and then undress
slowly in all modesty. First shoes are removed, then outer
clothing, then underclothes and finally inner clothing.
Those crossing the border and stopped for the first time
are allowed to dress again immediately after a brief inspec-
tion, and sometimes the undressing and redressing takes
place so quickly that barely anyone notices the procedure,
comparable to the split-second advertisements of American
movie legend. Only once you breathe a sigh, on the other
side of the border, do you notice how colourless the story is.


                    213

Sam wrote to me that he would compile a list of all subjects
and problems he wants to exclude from his notes; Sam is
constantly noting down his thoughts, more than me, and
we rarely show each other our respective entries, but I am
curious to see his list of unmentioned things.


                    214

Travellers include sportspeople, holidaymakers, sales
representatives with business dealings abroad, exchange
students, smugglers, voluntary and involuntary courtesans,
agents, members of parliament, celebrity chefs, geologists
and a large number of photographers, which I have men-
tioned previously (there goes my self-echo), because I often
think of these itinerants and also about the backgrounds
to their expeditions. The backgrounds tell us a great deal,
and the first question is why a person is travelling.

In the midst of this tumult comes a sudden order to stop;
everyone is compelled to stop still wherever they are,
trapped, so that they gradually become residents, all invol-
untarily, achieving a vague equality. All are made equal,
temporarily.

A while passes, no one moves, all that happens is that
some wonder where they have ended up. They look around,
gradually trying to get their bearings because to begin with
they were frozen, listless even towards themselves, they
were frozen in place at the start, and depending on their
own backstories, most of them were more dulled than
excited. They were out of it. Their heads were switched
off, granting protection in shock situations. There follows
the recovery phase, everyone thaws out again, and as time
passes they begin telling of the exceptional state they
have experienced. They tell of how they were prevented
from moving on and were trapped, describing their spectral
situation; some feel comfortable in their misfortune; at
any rate they hunch over their notes simultaneously, not
seeing one another, all writing alone and simultaneously,
and that has a touch of indecency to it.


                    215

Which brings me back to the problematic keyword diary
and the architect, who has no doubt since increased the
number of his separate notes even more, while I have almost
only empty folders on my desk. There is not a single note in
the folder labelled Nations, Various Countries. Nations, for
goodness’ sake! And I have entirely given up on precisely
separating the inseparable topics.


                    216

Sam is continuing his sound recordings in London, in
the lowlands there, as he says. He has been to markets
to record material, to covered markets, and in favourable
weather he has sat down for a coffee outside cafés, in al
fresco cafés, as he says, and placed his recorder on the table.
He played me a few samples on a trip home. We were on the
street outside Manu’s shop when Milly, his ex, came up to
him and embraced him. Why was he neither in London nor
in Basel nor at his office, she asked, but she didn’t need an
answer. He hummed something to her and rocked her a
little, his ex, who then put both her hands in mine and
quickly moved on. Later I heard from Manu that Milly
had a photo appointment with her and they wanted to
talk about fabric samples.


                    217

between benches and tables, I felt instantaneously anxious.
I have bad memories of large gatherings.


                    218

Hundreds lining the street, forming a swarm. Many women
are among them, including older women wearing make-up,
and they’re crying. To be precise, they’re sobbing, hundreds
sobbing; many have previously laid bouquets while the
others queue patiently to lay their flowers and tea lights.
One of the men says he has never cried like this before.


                    219

Thousands lining the streets and unafraid to be in their
thousands. Swarm formation. Suddenly they burst into
tears; the media has its guts in a twist. They all lay flowers,
cry, throw stones, survive and can talk to nobody.


                    220

Scholars offer contradictory statements about the Neander-
thals; hence, the question remains unresolved as to whether
they lived in smaller groups than Homo sapiens, who have
always tolerated or even preferred a community of hundreds.
The Neanderthal groups consisted of thirty people at most,
and I appear to have a significant proportion of genes from
them, being gripped by fear at all larger gatherings.


                    221

We have known for some time that everyone whose ances-
tors were from the northern hemisphere displays a minimal
percentage of Neanderthal, and the people from whom
these minimal percentages originate were also in the Alps.
In groups of thirty, they roamed the mountains and knew
both Alpdruck and Alptraum.


                    222

Reckenbühlstrasse, hikes around Lucerne with the dog,
breaks in between at a café where tourists prefer to
pass by without entering, but are clearly visible. Swarm
formation in smaller groups, thousands roaming the city
in all, but in each case about thirty people, groups of
Neanderthals. Along comes a sudden order to stop, and
they all run back to their buses, embark, fly back home,
and then tourism becomes extinct like the mammoths
once did, and the people of Lucerne and the rest of the
Alps starve to death.


                    223

Quiet time in the guest apartment. There were two of us
in Reckenbühlstrasse for a few days, and then Sam called
us the couple with the dog. Here comes the couple with
the dog, he said, or he asked whether he should bring ice
cream for the couple with the dog.


                    224

I have started a new folder for illnesses, but Sam, who
throws away his own notes, says he will design a wooden
house for me instead of the folders, with rooms opening
into one another back to back where I could store every-
thing I disparagingly call my diary, and then I would have
walkable spaces. For the content of the folders, I would
have a circuit to tour, and I could show the various records
or contents in display cases. We could close the door
on the not yet clearly defined rooms—he showed me how
we could close it—and hang a sign on the door saying
Building Site.


                    225

I shall go to the mountains again soon with Manu, to a
quarry near the Via Mala where the Alptraum is mined,
the Alpdruck, the burdensome dream on the mountains.
There must be people for whom the Alps stack up to marble
and good stone and who think of renowned sculptors,
not ski slopes, says Manu. Quarries in the mountains on
one side, ski slopes on the other.


                    226

A mountain family, five individuals, a small group on
an Alp. They need no one; quite the opposite: they avoid
close contact. They say they don’t want to quarrel, never
want to complain, and yet they quarrel and complain all the
more; a fine five-character tragedy. That’s what they like
because it’s what they are used to, and they do not want to
go without their assets, their habits, for heaven’s sake.



 





                    227

A campaign was held in spring in a former tannery, courses
for hikers focused not on practical exercises but on a lec-
ture by an expert. He would not deny, he said, that dangers
lay in wait in some mountain areas, but there was no need
for qualms—only respect. He spoke slowly, his tone always
resonant, his words resonating, and to achieve this sombre
sound he inserted a series of pauses, even mid-sentence.


                    228

Practice, training, drill, to get to like the Matterhorn.
Exposure to the mountain is a purely therapeutic exercise.
Close your eyes and listen for a possible echo. The idea is
not to turn away heartlessly from the Matterhorn. If those
in training still dislike the mountain after the exercise,
they will be out of pocket, time wasted, but first of all they
should expose themselves to it. They should close their
eyes in the face of the big white mountain horn that they
do not wish to climb, and develop a feeling for the innards
of the mountain. On the inside of this rough hulk there are
minerals. They should take no notice of the people arrived
from abroad and standing alongside them, looking up at
the horn and exclaiming, Oh wonderful. These travellers
had adjusted to the circumstances before they travelled,
force-fed Wonderful and unable to see for real. They think
the white horn is called Wonderful. The real practitioners,
however, want to overcome their heartlessness; their
practice means turning to face the mountain, turning to
face it is all a matter of practice, and then they will manage
the first step. They wonder how long this hulk might have
been there. The rest remains open.


                    229

I am more of an observer of mountain silhouettes.


                    230

At a height of two thousand metres, we were set down by
a helicopter on the ground outside the hut. I wanted to try
out the altitude up there and savour the altitudinous view
without having to climb, and an unexpected bonus payment
meant I could afford the excursion. We were to be picked
up again the next day.

Undertakings of this kind rely on good contacts or financial
reserves, and I have limited admiration for such excursions.
In addition, I consider travellers colonists, and that meant
I too was occupying the hut at two thousand metres.

There was a barley broth in the early evening, even better
than the first one I’d eaten in Chur, and a good chunk of
cheese as well, but the warden informed us with clenched
teeth that a storm warning had been issued the night
before. He himself had originally wanted to fly away in
the helicopter that had brought us, so as not to experience
the predicted stormy night, but no one had listened to him,
as if he were a mountain vole. So es G’heu: what rot. And
now we have the storm to look forward to. Don’t be afraid,
he said, it might be fine.

Later, the gusts blew open a window—aufgestossen, the
hut warden said—shattered the panes. Our host came with
boards and nailed up the gap. Then came more shattering.


                    231

In another mountain lodge, I had my own room. No one
forced me to the edge of the steep slope, I did not have to
look down to the depths from the harsh incline, and after
two days I knew which mountain to expect the morning
sun to appear behind. It would have been best to stretch
out on a deck chair by the wall of the building and stare
out at nothing.


                    232

I took the mountain railway up to the hotel, then sat at a
table with a stranger who regaled me uninterrupted with
stories about his past, mountain affairs, political affairs,
love affairs. He sprayed his cheating right in my face. After
dinner, I got up, wanting to be alone, but he followed me
and regaled me with more episodes from his invented life.
I like the quiet in the mountains, I told him, but still he
went on talking, and this dissonance made me feel genu-
inely nauseous, which is down to an ancient disease, not
a hereditary disease but an ur-disease I have contracted
of my own accord, but which I stand by.


                    233

What happens when six people are trapped in the moun-
tains and are overcome by an icy storm. Will they die?
What do they say as the storm comes in and the cabin
cannot stand up to it?


                    234

The six people are carried to their graves.


                    235

Indigo could be substituted for mountain air and Alpine
air, so I have breathed in indigo.


                    236

We arrived at the hotel delayed, which they took as an
affront to begin with, but later they let us order a little
something to eat in the restaurant. Outside we saw
mountain silhouettes and, at a certain distance, lights,
the lighting of other mountain restaurants.


                    237

The memories of the separate mountaintops peek out of
the sea of fog; or memories, some of them, are located above
the fog. Perhaps I could use the topographical term shoulder
drop in this context, referring to what is visible beyond
the fog.


                    238

A sad chapter. Drop. Descend, dive, dip. Plummet, hurtle,
The memories of the separate mountaintops peek out of
the sea of fog; or memories, some of them, are located above
the fog. Perhaps I could use the topographical term shoulder
drop in this context, referring to what is visible beyond
tumble, plunge. Then skids, scratches, scrapes and scuffs.


                    239

On the way down from the rocky heights, trees soon came
into play, then railway tracks, a train incarnate passed us by,
and from the cable car a village gradually grew visible in the
valley.


                    240

The fact that the dog enjoys flying with us is another
incentive for theoretical flight plans, for flights that are
out of the question. The losers of all this flying are clear
(the mountains only one of them); the consequences are
not worth discussing.

From Lucerne it takes a good hour to Mont Ventoux.
The giant stands illuminated in the west, and illuminated
in the east stands the Dachstein, even further east the
Vienna Woods with their slopes down to the Danube, and
when I speak of west and east, I see myself in the middle.
A number of watersheds, water divides can be seen or
guessed at from above, and sometimes even weather
divides.

Since I like flying but refuse to fly, I am allowed to imagine
the ideal flight altitude and picture the weather situation.
We are silent during the flight, looking down on the Alps,
looking into the valleys.

Love of flying is embedded in our bones and might explain
our urgent lust for overview.

The dog cannot smell the ground from a plane, he can
hear nothing remarkable over the noise of the engine, he
relies on his not particularly strong eyesight, so on his
previous flights he concentrated on his sight. And on boat
trips, he quickly grew accustomed to the speed and the
field of vision.


                    241

Before the planned trip to the Schafkopf, I went to Uri for
a second time and stayed with Herr Epp, the warden of the
mountain lodge. I was in a fairly familiar place, although it
was only a small portion of familiarity, a room where I could
look out into the surroundings from the protection of a
large desk and enjoy a day without having to listen to talk
of swings, and swings to the right.

My host welcomed me with a sparse smile. Later I under-
stood that he had found an injured sparrowhawk that morn-
ing, in the woods lower down the slope. A large female, she
had had trouble breathing and had grown apathetic, he told
me (if I understood rightly). He had taken the sparrowhawk
into his home and briefly hoped for recovery, but at noon
he had to lay the dead bird on a rock away from the house,
so that at least the other birds could make use of its corpse.
Now the bird was in sparrowhawk heaven, he said.


                    242

There is a sparrowhawk heaven, a heaven for mountain
eagles, a sheep heaven, one for Alpine choughs and one
for wolves; there is a heavenly cartography for one and all.


                    243

This time it rained incessantly on the mountain and there
was no need to observe the clouds. I had planned notes
on beetles and flies, on all the beetles I have ever crushed
under my feet and all the flies that have sought me out in
their hour of death. I was going to add an extremely detailed
description of the spider I had observed for several days
on a window. Her web was large and pedantically beautiful
and always apparently empty, since she stayed hidden
behind the window frame on the outside of the window,
but as soon as a fly ended up in her web she raced across
the threads on her black-and-white-striped legs to her prey.
First the disciplined attention, then the sprint, and once
she had sprung her trap she stayed with the fly and held it
in a long, firm embrace. That calm after springing the trap
was what I wanted to describe.


                    244

In the afternoon Herr Epp summoned his guests for coffee.
A young Swedish couple was among us, staying in the room
next to mine, and they sat closely side by side in the kitchen.
We stuttered friendly yeses and nos, nodded and ate pas-
tries, then a man joined us unexpectedly. He happened to
be in the area, he said.

How can anyone happen to be in this isolated area by
chance!

The visitor was pre-programmed, a pre-programmed
man with an unmoving expression and a freshly ironed
shirt (he was roaming the area in a freshly ironed shirt);
he talked about his health, he was an advocate of health,
he said, and regaled us with his morning routine, told
us he breathed in and out by an open window every day.

The Swedish couple left the room quietly, and when I too
wanted to leave the warden drummed his fingers on the
tabletop, which the visitor could hardly have missed—but
he went on regaling. Our host barely looked at him and
the guest stared right past him as well.


                    245

Without much thought, I could place other people alongside
this visitor, all of them around the same height, wiry and
determinedly self-satisfied, and I could mix all four of
them up.


                    246

How different individuals take a seat at a table, how they sit,
which questions they ask, which they never ask, how these
people ignore questions, how they don’t look at the people
they are apparently addressing when they talk—they stare
into a corner or into the distance. A group portrait with a
basic pattern.


                    247

I thought from the outset that the warden had a southern
touch to him; it was not his measured motions, not his
language, but perhaps it was his calm, sonorous voice.
Let’s say Epp’s father had fallen for an Italian woman, or
it was his great-grandfather, or both the great-grandfather
and the father had fallen for Italian women. The Epps of
Uri loved women who had crossed the Alps from the south.
When the Gotthard Tunnel was built. But it was mostly
men who came from Italy to build the Gotthard Tunnel,
and their names were not Epp.

Does asking these questions about the history of a certain
person help me to get to know the person better? If it is
about only their origins, I must rule out the thought from
the outset; I want nothing to do with those questions about
origins and ancestors.


                    248

A storm would follow on immediately from the rainy period,
Lucius had informed me by text message, and yet I had still
not expected a storm after the incessant rain. I thought tur-
bulence was linked to extreme weather changes, dry versus
wet, hot versus cold, but then a fully fledged thunderstorm
came over us, with great gusts of wind. Power lines were
torn down, railway tracks blocked by fallen trees. The trees
were forced to fall.


                    249

It was only after the storm that I saw how empty the vil-
lages were. I was in a badly lit dining area somewhere in no
man’s land, sitting beside unoccupied tables. Later I saw
red kites hunting outside, but barely any people. Beside the
little inn stood two damply gleaming horses, their heads
lowered. They trotted slowly towards me.


                    250

They say Glenn Gould loved talking to animals most of all.
So do I, especially to tapirs.


                    251

Aboard the postbus to Hertenstein, I saw an establishment
with the blue-illuminated name of Club B, and next door
to it a hairdresser by the name of Lockenstube: curl parlour.
Inventive names—that is the new poetry. I got off the bus
and went into Club B, where I drank a hot coffee alongside
teens with their backs turned to the television.


                    252

A documentary about Mont Blanc covered what is known
as water pockets, running water underneath glaciers, which
normally takes decades to trickle from the peak to the foot
of the thick ice sheets. But when the glacier melts too fast,
the rising water bursts through the cavities, breaks through
the surface of the glacier and the gigantic slope is flooded,
all the way down to the valley. In the nineteenth century,
one of the first groups of tourists was killed in such a flood.


                    253

Frozen corpses. Corpses in the mountains, one in Scan-
dinavia, one in the Alps, both frozen over. A female person,
found recently, stares endlessly up at the sky, it seems,
although she no longer has eyes.


                    254

Are frozen ice-corpse women friendly? They say women
are well disposed to one another, but such generalised
friendliness would be a joke few women find funny.


                    255

In practically every village, even the main roads are empty.
When a bus stops at its usual interval, two or three people
disembark and immediately disappear. Empty pavements,
no car horns, though no one has been locked in or locked
away. The silence is a sign of digital labour. Everyone can
be reached by internet, no one need set foot in the street.
Outside a front door a young couple are intensely entangled,
which is hardly heroic and would not be so in a busy area,
either, except now the two of them have no need to think,
since no one will see them.


                    256

Love no longer occurs, abolished since Darwin; what
remains is diaries and calendars with brief notes.


                    257

Just now, I lost another second’s thought, even though I
find these short sprinklings of ideas useful to capture the
details of a moment.


                    258

Mobile phone photos in the Alps are also interested in the
moment.

Experiences are deposited by photo and only experienced
later.

The photos created don’t count as experiences, for the time
being, because taking snapshots requires only short bursts
of concentration, Manu says, and Ruth laughs because she
agrees.


                    259

Transient ideas and the Alps are closely related. In both
cases, a person needs surefootedness. One false move
during mental mountaineering and the thought plummets.


                    260

Surly, dismissive, hostile, wordless, impassive, disdainful,
impersonal.

Digital silences, altered forms of politeness. No responses
to the simplest of questions. Whatever you do, do not
respond! Many people are so busy that they really cannot
respond, while the ones who do respond probably have a
lot of time because they’re not needed.


261

If you have time, go to the mountains. If you can’t get the
hang of the mountains, turn around and go home. That
would be the mountain-lovers’ view. There is this view
and that view. From my perspective is not a bad phrase.
This tolerant formulation has snuck in recently; it usually
appears in commentaries on sporting competitions, and
competitions are certainly relevant in the Alps. The Alps
are a sports ground. From my perspective they are a sports
facility.

When did Alpine admiration come about!


262

I shall draw a steep slope that can only be conquered in
climbing shoes. On the way up, my well-trained arm
muscles, leg muscles, abdominal muscles are visible, my
focused gaze trained on the mountain, but I slip and fall.


263

There are my-mountains and not-my-mountains, but after
this calming insight we return to the digital; in part it is
useful, in part too much silence arises and we lack direct
contact. One compensation is swarm formation. Thousands
come together. They cannot yet compete with the surpris-
ing formations of starlings, the flight manoeuvres
of their huge black flocks.


264

Other than that, the silence remains. On Lake Walen I go
into a bakery, stand there alone, see various pastries for
warming up on display and the necessary microwave at the
back, and I do not say that I would like a slice of spinach
quiche but instead I use the local term Spinatwähe; but I am
not understood, my pronunciation gets in the way. A tourist
trying too hard to please, the baker thinks, not hiding his
thoughts, and he smiles the way people smile at strangers
who are welcome to pass through. I’m not a tourist, I say,
and I point my finger at the slice I want him to warm up for
me. What does he know about pronunciation! He doesn’t
want to know much about it; he has a vague idea of how the
Grisons speak, accepts the Glarners, the respected Berners,
he knows his way more or less around the central Alpine
region, hears the differences instantly—though he doesn’t
find the Appenzellers’ accent attractive—but there are
limits to his tolerance. The unpleasantly unfamiliar begins
in Austria and Germany, that’s when his ears close up. The
ears protect themselves, especially in mountain landscapes.
Every valley has its own tone. (Every family has its own
tone; I’m repeating myself, there’s my echo again.)

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