Series Notes Contact Rehearsal Hotel
Series Notes Contact Rehearsal Hotel
34.
Mountainish Notes 209 / 264
Zsuzsanna Gahse
Translated from the German
by Katy Derbyshire
Mountainish Notes 209 / 264
Zsuzsanna Gahse
Translated from the German
by Katy Derbyshire
A still from Huw Wahl’s 2020
documentary portrait of the poet Stephen
Watts, The Republics.
documentary portrait of the poet Stephen
Watts, The Republics.
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Back to Rehearsal.
* * *
Back to Rehearsal.
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An excerpt (care of Prototype Publishing) ...
* * *
[...]
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 turquoise. 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. Everyone 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 inspection, 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 mentioned 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 involuntarily, 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
A year ago, at a festival with two or three hundred people 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 Neanderthals; 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 ancestors 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 everything 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.
* * *
[...]
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 turquoise. 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. Everyone 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 inspection, 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 mentioned 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 involuntarily, 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
A year ago, at a festival with two or three hundred people 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 Neanderthals; 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 ancestors 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 everything 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 lecture 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 genuinely 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 mountains 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 understood that he had found an injured sparrowhawk that morning, 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 pastries, 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 turbulence 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 villages 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 surprising 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.)
A campaign was held in spring in a former tannery, courses for hikers focused not on practical exercises but on a lecture 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 genuinely 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 mountains 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 understood that he had found an injured sparrowhawk that morning, 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 pastries, 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 turbulence 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 villages 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 surprising 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.)
Zsuzsanna Gahse, born in Budapest in 1946, has lived in Vienna, Kassel, Stuttgart and Lucerne, and is now based in Müllheim (Switzerland). Her literary work moves between prose and poetry, narrative and scenic texts. She has published more than thirty books, most recently Bergisch teils farblos(2021) and Zeilenweise Frauenfeld (2023), both with Edition Korrespondenzen in Vienna. A number of her stage projects have also been performed. She was awarded the Johann Heinrich Voss Prize of the German Academy in Darmstadt for her translations from Hungarian to German in 2010, and the Swiss Grand Prix for Literature in 2019.
Katy Derbyshire, originally from London, has lived in Berlin for over 20 years. She translates contemporary German writers, including Inka Parei, Heike Geissler, Olga Grjasnowa, Annett Gröschner and Christa Wolf. Her translation of Clemens Meyer’s Bricks and Mortar was the winner of the 2018 Straelener Übersetzerpreis (Straelen Prize for Translation), longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017, and shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. She occasionally teaches translation and co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show. She helped to establish the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, awarded annually since 2017.
Katy Derbyshire, originally from London, has lived in Berlin for over 20 years. She translates contemporary German writers, including Inka Parei, Heike Geissler, Olga Grjasnowa, Annett Gröschner and Christa Wolf. Her translation of Clemens Meyer’s Bricks and Mortar was the winner of the 2018 Straelener Übersetzerpreis (Straelen Prize for Translation), longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017, and shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. She occasionally teaches translation and co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show. She helped to establish the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, awarded annually since 2017.