Of course, there were several ways to put this story into perspective: For one, Kienagl’s report, as earnest and as naïve it might be, was full of logical errors, overlooked facts, and the overinterpretation of even the smallest details. Because the composer of these lines was a lonely, sixteen-year-old boy hungry for experiences, who yearned for any kind of occurrence in his ivory tower. In addition to this, he already had serious health problems at this point, and severe attacks of fever, which could have compromised his ability to make judgements. Secondly, even if it were a factual account, the scope of the implications would be enormous. Perhaps he just wanted to see something in it. And this ferocity of interpretation applied equally to me: the findings that I absolutely had to acquire, made them, as it were, worthless.
I remember the last forty-eight hours before the festival as a single expanse.
The first thing that is still present for me is the music, and how the brass band paraded in front of my house — an implausibly, eternally long, almost continuous procession that would not stop playing ‘Radetzky March’ until the following day. I awoke early in the morning and spent an hour or two lying on my back in bed, as if my bedroom ceiling held the answers to all the unasked questions I would have to confront myself with that day. The whole town resounded with hundreds of musicians rehearsing their marching formations at the last moment. The curtains fluttered, and I was sweating from the first coffee of this final day in Greater Einland, while I got dressed and carried some things to the car.
There was a spirit of optimism outside that soon gripped me, too: the atmosphere was brimming with enthusiastic energy, so I decided to take a short walk.
Apparently every resident was already up and about at this time, and supporting one another on their many paths to get things done. Housewives were setting out coffee and cake on the street with a sign that said ‘Free’, and people who were busy tying garlands to the streetlamps in their dozens helped themselves. Others carried an entire living room’s worth of furniture out into the street: sofas, side tables, and winged chairs, so that the theatre groups could sit down between rehearsals in the middle of the road, where they had conversations with the dogsbodies over a beer. Everyone was slightly drunk and softly beclouded, the conversations wadded, faces blurry. The children ran across the squares in their freshly tailored lederhosen and dirndl and played with footballs, especially in places where no one had ever been allowed to play football before, and it seemed as if all prohibitions had been swept away. I hurried to get back inside before anyone spoke to me.
What I had to do upon waking was to bring my highly efficient preparations to an end. I had everything I would need for my departure in two travel bags and a box, which fit in the boot of my car. I said goodbye to everything else inwardly — I’d done laps around the house yesterday before cutting myself off from every single thing individually, mostly wistfully, yet finally sure of my decision. I had memorised the route I would drive out of the town tomorrow: Johannesstrasse — Auf der Haiden — Gmeingrubenweg — Schlossstrasse, and then the well-preserved forest road behind the castle. All the other roads were either too decrepit to be used, or guarded, like the two fresh access roads that had been built for the tourist coaches. In the last few weeks, I had settled my so-called affairs: the house had become, as I had declared in a legally binding manner and had confirmed by a notary in Vienna, the property of Sister Elfriede, who had finally entered emergency housing two weeks ago. The plan to say goodbye to my acquaintances and friends here by letter, on the other hand, I had ultimately quashed after the first few fruitless attempts — all connections would have to be severed. I kept getting the peculiar feeling that someone would hold me back, that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave this place after spending three years here. No one had ever done anything like this before. Nevertheless, I now locked the hard copies in the armoire upstairs, and put the key in my pocket to take it with me.
Tomorrow at eight, when I was supposed to give my speech, I would, naturally, not give it. Instead, as soon as all the journalists and guests were in position, I planned to announce, loudly and clearly, what I knew no one wanted to hear. My report was patchy, but shocking. Was it shocking? The gaps wouldn’t matter, if everything went according to plan. The printouts I had prepared for the journalists now lay on my otherwise empty desk.
At the same time, I still had no idea how I was supposed to hand them over without being noticed. That wasn’t the only unknown. Whether I would be forced away from the microphone or whether I would finish what I wanted to say, time would tell, but one thing was certain: at the first opportunity after that, come what may, I would have to get into the car and flee. I would push my way through the crowd, maybe have to run — but why would anyone chase me anyway? I wasn’t doing anything illegal. A snack station was being set up at an intersection not far from my house; a great number of beer barrels were being hung on hooks. I greeted a couple of women whom I knew by sight, and received as thanks a piece of cake along with a cold mug of Zwickl, which I hastily and gratefully guzzled. Then I went up to the castle and made a couple of phone calls, just to reassure myself that no one would forget what to do tomorrow, before I walked back down to the town at noon. Strange: everything was ready, and yet there were still a thousand things that needed to be done. Everything had been resolved, and at the same time nothing was.
‘Hey Ruth, I’m looking forward to your appearance tomorrow!’ someone yelled my way, and I raised my hand before I could see who it was. Laughter in the distance. And then there was this atmosphere again —
It felt like we were experiencing the busiest hour of the year and the most significant public holiday at the same time: no one went about their business, unless it was of importance to the progress of the whole thing. This atmosphere spread over everything like a velour carpet, with a softness that seemed to be redrawing everything anew.
Whereas the truth was, of course, that many of the questions we’d been asking ourselves for months were still unanswered; we did not know whether the safety of the visitors was guaranteed or whether the moment all the heralded tourists marched through the town gate, the asphalt would break. Yet precisely because nothing was certain, we walked towards the coming day with somnambulistic self-confidence.
With a weak dose of lithium, I prepared myself for another wave of social interactions: I trembled as I shook hands with the politicians, trembled as I handed out the coupons for the market stalls, and trembled as the filling trucks rolled in and parked on the football pitch for the next day. I was extremely nervous about the following day, and not only on account of my revelatory intentions. I felt responsible for everything that could go awry — and the fact that I might already be over all seven mountains by then didn’t change that. Or was I trembling at the thought of my own flight, and the possible catastrophes didn’t change anything? Would the inhabitants be shocked by what I said, or rip me to shreds as the harbinger of doom? Lately, instead of becoming more familiar, the Greater Einlanders had become an impenetrable riddle. How they would react could never be anticipated.
Now, for example, while I was walking through the town, I only saw smiling faces: two weeks ago the public’s anger at a local council meeting had escalated to such a degree that this joviality seemed practically uncanny. To our great surprise, the meeting had been attended by a large number of Greater Einlanders.
Even when the mayor cleared his throat four or five times, the heated crowd hadn’t wanted to shut up. This is why he hit the microphone several times with the palm of his hand — a gesture that has stuck in my memory. What kept the crowd in verbal motion was a polyphonic ‘broken windows’ effect: whenever anyone intended to be quiet, the others continued to speak for a moment, and the person who had actually wanted to stay quiet imagined that they could respond to what had just been said without any harm being done. When the mayor had finally yelled authoritatively into the microphone, after many minutes of trying to tame them, t
here was silence for a moment.
‘We have gathered here today to discuss the festival taking place two weeks from now,’ he said, thrown off by the silence. ‘As you all know, after we had too few volunteers to organise this great and also difficult hour for our town, we issued a binding decree according to which every resident of Greater Einland must do their part. Not many have refused, but it’s still a few too many. Failure to comply will now result in a penalty.’ A murmur had already been simmering underneath the mayor’s speech, which now sparked from one person to the next, like small spreading fires.
‘So we ask,’ continued the mayor, sweating profusely, ‘that you don’t hold it against us if you’re assigned an unpleasant job or put to work clearing or brightening the place up. These are tasks that no one signed up for, and, in the name of community cleanliness, we must devote ourselves to them. Most urgently.’ Whistling ensued — and at the same time a couple of people stood up and signed up on the lists provided.
‘For example, there’s still a strong so-called surplus in the area of …’ but then it was over, and the first member of the public interrupted his speech.
‘And what about the danger to our children? And to anyone who works?’ someone shouted, and I had been compelled to stand up and see who had spoken, as remarks such as these had never been heard in this narcoleptic community until now. But whoever it had been — he had already fallen back into the collectively surging ocean of anger, from which it had started to froth.
‘I don’t know what you mean. We are acting to the best of our knowledge and belief. We aren’t able, as some people believe, to do the filling first and then have the festival, because then all of our planning would be redundant,’ the mayor said.
‘The town looks like a pile of rubble. And what are you going to do if someone dies? What about Himmelgründen?’
A predictable question — yet the inevitable collapse of the mayor had begun. The accident on the Himmelgründen, south of the primary school, would have been almost comedic if it had not led to serious injuries for some of the children: a group of pupils, who were supposed to be practising a ribbon dance to a medley of works by Gustav Mahler in a daring array of styles, were rehearsing their repertoire there when the unexpected had happened. The girls had on gold tassel hats, which were tied with red ribbons to a May Pole. In the course of the performance, these were to become braided with the boys’ white ribbons — in other words, all the children were more or less fixed to the pole and were animated to dance to the sounds of ‘I Walked Across the Fields This Morning’ when the stone material suddenly loosened, causing the concrete plinth to collapse.
The wooden post to which the child dancers were chained plummeted downwards into the ground. Within a second, the girls were launched into one another by the hats firmly attached to their scalps. The boys, instructed not to let the ribbons slip out of their hands, were caught in the middle of going through the motions of their shoe-slapping. Although the May Pole was sucked downwards and disappeared into a hole barely twenty-five centimetres wide, none of the children had suffered the same fate, because the gap was too small for a human body. It had only resulted in minor injuries and concussion, but the incident had, for the first time, caused severe irritation.
‘That was down to bad planning and won’t happen again,’ the mayor said, and waved towards the first row, where Philipp had risen. ‘Our structural engineer,’ he said, but the people were shouting across one another like naughty schoolchildren. To my astonishment, even Sister Elfriede had got up, raised her hand at a right angle, and pointed at the stage.
‘I am greatly worried about how the public will see our town if things don’t change. What will people say about us if the journalists come and Greater Einland is hanging lopsided? We’re actually a clean town, upright and beautiful, always have been. The fact that everything’s crooked now doesn’t suit us at all,’ she repeated. Isolated clapping. Upright, I thought, looking around at the assembled community.
‘You have to think of it as a habitus, a kind of brand. We’re not, so to speak, hanging wonkily, it’s going to be highly stylised when we’re done. You will all understand that afterwards. Yes?’ Like a high school teacher among chaos, the mayor pointed to someone right at the back with their hand up, as a reward for their civilised behaviour.
‘I see it the same way,’ said the man, whom I recognised by sight. ‘Nobody should be able to judge us from the outside, no one can do that.’ And then he added, as if it didn’t contradict what had just been said: ‘And if someone from outside does judge us, then it can only be the way we want it to be.’ Hoots of agreement. Now even the less courageous among them felt compelled to shout things out. Although the mood was so turbulent that to an inexperienced observer it would have appeared as if it was threatening to deteriorate, I got up and left. I was dead tired and knew that nothing would really escalate here; knew that the Greater Einlanders turned away before the actual act, and everything fell in on itself like a pan of overboiling milk taken off the hob. The same thing happened a day later.
As much as it simmered below the surface, on the surface it was wonderfully languid and festive, where there was a mutual lulling effect. I, too, succumbed to this magic: what had seemed a sure sign of decay for all the previous months and years suddenly turned into historical scenery before my eyes as I walked through downtown.
The filling trucks were already parked next to the stadium. There were ten vehicles, each with a capacity of thirty-two thousand litres, and a compressor, along with a twelve-metre-long hose that could be connected to the hole at special docking points. In the middle of the football pitch, a gigantic area had been set up for the ceremonial speeches. A thick pipe was connected to the main chasm underneath the Market Square to attract the public — and, like tapping a beer keg, a kind of bolt would be driven in and turned to set the pumping in motion. The presentation space of this folly was a one thousand and fifty square metre stage, which covered a good third of the playing field and was deliberately exactly a hundred square metres larger than the one at the Vienna Municipal Hall. A good dozen technicians had disappeared behind the pompous machinery and were in the process of setting it up.
Stocker, the head of the builder’s yard, jumped out of a truck and came over to me. When I was standing opposite him, I saw that he looked at least as worn out as I felt myself, marked by the sleepless nights. Indeed, he needed a moment before he even realised who I was. ‘Everything’s ready, Ruth, we checked the docking points yesterday. The trucks deliver,’ he said, pushing back his cap. The Countess had financed the vehicles personally, which was an absurd investment, especially since they would never be needed again. ‘Are you going to go over later? To the mixing factory? It’s meant to be an impressive sight, I’ve heard.’ I shook my head. At that moment, the filling agent was being mixed together in ten converted barns throughout the whole of the town, ready to be collected by the trucks that night.
‘Who can I give my speech for tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said and screwed up his eyes, as if he first had to force a double image to overlay itself. ‘About tomorrow, yes, that’s right. We’ll do it in this order: First the mayor will speak, then the Countess, then me, then you. That means you’re on at eight.’
‘Eight,’ I repeated nervously, handing him a piece of paper. ‘Here’s my speech.’
‘Very nice,’ he said, scanning the text I had no intention of reading aloud. ‘A speech about Greater Einland and its nature, I like it. Certainly better than what I’ve come up with. We’ll set up the microphone tomorrow morning, alright? Headset?’ I nodded and patted him on the shoulder, before I climbed back up the stadium steps.
After I’d arrived home, I checked three times that the doors and windows were tightly shut, and went through all the rooms to make sure that no one had got in while I’d been away. Nothing conspicuous, of course — then I sat on the sofa and waite
d. She would call me at three, she said, but now the minutes were dragging on, and when the phone finally rang, it was as if it had happened out of nowhere.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Thank you for calling.’
‘Not at all, Ruth,’ my aunt answered gently, as if not to spook a small animal. ‘Thank you for your patience. Will we really be seeing each other in Vienna next week?’
I looked around one last time, fearing for a moment that someone might overhear my answer. ‘Yes. Did you have a look?’
‘I have,’ she said, audibly relieved by my confirmation. ‘Listen, Ruth, how should I put this? Your parents did actually bring all these loaned documents back to Vienna, and we found the folders in the jumble of what they left behind.’
‘And? Where are they?’ My aunt didn’t say anything for a moment.
‘It was a very long time ago, all of this. I had to look at the estate list first, and you may not know, but at the time there were some ambiguities regarding the inheritance. Especially since we couldn’t find you. So much happens in six years.’
‘Three,’ I said. Silence on the other end.
‘Six, Ruth. You’ve been gone for six years.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said exasperatedly, and began counting the years on my fingers, but nothing fitted together anymore, then my aunt was already speaking again, as if to resolve this conflict before it had even arisen.
‘It’s not important,’ she said. ‘In any case, we actually found the folders, even if we had to rummage through all the boxes at the storage depot.’
‘So, can you send them to me?’ I clung on tightly to the edge of the coffee table, still dizzy from the lithium.
‘Ruth, that won’t help you much. That is to say, they were empty. It was very strange.’
‘What do you mean empty? What did they have empty folders for?’
‘I don’t know, Ruth. I don’t even know what was in them originally, but it wasn’t the original documents, and instead there were blank sheets of paper. I fear that your parents threw away the documents before they died.’
The Liquid Land Page 25