I was impressed by the piety towards the small during those days in the ten characters on this trip. In your parents, with the mushrooms, the flowers, the jams, the garden, the care of the meals. In his attentions to me, who am not “little”, but could be ignored. In you, with the beauty towards your parents in the midst of a society that confines the old because they are slow and clumsy. In your musical ear for the children, for the accents of each one and the meticulous translation from German to Spanish. And the attention to the nuances of the people, to your neighbor Beate, to me, a Martian in Kärnten. Definitely, I think you are interested in the extraterrestrial of the earth. In this sense, you too are a bit foreign, a bit religious.
The language games in Markus, his minority English and without method. The strange relationships of words, their delicious American spirit and their coffees. And in Beate the interest in strangers, her anxious way of looking sideways, her children, her relationship with the mystery of Christianity, her faith in the other lives that beat in this one. In Ida, her liqueurs and soups, the animals she feeds in winter, her childhood memories of her in Diex. Helga and hers silences from her, the smiling sweetness of her genau (“That is”). The memories that she has of dawn, fear and school. Her childhood so difficult for her in KleinWöllmiss, the new little shoes that she never had, the animals that screamed when they died. His boyfriend Hans with the double meanings, his mocking smile, the movement of his hands and his sudden seriousness: “What do you think of pornography?” I almost forgot about Rudi, with his susceptibility to a thousand details, his slightly naïve turns of language and his ability to fix all kinds of pots and pans. Five women and five men beating in the Carinthian summer. Not bad for a little play. The small, on the verge of ruin, set the tone of those days. Also in love for those old colored tractors that used to meet at Eory.
And attention to the rarity represented by the foreigner, the one who does not speak the language of the place, always on the verge of being left out of the game. I will never thank you enough for your effort to attract me and speak in Spanish, for making me understand and connect, going from one language to another. I know that you also used me, because the outsider brings out different layers of situations and allows us to discover the strange in the familiar. But that doesn’t take away from you, Markus and your parents, Hans and Helga. The back and forth between my Spanish and your German, with my silent reflections, doubled the trip forced me to delve into each situation and each gesture.
The distant awaken what is remote in us
You helped me dig into what was said under the words, into the ghostly details of the moment. The delightful setting of the tavern in Pribelsdorf, the vine-leaf-decorated windows in Primus-Poltz, the atmosphere of trees and barns in Berghausen. And on that walk to Gösselsdorf, with the combed grass on the shore of the lake after the bath. The distant awaken what is remote in us. And I devoured all that came out of you. The looks of the waitress in Bleiburg, that drunkard taken from Velázquez, the shy young man from Primus, the trout man in Lippitzbach. Also Manfred and Elfi, raving with us that night in their hotel bar.
It is not so strange to come back exhausted and changed from looking so much, listening and living so much. Losing the ground of routine, on trips we thirstily drink the signs that sprout from the bodies. We read the landscape and its inhabitants in a different way. We are in suspense and we feel with floating attention, catching ghosts on the fly. You even hear yourself say things you didn’t know you knew: “The relationship with religion is not pathological if one resists silence, the desert without God; the relationship with sex is not pathological if one endures chastity, a solitude without relationship; the same with alcohol, if one endures sobriety, the arid work in the mystery of oneself; the same with food, if one endures the humility of hunger”.
It’s easy to be anti-fascist in general
Do you remember that drinking night in Eberndorf with Beate and Markus? “You are the wolf’s ears to her,” you said afterwards. Deleuze insisted that it is easy to be anti-fascist on a general level, what is difficult is to be on a national level. molecular. Everything we experience in Kärnten is anti-fascist on that personal and vital level. Forests, mushrooms, oaks, corn, ash trees and Bildstock (cruise ships). And the top medicine of doing nothing, of not having plans and trusting in the camaraderie of the weather on the grass. Kärnten rests in the shadows of his past, in the moss of his paths, in the ancient ritual of his customs. It is a deeply conservative country, without a doubt, but that is politically very ambiguous. In any case, nothing dry, nothing hostile in that delicious mix of north and south with the mountains in the background. In the green of fields and forests, in the culture of wood, sloping roofs and honesty that allow others to be respected. Which also allows a beautiful cemetery to remain open and untouchable all night. And a very German south in the friendliness of the people and the careful meals, in the flowers in the windows and the churches decorated in the Catholic way.
People on the left, including the Austrian literary avant-garde, don’t understand much when they link this conservatism to political hostility to any change. As if under that historical slowness there could not be a deep opening in the existential, in the manner of a genau become a habit, breathing more here than history and culture. Faced with this humble freedom of the people in the countryside, Vienna seems painfully bourgeois and stagnant. The same before those two walks. In the first, through Köcking, Markus, you and I going through stable smells, wooden villas, unknown locals on the porches, with curved roads between sunflower spots. The light of the fields, the mountainous horizon, the stacked firewood, the anonymous lives that you leave in the houses on the shore. In the end, that beautiful church in Buschenschank, with the old ladies in lighter clothes than in Spain, saying the rosary and looking back. And at the end, the intimacy of a question “How do you see me?”. Followed by your wonderful, unsought confession: “I love you so much I don’t dare risk this relationship.”
On the other walk, towards Pribelsdorf through the Dobrowa forest, that smell of mushrooms eierschwammerln on the shore. And the infinite labyrinth of the trunks, the quick sound of footsteps in Beate’s youthful silhouette, in your steady walk. The two intertwined, accomplices, getting together, talking, separating when you laugh. German women are like flowers, my grandmother used to say. And again the huge cornfields, the plums on the road. Finally, the wonderful tavern with friendly people and that quarrelsome guy, fascinated with you two. Neighbor Anita and her little blonde girl, the tiny church decorated as if it were in Portugal.
And that Bildstock in the distance, motionless under an oak tree, in the middle of the immense cornfield. Do you remember Dobrowa with those lost paths, glimpsed when crossing the dark mass of trees? Each unknown path, left behind, was like a metaphor for the abandoned paths in our lives. Every time we go, Kärnten again opens up possibilities, present and past. That’s why I came back open, melancholic, a little in suspense. For ten days I felt divided, happy, indecisive, fluid, sometimes floating in a godless idleness. The sea of corn in front of those windows of your house, the almost African perspectives on the mountains in the background, the deepest sleep at night, the breakfasts at the garden table, the meals and the conversation with your parents.
Afterwards, long late-night conversations over brandy. Talking about Helga and your relationship, about Beate and Rudi, about the ups and downs of the day and your parents… There is a certain honesty that is only possible at certain hours of the night. A revelation, a meeting that occurs only at the end of the day, crowning his exhaustion. Is that why we are afraid of insomnia that prolongs the night?
And in the end, the best farewell. Your tear-filled eyes at the Klagenfurt station, the dark glasses, your slightly embarrassed smile. I consider myself lucky to have you. We should finally take a trip together, alone at once. Although perhaps it is better to continue like this, accomplices among the others, looking at each other under the noise. These five women, these five men. summer in blumenreich. Not bad for a little play, right? Maybe not so small. I felt that I was loved there so much that I returned overwhelmed with a trace of sadness that did not leave me during the interminable day back. That Bildstock still in the distance, reverberating under an oak in the cornfields of Pribelsdorf. That’s how I loved you
