Let's drive to the capital, the woman says to herself early in the morning. Before, as every day, the feeling of anxiety comes, we'll get into the car. Life owes it to her to drive, she's sat long enough and looked at it. Now everything should move a little faster, even if not as fast as at the Villach carnival, where everything races fast-forward past us, so that it doesn't occur to us to want to grasp anything. Here's the gray ribbon of the motorway already, which looks quite like the lake, which on some winter days also looks like a concrete surface. Hello. The car gets the ribbon under its tires and resolutely measures it out, perhaps at the end it will give a little encore, the way in an old-fashioned haberdasher's the sales assistant adds a little extra, but not on the speed. It's never quiet, because here, too, the woman has immediately inserted a cassette and is listening to a piano concerto. Although I don't know her character, and so could not describe it, I think, in some photos, but not on others, it's as if she's waiting for something, but it's probably because one's not supposed to move for a photograph, yet at the same time at least look animated. Yet not every quiet person is waiting for something. Some wait at last to be allowed to move into themselves. They have made provision for that. Before one places the furniture inside oneself, the joys and longings, one should at least cover up everything that could remind one of earlier days. Best to give everything a new coat of paint. If that's not possible, one keeps on painting the outside.
I don't know why the woman, who has now already reached the suburbs of the capital, absolutely wants to drive to where she used to live, a spread-out suburban development on the western edge of the city. There no limit has ever been set to the human imagination, that's nice, but what arose is not so nice. Alpine high pressure systems-built villas with ready-made and clamped-on all-round balconies, laden with truckloads of begonias and geraniums, with which the house glows red, please hurl down a bolt of lightning, God, a more powerful charge, so that something more beautiful in us can dream of not having been here at all! Please, this impression in me must be erased immediately. Other houses again are a copy of big city houses, only much smaller. I plead in friendly fashion for the expression of this early Roman front garden, fountains, concrete bracing, rose hedge stress relief to be taken from me again, before it falls out of my eyes and onto my feet. On my feet it won't get far, this ecstatic expression. This is a nice little house, too, they've added extra stories of between 70 and 150 square yards per story and they could have gone on over ten stories, the dear owners. It is surely satisfactory to unsatisfactory to be able to make a skyscraper out of an Alpine hut, at least it would satisfy me, I wouldn't have to look for any second person, because my house would then really be enough for me. The woman always drives off with her car. Already in Spital on the Semmering she's longing for her partner, whom she would likewise, in order for once to enjoy life to the full before it's too late, want to expand into a house in which she can live, cook, eat, sleep, and afterwards escape scot-free. She suspects, however, that he would prefer to own one story of her house rather than her as a whole. He wants to have everything for himself. Even if he got her for free, he would still only be interested in the bonus, the house, so as to be put in it. This is a marriage that will not take place. The woman will have to admit it to herself, I won't leave her in peace until she does. She comes up to me here, sees my social circle, stops short, because only one person is important to her, then she turns round and disappears again into the morning twilight, a pity, because I almost had her in my hands! I had almost caught hold of her, I already felt her fingertips. I hurry after her, surprised that the woman has escaped me, putting my hand to my mouth, as often, when I laugh in my sort of institution, where I live. No, it's not an institution, because apart from me there's no one here apart from the Catholic Charitable organization, which says: here I am and wants money from me and has sent a Giro transfer form. The woman and I, are we one? We are not yet at one, as to whether we have the same plan, but it wouldn't surprise me. So. First we follow the arrow for Center, but then take the turn-off for the Wiental. There, too, a river rushes, but can only bite its immediate surroundings, and even then only at flood, three times a year, at the most. Otherwise one hardly sees it. Is it necessary, then, that the river, too, is as nice as the woman? The river could easily be more cruel as far as I'm concerned, just a moment, here's someone who would like to talk to me, he'll soon be past. I duck down behind the driving wheel, perhaps he won't recognize me. He walks on. I go on. The water will eat us all up and swallow us yet. Like these two men, two of many, who have disappeared and never surfaced again, in the water, this gate, through which some stride, the others, however, through another, where to? Imagine a Sunday evening, a collapsible canoe, which, full of water, is lying in a bed of reeds, a last resting place, so to speak, half sunk in the flesh of the water, at its widest the construction measures thirty-three inches. Two paddlers set out in it and have disappeared, two young men, which is something we would like to be, but not these ones, you're about to find out why. They set out on a winter's day, a cold wind was blowing, the water was ice cold, perhaps there would soon be ice, unbelievably still. Do you see the many children's hands holding up their rubber ducks or the arms that go with them, and they stick out of their water wings like corks stuck in by their parents, do you hear the squealing, the splashing, the laughter, do you see the sand pits? Or do you see, for example, the female figure skater, who in a fast spin cuts a hole in the ice, in which she herself will be the cork? That would mean that it wasn't summer, as it isn't now either. So we take everything back again, it's only words on paper. Now it's gone, I don't even need to understand it. Before my anxiety returns, which is dear to me, but basically always keeps me away from water. Let's just stay, nothing is going to happen to us, with the two men in their collapsible boat in the water. There's a fire burning somewhere, there's a tent somewhere, I'm also at home somewhere, where I can turn up the heating, but not here. Something is being heated up on a Primus stove, human hands curve over the flames, a pot reveals something, then it's on to the next stage of a journey, during which the signs of life become increasingly rare, disappear, also the most curious habits people can adopt, e.g. washing their hands before eating. A couple of pebbles scraped together, branches oddly crossed on top of one another, two bottle shards, a plastic bag half-filled with wind, I don't need to explain it, because it will soon disappear into finality, and with that it will be superfluous. No effort anymore. I, too, have a long journey behind me. A ship of life floats by, a boat that glides, threatened by ice and the depths, I hope it will come back. Markings on a hydrographic chart, which tries to convince us that water is solid, blue in color, and one could lodge in it as in a room and appear where and whenever one wants. Oh, if one could be part of a couple, it doesn't matter with whom, perhaps like these two young men who have disappeared, thinks the woman while driving. The two packed up their collapsible boat like a seabag and traveled by train, until they reached the water. Then onto the water with their awkward baggage. The trail, which places no value on itself, disappears, a trail for which only packing and sending itself forth are