Trautmann ging in den Wurstelprater und genehmigte sich im Schweizerhaus zwar diesmal keine Stelze, aber dafür ein Krautfleisch, trank drei Krügel Budweiser, plauderte mit der ihm gut bekannten Chefin und raute Kette. Beschloss dann, sich ein bisschen im Wurstelprater umzuschauen, nahm dabei allerdings die ihm noch immer ungewohnte, verhasste Brille ab und hängte sie in den Ausschnitt seines T-Shirts mit einer chinesischen Aufschrift, von der er nicht wusste, was sie bedeutete. Seine Glock hatte er wie immer im hinteren Hosenbund stecken. Außer einer kleinen Ausbuchtung, die sein ziemliche langes T-Shirt aufwies, war von ihr nichts zu sehen. Er ärgerte sich über das vor dem Schweizerhaus aufgebaute, über sechzig Meter hohe Kettenkarussell, das den ganzen Platz verschandelt. Kurz setzte er sich auf eine Bank vor dem Pferdekarussell, in dem die Tiere zur schon ausgeleierten Orchestrionmusik im Kreis leifen, und ging dann langsam zu seiner nicht weit entfernten kleinen Wohnung in der Molkereistraße.

My closest friend in Vienna is Alice Springer. She's three years older than I am, gentle and funny, and though she talks almost without stopping she never seems to say anything wounding or indiscreet. Alice sings in the chorus of the Volksoper - a hard life of dirndls and um-pa-pa - and I regard this as a shocking waste because she has a real gift for millinery. Hats come to Alice like dresses come to me and she has total recall for any hat that has ever caught her interest.
She's not a person to complain, but I think of late things have been hard for her. Though she's so pretty - one of those nut-brown women whose eyes and hair have the same russet tint, she's nearly forty and recently there's been a tendency to put her in the second row, often with a hay
bale or a milking stool. And from there, as everyone knows, it's only a short step to the back row in a grey wig with the village elders and a spinning wheel.
I usually pick her up at the theatre and we go and have a spritzer at the Cafe Landtmann. Tonight I was early enough to use the ticket she'd left for me, and so I was privileged to see the whole of a new production from Germany called Student Love. Alice was in the second row again, holding huge steins of beer aloft because it all took place in Heidelberg and about the operetta itself I prefer not to speak.
At the same time people were enjoying it. I noticed particularly a very fat man in the same row as me. He had bright ginger hair parted in the middle and a round red face which clashed with his moustache and it was clear that he was very much moved by what was going on. During the song about the fast-flowing River Neckar he sighed deeply, during the duet in which the nobly born student and the impoverished landlady's daughter plighted their troth, he leaned forward with parted lips, and during the heroine's solo of (strictly temporary) renunciation he was so overcome he had to mop his face several times with a large white handkerchief.