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Madensky Square - pp 26-27
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.
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.
Near fragment in time
Sie wohnte im dritten Bezirk, in einer Seitenstraße der Landstraßer Hauptstraße. Während der Fahrt sprach Leo kaum ein Wort, er war verwirrt, sehr glücklich und sehr unglücklich in einem. Und er fror. Judith hatte das Fenster wieder einen Spalt aufgemacht und summte ein brasilianisches Lied, Leo kannte es, aber er hatte vergessen, wie es hieß und wie der Text ging. Als sie in die Petrusgasse einbogen, eine ruhige kleine Allee, in der Judith wohnte, schrie sie halt!, es sei dieses Haus hier, da steige sie gleich aus.
pp 30 from Selige Zeiten, brüchige Welt by
Near fragment in space
Max sitzt hinter der Glasscheibe des Cafés, in dem Peter und Gudrun ihn treffen wollen, trinkt einen Mokka und schaut hinaus auf die Spitalgasse, wo es seiner Meinung nach regnen sollte.
Er würde seinen Sonntag lieber nicht in dieser deprimierenden Aidafiliale verbringen, wo lauter alte Menschen einzeln an Tischen vor Punschkrapfen sitzen, er wäre lieber zu Hause und nicht hier, wo alles rosa und braun ist, alles, die Einrichtung, die Kittel der Kellnerinnen und die Punschkrapfen, aber es hat dringend geklungen.
Schon beim Hören des Wortes AIDA hat er gedacht, es muss um etwas Ernstes gehen. Gudrun hat in einer Aidafiliale mit ihm Schluss gemacht, in dieser Aidafiliale sind sie gesessen, als sie Margot aus dem Krankenhaus abgeholt haben, und jetzt wird ihn endlich klar, worum es geht und worüber Peter am Telefon noch nicht sprechen wollte.
pp 32-33 from Verlass die Stadt by
Er würde seinen Sonntag lieber nicht in dieser deprimierenden Aidafiliale verbringen, wo lauter alte Menschen einzeln an Tischen vor Punschkrapfen sitzen, er wäre lieber zu Hause und nicht hier, wo alles rosa und braun ist, alles, die Einrichtung, die Kittel der Kellnerinnen und die Punschkrapfen, aber es hat dringend geklungen.
Schon beim Hören des Wortes AIDA hat er gedacht, es muss um etwas Ernstes gehen. Gudrun hat in einer Aidafiliale mit ihm Schluss gemacht, in dieser Aidafiliale sind sie gesessen, als sie Margot aus dem Krankenhaus abgeholt haben, und jetzt wird ihn endlich klar, worum es geht und worüber Peter am Telefon noch nicht sprechen wollte.