the racetrack

[sweetwater]

A crowded cafe. Smoke, music, babble of voices. Outside the windows,
rain and the dim dullness of a late afternoon can be seen. A woman
stands at the bar, talking on the telephone. Her face is turned away
from the room, a hand put over one ear.
"No...No, I won't. Yes, you are right. You...No! No No NO!....no, of
course not. I know....listen, I am....No! Please! Stop that! I can'tell
you...No, I won'tI.....okay, Yes, maybe. ... yes. Me too. We see that
later. Bye."
She hangs up and rubs her face, looks around for a moment, then returns
to a table with a cup of coffee on it and a huge traveller bag beside it
on the floor. She takes a disordered pile of paper out of the bag and
spreads it out in front of her on the table. After a sip of her coffee,
she takes a pen out of a pocket of her pants and begins to write
something. But just a few seconds later, she puts down the pen
impatiently. Again she takes the cup and, holding it with both hands
now, elbows propped upon the papers, she drinks slowly, an almost
relaxed expression on her face. She watches the rain on the windowpanes,
the people around her, the door.

A tall elegant woman approaches her table. "Do you know where the race
track is?, she asks, "I've got my last hundred dollars and i need to
make money real fast. I've got a hot tip on horse number 3 in the third."
She lights a cigar and starts blowing the smoke into the vicinity of the
woman at her table, obviously contemplating the meaning of life and
whether coffee tastes better with Kalua or maybe even a shot of Vodka
would do just fine right about now.
The tall elegant woman with cigar breath orders a martini. "Life is so
fucked up.", she says, "I got turn my 100 dollars into a thousand by
tomorrow or else i am dead."

The woman at the table smiles slightly.
"Yea", she says, "that's what we always think, right? Or else we die.
But somehow we just live another day. I don't know about the race track,
by the way. Don't know anything about this city."

The Cigar Woman sits down. She takes the salt, tips it over on its edge
and starts smashing it with her fist, "God damn crystals. They're all so
stupid and small." The waiter comes by and she orders 12 eggs, all hard
boiled.
"God, I love eggs. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?", she asks.

"A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg", the woman with
the bag murmurs, then, looking up, takes one of the eggs, smells on it
and says "but just as the universe, an egg is a more complicated thing
than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking that
it's pretty complicated in the beginning. Don't believe what your eyes
are telling you. All they show is limitation. May I...?" - and she
knocks the egg firmly onto the table, peels it and eats it up.
"Ah, that's good", she says, "I haven't eaten anything for quite a while
and am just realizing I am pretty hungry."

"Are you new in town?" the Cigar Woman asks, "My name is Grace
Septopoulos. I married a Greek but he divorced me when he found out I
used to be a man. What is it with men these days? Do you know the secret?"

The other one laughs. "Secret?", she asks, "What secret? I don't think
there are much secrets about them. They are pretty predictable, don't
you think?"
She takes another egg.
"I'm Hanna. I won't stay here for long. I planned a visit, but I changed
my mind. Too much predictability, you know."
She sizes up her vis-à-vis as if to consider whether to go on or not.
"You mentioned some financial problems", she then says, "Maybe I can
help you. And you can help me."

"I got to lay down my 100 dollars at the track. Grab a taxi for the
third race. What do you have in mind ? You're not one of those crackpot
loonie bins that hang out in cafes and wait for someone to come along so
they can talk them out of going to the race track, are you?"

"I just had an idea of...well, kind of a deal. But no matter. Can you
tell me where I can find a museum of arts here? Preferrably
art-historical, but any gallery would be fine."
She takes a third egg, the last one left on the plate, then puts it
back. "Sorry. I'll order some of that stuff myself."

"Museum Of Arts? No. The name of the horse is RunsLikeATart. 10 to 1.
Longshot but you never know these days, these precarious days. There is
a street artist just outside this cafe. I gave 'em my last lire. My last
franc. All i got left is this stinky 100 dollars. What's a former guy to
do?" she grabs her breasts and corrects their positioning. "You like
art, do you? Well. An artist and a thief... there were twelve eggs in
that basket - don't pretend there were three...give me back the other
nine eggs!"

"I'll order a hundred, and you take as many as you want. Put up with
that? You're hard to please, aren't you."
She takes the last egg again and tries to balance it upright on her hand.
"And a pityful heart. Giving your last bucks to a soaked street artist
in the rain. What's he doing by the way? Juggling? Singing? Conjuring
tricks?"
She gets up and peers out of the window. "Not a him. A her. But you
never know these days. Deception of eyes... these misleading marbles."
She turns back to Grace. "How long has it been since you were a man?"

Grace doesn't answer for quite a while.
"Hey," Hanna says, "did anything I was saying upset you?"
No answer.
She prods her slightly with a finger. "Having a little absence, huh?"
No reaction.
"Eh, are you sleeping? Heart attack? A seizure?....Grace? GRACE???"
She waves her hand in front of Grace's eyes. Nothing.
Hanna leans back on her chair, eyes still on Grace.
"Sometimes I wonder which side I am on", she mumbles to herself, "a
figure in a narration....but who's telling the story?"
She reaches out for a cigarette with a ponderous arm, feeling slow and
viscous, as if moving through syrup. Sounds come from far away, outlines
blur. The woman on her table seems to lose color, to fade away. Hanna rubs
her eyes and shakes her head.
"Who's strange mind's product am I", she murmurs, "Who's in control?"
She grabs for her coffee, but it has gotten cold.
" HEY, BIG NARRATOR!", she suddenly screams out, looking up to the
cracked ceiling, "CAN YOU HEAR ME! DON'T STOP TALKING! THINGS ARE
STARTING TO FADE ALREADY! CONTINUE - OR I'LL SNEAK OUT OF THE FUCKING
STORY!"

Grace stares straight ahead, wide eyes staring into the colours of the
jukebox."The morning is a strange monster.", she says, "Last year I
borrowed a car and drove it into the ocean at full speed. It was the
most excitement I have ever had. Of course, my license is suspended
because of it and the car is still at the bottom of the sea. I think
i'll get a cab driver to lay down my bet, they're all addicted to
gambling, you know. You have beautiful eyes. Do you wear contacts? "
She gets up from her chair and puts a quarter in the juke box. Then she
goes outside and flags down a taxi, is seen talking to the female driver
and hands over an envelope with instructions for her to make a bet in
the third race. She comes back into the cafe where Hanna seems to have
fallen asleep. The cafe is all but empty, save a few patrons of the
night, the wind, the traffic, the honking of horns, the general malaise
of living in a city that never sleeps. It's all a metaphor for something
but Grace doesn't have the intellectual inclination to understand such
things as this. She believes only in matter. Everything else is a ghost,
a figment of people's overworked imaginations. Thoughts have no matter
and therefore are not subject to the laws of science and do not exist
beyond the thought of their own existence. Much like lawyers who
existence is merely to prove that they exist and nothing more. No real
function. "The world can certainly live without such extravagance, don't
you think?," she murmurs, as she slowly walks back to her chair.

Hanna mumbles something in her sleep. Her hair is spread across the
table, eggshells on her cheek. A black-and-white madonna among sheets of
paper and ashes and cold coffee. She surely can live without any
extravagances right now. Just a little sleep. Just a little rest.
Not a comfortable position, though. She moves, sighs, opens one eye.
"Hi, Grace. Back from the stars?" She sits up. "So am I. What's the
time? I should go and....well, I should go anywhere. The museum, maybe.
A hotelroom. Just go back to where I came from. Whatever. What about you
going to the race track?"
She stretches her back. "And what about the eggs? Did I order a hundred
already? Who ate them? " She picks a piece of egg-shell from her cheek.
"Must have been me...apparently."
She gathers the sheets spread all across the table and crams them in her
big brown leather bag.
"Okay, chapter two starts right here", she says to Grace, who has lit
another cigar and blows the smoke into her direction again.
"You seen my pen? My purse ? My right shoe?"
She fumbles somewhere under the table. "Here they are. All three of
them. Asusual." She puts them all into their places, pen and purse into
the pockets of her pants, shoe on her foot.
"Reality is just a special manifestation of the possible and therefore
could just as well be different, you know. We have to re-think reality
to venture into the possible." She gets up, then sits down again. "We
all sooner or later invent a story we consider to be our life. Maybe
even a vast amount of stories. At the same time we are creating our
universe by perceiving it. Isn't it strange? Think - and the world is
thought. Act - and the world is matter. Love - and the world is love.
Cry - and the world is tears."
She lits a cigarette. "Smoke - and the world is smoke. We are what we
pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend."


Grace puffs at her cigar, examining Hanna thoroughly.
"What was that deal you were talking about?", she asks.
Hanna looks up and rubs her face.
"Well, actually it's very simple," she says, " You need a thousand
dollar - I need somebody to accompany me... help with a project, I might
say... so this is the deal: I give you a thousand dollar... and you stay
at my side for the next twenty-four hours... do me some favours. No big
thing for you. No danger, nothing illegal, nothing that hurts."
Grace doesn't answer. Hanna continues: " Look at it this way: You invest
into a promising project. Guaranteed payment in dollar after 24 hours.
All you have to do is to support this, well, 'project'..."
She drags at her cigarette.

Grace gets up. "Let's go", she says and walks towards the door. Hanna
almost stumbles as she jumps up her chair, grabs her bag and rushes
behind Grace who's already outside on the sidewalk, waving down a taxi.
"It will be like finally plucking up the courage to blow your brains
out," Hanna gasps behind her, "except that the bullet won't mean death
but life - an explosion inducing the birth of brand new worlds!".
"Shhhhh", says Grace, and a taxi stops. They get in on the back seat,
and without turning back, the driver asks "Where to?".
"Art Gallery, if there is one," Hanna murmurs and sinks back into her
seat. The taxi drives off almost silently.


-----

They walk through the high station-like halls with Tiepolos, Tizians,
and Tintorettos, with puttos, baby Jesuses and tumults of gods, passing
painting after painting on cracked walls. The resounding of their steps
is louder than the sound of the traffic outside the gallery.

"Look at this Caspar David Friedrich", Hanna says, "The quiet brown
landscape. The hazy horizon. Can't you imagine just to walk into that
picture? To become small and smaller....disappear in the haze of distance?"
As they walk on, she points out to other pictures.
"The praeraffaelitic Medea by Anselm Feuerbach", she says. "And here...
see those scenes by Max Slevogt.... like Schnitzler's Drama's...?" She
walks faster, words pouring out of her like wine out of a bottle.
" Van Gogh's self-portrait... his piercing eyes... and the
green-and-green picture with the red poppy-dots - 'Plains at Auvers'.
And there's Segantini, 'The Bad Mothers'. See the wide plateau of snow,
the dark blue shadow of the mountains, the peaks in the sun? Look at the
tree in the snow, bowing in the wind. Can you see how cold the wind is?
Can you feel it? And the woman with bare breasts... her hair caught in
the branches... can you feel the pain on her scalp? The child she
doesn't hold is sucking on her breast... can you feel its little mouth?"
Hanna stands still now, her voice is slowing down.
"It is a subject of a buddhist legend. Child murderesses have to nurse
their dead children while hovering over plains of snow... it is a
picture that hurts, isn't it. Look at it. Feel it. Go inside it. Enter
the land of snow. Be the cold. Be the tree. Be the mother. Be the child.
Feel the sadness. Cover your breasts with snow. Cover your eyes. Cover
your heart. Bury it in the snow. Bury your heart. Bury your child. Can
you feel it? The cold? The sadness? The loss? Be it. Be the sadness.
........Now turn around. Remember you are still in that picture. Turn
your back to the scene. Look out of the picture. Look at yourself
standing in the museum. Look at me there beside you. Keep being a part
of the picture. Keep being the picture. Tell me what you see."
"I don't know what you want", Grace says with irritation. The sun coming
through the skylight high above falls upon her hair and is swallowed
immediately by its hard darkness.
Hanna suddenly looks tired.
"Oh...well. Yes, of course. I was just ... wondering about how the way
you look at things changes the things themselves", she says. "I can only
see things with my own eyes. You got another pair of them. The woman in
the picture has eyes too, right? I am trying to change my view. The
world is not real because it is dependent on our perception. Only what
we feel does exist. The world isn't made of matter. No real things.
We're surrounded by consciousness. Who's that other will or spirit that
causes the ideas that make up our material world? Who's present in our
consciousness, creating the variety of ideas and perceptions and
emotions we are constantly exposed to? I am wondering which story I am
in. Or which picture. My role, you know. Am I the acting person? The
image? Am I the writer...the painter? The reader? Or the viewer? What
changes if I change? What we call reality is an illusion. Therefore,
nothing matters but story. I mean... I have no idea. I don't know how to
explain, because I myself am pretty unsure about it all. It's what I
want to find out."
She turns around and starts walking out of the room.
"As all things are subject to change, you cannot believe a thing I tell
you, you know. Come on. Let's get out of here."

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