LionHz
Act 1
VOICE 1: Where are we? Zhang Yu?
VOICE 2: Well, we ain’t in Kansas that’s for sure.
VOICE 3: You know where we are. We’ve been here for as long as the siege of Troy. Und am Ende wird es auch Zeit für uns, den langen Weg nach Hause zu gehen.
An insipid arctic-orange sun in a sky of blackening ice. The city swelters in the exhaust of its own methane. The skyline choked by the smog & radiation of a city that worships only STEM & the only-knowing Empiricism, that no longer has any room for meta-physiques & Arte. There is an electricity here that is not electricity, something tangible in the air, tho, like the static before a lightning strike or the ionization of gas in an arc lamp just before it ignites – but it’s not those things either. There is no word for this. STEM has no term for it.
»You are my sunshine, my only sunshine; you make me happy, when skies are grey…« The sky is always grey; the world is grey; there is no you to make me happy: it’s just the 3 of us & we make for terrible company.
We walk thru the valley of shadow w/ death. It seems we can only speak evil, hear evil, see evil, especially when we look down at all the zombies on Steinweg. They walk so purposefully, so goal-orientedly, thinking their little appointments carry some grandiose meaning, as if their little deeds, as if their little hands always grubbing after money, for more more more, were the glue of the cosmos, holding the fabric of space & time together, drawn together & repulsed by each other like electromagnetic waves. Pathetic. Pa-honies. Scheisters & Philistines. Egomaniacs. This street a micro-microcosm. Stonyway, how apposite. This city a metaphor.
We stand before the steps of the Stadtstheater. A magnificent building. A glorious building constructed in the year of the Cock, 1861 (the year of the Great American Tragedy – the irony is not lost on us); Neoclassicist, Florentine early-renaissance style was it designed to replicate. When architecture was art & had class &…who gives a rat’s donkey anyway? Its doors are shuttered. No light from within. The once beautiful pond in front petrified to a deep bronze. How to find serenity here when all is a façade? Even we: an organized Ism: a hodgepodge of chemicals & elements. Cells. Bacteria live on & in us. An organism that is & feeds on other types of parasites. All things are parasites. Some more than others.
When we had journeyed half our life’s way, we found ourself within a shadowed forest, for we had lost the path that does not stray,1 that parallels the river that encircles the Old City like Jormungandr. The locals call the path thru the woods along the river the Hiroshima-Ufer. Its irony has never been lost on us. This circle of Hel begins much as Dante’s except instead of Virgil’s shade coming out to greet the hero, it is the shade of Lessing that comes out from behind a placard advertising a bastardized modern interpretation of Minna von Barnhelm that greets us. He’s holding a sign with a name on it like those people at Arrivals at airports. It’s not a name we recognize.
LESSING: (hand extended in greeting) Guten Tag, mein Herr!
AIGH: Wir möchten kein Deutsch m/ Ihnen reden. There’s no need to speak German anymore, especially when one speaks English naturally.
LESSING: Das iz aber nisht meyn shuld!
MESUF: Yiddish wont get you anywhere.
LESSING: De gustibus non est disputandum!
MI: Not even the learned speak Latin anymore.
LESSING shrugs and makes the sound of exasperation and the gesture of surrender.
LESSING: (In the antiquated German accent) Well, then, it’s a good thing that my father taught me English, and that I kept up with it. Plus, there was that whole episode with Marlowe.
AIGH: Marlowe?
LESSING: A story for another time. First, let me introduce myself. I am…
AIGH: …Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
LESSING: Genau! Have we met before?
AIGH: No, we’ve never met, but we know who you are & we’ve been expecting you.
LESSING: (To himself) Mich erwartet? (Aloud) Und wer sind Sie, if I may be so bold as to ask?
¿Quién somos? That is a question we ask ourself several times over the course of a day. Who are we? There is Mi of the family Mi, a diminutive fellow w/ black hair & beady-grey eyes, thin & sinewy but not b/c he is malnourished: oh no, not Mi. Mi eats heartily. He is just that ectomorph type that burns thru calories the way the fearful & ignorant burn books, the way every Terry, Dick & Mary regurgitate their wild Weltanschauungen on social media & burn down the Fabrik of society, the way humanity burns thru its resources & common sense; the way…but we digress. Mi of the family Mi is lecherous gluttonous unctuous. We can barely abide his presence most of the time. Then there’s Mesuf Abd al-Din bin Iblis: he is a rabbi, a priest, an imam. His moral code is contradictory & unbendable. He is the moral compass of the group. He keeps us on the straight-n-narrow. Lastly and largely, there is Aigh (of unknown origin), the companion to Finn McCool, Gilgamesh & Enkidu, Herakles & Samson, to Paul Bunyan & John Henry. He is a giant. A natural-born leader who shuns leadership roles & wants only harmony – a peacemaker – a terrible quality for a general at war. He wants harmony so much so that in the face of contention he becomes lame & impotent, like when a child stands motionless watching in fear as his little brother is bullied, fearing the fists of those bullies whom he could honestly easily crush. He could crack open the abusing orangutans’ heads like egg shells – but won’t. Instead, he watches like a coward while his little brother is beaten to a pulp. That is we, and yet, is we not more?
LESSING: (rubbing his chin) Ach so, very pleased to meet…Sie.
MI: Tout le plaisir est pour nous
LESSING: Didn’t you just say…?
MESUF: ...vergiss es. It’s nice to have you here.
LESSING: Ja…eh, übrigens, where is “hier”?
AIGH: You don’t know? Don’t recognize the place? This is your city.
Lessing looks around, observes in the distance the seven towers & the Dom. He squints & looks to the heavens. Looks behind. Looks left & right. He looks down at his shoes. He seems to say, ‘Das kann doch nicht wahr sein, dass das, was itzo in diesem Moment Hier ist, sei auch das Hier von damals gewesen. Gegenwart. Gewesen2.’ Aloud, he said, Quod aiebat Ovid? Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.3 A cold wind sweeps up from the south, wagging his coattails. A few unmeasurable moments elapse. A light passes over his eyes, like the glare of refracted sunlight, he adds: “Over there used to be the old Opera-haus.” He points toward the West (w/ a long & trembling index finger).
Just look at this place; place hands on hips & look around. We see the city thru Lessing’s eyes, can see what it used to be superimposed over what it has become. Instead of an artistically aesthetic cityscape of Fachwerk, it has devolved into the dim-shining example of impotent post-war 1950s practicality & austerity. The Phoenix had burned in the Nazi furnace & from the ash they molded a grotesque lump of clay in the form of a mutilated pigeon. But why so hideous? B/c of Bauhaus? The Leader didn’t like Expressionism, did he, b/c he was an artistic hack stuck in realism despite photography’s usurpation thereof; and probably b/c he lacked many certain specific emotions prevalent in empathetic sympathetic human beings. We are speaking of history’s most notorious megalomaniacal psychopath. Of course, we’re sure Walter Gropius wouldn’t have approved of most of what was built following the flames. This theatre will remain, however, but nothing around it will.
LESSING: That’s what I thought too.
AIGH: What? When? About what?
LESSING: Many things. Ganz viele Sachen.
MESUF: It’s enough to have a roof over your head & food on the table.
MI: Is it tho? We have that & just look at us.
Steinweg: nowhere near even the ugliest part of the city. Like cacti in a desert a few of the oldest buildings were spared the conflagration, or were too beautiful & historic for even socialist practicality to deny their right to existence, so they were rebuilt true to form: this theatre, for example. But just look at all those zombies milling around: they couldn’t tell Bauhaus from Art Déco from neoclassical. They walk so purposefully, so goal-orientedly, so quickly to their deaths. Remember the man who worked every day, saved everything for retirement, never went on vacation, the man who believed he would retire early & then really start living? Remember how he was diagnosed w/ Leukemia one year after his retirement? He died still never having gone on vacation. All his scrimping & saving for nothing. We ceaselessly watch them move about in the parade-rest position: meaning, we stand at parade-rest: feet shoulder-width apart, slight bend in knee to keep blood flowing, hands behind back w/ fingers of right hand placed in palm of left. Why? B/c this was how Napoleon observed the battlefield? B/c we don’t know what else to do? Doch. We know what is to be done. The future is written, was written long ago, even if we hadn’t seen our footsteps leading here. We will walk down this hill into the depths below, to the street of twinkling red lights, to the large stone steps & down into the crypt where one-thousand-&-one mega Hz of lions’ roars are silenced in the dark.
(Lessing interrupts the reverie:)
LESSING: If I am to conduct you through this city – and I am still not entirely convinced that I must – then I am going to need some very strong coffee, and something to eat. I haven’t had anything to eat since…what year is this?
AIGH: What year it is doesn’t matter: you haven’t had anything to eat for a long time. We get it.
MI: Why not go to Hertls? It’s just over there.
Hausfrau Hertls. The name of the café on the corner of the street across from the theatre. Another exceptional example of a non coup d’oeil. There is nothing aesthetically inviting about the place, nothing that welcomes the weary traveler. If it weren’t for the theatre & the nearby park, why would anyone be tempted to stop by? Frau Hertl better make one of the best cakes we’ve ever eaten is all were saying b/c if her food & coffee are like her architecture then an MRE would be preferable (an omelet MRE to be exact).
We cross the street that circles the theatre like an ancient Roman hippodrome & take in the magnificence of what is the malformed Bausunde that houses the house that houses coffee & cake. Jetzt auch “Kaffee to go 4€” advertises a blackboard sign out front written in marker that mimics chalk. The yearning for nostalgia but with the convenience of the contemporary. Phonies.
AIGH: We wish we knew what this area looked like in your day, Lessing.
LESSING: Why is that?
AIGH: Why? B/c look at this hideous thing! How could anyone think it was okay to build something so…so…¡no podemos pensar en la palabra!
LESSING: Was für ein Kauderwelsch war das?
MESUF: We can’t entsinnen the mot juste to describe the sentiments rising up from the viscera that nos ahogar when we see things that make us so…זעמ!4!!
LESSING: Das war ganz viel auf einmal. Why so many words in so many languages?
MESUF: Have you ever found just one language to suffice in saying all that you want to say?
LESSING: Retorques bene locutionem mihi.
MI: Exactly. Plus, these days it doesn’t matter. If someone doesn’t understand you, they just use their device to translate for them. Some say there is no need for polyglots anymore, but we polyglots know the difference, don’t we.
LESSING: Aber um ein gutes Gespräch zu führen, sollte man die Sprachen auf zwei, höchstens drei, limitieren, damit der Gesprächspartner eine Chance hat, etwas zu verstehen. There are few polyglots, I have found.
MESUF: When one is talking to another, we agree. Human language & communication is fraught w/ frailties & fissures in comprehension, but…what if one is not only speaking w/ another but also w/ oneself?
LESSING: Then we have the salad5, don’t we?
MI: We don’t want a salad. We’re hungry for something else.
AIGH: Not to mention you know more languages than we do.
LESSING: Il me semble que vous connaissez autant de langues que moi6.
For Lessing, the way between the Stadtstheatre & the café was fraught w/ new & somewhat harrowing experiences. For a person from the modern, such encounters are dull & quotidian: the shock factor wore off long ago. But for someone straight from the Past, seeing a group of non-binary people dressed in non-binary ways is rather scandalous. Of course, back in his day showing ankle was scandalous. Lessing asks something along the lines of, »What is it that I am seeing now exactly?«. Mesuf answered in a non-PC manner so as to better facilitate comprehension: »Those are three males wearing summer dresses, who’s gender has become fluid – like mercury.« To which Lessing responded: »Männer?« Aigh interjected: »They (if they use the third-person plural), do not identify as male, most likely, tho one may never assume anything about another’s gender.« To which Mesuf added: »Gender & identity are not what they (if one can use the plural pronoun in this case w/ these words), what ze were in your day. Today it is a field of landmines tongue-twisters & mind puzzles.« His dead mind was just as inquisitive as his living used to be. We did the best we could to explain it. He understood but also didn’t. He “themself” sounded like someone speaking with a poor understanding of English. It didn’t agree in number: third-person plural pronoun with the singular noun. Why not just invent a new pronoun, a neutered one, rather than bastardize grammar, was his suggestion. He wanted then to know how such things worked in German, since unlike English, German never did away with noun declension & the neutered form. First of all, we explained, neutered was probably also a problematic word. Nothing that indicated sex, gender, or…just stay away from genitalia & all of its political-socio-economic prejudices. & plus they (if they can be used in this case) already had thought out new pronouns. How many were there now in English anyway? He, she, they, we, qwe, you, soo, (f)ae, e/ey, per, ve, xe, ze/zie, tey…are we missing any? And in German? xier/xies/xiem/xien, oder hen/hem, oder day/deren, oder...vergessen.
LESSING: What a linguistic Kuddelmuddel.
We open the door of the café for him while he wraps his poor old head around the noose made from modern societal fabric. Inside, it is all hustle & bustle. A thousand-&-one people trying to order cakes & candies to take home. It is nearly closing time, which if you’re familiar w/ German cafés doesn’t mean it’s necessarily all that late in the evening. We find the only vacant table. When the waitress comes by, Lessing orders a slice of lemon cake & a Pharisäer. We need a bit more time in deciding. One would think that Lessing’s 18th-century clothing, accoutrements, and powdered wig would elicit unwanted attention, but no one seems to notice, or they don’t care. Their attention is shackled to their screens, which explains their obliviousness. But even in a world without a clear orientation in the ways of fashion, where anyone can wear whatever they want w/o fear of public ridicule, one would still think that a Hortensia-blue wool suit, a white frilly shirt, Hortensia-blue culottes with white silk stockings and brass buckled shoes would evoke a few sideways glances.
AIGH: Honestly, tho, why did language ever come up w/ genders for nouns, anyhow? Especially German: die Gabel. Die? Feminine? It has tines, a bunch of phallic sticky bits.
LESSING: Maybe it is die, because it has many tines, but also singular because it is one object.
AIGH: Oh.
Yeah, but two forks is zwei Gabeln.
(LESSING shrugs his shoulders.)
Too much emotion today. Too much. Lessing is perking up, seems to grow stronger, merrier, more color in his pale cheeks,w/ every meticulous sip he takes. There appears to be something magically restorative about his beverage. We’ve never had coffee, for certain inscrutable reasons, but do those even matter anymore at this point? Mi desperately wants to order a large Pott. He’s clamoring for it. Mesuf won’t have any & Aigh…Let Mi have Mi’s Pott! Screw it! Quando a Roma! If it’s good enough for Monsignor Ambrose, it’s good enough for us. Whoever wants may share w/ Mi.
Hot drinks were labeled unwise to drink in 1833. In 1851 it became required of the Saints not to partake of the rich black liquid, or even the thin black & green ones. It has never been easy to stay away from coffee. It smells fantastic! It’s a taste that might be an acquired one, but it’s one that is acquired quickly. A handful of coffee-flavored candies as a kid was all it took for us. Then of course there’s its cultural ubiquity. The brewing & consumption of coffee is an artwork in many countries. Remember Italy? A proper Roman breakfast: un doppio espresso con un cornetto. That wasn’t easy to say “no grazie” to. Mesuf argued that the subsequent sugar & caffein crash, coupled w/ mild dehydration, wasn’t worth the deliciousness & quick pick-me-up-ness. We compromised & had a cornetto c/ latte. We missed out on something then, back when the war wasn’t raging on all fronts. Now, who cares what happens? We’ve lost. We’re sliding into a freefall. A free-for-all? Free for all? Wir fallen. Wir kämpfen. Nothing is free. Everything has its price. Zum Kotzen7.
Have you ever seen a little guy (Mi weighs soaking wet maybe 135 lbs. (61kg)) take his first sip of an exceptionally strong cup of Joseph & the consequent jolt of caffein? We assume it must be similar to when an atom is slung thru the Hadron. He resembled a character out of the Looney Tunes. Like a hyperactive ADHD hyper-pituitary child trying to sit still in church. He downed the entire Pott in a few gulps. Stood up & down doing deep knee bends. Scorched the back of his throat. That seemed to only make him want more. We suggested a large piece of buttercream cake (b/c of the fat), maybe to help slow the uptake of the sugar & caffein? Mi ordered threescore & twelve.
We actually know quite a lot about Lessing. Two years into our little Teutonic adventure an old man sold us a leather-bound collection from 18-something-something of all of Lessing’s writings. He sold it to us for 50 DM. It took us a while to find 50DM, those having been traded in for the Euro long ago, but in the end we found them, bought them, and read them all: Bände I-XX. We know the Laokoon better than we know the back of our hand (we’ve read the one more often than the other, even seen it live in the marble). Of course, it has also proven problematic that Lessing’s analysis of that sculpture has colored our subsequent analyses of the visual arts b/c Lessing’s views fall short in understanding much of anything since the beginning of modernity. Try using the Laokoon to analyze Gerhard Richter. Good thing there’s no plan to go near the Graf’s museum. It has taken seven years to get his voice out of our head. But what does he think of us? Why did he choose to accompany us on this path, today of all days?
Mi is an interesting & pathetic creature. Stature? He doesn’t have much of one. He is a failed art student’s failed sculpture. Pigmy, one might call him. What he lacks in physical size & strength tho he makes up in stubbornness & whining. He has no means of expressing his opinions, his wants, his thoughts, except thru his nasal passages. His voice is like the mosquito’s whine in your ear at night, that high-pitched annoyance when you’re exhausted, can’t see anything & the world falls into somnolent white noise…all except for that cursed mosquito! Mi’s tactics are actually more effective than Aigh’s what w/ all his strength & bravado. Aigh almost never gets to have his way, whereas Mi tends mostly to get his. Hence, why we’ve stopped around the corner to puke into a deep mucus-green Biomüll container. Hausfrau Hertl’s Buttercreme sits like unsealed nuclear waste in the stomach.
Mesuf is the antipode to Mi, alltho he isn’t that much bigger. Physically, Aigh is Mi’s antipode. Mesuf is Mi’s antipode in spiritual moral & emotional things. Mesuf is of average build, average height & weight, not muscular, but also not skinny or weak. In an altercation, Mesuf holds his ground very well. He comes from a very religious upbringing – overbearing, according to Mi, & we’re fairly sure Aigh doesn’t disagree. Mesuf can quote from any number of religious texts: the Torah, the Talmud, the Quran, the Bible & several catechisms, the Upanishads & the Bhagavad Gita, any number of Sutras, & of course, from the Book of Mormon. Fortunately, Mesuf is reticent & mostly keeps to himself. He is very contemplative, introspective. His voice is warm, calm, reassuring but can also be stentorian when he has the feeling you aren’t listening to him. Even then tho it’s more like listening to a mountain stream falling over rocks & into a deep pool of sapphire liquid rather than a clap of thunder. However, he judges everything & anything & everything you do. He’s the proverbial sword of judgement ready to smite your every action & condemn it. No matter what you do, it seems like you have somehow broken some esoteric moral code. Take corn flakes for example: the milk part is obvious, but the flakes? For even the vegan they pose problems for no other reason than they are unholy constructs of the Industrial Age. They have been processed to the full extent of machinery’s capabilities & are fully stripped of their natural nutrients: nutrients have to be added so they can be sold as food & not packaging material. They are bastardized mutations, unnatural creations; & thus, the god-fearing should abstain therefrom b/c he who places his trust in the arm of flesh shall be cursed. Or something like that. We’re paraphrasing. Mesuf isn’t here right now. Also something about the sins of the fathers on the heads of the sons?
Aigh? He is more often than not, & more often than he would like, called upon to mediate between Mesuf & Mi. Those two argue constantly. He’s physically domineering, something like 7’2” (219,5 cm) & weighs 300 lb./21.5 st. (136 kg). He’s full of hair & muscle. We like to think of him as Enkidu – that is – the Enkidu before Shamhat civilized him. But of course that is Aigh’s greatest weakness, isn’t it? Why he rarely effectually mediates, impotently, between the other two b/c he has never met his Shamhat. It’s why such a large man can be reduced to tears over perceived slights from others, especially from women, especially when he feels rejected by women. We’re quite certain Aigh is not actually impotent. He could probably repopulate the world if needed & the world would be the better for it, but…never gonna happen. In the apocalypse, Aigh would be one of the first to die b/c he would do something foolish while attempting to rescue someone. He’s the martyr type. He has a bit of a weak stomach too. Probably where his emotional weakness originates. His stomach, while rock hard on the exterior like the Rosetta Stone, is as soft as a feather pillow from w/in. He’s puking the most & worst of us. Lessing appears to be unfazed by the cake & coffee, a new man even.
Sobald wir uns reichlich übergeben haben, gehen wir Richtung Westen. There really isn’t much on this street worthy to note, especially if it’s the last time. There’s a slaughterhouse posing as an Argentinian steakhouse, a couple of cheap bars, a place where the zombies pay to have their skin removed & a kiosk that sells replacement limbs to the ones whose zombie parts have fallen off. Effing zombies. Tell us, how can one have hope among the living dead, the brain-dead living, the soulless living? Effing Philistines. Effing ineffable efflorescent effluent!
AIGH: Tell me, Lessing, how would you describe this ring of horrors?
LESSING: In the first place, a ring of horrors is not how I would describe it. What? Do you think everything was better long ago?
AIGH: What is better about this place now than back then?
LESSING: Erstmal gibt es keine Pferdescheiße auf der Straße…and no one dying.
MI: No horse shite. We’ll give you that one, but we wouldn’t refer to These as being among the living.
LESSING: Indicta causa.
Forget Lessing. We still doesn’t understand why he is even here. We’ll plug him for more intel later…maybe we can finally get an answer to the whole D. Faustus thing…but until we speak to him again (after such belligerence), Mi has a hankering for a Döner: At the merciful end of Steinweg, we turn left & head south down Boll Weevil Way. This part of the city stinks the worst: we’re near the Rathouse. In a city of scum, the bureaucratic center houses all the city’s rats. All day long they feed on paper & shit out public notices, directing the lives of the zombies. We’re steering clear of that place. Its façade is more revealing that its name. We’ve been there once before & nearly lost our soul. The house possesses one of the city’s seven towers & it’s the tallest one. Atop it is a clock, oval like a giant monocle. It gives the zombies a sense of purpose & progress – order. The worst part about zombies is the fact they don’t know they’re dead & standing still. They think the rules they’ve built around them have given them peace & freedom & ABOVE all else, they think it has given them Sicherheit. Effing zombies. If they didn’t make us shout זעמ so often, we might just feel some compassion for them. The zombies in this nation are pretty bad, but we’ve been among far worse. Every where we go we just see the same damn thing. Zombies. Clones of zombies. White, black, brown, yellow, pink and purple and rainbow colored are all the same.
We’re going to Kebabhus. If you’re going to have a Döner, this is the place to go. We cross the street & intentionally dodge in front of the streettrain. We’re not zombies. They’ll stand at a crosswalk for hours w/ nothing around for kilometers waiting for the signal to go green. Pafetic. Once, several years ago, we stood w/ a group of about zwölf zombies waiting to cross a street. Herr Ampelmann was red & rote. If he were going to turn green, we would have to feed him something b/c he wasn’t going to get sick from the exhaust of passing motor vehicles: id est, there were no vehicles of any sort, not even a good old-fashioned wire donkey. We waited w/ them for the sheer profundity of the herd instinct. When we finally did cross as a group, we baaed like a sheep, freaking them all out. We had a good laugh then, even when some yelled at us: “Scheiß Verrückter. Ich melde dich beim Ordnungsamt!”
LESSING: Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
MI: What?! Lessing, we hope you’re not just here to spit old Latin aphorisms at we.
LESSING: I still do not understand why I am here.
MI: Have you ever had a Döner?
LESSING: Je ne crois pas.
AIGH: Don’t do French, mon ami. English. English is the new Latin. English supplanted the French of your days. Plus, you’re the one who said to keep things simple.
LESSING: I can’t even begin to imagine what a Döner might be.«
MI: Très bien. ¡Vamos!
It takes too long to get from Steinweg to Kebabhus. We have to pass by too many oddities, like a casino. It has a Statue of Liberty on its door & calls itself The Las Vegas. Aigh figures they must consider the trees on the roadside to constitute a meadow. Idiots. It definitely has nothing about it that is remotely similar w/ the American Las Vegas. We know. We used to live there. We worked the Black Jack. As a dealer. Meaning, we dealt the cards at the Black Jack tables. College job. We didn’t work the tables the way some of the tourists did & we didn’t deal anything other than cards. Effing strip. This may be a city of zombies & vampires, but Vegas is a city of dragons & mindless greedy dwarves & succubi.
Across the way protrudes the reconstructed remains of the old palace. They converted it into a shopping mall. The old palatial gardens are an even bigger consortium of capitalism than the palace was of the aristocracy. We’ve petitioned the rats to name the area Karl-Marx-Platz. Even Lessing’s positivity takes a hit at witnessing the grotesqueness of the building where once trees & shrubs & flowers stood. They call that monstrosity The Gallery. When we first arrived here ten years ago, we thought it was an old bunker that had survived the war. Nope, they designed it that way on purpose.
Lessing wants to go down the Longcourtyard, but we refuse. He says there was a nice little bridge that went over the old moat/canal leading to the Dom & old castle. He used to like to stand there & watch the water trickle by underneath him. He used to like to imagine he stood on the bow of a great ship.
AIGH: Take a deep breath. Smell that? The House of Rats is that way. That old canal of yours has long been gone. It’s just a street now for omnibuses to deliver rats.
(En sotto voce) Poor Lessing, we do sympathize with him.
Come. We’ll drown our sorrows in the sauces for sandwiches stuffed w/ fatty rat meat.
The Kebabhus is run by four ghoulish personages. They’re always tired & sweaty & hunched over. They chain them inside & force them to rotisserie large kebabs of minced rat flesh 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They slice the flesh off of the large thigh-like kebabs w/ an electric saw after the meat has been properly scorched & crispified; then they toss it into a spongy bun & stuff it full of centuries-old vegetables. The sauces are something else tho, something to die for. You could make cardboard edible w/ these sauces. We order for Lessing, who looks skeptical. Mi, the glutton, orders a Döner w/ everything, a Lahmacun w/ everything, a Dürüm w/ everything & some Börek. Oh, and a side of fries, or as they are called here apples. Mi never learns a lesson & at this point (here of all places), where even Mesuf will indulge, no one tells him to slow down.
Outside & w/ our food wrapped in silver foil, cans of Mount Olympus in our hands, we find a quiet spot in a nearby alley & sit in the corner among discarded cigarette butts and trace smells of ammonia. Mi tears into the food like a ravenous pig. Maybe Mi really does have intestinal worms: it would explain a lot. Lessing picks unenthusiastically at his Döner w/ his plastic fork.
MESUF: Don’t worry. It’s halal, i.e., kosher, i.e. blessed in accordance w/ the statues laid down by the illustrious High Council of the Gesundheitsamt.
LESSING: I wasn’t even thinking about that.
AIGH: (in the voice of Faust) What is death like?
LESSING: Wenn der Tod kommt, one feels at first a terrible fear, but then he brings you to a spa high in the mountains where one can finally rest and relax.
AIGH: Probably not very happy to be here w/ us then, huh?
Death is a wellness vacation. Aigh never would have imagined that to be possible.
MESUF: Is Gott there?
LESSING: Nein, only his angels. We are still waiting for Him.
(LESSING eyes his Döner like a bull eyes a matador.)
And don’t misunderstand me. Life (and above all else my body), I miss very much.
He then bites into his Döner like a Great White into a tuna. Mi laughs w/ sauce in mouth corners & bits of masticated rat falling onto chest from gaping maw. We finish our snack. Mi somehow finished all the food. We all slowly arise from the pavement like winos after a night of Vergissmeinnicht. We run as fast as we can thru the streets and alleys, a dead sprint. After only a few hundred meters, Mi vomits up most of the food against a rhinoceros-sized dumpster. The rest follow suit.
We’re at odds as to what to do next. Mi wants a burger, at which Mesuf scoffs & Aigh rolls his eyes. Mesuf wants to go to the Dom to prey (not a typo) for forgiveness for our gluttony b/c eventho it isn’t our church, God sees the penitent everywhere. Are we truly penitent tho? Aigh wants to get it over w/ & go to Brokestreet already. We ask Lessing to intervene.
Lessing paces back & forth with his hands behind his back pondering the task before him like a professor of philosophy: the median between existential knowledge & the rows of eager students before him waiting to hear wisdom whispered in their ears. We wait patiently. The sun slowly lowers itself down into the murky and fetid waters of the horizon, behind the bunker, & the vampires set out upon the city in swarms of scantily clad sultriness. As darkness descends on Hel, we wait patiently. Time has no power over us. Unlike the living dead who flow around us as if we were stones in a river, we have found freedom in indifference. We have usurped the powers of life & death. The destination is clear to us; it remains only to be decided how we will get there.
LESSING: (to himself) Wer ist denn der Geist hier?
MI/MESUF/AIGH overhear and Mi gets an idea.
MI: ’The Sixth? So schnell wie die Rache des Rächers…Dass er dich noch sündigen läßt…the Seventh? Schnell wie der Übergang vom Guten zum Bösen’…aber…δυναμισ εν ασθενεια τελεται8…אהיה9…I know where we have to go.
(MI then takes off in a fury typical of his type.)
What is there to do but follow Mi?
Mi takes us to Glücklicher Hans. It’s a burger stand down the street run by a corpulent curly-mustachioed Bavarian in vollem Tracht. Hans is always smiling; whether that means he is happy is debatable, but he certainly seems to personify it well. Aigh thinks he’s happy b/c he has a macabre sense of humor. You will find no better burger in Hel than at Hans’s stand. Health is defenestrated by the strong arm of flavor. Aigh says Hans is always smiling b/c he knows that w/ every burger he sells, he brings that person one step closer to a myocardial infarction.
HANS: (wie ein Metzger) Ach, mein amerikanischer Freund. Ich habe dich seit langem nicht gesehen.
AIGH: Not so long, Hansel.
HANS: Ach ja, mein Nick’s name b/c I look like I ate whole witch’s house, yes? Well, I killed the witch too and I use her meat to make your burgers. Top quality. Only the best for my favorite American.
WE: Appreciate it, Hans.
The burger comes out dripping w/ juice & cheese & sauce. It’s a drug. We savor every bite like it’s the last we’ll ever have. Lessing likes his burger too, much more so than the Döner. Mi sets into his burger & fries w/ fully abandoned scruples. It’s a good thing he’s so little & that his stomach can expand so well; otherwise, we’d never have a moment’s peace from his ceaseless complaining. Mi’s so content right now it’s hard not to like him a little bit. Cute like a piglet is cute, just not quite so endearing.
After the burger & fries, it’s time for another trip to the vomitorium, which we mean both architecturally (if you choose to view the space around the palace like a theatre), & figuratively/mythologically in that the already molested stomach can’t hold them down & they need a rapid egress.
LESSING: Diese Gefräßigkeit kann ich nicht verstehen.
AIGH: You don’t have to participate.
LESSING: Doch.
MI: Why doch?
LESSING: As your guide I must understand you. To understand you, I must walk with you.
AIGH: So you HAVE to do what we do?
LESSING: Talis hominibus fuit oratio qualis vita.10
AIGH: Come again?
Mi says it’s time for an Eis & then he’ll be fully content & so we turn around & go to the ice cream place on the corner of the Longcourtyard. While we order, Lessing takes the opportunity to reminisce. We focus on the smells of ice cream. The stench is nigh unbearable, especially b/c next door is an old thyme bar that caters to vampires w/ a penchant for herbal liquor. We think they think that they think it must be like drinking Ricola. These vampires stink of herbs & cheap perfume over the musky stench of unwashed groins. Good thing we have our beeswax. We place a gracious plenty across our upper lip, right under our nose, to relieve our olfactory Weltschmerzen.
We get Lessing pistachio in a waffle. Mi gets Eierlikör, Malaga, Bailey’s, Yoghurt & Zuppa Inglese in a large Becher w/ sprinkles & crème & a crunchy waffle cracker for dipping. Eierlikör gives a brain rush. It reminds us of the time when we witnessed an ice-cream eating contest in Chattanooga. It was the funniest thing to watch a group of fatty smelly sweaty hillbilly automatons fight thru headaches that froze the last few brain cells they had available. At one point, this one’s brain froze so badly she forgot how to use a spoon & spooned her ice cream w/ the handle & dumped most of it on her swollen udders. Mi doesn’t get brain freeze. Not b/c Mi’s not intelligent. Mi is too smart for Mi’s own good. Mi doesn’t get brain freeze b/c Mi is too great a connoisseur de la crème glacée. Mi never eats it fast enough to get the frozen head of ice.
W/ the end of the ice cream comes the unavoidable aftereffects of the feeding frenzy. The body & mind shut down. The world’s rotation slows down. We slump back down in our alley & give ourselves over to exhaustion & sulphuric belches of indigestion. We just need a quick cat nap & then we will be as good as new. Lessing stands over us, shaking his head in either revulsion or pity or a combination of those probably other adjectives. He says to us, a blurred image of the 18th century:
LESSING: Wenn Sie fertig sind, I would like to have a little look around the city. See what has changed and what might still remain from my time.
AIGH/MI/MESUF: Geht klar.
So we answered him & then dreamed a dream of days gone by.
We remember returning from Francesca’s,
Heart heavy w/ the pain & joy of being
W/ her but not knowing her like a novia.
The weather mimicked our soul’s beating
At the hands of our own inadequacy,
& the wind grew fierce like Cerberus’s growling.
Moments ago we’d just finished our orgy,
Stuffed our gullets as a grave is w/ earth,
A befitting token for our celibacy.
We were biking home, head bowed low to the earth,
When the clouds heaved a sigh & wept over us,
Drenching us in the heavens’ fecund afterbirth.
Our corpora became heavy w/ lice,
Our boots filled w/ muck & mud & vomit,
Then heaven’s fury pummeled us w/ ice
To the point we sought solace in the pocket
Of an old birch tree’s muddied & icky stump,
Where we soiled our pants when lightning struck our sprocket.
We learned that day we’re nothing more than a chump.
1 Cf. Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Canto I: 1-3.
2 That can’t be true, that that which now in this moment is Here is also the Here from back then. Present. Was.
3 Eilig schwindet die Zeit, unmerklich nahen die Jahre des Alters, und die Tage, sie fliehen, da doch kein Zügel sie hemmt.
4 Hebrew. Pronounced “saw-am.” Anger, Rage. See usage “righteous indignation.
5 German colloquialism for SOL.
6 It seems to me you know as many languages as I.
7 Vomit
8 “Power fulfills itself in weakness.”
9 Hebrew: I am, I will be
10 Seneca: Epistles 19.114