Peter Kurzeck

In the Fressgass, a tramp. Drunk. Right in front of Café Schwille. Sitting on the paving stones and has finished all his bevvies. Rum, red wine, beer in cans, a Christmas liqueur, and corn schnapps. First was there and then gone! Absolutely all of it! Stands up, because sitting you can’t even defend your own. Stands up and staggers. Around him: everything’s swaying! Ghosts, briefcases, coated figures, stupid people. He with three coats one on top of another. Everyone avoids him. The serious Fressgass beggars have all abandoned the area, hours ago, because with his boozing he’s bad for their business. He stands up, gesticulating wildly. He opens his arms wide. His hands bloody. Cut to ribbons. Must have, with glass, bottles, and can’t remember now. Cut to ribbons, both hands. Must have, into shards, or with a knife. With sheet iron, a sharp metal corner or his reflection, drunk, and into it with both hands. Maybe yesterday? Maybe three days ago already? Pus and dirt and the blood dried on. Puked already, not long ago. Not the only time! Pedestrian zone. Just as long as the frost doesn’t get into his wounds, in the night. What’s he mumbling? Right in front of Café Schwille. Boozed up. Solitary confinement. Holds himself up on a surprised pillar. Everything’s swaying, everything’s dragging him down. Will sit down in a second. How did that happen, that he didn’t have a single drop? So much life, so much life experience, and now not even a single drop! And the pigs no doubt already on the way? Coming here from all sides, from every direction, and in his head: they just keep on coming! He staggers, he pants, he’s sat down. If you don’t take care of everything yourself! Now he starts to stand up, the world rises, the whole Fressgass stands up with him. There wouldn’t perchance somewhere in the world be a last drop he could, damn it all! If possible, around here! If needs must, with force! And in the distance the sirens already.

Cold and damp, soon dark. Is that me again? An emigrant’s coat and no face. As if the day had been taken from me and for just one good thought what should I, where should I? Would most like to go back now, but how far and back where? Back and start today again? Home now, home on foot. Defeated. In the third person. And this afternoon already as a story for Sibylle and Carina or not a single word of it? Not a single word of it, he couldn’t bear that! Home on foot. Hauptwache, Fressgass, the road to Bockenheim. December. The dusk, one week before Christmas, Frankfurt am Main. And the whole way not meeting a single face. And you will never arrive. Home, as if it were still our first year here in Frankfurt. From the village. A stranger there too. Every time that he arrives with sore feet at Opern Platz from whichever direction, never any money for the tram, and sees ahead of him the Goethe Strasse glinting, tired and hungry, the Fressgass: like a living past he can’t lose, it comes vividly to mind that there’s still a plentiful supply of fame and fortune. And many skies. Spell your name once more for us, please! And walking on, and not by a long way, never enough of anything. Always with Carina, before we reach Opern Platz, on the tram or on foot. Any second now, you’ll see! And will it this time too? Will definitely be there! Where the sky starts. There on the roof of the opera house and knows us: the horse with wings!