Ich lese gerade auch wieder Kurzgeschichten. Und zwar "Death in Venice and Other Stories" - eine Sammlung aus Kurzgeschichten von Thomas Mann in englischer Fassung. Bis zur letzten Story der Sammlung, Death in Venice, bin ich noch nicht gekommen. Bisher ist meine Sicht auf diese frühen Werke des Autors eher durchmischt:
[sup]Hier die Story... Sorry für Typos und sonstige Fehler - es war spät, als ich es verfasste und hatte jetzt keine Lust, da nochmal drüber zu gehen.[/sup]
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SpoilerThe Neologist
Night surrounded Delamere railway station like a black velvet cloak. Truth be told, it was not the comfiest kind of cloak, however. On the contrary, the real feel temperature had to be about four degrees at that time, with 'that time' referring to 02:53 a.m., according to the station clock. It is not as though Dale was not used to lingering around in similar surroundings, for after all he had to wait for public means of transport on a daily basis for half a year now whenever he had classes at university. Only this time things really sucked.
Sitting on a metal seat that felt like an ice cube and observing the site for lack of something better to do besides shivering off the cold occasionally, Dale monitored the other people at the station. On the other platform (there were only two platforms) he saw some guys whom he had been watching for some time now. As he slid the last peanut butter cookie out of the package he had bought at an extortionist price from the vending machine nearby, two of the men stood in front of the drinks machine and grumbled. ''Tha' bloody think jus' won' work,'' one of them said as he gave the machine a listless kick, ''we'd be'er try sumwhere else''. From what he saw, Dale reckoned the two drunks had been hanging out there and looking for something to grouse about all night, but finding nothing, they repeatedly had a go at the apparently inoperable machine and surely would continue to do so until they would retire. Hence this small episode only added the score up to four since he had started his observations and added to his feelings nothing but ever more boredom.
A little apart, Dale saw a third guy who was so tanked that he barely managed to aimlessly weave about without falling off the platform and on the tracks. Realising that, Dale thought that actually this would not be that dangerous, anyway, because as he had read on the rail timetables, there would be no trains coming in before 5 a.m. This being thought, he came back to what he had been trying to avert for the last half an hour, namely the fact that he was stuck on a railway station in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night, waiting and waiting for a new hour strike (or two hours, to be more accurate). Screwing up the empty cookie package in his fists, Dale damned the mushrooms and drunk giraffes that had earned him all that trouble.
He had deemed it a smart idea getting by train from Cranfield to Chester particularly late, because it had saved him more than five quid. ''Well done, mate!'', he heard himself mumble now, ''For someone who studies at a university that specialises in subjects like logistical analysis, communication systems and so forth, you do have a talent to fuck up.'' And yet, thinking about it, he had to acknowledge that the people in costumes had been a factor he could not have possibly foreseen. If it had not been for that group of about a dozen men and women dressed in fluffy and colourful mushroom and griraffe costumes making a rumpus that would make any announcement inaudible in his compartment, he would not have alighted from the train two stations early in the first place. ''Besides,'' he thought, ''I'm just a first year. Plus I've always known that I'm not into logistical analysis. Can't imagine a subject less interesting. Except for British Army Culture, maybe.''
He binned the cookie package and pulled out his mobile from his black winter jacket pressing the power button but, as expected, this hopeless attempt to switch it on resulted in a short flicker followed by a blank screen. ''Candy Crush Saga be damned!'', he mumbled with a feeling of sly humour in his stomach as he put the phone back in his pocket, now regretting to have surfed the Net on the train all evening. Of course he had checked for a cab earlier, but there were no cars in the parking area behind the locked station building at all, just a phone box that had been vandalised. Now he could do nothing but wait; wait for a train, wait for the drunks to come over and start bothering him, wait for these doubts and questions he had been neglecting the past few months to recur to his conscience.
Sure enough, the wounding voices now started to echo through his head, mocking, teasing and questioning him into pieces. ''Not even fit to travel on your own, are you? You know you won't make it to a degree with that attitude, don't you? What are you going to do with your life?'', they were hissing, and caught in a moment of weakness, Dale found himself unable to push them back into the chamber of denial. ''It's true.'' he thought, ''My courses are chosen at random, including Introduction to Explosives as well as Leadership Studies and even a course called Fakes and Forgeries. Well, sure it must be nifty to be able to tell real art objects from fakes, I mean, they do it in the movies all the time to make an impression on the baddies. But, honestly, the constellation of my courses is totally pointless if there're no jobs including all that. Nah, well, at least they're fun.'' A murmured singsong echoed ''Sure, they may be fun, but as long as there's no common theme at all, the whole thing is pointless and a waste of time.''
As his self-doubts took hold of him, Dale got up from the blue metal seat and started to walk around. Kneading his fingers into his thick brown hair and sidestepping a light post, he passed the small rain shelter, but not even as the pungent odour of public toilet aroma hit his nostrils did the sudden flash of emotional self-harming ease off. ''You've always had problems fitting in. You still do. You'll never change, you know? It's no wonder you don't make any friends'', the chorus chimed. ''Bullocks, I do have friends! Sage, for instance. I wouldn't be here if we hadn't agreed to meet'', he mentally retorted. But as he had to admit to himself, the inner critic had a point. Even Dale's teachers at primary school had already remarked to his parents that he was a bit of a loner who scarcely made contact with his classmates, and things had not changed by an iota since then, even though he had tried and tried again to change. Sage was one of the very few people that could stand him despite his largely ugly traits, like his detachment or frantic perfectionism, and about the only person to endorse his at times unsettling silentness.
On numb feet he approached the end of the platform, turned round and scuffled back towards the rain shelter, not realising that the drunks had left the stage by now. ''If I cannot change, I guess I'll have to work with what I have'', he thought ''and even if there's nothing to be proud of yet, maybe that way I'll even achieve some kind of pride.'' Mesmerised by the idea of attaining a sense of worth by following his strangely diverse interests, intuition and traits, it took a little while until Dale realised that the voices in his head had no witty banter to reply. ''Well, that's new'', he wondered just before he bumped into the light post and fell hard on his back, slamming his elbow into the concrete. He felt dizzy only for a few seconds before the pain in his elbow made him whince, but when his eyes regained focus, he got ever more perplexed. Clustered around the yellow light cone of the street light in small dots of sparkling blue, the stars seemed unworldly beautiful to him that night, and in a whisper he heard himself say ''Post Nubes Lux'', adding to these words a completely new dimension of meaning.
By Mario R, Kassel, January 2014
