From Thomas Bernhard's "The Loser"


Beer-truck drivers have fascinated me since my earliest childhood, so too that day. I was fascinated by the way they unloaded the beer kegs and rolled them through the lobby, then tapped the first one for the innkeeper and sat down with her at the next table. As a child I had wanted to become a beer-truck driver, admired beer-truck drivers, I thought, couldn't look often enough at beer-truck drivers. Sitting at the next table and watching the beer-truck drivers I again fell prey to this sentiment from my childhood, but I didn't dwell on it for long, instead I got up and left the Dichtel Mill for Traich, not without having told the innkeeper that I would be back toward evening or even earlier, depending, and that I was counting on an evening meal. While going out I heard the beer-truck drivers ask the innkeeper who I was and since I have sharper ears than anybody I also heard her whisper my name and add that I was a friend of Wertheimer's, the fool who'd killed himself in Switzerland.

Comments

POPULAR POSTS

Tarkovsky's Death and the Film "Stalker"

Hitchcock's Soda City

TÃœBINGEN, JANUARY by Paul Celan

Coetzee's "Costello": Koba the Bear and Paul West