English Texts

Lond-on-Line Diary

10.02.1996
The Indian meal weighed heavily in the night, whilst I lay awake, startled by a creaking or crackling from one of the few cars that drove through the street. The facades shimmer in a lethargic yellow, a haze lays over the town.

Heinz told me how the arrival in the morning reminded him of his arrival in Delhi 15 years ago, a civilisation shock, seven months he travelled with little money, that he carried in cash on his breast, always afraid that he would be hijacked, ambushed. Cadavers and semi-famished lay on the streets. Cats without fur rummaged in the waste, he left after his first term in sociology, later he changed to philosophy.
He narrated and we dined on chicken and lamb in curry, pilau rice, spinach, mushrooms and drank Indian Cobra Beer, the waiters thanked consistently and politely, when they brought something, we sat in a cool local. An air-conditioning rustled.

At that time, we knew each other from just one encounter. Heinz had jobbed as a taxi driver, alongside a second chance education for the university entrance examination. One evening in Wollishofen he switched on the radio at his taxi stand, there was a radio play, «Two mountain climbers in bivouac”, my first. Heinz, a mountain climber, had suggested me for a class visit. I still remember one morning in a classroom, the students sat in a circle, posing the usual questions. Afterwards he wrote a letter. He wrote a letter once again, after we met years later on the «Villigerpfeiler” a difficult climbing route. He wrote we could climb together again. Our first tour was the «Bockmattli” North wall on a bright Autumn day ten years ago.

Now he was here and we walked through tourist’s London, along the Thames. Tower, Embankement, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, Oxford Street, Hyde Park. London, the big village.
The meeting with Heinz had changed my life, through him I became a sport climber, young once again.

While we paced home through dull backyards, over puddles and soaked cardboard, he told me that G was attacked in London, from 2 youths, as he wanted to break away they pulled a knife. Back at home he checked if he could lock the outside gate, but there was no key to be found that fitted. Alone in the night I often startled, it creaked and crackled, a car drove up. Doors slammed, Heinz would stay a few days to keep company.

Translated by Pat Gerber