AUGUSTINAself

1.

Yes, it is true, she is standing there in front of the elevator, the mobile phone lying fat and heavy in her hand.

Beep_menu_beep_messages_select_beep_received

select_beep_opening_folder_beep_CONGRATULATIONS!

open_beep_opening_message_Congratulations, YOU have

won! THE REVELATION, way beyond cool! FREE ENTRANCE.

FIRST LIFE. 1st FLOOR TONIGHT. SPECIAL 4 YOU!

The elevator widens with her breathing out and sucks her in, our Augustina who cannot recall which game she actually took part in, where at all she is participating, is she a gamer? Is she a surfer? Does she belong to a gaming community? Did she register there? User name? Yes. Password? No, forgotten. What was her surname again? Augustina Je. Laa.joo.meee. no Suu. I forgot, no, eaten by the gorge of memory, well never mind! Although eating is important as a matter of principle.

Meanwhile the interior of the train warms her with tender orange light, and the illuminated numbers of the passing storeys dwindle. The wall of the elevator is covered with a delicate intransparent webbing, a finely woven pattern, pulsating, branching out and thickening with the upward motion. Somewhat cheesily, it blinks and twinkles in changing shades of colour. Augustina is impressed by the small, fiery explosions at the intersections which spread out, twitching feathery veins. Fabulous!

Ping! Okay, that's it, 1st FLOOR. 1st floor?

BLACK!

Is it that?

Augustina is standing in a huge hall on a smooth, milky surface, her head lowered she stares at half a walnut kernel on the floor. Now one might ask oneself, is that revelation?

Augustina does not. She bends down to see better, nothing else. And for a long time; observes the valleys and grooves, the whorls and warps of the nut, and when she looks up again she is inside these shapes, surrounded by what she has seen, engulfed by the bulging concavities.

Just like home, she thinks. No, not her current home. No, not her previous home with her ex. No, not even in the next to last or the next to next to last or the next to lost one, nor her childhood home, but the being-at-home one sometimes dreams about.

Suddenly, solemn synthetic music sounds, TV-show-like, and the entire floorspace lights up like an overdimensioned monitor. Tons of information in words, signs, and images flicker through the surface, flittering criss-cross over the plane. A squirrel enters the show, jumps on the stage. It smiles widely with its oversize teeth.

The jumble of sounds swells, voices, noises and resonances entangle to an impenetrable, overflowing mash weighing heavy in one's stomach, indigestible.

Augustina's body stiffens. HOLD IT! Something to hold on to, hold me! Silence all of a sudden. Paralysis, freeze frame, still.

The floor - now a giant sheet - rips, splintering into an infinite number of parts. With a windy, howling sound the sheet fragments peel away from the plane, rising slightly, turning upwards - stop, stop it - someone stop them! -, only to skid back again immediately into the plane with a sucking sound. Then again up and back, up back, forward and backward leap. For- and backwards in time, and up again they are rustling in the air flow. The fragments whirling through the room, turning, rushing, dashing. The speed robs her of any possibility to decode what she perceives. The shreds shrink, cluttering soppily, the noise becomes more saturated, the speed slower. A beep. Once, twice, thrice, the whirling getting wetter, a sound of bellyflopping. Spin cycle, speeding up again. Beep. Rags whacking, thwacking against the walls. Beep. Sluggishly sliding along the rim to the ground. Beep, beep .

At 07:14 in the morning Augustina was yanked out of her dream by her mobile's wake-up call, which also tore away any memory of her dream.

Monday

Brigitta had knocked over the espresso machine, the melted-off handle still had not been replaced. When jumping away from the stove so as not to get scalded she cursed and actually was on her way to the bath already, but there was no rag, it still hung on the balcony to dry. However, she could not know that. Well okay, it is possible to suppose so instead of ranting along, only to scald one's hands again during the renewed coffee attempt. Apparently Brigitta was not even able to mop the floor without her morning coffee! She also appeared to be late, as always, now also had to change clothes. And then found it after all, the rag. But the balcony door stayed open, so that there was a draught and the kitchen door slammed shut.

Augustina did not even want to imagine what would happen now to the unstable coffee pot. Yes, now she was awake for good, already awakened before by her wake-up call, but she always set it so that she could stay in bed a bit longer. Listening whether Brigitta was gone already.

It's nice when it's the other way around, Augustina thought, when I'm the first one who rises, the first to enter the bath, and the first to switch on the kitchen radio. It's pleasant if Brigitta comes out of her room only then. How pleasant it is to get a chance to be nice, give a sleepy-eyed person a pitying look, and be able to say nothing gracefully through a nice glance, not even if the half-present person is coming back from the bathroom and looks even more disastrous.

What did she do to her tear sacs under the shower? Scrub the sleep away? Cry because she woke up?

That made sense: helping Brigitta into the day by sliding coffee prepared by means of a well-thought-out pincer grip with the help of three pot cloths towards the flatmate, together with a gentle word. And then, of course: Brigitta really had a charmingly grateful smile.

It was just such glances which Augustina would have needed every day in order to cope with the fact that getting up was no torture for her. Being tired, not wanting to get up, that at least would have been something. But no, totally fresh, but then this indetermination. Why was she never in such a clear mood as Brigitta, and why was Brigitta to change her mood at first social contact, according to need, like a hurriedly put-on pullover? As she wanted to. As you like it.

Not so Augustina, who got up, showered, brushed her teeth, switched on the radio and was thankful for every security-increasing ritual that did not require any decision. Having discarded the neutral white of her morning gown, she dressed, and generally never felt very comfortable in her clothes. For how on earth should she know then what she would like to wear? Her uniform right in the morning, no, that didn't work either. And - alas! - she did not need her morning coffee so urgently, not that either, she did not really know what she wanted, but in any case she was always thirsty. If there was nothing in the fridge, at least there was an exigency from which resulted a need for action: someone had to go shopping. Okay, down to the supermarket. Orange juice and other stuff, just breakfast for now, in the evening there would be nothing there again. Nor tomorrow morning. But she was generally unable to imagine prospectively what she might fancy then, so, as usual two rolls, cheese, orange juice and two yoghurts? Jam was still there, always was.

Augustina's mother kept the never-ebbing jam fountain up to season. Mother had never visited her at her shared flat, if she knew in what places the carefully labelled glasses were stacked up! Nevertheless, Augustina never objected when she left and mother did just not forget her usual almost-forgotten gift.

Stop, wait a second, will you? Now I'd almost forgotten the jam, why didn't you say anything, Tini? Tini didn't say anything, but loaded up, including the extra glass for Michael.

Mother simply didn't want to accept that it was over, a thing of the past: "I know he just loves raspberry-elderberry!"

Parents like to think: it's going to be all right, only a bit of crisis, and he would certainly come back to poor Tini, who after all had walked out on him. Did not want to face facts. They prefer to think up a poor daughter to be consoled, even if they didn't say so to her face: "poor Tini -" But as soon as she was gone, Augustina knew, it would break loose at once: "did you notice how sad she looked again today, don't you think we should call him, shouldn't we call Michi?"

They had never done so, and they wouldn't. Augustina would never eat the raspberry-elderberry jam, on principle, but throwing it away wouldn't do either. Darn scruples, childhood precepts, about food and stuff, respect for raspberry-elderberry. Brigitta had also stopped asking questions, but out of solidarity had decided to find raspberry-elderberry too tangy and to reject it, too.

So when would Brigitta leave at last? Please, please, now, no forced conversation today with grumpy Brigitta, grumpy Brigitta with Morning Augustina who did not know yet how to manage her iffiness today. Waiting in bed.

When after a while the front door banged she thought she was safe. Only thought, though, for Brigitta came back again, and this time - plodplod, unmistakable -...