Attempt
It always happens the same way: the train keeps slowing down until after a few small jerks it comes to a standstill. This time along the stretch between the Promenade and City Park stations. A loudspeaker announcement ensues, so muddled that the passengers look around helplessly. Minetti tries to think of nothing, but instead of that relaxing emptiness that sometimes sets in during the wee hours of the morning, various and sundry plans force their way unchecked and insidiously into his consciousness. Is there really nothing, he asks himself? The train starts moving again, and as if air were softly escaping from a balloon, relief spreads throughout the car.
Stand Still
Minetti is striding as he always does, quickly, with even a bounce in his step, along the Mews, when a few snatches of words jolt him abruptly from his thoughts. Minetti - stand - still ... he thinks he has heard. No one is to be seen. Minetti - stand - still! reverberates ever more insistently inside his head with each attempt to find a meaning in the wafted-by words. Anyone making such a peremptory demand and without justification must have dishonest intentions, Minetti ponders with suspicion, though realizing with unease that he would like to comply.
Answer
Minetti's heart is beating so loudly that he's sure it would be heard in the remotest corner of City Park, specifically where the hedges are the highest and the thickest. It is still too early for lovers; they arrive with the first signs of dusk. "Beat softly," he says in a low voice and smiles up at the canopy of foliage without wasting a single thought on the fact that he was following his heart to the other end of the park. High above him two branches fork apart and skewer a cloud tower as if it were an enormous wad of cotton candy.
Free Day
For today—a mild November morning warms the alleyway—Maag plans to play Minetti. Full of curiosity, he leaves the house, though as he crosses the threshold he starts reeling and arrives on the sidewalk, to his disappointment, still as Maag. For reasons of pure common sense and not to tempt fate, he abandons his plan, secretly delighted to have a free day ahead of him.
© 2006 Keller+Kuhn
Translation © 2006 Alison Gallup
(Christoph Keller and Heinrich Kuhn) has published the novels Unterm Strich (On Balance, Econ, Düsseldorf, 1994) and Die blauen Wunder (The Blue Wonders, Reclam Leipzig, Leipzig, 1997), the latter perhaps the first fax novel in existence. 's latest book is the acclaimed autobiographical novel Der beste Tänzer (The Best Dancer, S. Fischer, 2003), while , whose work has received numerous awards, has recently published the novel Sonnengeflecht (Solar Plexus, Rotpunktverlag, 2002). They live in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Paris (Kuhn) and in St. Gallen and New York (Keller). The four texts published here are part of the ongoing series Maag & Minetti: City Stories. Currently they are working on a new novel.
, a native New Yorker currently living in rural Germany, is a freelance translator. She holds M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in art history from Columbia University and studied translation at New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies. She is co-author of Great Paintings of the Western World and has translated books and essays on art and architecture. An excerpt from Christoph Keller's most recent book, Der beste Tänzer, appeared in her translation in the 2005 issue of Two Lines.
