An extract
Words of a Friend
the opening of Between Cities
Every day takes its course, and it’s accepted by most of us that a day begins with sunrise and ends with sunset. While some among us defy this and say that a new day begins when the clock strikes 00:00 and ends when it’s 23:59, others say that this isn’t true either and try to explain that these are just conventions that were agreed upon at some point.
We want to keep it simple for the reader of this story. For us, a day begins when the sun rises, and it ends when the sun sets. We further establish that a sequence of seven days constitutes a week. According to most conventions, such a sequence of seven days has fixed names for each of these seven days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It’s generally accepted that the week begins with Monday and ends with Sunday. In some cultures, it begins with Sunday and ends with Saturday. Depending where one lives, one understands Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, or Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The reader should pay attention now, because we’re breaking convention slightly: Our friend F. Wendelin’s account begins on a Friday. So, for the reader, this is the beginning, the start of the week with which he’s confronted. Consequently, the next question that one reader or another surely asks is legitimate: If convention is being broken and the week begins with Friday, what about the definition of a day or even the sequence of days within a week? One may breathe a sigh of relief. The sequence of days doesn’t change. And generally, F. Wendelin also understands sunrise as the beginning of a day and sunset as the end of one.
But just as one doesn’t see every sunrise, some days are somewhat cloudier than others and depending on where in the world one finds oneself, sunrise occurs somewhat earlier or later than in other parts of the world—so too are the impressions described in the following account: sometimes somewhat clearer, sometimes somewhat murkier. Sometimes F. Wendelin loses himself in his own thoughts and in trivialities. Some days drag on and others don’t. His wandering, as the reader understands it, is entirely human.
The understanding that F. Wendelin wants to change something about his life is fundamentally addressed in his recollection. Most of the time, however, he’s unaware of it, and thus it remains merely an intuition until the very end. One final warning should be given though to position the reader’s expectations properly. Whoever hopes for drama, tragedy, and an epic arc of suspense in the following events will be disappointed. That would require an artistic trick that would falsify F. Wendelin’s reality. His impressions and narratives, his way of thinking, his understanding of the world and of life—they are entirely and uniquely his own.
The readers who know F. Wendelin know firsthand that this account corresponds for the most part to events from his life, insofar as his memory didn’t cloud it in some instances.
The readers who don’t know F. Wendelin, we’d like to subdivide once more and try to describe their expected reaction as best as possible and take responsibility for it. The first type of reader who doesn’t know F. Wendelin, but who knows people like him: characters that brood a lot, who let themselves drift through life, who are very much loved; for they have an air of mystery about them, and for whom one would always wish well in life. We wish this kind of reader continued enjoyment in reading. The second type of reader, who likewise doesn’t know F. Wendelin, but doesn’t like characters like him or doesn’t know any character like him at all and doesn’t even want to know them; to this kind of reader, we’d like to ask forgiveness for the wasted time. FRIDAY
FRIDAY
This weekend wasn’t supposed to be particularly eventful. A friend’s birthday party was planned for Saturday— it was a friend I’d met through another friend from my university days. Back then, I’d been looking for people to drink beer with when I moved to Mexico City. That is, back when I had to travel to Mexico for work for a few weeks for the first time. I travelled between countries for work, never staying longer than a month in the same place. That had been my life for over 10 years now.