another re-run for halloween
Appointment in Berlin
Having arrived late last night I nevertheless woke early. The brief sleep left me unrefreshed but I was determined after all these years of my search to get an early start this morning in Salzburg. I had hoped for one of those crisp, clear late October days so to best enjoy the famed Mozartean dreamland in the oldest part of town, but instead the weather disappointed with cloudy skies and high humidity. I walked a couple of blocks through the city before I found the office not far from the birthplace of the great master himself on the Getriedegasse. It was early and the street quiet and deserted. My destination was in one of the very grandest of the baroque buildings that line the streets of the old town. My appointment had been set for eight o’clock but in deference to local norms of punctuality, my arrival was precisely 10 minutes early. Anxious to collect the promised papers at the appointment, I decided to head up to the office immediately rather than linger outside on the street or loiter about the ground floor lobby.
I took the self-operated cage lift to the third floor and then stepped out directly into a vast reception area. A sleek young woman with severely pulled back hair sat behind a glass and chrome desk that stood alone in the center of the room. She sat amongst polished parquet and walnut paneled walls beneath a magnificent vaulted ceiling. Soft overhead lighting bathed her in a slightly eery glow. A glance at the polished brass letters that gleamed on the raised panel wall behind her desk confirmed my arrival at the intended destination. Those glittering brass letters shone only slightly less intensely than the waxed parquet on the floor.
I knew from my old designer friend CB Ames that such displays were intended for effect but this one nevertheless worked its subliminal message on me. As the ambassadress of first impressions, the elegant young woman, attired in a chic Parisian dress sitting alone in that magnificent room made so powerful a statement of money and extraordinary, perhaps otherworldly, realms of power. Suitably cowed and intimidated in her presence, it set my nerves jangling made worse as a distinct chill permeated the room.
I glanced back at the polished brass letters on the wall above her desk. They read simply, “Stiftung Augenthaler.”
The young woman managed my disappointment smoothly when stating simply that unexpected circumstances made it necessary to cancel my appointment with the representative of Augenthaler. Without providing further explanation her beautiful languid hand gestured for the door, directing me to leave . This was yet another dead-end in my quest to obtain a large collection of rare factory documents and Porsche engineering papers including the original Porsche AG shop drawings and blueprints for the 2,3L flares that has been homologated back in 1970.
I had been the under bidder on this same collection long ago at a Stuttgart auction house. The lot sold to an anonymous buyer and I had entirely lost track of them for a decade. But now my long search led me here to the Augenthaler offices in Salzburg, only once again to reach yet another dead end.
But as I turned to leave, the chic young woman held out a last hope in the form of a note, written in violet ink on rich buff velum bu a strikingly elegant hand. The brief lines written on the note set the flame of my quest burning anew. In order to obtain what I desired, the note instructed me to proceed directly to the Adlon Hotel in Berlin where I was to find Old Pieter, described as the head barman in the lobby bar of the Adlon. I immediately made plans to find him.
But the next flight to Berlin was not until just after four this afternoon so I had some time to kill in Salzburg before heading out to the airport. I hurried away from the Baroque old city and set out past the Kollegianbirche by foot first crossing the old bridge across the river and then wandered along to the Restaurant Katzhof up the Hohn Salzburg to enjoy a coffee and the view.
At noon I went up the Monchs Berg and climbed along the ridge. For lunch I stopped for a glass of beer and a plate of sausages in a beer garden run by tonsured brothers in monks robes, their bloated faces fat from good beer. The lunchtime guzzlers sat at long wooden tables and tossed back foaming steins of brew and emptied their plates of heaps of glistening sausages. At the end of the room a depiction of Christ on the cross looked down mournfully on all those gathered, guzzlers and gluttons alike, while the good brothers hurried about the tables serving their fare.
It was then that I heard an odd voice. It was the voice of a repellant, snake like little man sitting at the table next to me. He stared intently at me and repeatedly stated the importance of our appointment later that day in Berlin. A truly hideous creature, there was an disagreeable odor about him and a calculating look of reptilian craftiness in his eyes. I had a strong urge to flee but struggled to remain composed as I got away from his unnerving presence.
I then wandered a bit, only to come upon that unhappy place where the town gibbet used to stand, exhibiting the corpses of the condemned. After this unbroken sequence of disquieting events, it seemed best for me to head out to the airport.
The brief, one hour flight to Berlin, although uneventful, left me feeling uneasy about the trip and rather than deal with crowds on public transport I decided instead that it was best to hail a cab curbside at the terminal. I instructed the driver to take me into the city to my destination at the Hotel Adlon. At first the colorful old capital looked splendid to me. And although the weather in Berlin was mildly cool with cloudy skies, the warm, exceedingly moist air in the taxi was stifling and nauseating.
Still some distance from the Adlon, something told me to end the cab ride immediately. It seemed by chance that the driver stopped just at the entrance to the western side of the Tiergarten. Recognizing the familiar surroundings, I had a thought to walk east through the park before intersecting with the Brandenburg and then proceed through Potsdamer Platz to the Hotel Adlon that stands just beyond. After I paid the fare, and upon opening the cab door, there came to me a distinct feeling, an unmistakable sense of foreboding. It was as if a dark shadow passed before me through the open door of the cab.
The afternoon had grown late and beneath the dimming light I lost my bearings almost immediately in the Tiergarten. After wandering lost for an agonizing 20 minutes I stumbled upon a small bridge that led me over a gully and then along a bumpy, pot holed road toward a ramshackle Bavarian-style country house cloaked in the distant haze. As I came closer to the house my pace something involuntary slowed my pace. The house itself stood in ruins with gaping cavities in the half-timbered facade and a derelict roof fallen in upon its upper floor. Only a small service wing had been hastily roofed and patched up.
As I looked about furtively before daring to enter, I saw that darkening cumulus towered in the western sky and then, just as the sun sank beneath the horizon, it cast the scene in an eery green tint. It was then that I entered the poorly roofed and patched up service wing of the derelict house.
A blast of icy air within greeted me at the door. Upon entering I tried to regain by bearings but my thoughts were interrupted by odd scratching noises in the walls and ceilings. Then came three loud knocks at the entrance behind my back and as the door swung to, I recognized an unmistakable and fearsome odor made familiar earlier that day.
cont
another re-run for halloween (cont)
It was then that he appeared. Before me stood that same repellant snake little man from the lunch table on the Monchks Berg and upon whom the Christ had so mournfully gazed down upon. He held his right hand high, holding a roll of what I took to be engineering drawings. His left hand pointed downwards towards a plate of cakes on a rickety table standing in the center of the room, as if inviting me to partake of an offering of the forbidden sweets of knowledge at the end of my quest for the papers in his arm held ahigh.
At first he spoke elegantly in high German and engaged me in philosophical debate. But enraged by my clumsy rebuttal he flew into an uncontrolled fit and ranted viciously in a foreign tongue, one full of glottal consonants and nasal trillings, as if he was the serpent from the garden, the constant traveler of those regions where lay the ancient cities of Aram that stretched across the ancient world from Aleppo to Samarra and Anatolia.
In panic, but with the firm determination to end my quest at last, I lunged for the papers he held high. Grasping them, I pulled them close to my breast and broke from the room. A contented laughter followed my passage and upon crossing the threshold I felt the dread of irretrievable loss flood over me, as the drawings literally dissolved in my hands. Turned to a useless confetti I felt the once unattainable but briefly attained Werks drawings pass like water through my fingers and spill across the ruined lintel of the doorway.
My heart pounded and my senses reeled in the knowledge that before me had stood something I did not think existed. I did not linger any further at those cold ruins in the Tiergarten and stopped no more until I made my way east and out of the park. Passing through the arch of the Brandenburg I recognized the façade of the intended destination just beyond, the Hotel Adlon. Its familiar sight reminded me to retrieve the vellum note from my pocket. It was the note that the chic young woman at the offices of Stiftung Augenthaler had handed to me that morning in Salzburg.
As I glanced anew at the graceful cursive that flowed in violet ink across the vellum I felt a sudden intensity grab hold of me and the thrill of the quest burned more brightly than ever before.
It had grown late now and the barman at the Adlon was closing for the night as I approached. I waved that vellum note to gain his attention and asked point blank about the papers that old Peter might have for me. The barman eyed me up and down carefully before whispering in an obsequious tone that old Peter had been dead some 40 years. He paused briefly and then asked sharply in a very different tone what I could possibly mean by such an affront.
As I fumbled for an answer to put him at ease, I stopped mid-sentence to watch incredulously as a scratch slowly opened across his cheek and blood flowed down his neck and reddened his collar. When next he reached out to touch my skin I saw his fingers run with blood.
A catatonic panic spread though my limbs as his fingers reached closer but the adrenaline finally reached my heart before he took hold of me. I felt the warm rush as my frozen limbs came alive and carried me as if on wings from his gruesome presence.
The panic quelled as I crossed the Potsdamer, and I looked about for a protected spot and took cover across the street. I crawled beneath the stacked tables outside the deserted coffee shop across the darkened plaza from the hotel, my heart pounding and limbs still shaking. When I searched again through my pockets for the vellum note, I realized that it had been left behind with the barman at the Adlon. A sudden feeling of loss came upon me but it thankfully passed to be replaced by a calming sense of contentment and being forever freed from my quest.
So fellows heed this. If on All Hallows Eve you listen closely and think you hear the scratching noises in the walls and ceilings, feel a sudden blast of icy air or hear three loud knocks upon your door, think twice as you unlatch. Watch carefully then for the Ancient One, that snake like little man, standing there on your lintel among the guising goblins that wander the roads this night.
