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feel like going out yet, so I examined them – most had
Italian labels. Care of the body, it seems, carries a whiff of
the exotic and distant. No matter whether they’re made in
Hong Kong or here, the labels must be in a foreign
language – what are people thinking when they choose
their dreams? Money is surely a crucial element. Okay, well
here’s the money, I’ve got it. What happens now?
Yes, the money was already on the table when I left the
bathroom, stepping barefoot onto the soft carpet. Water
dripped all around me as I stood in the center of the room,
my head was spinning ever so slightly from the heat, from
exhaustion, from the red-eye flight, from impatience to do
the deed and from the wavering question mark lodged in
my stomach: why did I do it? Do I even understand what
I’m doing now? Do I have to do this? Is it right? Does it
mean I’m responsible, that by doing this the blood is on my
hands?
Then I flopped down on the still-made bed. The bedspread
was clean, but somehow shabby. Sterilized and ostensibly
normal, yet with my body’s expanded and cleansed pores I
sensed its lack of coziness, overcrowded with reminders of
previous guests, sleeping bodies. Of course, all this turned
my thoughts back to the hospital, or perhaps it was the
opposite: I continued to be there in my mind, until in the
end the bed itself from room 308 at the Hotel Hamburg
actually began to move towards Krankenstrasse – or better,
Krankenhausstrasse – in any case, it was moving towards