TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Birke

when the first train left and the last train arrived at Klagenfurt’s Bahnhof . The first train left the tracks at 4:40 in the morning and at 4:38 every morning, she heard the shrill screamof the platform guard’s whistle. She used to imagine a portly man blowing his whistle with fervor, while his red cheeks, shaved clean from a single-blade razor (a practice he often bragged about), poofed up like a hot air balloon. Every night, at 23:35, the last train from Vienna would huff and huff before eventually slowing to a stop at the Bahnhof ’s second platform. Herentire lifeexisted between4:40and 23:35. Nomatter what happened during the day—whether she failed a Latin Exam, found her father staring at the ground of their kitchen in the middle of the night, or went swimming at the Worthersee with Erika and Kathi—she knew that between 23:34 and 23:35 the last train of the day would screech onto platform number two. And after that last train settled onto its steel tracks for a night of rest, she would finally be granted silence. This silence was a prepared silence, one that came back every night and left promptly in the morning. However, the silence she sensed nowwas not tied to any schedule that repeated itself everyday. It was not dictated by the rules of city life, nor by the transportation between regions, contracting village life tocity lifeona schedule that beganearly in themorning and ended late at night. The silence in the valley surrounding Hans Grabner’s cabin was an accident. She turned around to try to get a glimpse of some humanity. Some noise. The bridge, which now lie a few hundred meters away and would disappear once she descended the last of the four steep 215