Trafika Europe 3 - Latvian Sojourn

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

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