Pravles Redneckoff 🇷🇺 Z

Friday, November 1st, 2019, 13:45

Abwehramt, Hetzgasse 2, third district of Vienna

In Hetzgasse, opposite of the federal taxation authority, there is a large, five-story building. Grime clings to most of its windows. There are spots of white paint on the dark gray facade, and holes that look as if a construction worker drilled a hole by mistake and didn't bother to fix it.

Next to this structure is a garage. Here, the Hetzgasse ends and crosses the cobblestone-paved Upper Viaduct street. It runs parallel to a railway track. From this crossing it's about three minutes by foot to Superstrizzi's all-you-can-screw-brothel in Zollgasse 3.

The building has only one entrance. There are two doors made of metal, with glass in the upper half. The doors look as if they changed little since the 1950s.

Close to the entrance there are rectangular spots on the otherwise dark-gray facade. In the corners of these spots there are holes. These seem to be remainders of signs explaining what organization this strange building is accommodating. But the signs are no longer there.

Above both doors is a big glass plate with the engraving of the Austrian coat of arms. This is the only direct indication that this is a government building.

Next to the entrance, above the door, a metallic box with white glass sides is mounted. You can see the silhouettes of incandescent lightbulbs through them. Such emergency signals are rare in Vienna.

Most buildings on this street, including the restaurant Guesthouse Wist on the opposite side, are relatively well-maintained and clean. If God was a Libertarian propagandist, He or She could not find a better metaphor for the government's inefficiency.

It is in this building where Riml-Löhr works (or pretends to work). He has a large office in the second floor. Its aesthetics do not bother him for several reasons.

At first he thought its ugliness is the problem of outsiders. He was inside and didn't see it, so why bother?

After several years he got so used to this building that he ceased to notice the lovelessness of its appearance. At the same time he started to regret he traded computer science for the life of a glorified clerk–because that is what most counterintelligence officers are.

On one side he was overqualified for this work. On the other, he can't derive pleasure from serving others. Those others are like atoms floating around in a Brownian motion of life. He is like the other atoms, but there is a difference between being similar and being connected.

In Greek mythology there is Sysiphus – a king whom Zeus condemned to eternal torture by meaningless work. Sysiphus pushes a boulder uphill. At the top, it rolls down and the process begins anew.

At work Riml-Löhr feels like Sysiphus, but worse. Sisyphus' enemy was Zeus, the most powerful Greek god. Riml-Löhr's enemy is his own inability to defy family traditions.

He suppressed these ideas, and the more he did so, the more annoyed he became, until perpetual irritability left no mental bandwidth for thinking about the aesthetics of the building.

On white walls of the office there are two paintings from the time he was rebelling against someone or something. He would need to bust his brain to remember what or who.

The first one shows the evolution of man. On its left side, there is a fish in the water.

Slightly to the right follows a lizard. It evolved from the fish and now has little legs and hands. It crawls from the water on land. Underneath it there is the lettering "Representative of any other nationality."

To the right of the lizard is an ape walking on all fours. The lettering says "German."

Another ape follows. This one walks on its hind legs with the body hunched forward. Its long arms reach the ground as it moves. According to the lettering beneath he is a Burgenlandian.

To his right is another ape. He stands more upright than the Burgenlandian, but still hunched forward. Its arms are shorter now and no longer touch the ground. The lettering tells us he is a Styrian.

To the right of the Styrian, there is a taller ape with a low, sloping forehead. His fur is much sparser than that of his colleagues down the evolutionary ladder. He holds a rock in his hand. This is a Lower Austrian.

To his right is a tall, fully upright, modern man. He wears a tailcoat and a top hat. You can also see a part of a red shoulder sash. Instead of a rock, he holds a cup of coffee in his hand. The lettering says "Viennese."

On the other wall hangs a picture of the solar system–or so it seems, until you get closer and look more carefully.

In the center, instead of the sun, there is a big, Earth-like planet. A little lettering next to it says it's Vienna. The planet had two moons – "Lower Austria" and "Burgenland."

At a distance from them is an asteroid belt. Behind it there are several other, smaller planets titled "Carinthia", "Upper Austria", "Salzburg", "Tyrol", and "Vorarlberg."

Farther from them is a giant planet with Saturn-like rings around it. This is Germany.

Finally, far away from Germany there is a small, barely recognizable, pale blue dot in the corner of the painting. The lettering next to it says "Every other country."

Riml-Löhr sits in his chair and occasionally looks at both paintings. When he painted them, they seemed funny. Now, decades later, they express self-evident truths.

However, these are just the tributaries in Riml-Löhr's stream of consciousness. Its stem river is the question "how to spend the weekend?" It will start in quarter of an hour, at 14:00.

Even though technically Friday is a business day like any other, most Austrians of Riml-Löhr's seniority stop working around 14:00.

When someone doesn't, they may be immigrants who, regrettably, haven't yet ascended to the pinnace of evolution with respect to their work ethic.

They could also be a despicably overindustrious person, also known as Streber. Or they are a low-skilled, easily replaceable worker in constant fear of being fired.

Riml-Löhr is none of these.

In about fifteen minutes walking distance from the Abwehramt there is a shopping mall Landstrasse-Wien Mitte with a variety of restaurants. Riml-Löhr ponders on whether he will eat a Schnitzel today or go with something more exotic like Sushi. Should he top it off with a "dessert" at Zollgasse 3?

Someone knocks on the door.