Galina Toktalieva - Diary of Female Photographer©

Oct

8

Mustard

Filed Under Gesellschaft

America.jpg

I was taking a nap on small broken bed of mine in Mehlplatz-1 garret after sleepless night and was galvanized by crashing noise of bottle collector in the yard.

Graz was one of the cutest towns I ever lived in, but to be positioned in old center of it under the roof with unbearable heat in summer and roar of surrounding restaurants all year round � was very hard 5 years long trial.

Besides my small room that was offered to me by landlord himself was located in intimate closeness to African commune from whose cheerfulness and sexual harassments I was separated by thin carton wall.

Considering size of room being as doghouse and had no wash machine, I applied three times to landlord Dr. Helmut Marko for discount, naively convinced that rich people like Marko with world-wide-fame background would be somewhat compassionate to me. But what does it mean to be compassionate? It means to share one�s riches.

Sometimes I have seen Helmut Marko � one of milestones in Graz high society- during presentations downstairs in his first-rate grey suit, and he only gazed back at me with his single eye as if he didn�t see me at all. Once his devoted secretary Baar replied to my absurd applications that discount was never ever possible.

Everything was going according to strict social rules.

Did you notice that lack of human kindness is always justified by following to prescribed regulations?

When you ask for help, understanding and mercy, they reply you they can not do anything because they follow certain rules.

I thought I could not leave. Normally landowners demanded rather high deposit.

There I was stacked � in awful living conditions, having no cent from Austrian social benefits, no work permit and no money savings.

It was survival in jungles.

Nevertheless at the expense of mental and physical health I paid all my bills regularly � including costly insurance, and millionaire Marko always got his share in time.

Human being who used to live in such circumstances was to experience feelings about world to be tragically transformed. It was good school of knowing people’s nature and knowing how other side of moon looked like.

And at last I moved!

Or I had not moved and stay still in my cramped poor room under the roof?

Life could be only short painful dream, which constantly comes back on its old circles.

Grey-haired man took my hand and told:

�You are the sense of my life!�

We were walking in dark neighborhood of one -U3 underground stations.

Tears filled my eyes and then fell upon cheeks mixing with drops of rain.

I already knew what was all about.

Then we said good-buy and he went home, to scheduled routine of

his married stable life with regular work, regular income, regular vocations and regular sex once per week in darkness of habitual matrimonial bedroom.

I went back to my small Vienna flat.

All kitchen shelves there were empty like during great famine in old Russia

when people used to consume not only cats, rats and crows, but also one another.

O, yes, I am not street prostitute, not mature porno model and I don�t wash the floor for 7 euros per hour, but when I open my refrigerator and see nothing except bottle of mustard

I regret I am not.

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    One Response to “Mustard”

    1. rider on October 15th, 2007 2:49 pm

      “Grey-haired man took my hand and told:

      You are the sense of my life!

      We were walking in dark neighborhood of one -U3 underground stations.

      Tears filled my eyes and then fell upon cheeks mixing with drops of rain.

      I already knew what was all about.

      Then we said good-buy and he went home, to scheduled routine of

      his married stable life with regular work, regular income, regular vocations and regular sex once per week in darkness of habitual matrimonial bedroom.

      I went back to my small Vienna flat.

      All kitchen shelves there were empty like during great famine in old Russia”

      Maybe you forgot to mention, that you came just out of chinese restaurant, where you had Peking duck.

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