A part-time job in Pompeii
A part-time job in Pompeii is the title of a book by Jürg Federspiel . It was first published in 1993 by Suhrkamp Verlag .
content
A part-time job in Pompeii is a collection of eight mostly surreal short stories . The content is preceded by a dedication for Rolf Geissberger and a quote from Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Frank Sinatra .
A bad beginning and a nice ending
In New York , Marina Rudin takes her 18-month-old daughter of the same name and her husband Joe by bus to see her mother-in-law. The two parents had committed themselves to giving the child the first name of the same-sex parent as a token of their love. Fourteen years later, Marina changes her name to Arina , because the M reminds her of her hated mother, and at the age of 19 she marries the psychiatric nurse Blox Berger, with whom she later has an argument over differences of opinion over sexual intercourse. As Blox Berger overworks himself, he dies one day in the shared apartment. At Blox Berger's funeral, Arina gets into an argument with her mother Marina, who in her opinion does not have the right to mourn Blox Berger. Arina is overwhelmed by her deceased friend's work colleagues, dragged into a car and raped in a forest. Shortly afterwards, Arina also loses her job. But since her mother dies in a traffic accident, she inherits her fortune and opens a flower shop. She marries a man, Joe, and has a daughter with him, whom she names after her mother, Marina . The narrative flow is narrative repeatedly interrupted by a second story, namely that of the creation of the moon .
The covered man
In a bar, a guest sees a man about seventy years old who is taped over with tape. He gets into conversation with the guest and says that he used to be a train driver and that he fell in love with a woman who always waved to him on the railway line. One day, however, he accidentally ran over her and said that she could have been saved if her body had been taped together. When the guest says goodbye and leaves the pub, he sees that the moon is also covered with tape.
A snowman looks at the world
A businessman in Alaska buys the snowman Riildu. This seems to be inspired and says after it has been acquired that he wants to go to Mexico. The narrator flies to Mexico with the snowman and moves into a classy hotel. There he watches an old woman playing with a little Japanese girl who apparently has no name. When the narrator learns that children are considered commodities in Mexico and that they are even rented out, Riiltu begins to melt.
The man with the umbrella in Zurich
While the narrator is waiting in Zurich for his wife, who is shopping, he sees a man in his late sixties at a tram stop. He holds an umbrella in his hand, which he does not open despite the heavy rain that has set in. Passers-by are outraged that the gentleman is not using the umbrella and take him for a foreigner whom they make to understand in primitive language that he must open the umbrella. In the end, the man is led away by two policemen. When the narrator's wife returns, she is told the story. Seventeen years later, the narrator is in the same place, but is now divorced. Surreal scenes play out, at the end a Bedouin with two burning umbrellas calls the takbīr . The narration ends with the narrator's ironic assurance that “It is written”.
Portrait of a romantic
Michael Dedual, a Swiss, shoots his wife's supposed lover in Manhattan . When the victim turns around shortly before death, the perpetrator realizes that he has mistaken him. When he is about to fly back, he reads about the murder in the newspaper and becomes nervous. Dedual is described in a flashback. He is a lawyer and romantic, which explains his emotional outbursts in love affairs. After Dedual was killed in a car accident in Switzerland, the narrator has to think of an ending for the story.
A story about revenge
A couple in the bedroom of their hotel on Gozo : While a dispute is brewing between the two married couples, a storm is brewing. The 22-year-old husband goes to the hotel bar. The wife takes sleeping pills and drinks gin while she remembers her childhood in post-war Germany. The next morning the woman wakes up and notices that her husband has meanwhile left alone. Like the first story, this narrative is interrupted by two insertions relating to Maltese history .
A part-time job in Pompeii
The parents Wolfgang Vonderach and Astrid go on a spring hike with their daughter Claudia and their son Valentin. Her daughter discovers snow and remarks that the family should have brought skis. In a flashback , we learn that the parents got married nine years earlier and recently moved into a new house. Astrid discovers her dying husband there, but her help comes too late. The dead Wolfgang finds himself in Pompeii . The narration ends with the repetition of the passage told at the beginning. It is supplemented by the fact that her daughter once called out when she saw a puddle: "We should have brought a surfboard."
literature
expenditure
- Jürg Federspiel: A part-time job in Pompeii . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1993 (first edition) ISBN 3-518-40509-8 .