The times were dark as the corrugated iron of the barricaded display of the once beloved candy store. The grasses in the borders stood tall and the treetops arched. The wind swept through the alley and spread the smell of the remains of dogs that had relieved themselves. Why didn’t anyone clean the discounts here? This is what Christmas smells like in Neubaugasse. It murmurs. The word was coined by a friend who died years ago. The staggered fences around the borders are rotting away, cannot be easily cleaned and cannot withstand anything. What can smell like Christmas here? The jeweler? The Copenhagen House? The Curry Island? The hairdresser? The patchouli hut? No Christmas angel to be seen. Angels with amputated wings were mentioned in Krasnahorkai’s Nobel Prize for Literature speech. Angel of the end of history. My angels were present as pars pro toto. The angel wings were nailed to the light blue wall, remnants of putti, these children’s angels made of wood, painted with gold and silver, crumbled, damaged. The wings on the blue color decorated my room and were supposed to set the guardian angel fantasies in motion. I lay awake and the wings became amputated.
