Sun 09
Sep 2007

but at the end of the day the 20 Euro bill is still in his pocket. He will take a cab tomorrow to meet that art collector.

Posted by dora under The Beggar's Diary
2 Comments

The Beggar's Diary, 08.09.2007. – Filch is passing the Landesmuseum early in the morning when Christine Litz spots him and reminds him of the deal they made: he got to meet the Bundespräsident in exchange for going with her to meet an art collector next Sunday. By all means, dear Christine, that’s just the sort of people The Beggar is interested in right now. After the insolence of the SP07 acquisition committee, this may, perhaps, be his only chance of lasting longer than two weeks. The one, and only, visit from a collector he can remember from the entire summer resulted in a 10 Euro investment in his small business.

"Sunday," says Christine, " at this address. Here’s 20 Euro for a cab."

20 Euro for a cab. That is a fortune for Filch. And the hours between now and the meeting: an infinity of temptations calling out to him to spend that money.

But what did the acquisition committee decide to buy? Martha Rosler, they say. That’s a wise decision, thinks The Beggar, and he genuinely means it. He doesn’t seem to think about this that much anymore. Why ruin his last days in Muenster with somber thoughts and dull resentment? He will enjoy it to the last minute.

And he’s got 20 Euro now.

But first to the Spiekerhof. He has an uncanny, David Lynch-like encounter. A woman comes up to him and says she saw him yesterday (yesterday? where?): the conversation stops there and they smile at each other for an eternity. "Ich schaue weiter," she says by way of good-bye.

Two lively and joyful conversations with a Belgian couple and two girls from Glasgow follow that encounter, and Filch’s bipolar disorder tilts back towards euphoria. The couple tell him in Flemish: "Het is de eerste keer dat een skulptuur me aanspreekt, letterlijk!!" (It's a play of words: "aanspreken" means both "talk to" and "please," so that the sentence means: "It's the first time a sculpture talks to / pleases me.”) The two Glasgow girls have a suggestion for Filch's last day: "Maybe the train is a good way to leave?"

Today, Filch gets the crazy idea of asking people the following question:

"Is there a question you would like to have asked, but didn't, either because you were too afraid to ask it, or because you didn’t have the chance?"

He thought of adding the clause, "didn’t have the chance," in case the person one would have addressed the question to was not in the position to answer it (was dead, far away, a fictional character, or God).

These are the answers he got. Here are the never-asked questions:

What is the meaning of this?
What's your passion?
Is he leaving you?
Do you think your marriage will last?
Why did you choose this life?
Sind wir beim du oder beim Sie?
Why are you scared to want more?
Could you imagine yourself in her position?

He has a second David Lynch-like encounter when he poses his question to a young woman sitting on a street bench. After a long silence, she says she would have a lot of questions to ask Juan Muñoz.
"Juan Muñoz?"
"He was a Spanish artist who died in 2001, very young and unexpectedly. He was a storyteller, he was playful, and he was disturbing. He made many sculptures in the form of a stage set."

She feels an obvious devotion to that artist and she speaks a long time about him. But she refuses to give her name when they say good-bye.

What a forest of signs today! He tries to sell his last umbrella to a group of Muenster natives in the rain, but they are not interested; one of them, a lady, offers him a job at a call center where they could really use an English speaker.

"I already have a job, I don't have an ID, and I totally refuse to pay taxes."

"All right … your taxes are none of my business … Here you have my card anyway."

The streets of Muenster are loaded with people. There is a free concert at the Domplatz by a group called H-BLOCKX. Simultaneously, a couple of streets further, at the Syndikatplatz, a free concert takes place as part of the Red Cross Jubilee, by “Wilde Herzen”.

But this is the real dilemma: find some money or spend Christine’s 20 Euro bill? It seems wiser to find some extra money. He writes little notes to leave on tables so people can read them and give him some money. For instance:

a. Some help for a beginning millionaire?
b. Your money or my life!
c. I lost my memory; please help me find a good story.
d. I have some important information about the future!
Please give me some money so I don't have to tell it.
e. Be a useful fiction, give some money!
f. Go ahead, make my day!

This should do, he thinks, and promises himself that he will go to work and distribute them first thing in the morning. At the end of the day the 20 Euro bill is still in his pocket. He will take a cab tomorrow to meet that art collector.