Siegrun Appelt Working text

When reading the text there are two cafés in my mind. The first, where the murder happens, I see a modern café in the style of the 80s, more of an evening locale for eating and drinking. Later it changes into a rather unprepossessing locale from the 50s, a mixture of café and bar. In the first café, a bar made of dark wood can be seen in the background, otherwise it's empty, and there are neither tables nor chairs.The side facing the sea and the street has a glass façade divided by narrow wooden bands. Some of these frameless glass elements are open, and also the door, which is optically no different to the glass elements, is open.

First, there is the view down to the café from the music room. I see the square in front of the café which for the time being remains in daylight and people standing around. Later, when I think Anne and her son have come out of the door of the house with the music room, it becomes dark. There's only light in the café and because of that it seems to be brightly lit. Also the deal floor, a dominant element in this locale, has got something bright about it.
When Anne crosses the square to the café, my gaze follows her moving and also approaches the café until finally she stands in front of it and looks and sees what's going on. In this first scene I don't imagine her entering the locale. The only view from the outside in is through the open glass elements. She doesn't go into the locale at all. The dead woman is lying on the floor in the front part of the café and a few people are standing around. In the background is the bar, further back everything gets lost into nothingness, into darkness.

The next day when Anne comes back to start her investigations it is already a different café. It's in the same place and has a similar ground plan. To the right and the left of the entrance the two front corners of the café are rounded. But I only see that when I come from outside, that is when Anne, coming from Boulevard de la Mer, goes to the café, then the corners are slightly rounded.

The second locale has a green linoleum floor and beige-coloured walls with painted green lines around the windows. There's no longer a continuous glass front but instead of that there are rows of narrow high windows which are arranged regularly and close together. You can see the men, the workers coming, through the closed glass door, which is made up of two glass elements, one above the other; the background is shadowy and you can see the factories. Outside it's very bright, as if it were foggy, and above the fog, the sun which shines through and is almost dazzling. It's such a diffuse, blinding white light.

Anne and Chauvin first meet each other at the bar. Chauvin is standing to her left at the corner of the bar, actually round the corner, Anne is standing in front and the café owner, who is somehow involved in the conversation from behind the bar. On the bar is a black radio. At their next meeting, they sit at the table immediately to the left of the bar. It's the only long table in the locale, with two benches, everywhere else are chairs and square tables, all of them made of untreated wood, a light grey wood. Chauvin always sits in the same place with a view of the door. At the beginning she sits opposite him with her back to the door and then later next to him.

Anne has got long black hair, she's slim, petite and very pale. She wears elegant clothes in dark-blue tones and white. Monsieur Chauvin, more of a taller man, has got brown, slightly reddish hair. He's a fair-skinned type with a few freckles and a beige-grey T-shirt or plain shirt. When the café owner pours out the wine, it's like a close-up of the movement: She stands at the table and I see the carafe in her hand as she fills the glasses.

Whenever the murder is talked about the first café appears again briefly. Then I'm standing as an observer in the locale, in front of the dead woman who is lying there all on her own, there are hardly any people there anymore. This viewpoint, which appears again and again in my memory/imagination, is then from inside directed towards the glass front and the door with the body lying in front. Behind me is the bar and to my right two men are talking. The door and the glass elements are closed. The locale is no longer at ground level but you go down two or three steps.

The music room is on the 4th or 5th floor in one of the neighbouring buildings setback from the street.. There is almost no furniture in this room, only the piano and the plain wooden chair on which the mother sits. The mother sits in the background by the window, the boy sits at the grand piano. He can see out of the window but it's not the same window where his mother sits. He only sees sky, not a blue sky and also no clouds, just a bright sky. The room has a wooden parquet floor, white walls and a door leading into the next room. It could even be a through-room, but it's still a large room. The music teacher is always on the move, she sometimes stands at the piano beside the boy or behind him near the wall opposite the windows. She often turns towards his mother and directs her words more towards the mother than the child.

– I’m standing as an observer in the doorway– the door is in the middle opposite the windows – and I watch the scene.
– In the first café the tables are round and made of metal. There are no tablecloths and the table tops are a yellowish-beige metal
– In the second café the bar goes around the corner. Anne has the view to the outside and Chauvin sits with his back to the door.

Amelie Haas Interview

The child at the piano. His mother sits at his back and beside him is the piano teacher. The room is shady, relatively dark, perhaps there are also curtains. It has something about it like an old-fashioned, rather stifling room, from which you look out into the light through the windows. Outside, for me, everything is blue, turquoise, sea colours – and you see a boat going past.

I’m standing as an observer in the doorway – the door is in the middle opposite the windows – and I watch the scene. It’s like a zoom directed towards the piano. I see the child’s hands and the piano teacher’s pencil with which she beats on the keys. Then my view widens and I see the whole scene, the square room, this remarkably large window. In all this I stand quietly and relatively close by. I only have a feeling for the rest of the room but I’m not really aware of it.

This window makes up a very important part. Otherwise the room is furnished with a carpet. Everything is kept in very dull, dark colours. It also doesn’t smell good, there’s something musty about everything. Because of this, this yearning which comes in through the Cinemascope window – the sky, the sea, the passing boats – becomes even stronger. The room has something confining about it, it’s not a room I would feel comfortable in. And then there are suddenly these noises which come in through the window, whereby nothing can be seen. From my view of the window nothing changes, everything stays calm in the room. Only the child reacts to the scream but is obedient enough to simply keep playing.

On the street there’s a corner and there is the first café where for me the murder happened. The music room is exactly opposite but on the fourth floor. Actually you could see down to the café by going over to the window, but they don’t do it. The second café is directly on the waterfront. It’s also on a corner, with large windows onto the promenade. Anne and the child come from one direction, from the other come the workers.

Café Murder: In front of the bar lies the dead woman and the murderer. There is the landlady and people looking in through the big glass window. Everything is a bit old-fashioned, from the 50s or 60s I would say. There’s a kind of linoleum floor; I see this café in dark red and linoleum green. How exactly is the room provided with tables? I’m uncertain there, as I just notice. Well, in the diagonal I see the dead woman and her murderer lying there. At first I almost go with Anne, who goes through the crowd, as an onlooker I am lucky to get still closer to what is really going on. That captivates me so much that I no longer pay attention to the rest of the room. It is half in shadow, so it’s not very bright, like all inner rooms are rather dark.

In the second café the bar goes around the corner at a slight angle. At the beginning Chauvin is standing at the bar reading his newspaper and then Anne joins him there while the child runs in and out. Later they choose a table. Anne keeps the view to the outside and Chauvin sits with his back to the door. Here it is brighter than in Café Murder, whereby ’bright’ is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but there’s still a very big difference between inside and outside. It is the room in this story which is the most flooded with light.

The tables are round and made of metal. There are no tablecloths and the table tops are a yellowish-beige metal. The chairs are upholstered in dark red plastic. About the bar I only know that it goes around the corner and that the landlady is busy somewhere around the cash register or is drying glasses or working with her red knitting things. She doesn’t really have a free view of Chauvin and Anne sitting there and she is also not interested. Radio music is playing, that is very important for me. And there’s a clock. The time, or the restricted time of this situation is always very important. Not only because of the sirens from the factory but also because of what these sirens announce, such as, ’now there are ten minutes left, then the workers come’. The workers are rather shadowy, they only give the feeling that the room becomes full. They change your perception of space but I don’t know what they look like, what they are wearing or how many of them there are. Chauvin is shorter than Anne. He is a dark type, dark hair, southern French. At first glance he is probably not a noticeably good-looking person. She is tall and slim with blonde, rather long hair. She has something refined about her – slender, slim, tall, upright.

>link: opernhaus zürich

– When reading, this woman is only there in a shadowy way. A face does not really form.
– I’m now drawing a diagonal, the upper triangle is the action area, the other half remains vague.
– It is the world of embroidered decorations, beautiful paintings which always hang a hundred percent straight.

Bernhard Kellner Interview

I’ll begin with the harbor square: Sea/dry land, a ’borderline situation’, you could divide the page horizontally like that. Vertically we could divide it into the world of work, port installation, factory etc. on the one hand and the exclusive residential area, ’better world’ on the other. On the port side there is a large area with jetties leading out to sea. Loading and unloading is going on, old barges and fishing boats are moored here. Opposite there’s a row of buildings – cliché images interfere here – with pretty facades, rectangular windows, balconies and wooden beams.

The café is in one of these buildings, on the ground floor or in the basement. The music room is on the second floor of the building next door. That’s where the heroine, Anne, takes her child for his piano lesson. During the lesson the windows are open, noise comes in, police sirens, action... you ask yourself what’s happening, see a dead woman and find out that she has been shot. And – the scandal – word goes round that the woman had been shot at her own request.
The murder happened in this café. Firstly there is a rectangular room. The door is open and gives a free view of harbor life. There’s a bar in the room. I imagine that it extends far into the room. To the left of the entrance there could be a telephone booth, an old coin operated machine and that is adjoined by the realm of the landlady, the boss of this café. She is the silent observer of what goes on. She knows Anne by sight from her passing by, Chauvin is a regular customer who sits in the same place every day. She is an elderly person with a certain fundamental bitterness. She is no longer under any kinds of illusions. Behind the bar she has her knitting gear. She works away at it but never loses sight of what’s going on in the café.

I imagine the space inside the café divided in two but I don’t know how this division works. Perhaps there is a column in the middle, but on the other hand this column disturbs me. In any case there are tables which in the evenings are filled with workers from the nearby dockyard. This one table is a special one, that’s where Chauvin sits. If I remember rightly he worked as an iron-bender in the factory. He is a figure of around 50 with a striking face, a man of very few words. He too knows Anne from seeing her passing by. A higher-class woman who passes by every Friday catches the eye here.

I’m now drawing a diagonal through the rectangular ground plan. The upper triangle is the action area, the other half remains vague. The murdered woman was lying here at the front, beside her or above her the murderer who was not able to grasp the whole thing and who went crazy because of it. This is also where the interactions happen between the landlady and Chauvin, who are somehow allies, even though it never becomes clear what forms their alliance. This room more and more becomes the destiny of Anne, who feels magically drawn to it.

On a first read this woman is only there in a shadowy way. It’s sure that she’s blonde with fair skin but a face does not really form. Her stature and gestures come out of the action and sentences like, ’she lowers her gaze’ or ’she reacts in embarrassment’. At first she only dares to stand at the bar. She wants to find something out. What happened? She somehow gets caught up in the incident and always wants to know in more detail what was going on. That’s how she gets into conversation with the landlady and Chauvin. With him she spins the story on.

There are various lighting atmospheres in the room. I especially see warm evening light. It’s not a tidy room, bottles, crates, glasses etc. are standing around. If you look into the light you see the dust radiating in the air. There’s a calm atmosphere, the back part of the room where Anne and Chauvin sit is in half darkness.

The space in front of the café more and more becomes the play area of the son, who realises immediately that something is going on with his mother. He already knows the first time that they set out the same way, not to go to a piano lesson but to go to the café, that from then on they will be going there more often. And that then really becomes a space where the unsupervised child can develop. Here he can whistle perfectly the tunes that he can’t play in the piano lesson, he strikes up little friendships and every so often he has a look to see what’s going on in the café. An adventurous world opens up for him here because it’s unsupervised.

The music room is the counterpoint to the café and its surroundings. A tidy room with two windows overlooking the port. Again we have a diagonal division of the room, the upper part is the action area. It is the world of embroidered decorations, beautiful paintings which always hang a hundred percent straight. In front of the grand piano stands the stern teacher, on the sofa sits the loving mother. There are many lines of interaction; on the one hand this ambivalent relationship between mother and son – somehow she finds his stubbornness just great, on the other hand there’s the rather desperate discourse on upbringing between the mother and the teacher.

>link: troisville

– I experienced this music room very strongly as a space of sound where the sounds of the piano intermingle with the sounds of ships.
– When the woman looks at the man one time, the setting sun is reflected in his face.
– I imagine the harbor café as a plain, simple building, rather like a wooden shack.

Christiane Meyer-Stoll Interview

When I try to imagine this music room, there are only two corners. I have the feeling that it’s created out of a polarity. It’s not a closed room, even if it’s a narrow room. There’s just this one corner where the music teacher and the child are. There is the piano, no grand piano, which is a bit pushed against the wall, just like the teacher pushes the child against the wall. The teacher needs a lot of space, she overwhelms and stifles everything. In the other corner sits the mother. Although she’s on this axis with the teacher and the child, there is no real connection.

When you step into the music room the windows appear large. They could let in a lot of light but there’s a lot of curtain, heavy dark velvet curtains. This looking down from above is very important. But actually I don’t imagine this direct view out, it’s a line with a connection in sounds. I experienced this music room very strongly as a space of sound where the sounds of the piano intermingle with the sounds of ships. The noises from the port drift in, you hear the clinking of glasses. If you were to look out of the window you would see all that. But this fat piano teacher blocks the view out of the window, contact to the outside only works via hearing.

From the building with the music room there’s a visual connection diagonally across to the building with the café. It’s a harbor bar where workers from the area go for a coffee. There the setting sun falls across the couple’s faces. I find the sun altogether very important. This play of the sun, its passing when the day comes to an end – for me that’s a very important metaphor which appears again and again in the novel.

I imagine the harbor café as a plain, simple building, rather like a wooden shack. You go two steps down. Directly opposite the entrance is a high bar and behind it the lower area in which the landlady works. She has a high cane stool with supports where she can rest her feet. This is where she knits and from this spot she can look outside and at the same time keep an overview of the café.

Funny enough it’s important for me that this café always goes further and further down into the depths. You go through the bar area and then again a bit deeper underground. Everywhere is filled with smoke but because it’s warm the doors and windows are open and it’s also very airy. There are simple tables, all with four chairs arranged around them. A few of them stretch into the back part of the room where Anne and Chauvin frequently sit. Somehow the space towards the corner must get more narrow, as if there was another step and it went down a bit further.

I imagine that Anne and Chauvin sit at a corner table from where they have a view to the outside. The men who come in look at them immediately so it must be a room which gives a relatively good overview. It’s not really a clean place, but the landlady takes care that it’s well looked after. The way the light comes in is very important because when the woman looks at the man one time, the setting sun is reflected in his face. It is relatively light in the room, whereby it’s brighter towards the front. The light changes. There’s this reddish sunset light where all contours become stronger and have more perspective, where the light puts a spell on things, warms them and makes them golden – that happens very much here. It’s an evening setting. Later comes unpleasant neon light, where you’re almost blinded out. The light is above the bar and gets lost further into the room.
The murder takes place in the front area of the café. I see the dead woman through the eyes of the murderer. I have a picture in my head how this man hugs her. She is dead, is becoming cold and it’s as if he wants to draw the last warmth of her body into him. An inner drama is running between the two of them, an immense entanglement between murderer and victim so that during this time not much can be seen of the surroundings. It’s just astounding that all this is happening in a public place.

It is a completely routine day in this café. The landlady is sitting there closely watching what’s going on and again and again directs her gaze at this unlikely couple. She’s not happy about it, probably it contradicts her moral principles. She’s something like a mother hen. There are minders everywhere, there the teacher, here the landlady, social pressure is prevalent everywhere. For me, this man, Chauvin, doesn’t have a face and neither does Anne, at least I have no concrete idea of them. The man is quite open and is not afraid of a confrontation with the landlady, whereas Anne cannot really withstand this confrontation.

>link: kunstmuseum liechtenstein

– Golden, warm evening light from the west always comes in through the glass front. As the sun goes further down the light becomes more and more red.
– That’s the place where Chauvin and Anne come closer, the dead woman was also lying in this area.
– The boy sees his mother against the light. When he turns around towards her he can see the ships through the window.

Andreas Patton Interview

Here is the window-less outer wall of the building, the firewall. Next to it there’s nothing at all, it’s empty. There must be a door in the hallway, further back a staircase. The front of the harbor café is glass, from the floor to the ceiling, and the door is glass too. There’s a brass rail with a heavy curtain hanging on it so that the wind doesn’t blow in. The door is open, I imagine it quite warm. Here is the bar, behind it the wall and a passageway.

Chauvin stands at the outer corner of this bar, that’s the place where Chauvin and Anne come closer. The dead woman was also lying in this area. At the beginning Anne stands further away but then they come closer together. This also has to do with the fact that the two of them must move closer together because the workers come in. I imagine it as very cramped. It becomes louder and louder, the workers want something to drink and approach the bar.

There’s a light above the bar, a bar sign. The landlady switches it on, first that light and only then the other lamps in the café. And it’s also important that, trough all that glass, the golden, warm evening light from the west always comes in through the glass front. As the sun goes further down the light becomes more and more red.
The music room is directly above. It seems to me that it is exactly above the café room. For me the murdered woman died directly under the piano. One of the outer walls of the music room is also the café’s firewall. Here my imagination becomes conflicted.

The building has three or four storeys. I don’t know exactly how far the building goes back. I only know that there is also a kitchen or something, but how big it is or if there is more at the back of the building I don’t know. Below next to the firewall is the entrance, everything is glass, divided into several segments, but they are very big. Here in the lower part I imagine brass rails with curtains on them, egg-shell coloured. Above are square windows, maybe five on each floor, all the same, completely without ornament. And here above are the two windows of the music room. But there, again, my imagination becomes conflicted.

I imagine it like this, that in front of the house there is a pavement, a green area with trees here and there, behind that there’s the street here, then the water. And here it goes a little bit down, two or three steps. That’s also where the boy always plays. For me he plays on this grass here and jumps down there across the street, over the cobblestones.

The workers either come over by boat or along the street and go into the café. They are factory workers, real grafters. I imagine that they have a lot to do with heavy metals. They wear flat caps, talk loudly, drink their after-work wine and smoke cigarettes.

It’s important that the light in the music room comes from the west. So the boy sees his mother against the light. When he turns around towards his mother he can see the ships through the window. I imagine the boy with dark hair. For me there is a lot in his resistance towards the piano teacher. For me that says most about the child, how he goes about his discovery of the world. He is never loud, he’s no rowdy, not a boy who breaks a window every couple of hours.

Anne has rather lighter hair, not straw-coloured, but in any case blonde. She has straight hair, I don’t know if she puts it up, but it’s not long. I have such a cliché in my head, that’s Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. That’s a middle class young woman who is terribly bored with her life and is ruined by it. For me there are parallels there. The man who meets her there has something that she doesn’t yet know and which fascinates her. Both know that it’s very dangerous, what they are doing there, and that’s why they are both always at this bar, they move towards each other and away again. The landlady sees it all and understands exactly what’s going on. She realises what game the two are playing with each other, maybe even better than they themselves. Chauvin is rather a dark type, a very virile, good-looking man. For me both of them have something very aesthetic, fine about them. Possibly she’s even a bit taller than him, but it doesn’t matter.

– I’m always a part of the story, I’m always sitting there somewhere.
– There’s not a grand piano, only an upright, that’s of course somehow disgraceful.
– This door is a problem because the two of them can see the child jumping around outside.

Manfred Schu Interview

I’m always a part of the story, I’m always sitting there somewhere. I don’t like the idea I have of the café. It’s not a café but more a type of tavern-bar, not a tavern but rather a mixture of tavern and bar. The essential thing that I feel very strongly is that the central point of this room is the bar, the front of the bar behind which the landlady knits. Then there’s the table where Anne and Chauvin sit. The door is to the right – that’s where light comes in.

It’s all only very vague. For example, there could be a window there, there could be a table but then they also immediately become blurred again. There are actually no edges in this room, maybe an edge could appear here. The whole place is incredibly empty, there is a small shelf and otherwise nothing. It’s all very makeshift. There’s a curtain. I have no picture of the table except that it’s not by the wall and that there’s no space for a seat between.

The seats are very simple. There are also others but only one which has white formica and rubber, not rubber but twines. The other tables and chairs, rectangular tables, are made of laminated wood, from imitation wood. The bar is also laminated with a touch of marble, that has its own kind of humour . . . – everything is pink, slightly brownish.

There are not really windows there, more like portholes, tiny windows where light does come in but you can’t see out of them. They look onto an air well, an awful air well. And there’s something else there, right, but what is it?

It’s a story with the door. This door is a problem because the two of them can see the child jumping around outside. Here is grey stuff and there it’s brightest. The whole bar lives from light coming from the door, but here there must be something else, maybe a small window. But direct sunlight doesn’t penetrate the room. There is only reflected light from other buildings, no rays of sunshine which could fall anywhere here.

There they come in, Anne and the man, the whole action area is here. They go directly to their seats. The man looks towards the old lady, the landlady, the knitter. The dock workers also smuggle themselves in here but they are hardly noticeable. They’re there but they take up hardly any space in what goes on. Maybe there are three of them but they never come as far as the couple.

I have no special picture of the dead woman, nor from her murderer. When I now look from above the rooms are strangely different. The room of the murder, the death part where the body lies and he kisses her bleeding mouth, is different from the room where Anne and the man always meet. In this murder scene the ceiling is very strongly in the picture: ceiling and floor with the dead body and lots of people around, you don’t see more of the rest of the café.

I need a ruler for the music room. Let’s try and get the room into proportion. It’s long with rounded corners. There’s not a grand piano, only an upright, that’s of course somehow disgraceful. The boy sits a little alone, the poor thing. The mother holds herself back, the teacher butts in all the more. She brushes past his shoulder.
Something or other must be blocking the way here, at the corner. There’ll be something there. It could be that there’s a small table. There is something there and there is also a curtain.
As far as her age is concerned, I would guess Anne to be thirty four, thirty five. Her son is seven, has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, a rather charming, soft, boyish child. I imagine him with a parting on the side, a slight curl at the front and a summer suit, a dark summer suit and a white shirt.

The man is totally alien to me. He’s almost like a ghost – I’ve just realised that he has a name – but he doesn’t appear to me like a person in any way. He’s not very striking, not so that you could really imagine him. Everything on him is grey or beige. Oh yes, I could imagine him beige, in a beige coat, a thin beige raincoat.

There’s not really a relationship between the two of them. It’s a sort of in between thing. The man is someone one confides in, but not very deeply. You can imagine that you could let him kill you. It’s got something about it of a matter-of-fact death, no killer instinct, no lover who kills his lover out of suffering, nothing at all. There’s something strangely respectable, unpretentious, it’s almost like an accident.

>link: mica

– I know the light in the café from English pubs. Outside there’s sunshine, inside everything is dark.
– At first there’s still the open roving view, then it becomes hermetic.
– There’s a carpet. I don’t see it but I hear it.

Andrea Sodomka Interview

At first the music room isn’t even there but only consists of a window. Everything is turned towards the outside. Outside there are voices, a flow of time, life, something’s happening there. It’s like a radio play. The people who are inside are practically watching themselves. Actually, they are outside, they experience what is outside. It is very like a film: You have action which you can’t see and which thereby becomes incredibly focussed.
In this configuration of time the rooms constantly change all the time. At first the music room is firstly only a window, the café only a door, otherwise it’s black. When Anne goes out and sees what’s happened, there is simply no interior. She sees the crowd of people, hears the screaming and immediately knows what’s happened. She herself is the person lying there. There’s only an interior from the moment when the murderer comes out, because he’s being taken away by the police.

Firstly the dead body is there. There is no furniture in the room but now there is a door and a window. The light from the door falls on the dead body. Then there’s this bar there, here a door and there the window. Maybe there are also two windows, I don’t know exactly. In the beginning Anne and Chauvin sit in the front area. During the course of the story they go further into the back part of the room.

At the beginning the view to the outside is still there. Sometimes the child appears there, Anne sees how he’s playing outside. When later she sits with Chauvin at the back he doesn’t see the workers who know him. He sees nothing at all anymore, more and more everything becomes more hermetic.

At first, there is the open, wandering gaze, then it becomes hermetic. I know the light in the café from English pubs. Outside you’ve got sunshine, inside everything is dark. Light doesn’t really come in through the windows but you see that it’s bright outside and then there are these small lamps, islands of light which are always switched on. Still daylight but already with the premonition of twilight. Towards the end of the story it becomes darker because Anne always goes there later.

There’s this piano in the music room, the mother sits in the background. As the scenery changes the ground plan changes. This room has floorboards and it is very bright. You look into the window, there is really bright sunshine and that’s why you don’t see anything. And there are green plants – there’s such a climatic feeling for them. It’s cool and it is quiet. So there’s a carpet. I don’t see it but I hear it. I don’t see it because I don’t actually look at the floor.

Anne comes into the café and sees what has happened. Anne experienced this scene twice, she was in the music room and the café at the same time. I think this first scene is very important because a chronologie comes back which has not yet even begun. It’s precisely this horizontal time, this time area which has neither a beginning nor an end. Somewhere this reality intersects with the totally realistic description of the scene with the piano playing, but not at a determined start or end point. There’s this cut, and these cuts appear again and again.

I first saw the murderer in combination with the dead body. But of course it no longer fits into this horizontal time formation in which both characters, the dead body and Anne are one and the same person and are in different places at the same time. Perhaps that’s not the intension, but that for me in this story, in this structure, it’s the only logical one.

I have no picture of this woman, and that’s because she stands for a typical small town woman’s fate. There are very many who have led this small town life, or who still live it, and are then caught up in a destiny which imposes certain rules of behaviour on them which they are not allowed to break. In the moment when they break out and behave in a different way, they are thrown out of the system.

They are very beautiful women who have a kind of beauty which can be well applied for a life with a rich industrialist. Of course it’s clear that here it’s about a particular time, about a ‘small town in the fifties phenomenon’; but this small town phenomenon has not fundamentally changed, and if so, then only outwardly, but not really in its content.

>link: mur.at

– I don’t think Chauvin stands up but speaks to Anne from his seat.
– The bar has two sinks and a tap – I see this piece of furniture very concretely.
– I think the music room is rather empty. It has a mean rather dusty atmosphere.

Gerold Tagwerker Interview

A port location – docks going out to sea from the boulevard – longer and shorter ones. But they’re not there as a concrete picture in my head. There is only the idea that they must be there because that’s the way towns work. I also don’t have a concrete picture of the way Anne goes from her villa to the café. Here’s the building where the piano teacher lives. The music room is on a higher floor, the café is on the ground floor of the building next door. This building next door is larger and has shops at street level. In front there is a pavement, a street with cars, then comes the water, the sea.

My old memory (note: from first reading the book a few years ago) is very Italian. It is not a café but more of a little place for drinking wine or a bar, with the lower part painted blue-green up to about 1.20 m, an oil-based paint. The upper part is painted white and there’s a wooden floor. At the first reading it was already rather dingy, not a café with an ambience but rather a place frequented by people on their way to or from work who want a quick coffee or a glass of wine.

Then, at the second reading I saw it differently. That maybe has something to do with the fact that years later one also acts differently. Then I felt it all to be very Viennese, not like a Viennese coffee house but like small Viennese places for drinking coffee, wine or spirits where you mostly stand. A seedy, grubby place.

The first locale was the same in terms of the spatial arrangement and sobriety, I just replaced the oil paint with wood panelling. That makes the light a bit different, the room now appears rather dark, somehow gloomy. The walls are no longer really white but yellowish from the smoke.
The café isn’t big. It has two horizontal oblong windows, between them is the door. When you come in you go straight towards the bar which is relatively near to the door. This counter has two sinks and a tap – I see this piece of furniture very concretely. It’s a rectangular piece of furniture, the upper part is made of aluminium, of stainless steel, a highly polished metal which has become dull over time. Bottles and glasses stand on the bar. The lower part is made of darkened wood, a bit dirty. Behind it is the wall with a door to the toilets and the entrance to the back room.

Three round lamps hang down from the ceiling. You don’t have any direct light on the tables and there’s no kind of decoration. The only ornament is a mirror above the bar which is angled a little bit downwards and is the same width as the bar. There are no pictures, no curtains, no flowers or anything else. There are also no shelves behind the bar. All the work is done on the surface of the bar.
The first time the café is empty. Chauvin is sitting on a chair in the front area and has eye contact to the landlady who is standing behind the bar. She’s a rather plump, unkempt person. Anne comes in, goes to the bar, speaks to the landlady, gets a glass, drinks it standing up and then the dialogue with Chauvin develops. I don’t think he stands up but speaks to her from his seat. The distance is small, about two metres. She doesn’t sit down directly next to him but keeps a certain distance so that she can look out through the door and keep an eye on the child who’s outside somewhere. Later I see the two of them sitting in the back room, which also has this wood panelling. This room is small, three times four metres, there’s only space for two tables.

Anne is not really beautiful. She is slim, petite, has dark chin-length hair which is mostly pinned. She stands for a certain social class, a cliché of the married younger woman, distinctive, smart, well dressed with style without being particularly interesting at the same time. She is a woman who is under-challenged, who doesn’t really know what she could do. She has probably been forced into different roles throughout her life, from little daughter of a middle-class family to the wife of a bourgeois, or an industrialist, then in the role of mother.

I think the music room is rather empty. It has a mean rather dusty atmosphere. There’s a wooden floor which is clean but worn out. Anne sits on a chair and looks out of the window. The mademoiselle piano teacher is continually in motion. She has a desk in front of the window on which she sometimes sits, a wooden desk with four legs and two drawers, but she mostly moves around and makes the child nervous. In all this Anne also has rather a passive role. Without doing much, just by her presence, she influences the relationship between the child and the mademoiselle. She often looks out of the window. The child also looks out because the whole thing gets on his nerves. He doesn’t like being in this situation and therefore he tries to divert his attention or calm himself. He sees the ships sailing past and the clouds drifting by. I don’t see the ships concretely but I have the picture of the window frame with one third water and two thirds sky and clouds.

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– The woman sits with her back to the entrance, he sits opposite her and watches what’s going on.
– When Anne arrives she mostly has the wind against her and the sun in her face, a lot of sunshine.
– The two buildings form a sort of gate through which Anne and her son always enter the scene of action.

Anna Wickenhauser Interview

There are actually only two buildings, the building with the music room and the building with the café, there’s nothing else around. The two buildings are opposite each other; the building with the café on the town side and the music room building is the only one directly by the sea. The two buildings form a sort of gate through which Anne and her son always pass and thereby enter the scene of action.

The music room building has a pentagonal ground plan. I’ve never seen a building like it, but that’s the way it looks. You go up a few floors, up the staircase to the fourth floor. It’s a bit like in a tower. The music room has a spatial quality, the view of the sea, the sound of the waves. In the book you read again and again that the music is supported or interrupted by the roar of the sea. The sea is very present in this room, and also the breeze, the wind and the sun. There’s a terrace around the building, and in front there are a couple of tables outside with people sitting at them.

In the room, turned towards the wall, sits the boy at the piano, the piano teacher sits beside him. The boy’s mother stands at the window. When the murder happens they all run to the window. And there, directly opposite is where it happens. There’s the café – I’ll draw it as I remember it and then add to it – and here is the bar with the lady with the knitting sitting behind it. The murder happens next to the bar. The dead woman was lying in this niche, the man was standing beside. But I don’t have the feeling that the murder was so important for this café. The people act as if it never happened. It’s talked about but it’s no longer really present at the scene.

The way that Anne goes home from the café or the piano lesson, the Boulevard de la Mer, is extremely long. Her house is a very nice house with a fence around it. The sea here is a little bit further away. I have a very light-blue, a pink-white image of this place. The house is white, a very modern house, almost like a box.

Where the man, Chauvin, comes from or goes to, I don’t know. He always appears from somewhere out of the town, more from the dockyard corner. This docks area is very brown and orange. When the woman, Anne, arrives she mostly has the wind against her and walks into the sun. That is very important for the picture that she has the sun in her face, a lot of sunshine, although there are actually only dark buildings and it all makes a bleak, uninviting impression.

Strangely enough the workers always come from the front here, although actually there is only sea there. Although they always talk about the town, it somehow doesn’t exist. There are also other pictures where the town is then in the back area from this café, a relatively small town, I think, and that’s where these factories are that have nothing to do with the docks area – factory buildings with smoke coming out of them. So, when you look at it in cross section there’s the hilly background, then the town with this house with the café growing out of it like a white block, then the sea, the water.

The café has at least two, probably four windows and a double door directly opposite the bar. Here Anne and Chauvin meet to drink wine. There are enough tables and when the workers come in they are crammed full. Otherwise its open and empty. The two of them sit in seclusion, but at the same time not. Later, they sit in the adjoining room where it is more discreet, in their togetherness they look for seclusion. Anne always sits with her back to the entrance, Chauvin sits opposite her and watches what’s going on, how the men come in, how they go straight to the bar and later spread out through the café.

It’s a relatively big café with a sturdy wooden floor, dark brown chairs and round tables where four people at the most can sit. The light over the bar is glaring. Spatially it’s not particularly interesting, not cosy, not homelike. When you go in you see everything immediately. It’s cheerful when in the evening the sun shines in. There must be another window because Duras also writes that Anne sits in the red glow of the sunset while she is watched by the landlady and Chauvin. The landlady sits in her bar and watches everything and hardly moves with her red knitting. She looks at the two of them and always know when they need wine and when they don’t. The place is dreary but still somehow okay. Everything about this café – it’s more of a sort of, well, dive, a little drinking place – it’s simple. It’s a completely normal place. Everything is very common, there’s nothing fancy. For Anne it’s maybe the place where she can be completely normal, herself.