And the rest, is Johann

Chapter 4. In vino veritas (III)

Once upon a time, there was a city bathed by the waters of the Danube River. A city meant to lead that empire that spread its tentacles from the very core of Europe towards the east. A reference to culture, art, science that could have conquered the world.

Now that city was nothing more than the ghost of what once was, still breathing from its former glory even when it implied suffocating. Mozart and Freud reduced to touristic assets, same with the Habsburg dynasty and their dramatic romances.

A shared destiny with Prague.

His consciousnesses flew over all his knowledge on that city whose streets he was wandering: Maria Theresa, the Battle of Austerlitz, Freud's psychoanalysis, the Vienna Circle, the civil war of 1934, the Anschluss... yet it swiftly departed from those old history lessons, too agitated to be able to focus on serious cogitations, those concepts, and events converging in a chaotic spiral of the absurd. Johann felt surprisingly stupid, and he was planning on enjoying every bit of that sensation, the lack of invasive trains of thoughts, obsessive over-analyses, focus. Neither his inner world nor the reality ahead offered enough stimuli to matter anymore. Could there be a sweeter sensation?

Weeks had turned into months and the memories lost so long ago returned to their legitimate proprietor, in the shape of vivid images full of color and darkness, of the same streets -narrow and chaotic paths-, the low contiguous buildings of pastel colors, the paving stones under his feet. He was wandering the same places again, like many other nights before, but for the very first time, he was attacked by a sensation of familiarity, of a lifetime trapped within.

And then a bolt of lightning annihilated that flow of thought, the sudden reminiscence offered with lethal clarity, that he was no longer in Prague, that the period of chase had ended with a second bullet and the familiar solitude had been softened by the entertainment of what Anna represented. It had been years from those chases of memories and ghosts of a childhood and a whole universe in between.

The simple realization that those streets didn't belong to Prague, not even Czechia... but Vienna. Austria. And sign in German had been necessary for him to remember.

Once upon a time, there was a city known as Vienna that felt just like another Prague, but it only made sense, tied by common history of German, central European culture, bloodbaths, annihilation, and more wars than humankind could reminiscence. He had never been to Austria before, just its former imperial territory that now represented Czechia, and Czechoslovakia back in his childhood. It was a curious thought, that neither Czechoslovakia nor East Germany existed anymore, places that represented so much of their lives, of many others like them who were forced -or gifted- with the era of post-soviet capitalism.

Enough of history lessons. Better to concentrate on the scenario ahead, the reality entangled. It could store some interesting experiences he was willing to explore if only to pass the time and test what was he capable of in that sweet mediocre state of mind.

His footsteps echoing through those empty streets he walked and walked, not knowing exactly where to go but following some instinct he preserved from past times. Maybe future ones.

His head raised toward the black skies like they could offer an answer to his clueless sensation of time and space. Vienna was just another Prague, the distinction between them turning meaningless: Czechia, Austria, east, west, past, future... could the skies, the angels promised beneath, talk to him like they had never done?

Could they tell him what time it was?

He expected only silence and his head lowered again after a few minutes. He had lost the track of time long ago and he supposed it to be sometime around 4 am.