On August 11, 1999, my family and I were living in a tavern in Upper Austria and our kitchen assistant thought the world was ending. But she still turned up for work, punctual as ever. The moon slid between the Earth and the Sun, totally eclipsing the latter for a brief moment. While my parents, my siblings, and I, along with all our neighbors, relatives, and a few friends, stood outside on the terrace and put on the free glasses we’d gotten from TV magazines, fashion magazines, and tobacconists to watch and, above all, experience the event of the century, the woman I’ll call Charlotte (because no one would ever think that a Charlotte would be a maid in a village tavern in Upper Austria) scrubbed and polished my father’s countertops fastidiously until the very last second, only to then hide under them, hoping to be protected and, above all, to avoid having to watch the end times. Charlotte, who had spent days preparing us for our impending extinction, who had recited Bible verses to us and brought rosaries to the village chapel to be blessed, had left her own family at home knowing she would never see them again. She said goodbye to them that morning, perhaps in tears, perhaps with a sense of relief and satisfaction – I’m just speculating here, I never asked her – so she wouldn’t miss the chance to go about her regular working day and start her shift precisely on time, something that impressed me even as a ten-year-old. I certainly couldn’t be that enthusiastic about work now, especially on my last day on Earth, and I am younger than Charlotte was back then. Quite the opposite. If I were really convinced it was the end of the world, I wouldn’t do anything at all except say a fond farewell and have one last hurrah, experience the maximum dissolution of boundaries, a final moment of unrestrained excess. But I certainly would not clean someone else’s small but extremely well-equipped professional kitchen and prepare it for a chef, who, while he may be my boss, is also crazy enough to want to serve a special menu following the spectacle of absolute destruction because a total solar eclipse like this didn’t happen every day and, in his opinion, something special should be served to celebrate and mark this event. To be able to face the end of the world with open arms, that is, to celebrate it instead of being surprised by it at work and dying unprepared while slogging away, we obviously need a concrete date. I don’t mean the guarantee of the end times we are provided with by the sometimes rather diffuse, sometimes more marked, but always impending and palpable anthropogenic climate change, or by the microplastics in our bodies and in those of all other living beings on Earth. We need something like December 21, 2012 (the end of the Mayan calendar) or similar.
Charlotte had that. She knew that on November 8, 1999, life, society, and the planet would immediately disappear, disintegrate, be swallowed up, or (and this was her greatest fear) it would simply remain dark forever and everything would slowly perish. At around 11:30 a.m., the time had come. The kitchen sparkled; Charlotte had finished her day’s work and was standing alone in the heart of the tavern. Half the village was in our beer garden. The huge demand for protective sunglasses did not let up right until the very end, and then Europe stared expectantly up at the sky. With nary a cloud in sight, the view was clear, Lake Attersee fifty-five kilometers away. Even the German Wikipedia entry on the last major solar eclipse states: »In Upper Austria, where the center of the path of totality passed over Lake Attersee, viewing conditions were relatively good.« The atmosphere was incredible. At this juncture, you have to ask yourself: What was the point? How had Charlotte imagined it would go? Had she had her wages paid up until a certain day and then worked for free, so to speak, perhaps out of some sense of duty or due to an upbringing that had instilled a strong work ethic? Because once the world had ended, neither my father nor mother could have paid her. She would waste the last hours of her life on unpaid labor and therefore a truly pointless activity. But even back then, I didn’t involve myself in this matter, and I still won’t today. So be it. The whole thing only lasted a short while, anyway, about a minute, and after we had witnessed the eclipse and the euphoria had subsided – because nothing had happened: no earthquake, no dead birds plummeting from the sky (they were just quiet), no Internet collapse, no imploding nuclear power plant, no gaping rift in the ground, and no third world war – Charlotte was left trembling, praying, and bewildered under the countertop next to the chilled salad. Some helpful customers then sat her down at a table and looked after her. Her pulse was checked. She was fanned. She was given a glass of water with lemon juice, along with a glucose lozenge. She was patted on the shoulder and the back of the hand, and talked to coaxingly. Charlotte, however, wanted none of this. She was getting more and more lightheaded, for she was horrified. It slowly dawned on her: life after the end of the world had stayed the same as life before the end of the world. What a wretched, dirty trick! She had prayed and suffered and worked all her life, was thrifty and frugal, and had put up with a number of privations. She was friendly and adaptable and tough and resilient and didn’t whine and had borne children and listened to a husband she hadn’t even really been allowed to choose. She lived in a small house she hadn’t been allowed to choose either, grew her own vegetables, cooked and cleaned and cared for everyone, and did as she was asked and was required of her. But in the end, she sat there, with everything ruined, everything over, and everything remaining the same as before, the same as it had always been. This end of the world, the thought flashed through Charlotte’s mind, was the biggest disappointment of her life – the gall of it, worse than any humiliation she had ever experienced: absolute hell.
Stunned, she shouted all this, worded somewhat differently (and above all in the local Austrian dialect), into the slightly flushed, cheerful faces that had gathered around her, who were either laughing at her or with her, who either wanted to help her or to share with her their own stupidity concerning this huge failure. Because a once-in-a-millennium event like this brings people together (except for those who missed it). Charlotte was sweating, breathing deeply and heavily. She narrowed her eyes and pulled the corners of her mouth downward, while my father, in high spirits and wielding sharp knives, prepared the special menu in the kitchen and my mother pulled beers and poured white wine spritzers at a rapid pace and brought them to the many tables. After such a liminal experience everyone was suddenly extremely thirsty. The small crowd of people that had gathered around Charlotte became rather stricken at the sight of this scolding woman and decided to retreat to a safe distance because this delicate lady was suddenly no longer pious and timid, but hateful and tense, seeming stronger than she ever had before. »Is this hell?« she asked the bewildered faces that were still turned toward her. She snatched the tray out of my mother’s hands as she passed and sent the drinks tumbling to the ground. My mother was not impressed and exclaimed in astonishment and admonishment, as if she were scolding us children or the dog. »You must clean up the broken pieces yourself right away,« Mom added on her way back to the bar to pull more beers. To be on the safe side, I sat down next to my granny, who was swaying back and forth because someone was singing a silly folk song, getting people in the mood – and Grandma was immediately up for that. Charlotte, meanwhile, sure that the world had come to an end and that this was God’s greatest punishment, decided that none of it mattered now and stood on a table. She demanded that the illegal homebrewed schnapps Dad had hidden on top of the kitchen cupboard be brought out. »Hand it over!« she shouted in a monotonous, endless loop. To her surprise, the entire tavern joined in. »Yes!« shouted Grandma, »Hand it over!« Dad, who had been oblivious to Charlotte’s meltdown, came through the swinging door to see a bunch of rebellious villagers, some of whom were our relatives and friends, and didn’t immediately know what he needed to hand over. »Hand over the food?« he asked incredulously. »Oh, come on!« cackled the leader, »Hand over the homebrew!« »The moonshine?« »Yes! Are you deaf or are you just a schmuck? The one that makes people go blind!« »Hand it over!« demanded Mom, and that was that decided, so Dad disappeared into his highly polished kitchen for a moment before returning, waving an unlabeled bottle. The tavern erupted into cheers of ecstatic joy. Mom was sure now that everyone had completely lost their minds; I thought it was funny. Grandma clapped her hands and the folk song got even sillier and the mood even better. Anyway, Charlotte then went from table to table and poured the homebrewed schnapps down everyone’s throats, and those she liked the least got the most. At the end of the day, everyone was blind drunk and sleeping in the tavern or in the beer garden. We children eventually got bored and went into the living room on the second floor to watch TV. Charlotte was back the next day, ready for work, right on time, as if nothing had happened. My parents were still a bit disheveled, but they too returned to their self-imposed duties. The hell continued; they had probably all just come to terms with it.
