eins, zwei, polizei
please, allow me to be loud
THE CHAUFFEUR
monday, 23:34h
home, chair, table, lamp, candles, bluetooth speaker
as a good storm scorches the sky after a set of boiling 40-degree days, i feel my synapses are rewiring, first breaths, first thoughts resurfacing into the broiled grey mesh in my head.
heat is gone, let’s live again!
candle flames flickering, sound of cars going over freshened up wet asphalt outside, still a drop of rain here and there seen under a streetlamp. bliss. calm, dark night.
as i enjoy my love for life again, i play music through my tiny speaker companion, a bluetooth rubbery square thing that keeps the good spirits in the house
i siiiiiiing blue silver…
siiing siiiing blue silveeer…
!
rrrrrrrriiiiiiiing rrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiing
at this hour, someone is at my door.
rrrrrrrriiiiiiiing rrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiing
i think already know who’s the chauffeur…
a glance through the spyglass, eins, zwei:
police woman and a police man, usual attire
- Guten Abend!
- Sprechen Sie Englisch, Bitte? Danke!
- Problem? Music is loud, neighbour complaint, understood I will cut it immediately.
- Passt schön. Gute Nacht!
i sit back in silence, as my groove and love for a creative night alone at home deflated.
feeling a little bit sabotaged in my jovial intentions, however, I should stay low-key and respectful now.
it’s that time of the year….each summer, i get a visit by uniformed mediators, einmal or zweimal in the season for some kind of sound interfering with the perfect peace and quiet of my sleepy austrian neighbourhood.
sometimes, they would just drive below my balcony on the first floor of the building and conclude that music and light after 22:00h might be disturbing. they heard it through an open window of their car. we always depart peacefully, and with a polite apology. it has been an annual ritual. i guess it’s a cultural clash we reenact on occasion.
-
THE WINDOW
anywhere on earth
from my balcony i see the street and a few close buildings. my building is yellow, one across is also yellow, but austrian corn field pretty yellow, not a dirty kitchen sponge yellow like mine. the building below mine was supposed to be pink, while now this pink feels like lipstick smeared over a festival toilet.
respectively i call them the good, the bad, and the ugly.
every summer, the neighbours start to open windows. no more heating, monthly gas costs are gone, no more fear of russian winter - frische luft!
at that moment, these urban hobbits open their enclosed membrane of life, cradled behind a few locks and decorated with a 100-inch retina-burning monstrosity of a TV glaring through their windows like a UFO crash site.
they start to see and hear their peaceful urban surroundings.
church bells ringing at a punctual quarter hour.
air raid siren testing every saturday, noon sharp, cca 45 seconds. sometimes longer.
garbage men at 6:00h in the morning. facade and window renovations on the ugly pink building across from 7:00 to 15:00h for the last three months. chainsaw massacre gardening - cutting front yard plants from 08-16:00h.
in the good, the bad, and the ugly, most of the neighbours have their lights out by 21:30h. my landlady lives next door, and she supports me in late-night low-price electricity consumption.
her light is sometimes on until 2:00h in the morning. she likes to watch opera in the evening. we never interfered with each others music choices, or disrupted our peace.
our doorbells sound like old school bells, loud and piercing rrrrrriiiiiiiiiiing rrrrrrrrriiiiiing that would wake up the dead. at least, i never missed a package delivery.
i got a light that never goes out. i am a loud person. my vocal capacities earn me a living, and they are the means by which i contribute to society. i speak and i sing for a living, literally. i make a standout academic work with this capacity to present and verbally communicate, and as a musician and a human that cannot live without music, i sing for others and for myself, as i heal my being through it too. voice is essential, as much as the nighttime is - the time to fill with ideas, immerse in songs and words. i like to say that my timezone of existence is anywhere on the earth. currently, i am preparing for LA, so i operate between pacific daylight time and central european time. quite a stretch it is. i know a lot about time zones, but very little about time itself.
i thought time is a number, a natural condition, but not a rule.
time is a different kind of power in the cental european zone.
there is time for garbage, gardening, drilling, hammering, construction work, and for sleep. deep sleep and deep silence.
in urban areas you can’t have both silence and an open window. but maybe these facades are not an urban area at all.
-
THE CALL
thursday, 23:50h
long day, long night. long drinks.
i am looking forward to sitting at home, opening a bottle of wine and welcoming an important meeting - an online consultancy call with lidija
buzzzzz buzzzzz bzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzz
lidija is calling from the supermarket, waiting for the midnight shift cut, buying cigarettes and prosecco.
i envy her because she can go midnight shopping in belgrade, whereas, meanwhile, at my austrian midnight, i question whether i am allowed to breathe and have a light on.
still contemplating monday’s events, i long for some music in the air, but of course i am even happier to have a video call night out.
got that extra bottle of wine on the go, gossip, chatter, laugh, contemplations, two talking heads ready to unpack last week of our existence, talk, talk, talk…
friday, 00:30h
rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiing rrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiing!
at this point i see that the plot thickens and that monday was not just a story to tell to lidija, but a story that we are now living.
i tell her to stay on the call, i might need a witness.
a glance through the spyglass, eins, zwei:
two male police officers, not so street style looking, gun on each leg, heavy bulletproof vest, CSI Miami style.
seems like they came on a serious duty
pilot episode of law and disorder, i think for myself.
this is no time to open the doors in my underwear, so i put on shorts.
- Guten Abend!
- Sprechen Sie Englisch, Bitte? - Danke!
- Problem? I am loud; neighbour complaint.
are you alone?, they ask. i say yes, i am having an online call, alone from home, sitting in my candlelight, talking to a person on the other side of the screen. please come in and see for yourself.
we already had to inform you about a complaint, they formed a polite rhetorical question.
i say yes, this week has started dynamically, i already hosted your fellow colleagues, and i take my warning seriously, and therefore, i am not listening to music from my mini bluetooth speaker, i am just having a remotely social evening.
they say that the neighbour complained that he cannot sleep because of the noise i make, and that i should close the windows.
i like my neighbours. left - the landlady, right a sweet old lady, up a mother with two sons, below, another sweet older lady. a lot of old ladies, a few children, a dog, a couple or two, and only zweimal i was politely and humanely asked in person by one of them to cut the music at a late hour while having a couple of friends at my place. never a fuss, never a problem.
i live in this apartment for six years, and i have deep respect and love for my neighbours. i would never do anything that would disturb their peace.
i share these confessions with the CSI Miami guys, and with visible concern and with slightly emphasised naivety i ask them: could you tell me who this neighbour might be?
They give me a crucial clue -
he is from the ugly pink building below, windows looking at my balcony.
i thank them, apologise, politely wrap up this visit, thinking that this neighbour might have a bigger problem, more than me and the polizei should have.
i close my balcony door, put the blinds into bunker mode, and leave the kitchen window tilted so to enable my breath to circulate in the warm summer night.
of course, lidija, as my virtual witness, and i, now have even more material to talk about and to reflect on this midnight visit in blue.
as this visit took some time from our precious call, we had to extend it a bit longer. we have not gone through all the meeting points yet.
we were too distracted thinking about how austrian polizei duties involve parenting, and bedtime check-ins. along with the parody of these encounters, their pointlessness and lack of legal basis put me into a comic relief. i feel like they have been curing my ptsd from years of encounters with serbian policija. policija does not speak the same language, and they don’t do discipline. you don’t invite them to your house, ever.
-
friday, 3:00h
knock. knock.
knock. knock.
fuck. it’s already too late to rrrrriiiiinnngggg rrrrrriiiiiiinggg, but someone is at the doors. lidija already understands the cue, switches into the silent witness mode.
i start to find this more theatrical than disturbing, and after a couple of glasses of wine i am blissfully dissociated and ready for the plot.
a glance through the spyglass, ein, zwei:
a female and a male police officer. usual attire, yet, i see slight edginess and annoyance in their posture.
- Guten Abend!
- Sprechen Sie Englisch, Bitte? - Great, thank you. I believe I know the reason why you are here.
- I am loud, neighbour complaint.
- Please do come in.
the officers enter my shoebox apartment. big red suitcase hanging out in the middle of the room, standing in the way like a guard dog. candles, glass ashtray, empty wine glass, glass of water, and a laptop with lidija’s face shining bright through the screen.
i point at the balcony doors, windows, and barricaded blinds and ask them, what can we do about this?
i thicken the plot, and open my heart full of empathy and concern, round two:
i live in this apartment for six years, and i have deep respect and love for my neighbours. my landlady lives here, next door to me. i would never do anything that would disturb their peace.
i heard from your dear colleagues that the poor, sleepless neighbour lives in the ugly building.
I take them through a three-step tour around my shoebox apartment, we put the barricade blinds up, and take a look at the balcony.
THE OVERTIME
i wish i could do more for my poor neighbours’ sleep, but i am working.
i am having a consultancy call with an external partner of my university. we live in different time zones and i must make this call now.
talking head on the screen, called lidija, politely says hello. it’s important that they know we are all being watched by a virtual human entity, and that this neighbour’s lack of sleep is disturbing my work.
the fact that lidija is virtual means lidja can be anywhere on earth. in reality, our time is precisely the same, but our zone imposes different rules to it. so, i metaphorically put her into the time traveller experience, as it made perfect sense for the plot.
then, i continue with a little background/reality check to put my social dignity out there, so i say i am a hard working serbian woman, working at a respectable academic position, PhD candidate who is serious and responsible, and i feel threatened with their frequent visits and the frustration of a neighbour who is spying me through the window whole night, and non-confronts by sending police units to my doors.
my work might be blasphemous for austrian standards, the central european time zone limits the working hours. yet, what can we do about these ever-misaligning time zones? international time, international waters, can’t i be exempt from the natural law of central europe?
i said i am concerned that this neighbour might be particularly disturbed with me not only for being loud, but for speaking loudly in serbian and english? could it be that that is the source of his anger?
THE VOYEUR
die polizei awkwardly point out that they have to do their duties, if they are summoned, they must come to the scene. in this shoebox scene, while we analyse my balcony doors right next to my work desk, one of them spots my tilted window and expresses their brilliant assessment that might prove the troubling of my neighbour - that that one window was a liiiiiiiittle bit open. i tell them that i have to breathe, it is a summer night after all, and my shoebox is obviously a one room apartment, so i have nowhere to move. should i pack myself in the suitcase?
then, i ask them whether they have suggested to my voyeur neighbour the same thing?
if he cannot sleep from the outside noise in a city, shouldn’t he close the window?
i think for myself, his sleep requires less air than my meeting. he only learned how to open them this week, so maybe he could still live without that pleasure, since it looks like he is poorly adapting…
police officers are caught in a tautological error. point is correct, and i use this small win to investigate further. we know they are a him, so i ask, if he seems to have any other issues?
he obviously has 1. excruciating insomnia, and 2. some kind of anxiety might be stopping him from communicating through that window channel of ours, right? 3. maybe some anger issues, or something against auslanders?
how is his blood pressure, lungs? does he sweat a lot? is he an old man?
is he maybe at that or that window [i point fast to one side of the building]?
my cross-questioning and compliant investigators-turned-witnesses gave away that he is not too old, but not too young either, and that it is not the window that i pointed at.
you know that psychological trick when you ask a person about their wallet, and you watch which direction they look at? well, it worked here too, i spotted their gaze fixating on the second or third floor of the ugly, and i smirk and say a-haaaa…
silly trick.
i politely gave them my ausweis, and my phone number, and asked them if they could just call next time.
i also noted that next time i should call them instead, as i could be worried about this harassing new neighbour. a middle-aged austrian man hiding in the darkness, who stares at my windows and listens to my conversations at night.
friday, 3:30h
the visit came to a close. i was out of wine, and out of words. lidija, es tut mir leid, we’ll have a meetup in a better zone next time.
P.S. i am very grateful to the Linz police department for their consideration to always dispatch at least ein polizist on the team who speaks fluent english.
