Filiz Dogan, German Psychoanalytical Association; Karl Abraham Institute Berlin Her attention was drawn to a piece of paper on the desk. The desk was always empty, with nothing on it except two very pretty boxes. She had always assumed they contained various desk supplies, pens, erasers, pencil sharpeners, maybe a small pair of scissors, which were immediately stowed away in one of the boxes as soon as they were no longer in use. That was the only way she could explain why there was never anything on the desk of her colleague, whose office was at the very end of the hallway, which you only passed if you wanted to use the stairs instead of the elevator. She often used the stairs, especially when going down, because it made her feel better and superior to her colleagues when they were standing in front of the elevator. SHE did not shy away from physical exertion. She opened the door to the stairwell very slowly to give herself more time to inspect the desk. The note was folded and looked as if it had been rummaged out of a pocket and landed on the table rather unintentionally. Her colleague looked at her screen and didn't seem to notice the note, or perhaps she had forgotten about it. She made sure that her colleague didn't notice her watching, as they had never spoken before except for a friendly nod. At that moment, her colleague looked up and said, “Good afternoon.” Another one, she thought. She couldn't stand it when people said “good afternoon.” She said “hello” and entered the stairwell.
Roland Zag HER ATTENTION WAS DRAWN TO A PIECE OF PAPER ON THE DESK.
Monika thought she recognized the unmistakable artistic handwriting of her grandfather, Hans Albrecht, who had gone missing in the war, a talented amateur painter who had drawn Bedouins in charcoal as a Wehrmacht soldier in the occupied territories of Africa, on the sketch by the landscape architect with whom she was discussing the renovation of her parents' house. Hans Albrecht's sketchbooks had found their way back to Germany, but he himself, sadly, had not. She had tried to publish these pictures, which she found remarkable, expressive sketches in deep black tones on badly damaged rolls of paper that may once have been wrapped around cable drums, depicting the emaciated faces of African Berbers, but no one was interested in them. Nor for the story of her grandfather, who had tried to give an identity to the people whom the German army had brutally destroyed. Even this biography, which she found remarkable, met with disinterest today, and her master's thesis in art history on her grandfather's work was rejected. She now thought she recognized the same deep black chalk marks, uniquely characteristic hatching and glazing in the horticultural architect's sketchbook. Was this a delusion, was she beginning to hallucinate, was her concern for the fate of this Hans Albrecht, whom she had never known, becoming her own fate? Well, it didn't seem entirely unlikely to her at that moment that Julien, the architect, had come into contact
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