It started with smoke. Or perhaps not. It started with an eerie feeling, like the shiver of a grave walker; tired and edgy from all that has been witnessed. Things have happened, time has passaged a dark route and a once flourishing business has suddenly turned sour or rotten or something. Whatever has happened there has been decline. Slow at first but then rushed; hurried, like rats standing by the ship and applauding its sinking. Ha Ha. Another one fights the dust. Or such earth. Overgrowing with weeds now, brittle-crisp already from the creeping cold. What had once been a flourishing business has now grown ivy on its menu; storks wre meant to be carriers of hope not soiled dreams.
The smoke was unexpected. No one lives there we have been told. The owners have sold or evacuated, no one is quite sure. But there is smoke with fire; not just speculation or ghoulish expectation, it is what it is. In the basement which we can see from our apartment we are intrigued by the flicker of flame and glancing upwards we can see the plumes of smoke, furrowing into the cold air. There is no one in the hotel. This is early, night barely cracked by day and there is not a light on in the 1930s building nor, can you believe, is there a sigh or a sound as we listen closely but surreptitiously, glancing furtively but no less acutely through the windows that show nothing but business shrouded; large white sheets slung over furniture, luminous in the septic embrace of darkness. When we step back, or rather retreat, we are sure there is no one there and on cue, the smoke stops, a disappearing cloud and the rippling flame in the basement has abruptly gone, like fingers snuffing out flame.
Hotel Storchen is not empty.
