The Illogic of Kassel Read Online Free Page B

I considered not participating. So this famous Dschingis Khan, I thought, wasn’t just a boring place at the far end of a park; it was also a dive where delinquents came straight in—with machine guns, one could only imagine—and took the tools of trade away from poor prose writers.
    I decided I would not go to Kassel, but it didn’t take me long to change my mind again when I remembered how eager I was to know what the state of the avant-garde of contemporary art was. I also thought that if I didn’t go, I’d be left wondering forever what possible hidden charm there might be at the very heart of the Dschingis Khan and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Chus Martínez’s proposal.
    Curiosity turned out to be stronger than fear, and I decided I’d go, though there was no way I was going to show up at the Chinese restaurant with my laptop. After all, nobody likes to get their gear stolen. But about three days before embarking on the journey, I sent an email to Bellatin to find out just how dangerous it was to set up in the Dschingis Khan. “Hi, Mario,” I wrote, “I’d like it if you could give me more details about the circumstances surrounding the theft of your computer so I can get a better idea of the situation in which I’ll find myself in a few days in that Chinese restaurant.”
    He answered almost instantly: “Don’t worry. You just sit at a table in the back of the restaurant to write for a while. Go with a pencil and eraser and don’t take your laptop, though that’s not where mine got stolen . . . I had another activity at the Documenta bookstore. I was working there trying to sell a hybrid book, and that’s where the theft happened, someone in the middle of the throng took my briefcase with all my stuff in it.”
    Having learned that the danger wasn’t at the restaurant, I calmed down a little and decided to write Pim Durán to inquire about certain aspects of my upcoming visit. In the email she’d sent me in April, under the letters of her name was written “Personal Assistant to the Head of Documenta and Museum Fridericianum, Veranstaltungs-GmbH, Friedrichsplatz 18.” Such a long description of her position made me remember a Blaise Pascal phrase, a McGuffin about brevity, or its opposite: “The only reason this letter is so long is because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”
    I wrote to Pim Durán: “Dear Pim: The day on which I am theoretically to fly to Frankfurt is approaching, but the lack of news from your end makes me uneasy. All I have is a piece of paper with a round-trip ticket, and nothing else. I don’t know what to expect.”
    As soon as I sent that email, I realized that perhaps I’d gone on too long with the text because I hadn’t had time to make it shorter. I was about to send another to apologize when I received this succinct, efficient, very speedy reply from Pim Durán: “I’ll get in touch with Alka, who is the person in charge of your visit to Kassel. Don’t worry, you’ll be well taken care of and we’ll keep you apprised of everything. Alka will be waiting for you at the Frankfurt airport.”
    The message calmed me for a few moments, although it worried me to have to depend on Alka, which was an indecipherable name for me. I didn’t know if it was a masculine or feminine name, or that of a fourth-generation German robot. On the other hand, what did this mean, a “person in charge of my visit to Kassel”? Would they not let me take a step on my own?
    I did a Google search and found an Alka Kinali, a Croatian belly dancer born in 1986 and known simply as Alka; she’d been dancing since childhood and had won international recognition thanks to a variety program called
Zagreb Show
. It could be her, why not? I didn’t look any further. When I met Alka, I wouldn’t tell her, but I’d always associate her with the Croatian dancer. My grandmother’s sister had been the lover of a Croatian dancer, but that was another story; it’s probably not at all