And now they’re in the car together.
Ulrike’s exhaustion is gone. That’s an accomplishment. When she started at the Eagle’s Nest in May, when she didn’t know Anke-Marie yet, let alone Ulrich, she always slept whenever possible. She slept on the way to work, she slept coming home from work, and without enormous doses of caffeine, she would have slept at the Kehlsteinhaus too. She would have nodded off in her seat or passed out standing up like a horse. Yes, in an emergency she could have locked her knees like a horse and dozed on her feet, or even on one foot like a flamingo. That was how profound her exhaustion had been. But of course sleeping at work was not befitting. That would have meant getting the boot, and Ulrike couldn’t afford that. She needed money. She needed to save for the coming year. For leaving Salzburg. Goodbye, horse-shit cream-cake city! Goodbye, Hanno! Goodbye, Mom and Dad! Living at home was simply too intolerable. The atmosphere was slimy. Whose fault that was, Ulrike didn’t care to figure out any more, but two opposing truths existed. Her father thought they were victims of speculators. Her mother thought they were victims of her husband’s obstinacy, since he had refused to sell his money-losing company in time and just let the Great Catastrophe happen. He had practically rolled out the red carpet for the Catastrophe despite all the warnings. But if that was the case, if her father really had made too many unforgivable mistakes, as her mother claimed, why on earth were they still married?
Goodness, how Ulrike could drink coffee! Sometimes black, sometimes with milk, sometimes as espresso from the espresso machine, sometimes instant from coffee granules—whatever happened to be within reach. And sometimes, for variety and refreshment, she drank lemonade. This was how Ulrike was able to offer her best service the whole long day through at the Kehlsteinhaus.
Tourists arrived at the parking lot in lines of buses that wound along the serpentine road, disembarked, and then moved in a queue to the tunnel carved in the mountain. Clumps of them then entered the polished brass lift, the buttons of which were pressed by the lift operators, among them Glass-eye Ulrich. The lift carried them and their cameras and sun hats or ponchos and umbrellas or walking sticks or binoculars or tightly packed backpacks and water bottles and sunglasses on their foreheads, straight to the lobby of the Eagle’s Nest. Ulrike waited for them in the restaurant. She wore a picturesque if not rustic blouse with gathered sleeves, in a customer-friendly and easily approachable white-and-violet checked fabric. Her right hand was prepared to set a laminated menu on the red-and-white checked tablecloth before the customer next to the artificial white roses decorated with glass beads. Ach so gemütlich! On the belt of her black work trousers, Ulrike carried a train conductor’s wallet for easy access to coins and bills, as well as a small notebook where she could quickly check the orders. This summer she was Fräulein Kehlsteinhaus, a diligent, eager, perhaps slightly hysterical, but all the more lovely waitress.
Sometimes she got moving so fast the money belt swung all the way around her hips to her behind. Ulrike strode from the dining room to the kitchen delivering orders to the cook, and back from the kitchen to the dining room carrying dishes to the hungry customers. Weighed down by coins, the bouncing money pouch lent her movements even more speed. This quick scatterbrain wasn’t the gloomy Ulrike of Salzburg; this was the light-footed, sashaying Ulrike of Kehlsteinhaus. If she slouched around Salzburg in combat boots and with her hair in her eyes, just for the sake of contrast, here she had intentionally learned perfect grace as she carried head cheese seasoned with oil and vinegar, Hungarian goulash, Leberkäse buns, pork schnitzel and chips, hüttenwurst and sauerkraut, spätzle, venison and red cabbage, salad, beer, coffee, and apple strudel—with charm and swaying hips. Her blokeish walk, where she moved her entire upper body as one massive plate like a security guard, which appealed to Ulrike so much because it matched so poorly with the natural movement of her slender, somewhat girlish frame, did not belong in the Eagle’s Nest. In the Eagle’s Nest she had to hurry with the cotton-wool lightness of Lepus timidus, which leaves the beaded paw prints of a fox as it flees.
The results of her walking practice at the Kehlsteinhaus were excellent. Now and then Ulrike ended up posing in front of the enormous, restored picture window with overly tanned American men drunk on beer who looked like Hugh Hefner. Their friends took pictures and then traded places. Ulrike might smile under the arm of as many as four Hefners at a time. She always got an excellent tip. The men were extremely generous. She also got a round, white bobtail between her buttocks and long rabbit ears on her head, which made returning to the packed dining room difficult. The ears always seemed to get in the way and made it hard to see as Ulrike weaved between the tables with a tray full of empty plates and tall beer glasses. The bunny tail swung under her legs and dangled like a poorly-seated tampon, and her mood didn’t return to normal until her smoke
