Alarm literature – Christel Buschmann: The sun, the smartphone and fear

It’s hot. Matilda, young and beautiful and lonely, is staying in Mexico City. She has a Birkin handbag, no money worries, a playlist with music from the history of sophisticated light music in her ears – and constant fear. The poverty of action and the wealth of imagination determine their lives under the scorching sun of Central America; where she spends most of her time in air-conditioned rooms.

“A Blazing Hot Afternoon” is a novel about a woman who can’t get out of her head. The title itself is borrowed from a pulp novel that Matilda is supposed to write to pass the time. Matilda is in Mexico accompanying her husband Alexander, who is on a business trip. He’s used to giving orders, according to her, he’s strong, he’s cold because of his job, he’s constantly absent because of business, which of course she knows nothing about. When he touches, he excites or leaves her with pain that she can remember.

The couple’s communication is largely limited to humiliation on his part, complaints from Matilda or cool comments. An affair that promises to get out of itself if your psyche allows it seems almost inevitable. Serving as lover, safety first, not a local revolutionary and poet, but a businessman.

This plot initially sounds like upper-class literature neglected by affluence. But far from it! “A blazing hot afternoon” is a playful, highly funny and deeply sad text from a present that takes your breath away because the protagonist exposes herself to a fear industry of self-help and news flashes that ensures that she only thinks within herself yourself and staring at the screen.

Although it is a debut novel, the author is 82-year-old Christel Buschmann. The filmmaker and journalist made documentaries about faith healers in the Soviet Union, Russian prison camps for women, child abuse, but also a portrait of the fashion designer Wolfgang Joop. Her feature films had titles like “Gibbi West Germany” (with Eric Burdon and Martin Kippenberger) or “Ballhaus Barmbek” (with Kiev Stingl and Nico): They are about dirty and beautiful outsider demimondes, life plans on the edge of the old Federal Republic of Germany that are not safe from bourgeoisie offered, but allowed a little of the ominous freedom that the West advertises.

Buschmann’s protagonist Matilda, on the other hand, is very unfree, but also very productive in imagining everything bad that could happen to her. She’s like a malicious scriptwriter of her own life, but in reality she’s running around chasing her husband or just sitting there. In her head, self-made psychological diagnoses alternate with horror reports from the Internet. She knows countless apps to combat overwhelm and discomfort. The songs capture their feelings, are instructions, judgments.

The novel is not an inner monologue, but the narrative voice does not leave Matilda’s side. Goethe, Eichendorff, Fontane are quoted, as are Lou Reed, Elvis, Roberta Flack, Lil Peep. Regardless of whether it is German poetry, an evil saying or classic rock: Matilda is predetermined in thoughts and catastrophes. And she trusts superviseddenken.de and other sites in the glowing casing in her hand. However, she spends most of her time in highly secure hotels, moving around the city in taxis or going to expensive properties owned by rich people. From a dialogue with a barman: “What counts is the moment.” “Nice blouse.” “It’s not what you’re wearing, it’s what’s on your mind.” “My wife has a tumor in her head.” “Have you ever thought about it…” “Thinking makes you sad.” “Yes. It is like it is.”

Only once does Matilda undertake a bit of poverty tourism, but she quickly flees the people with material needs who are alien to her and too lively. A German tourist in a sombrero hat in the elevator who tries to rape her is felled with the heel of a high-heeled shoe. It will be used a second time. And in the end there is actually a dead person. Matilda takes a maximally unreliable perspective on her environment.

Christel Buschmann’s way of writing, of telling stories in flickering, hot highlights, breaks the present down into constantly missed moments, into wasted opportunities to free oneself from the demolished way of life, of being an appendage. Hunger for experience is a form of anorexia. A disturbing, evil, funny, fast-paced novel against the anxiety of a constantly alarmed soul.

Christel Buschmann: A blazing hot afternoon. März-Verlag, 192 pages, hardcover, €23.

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