Petrol Station

I was in the orange - in a glow. Bathed in sunlight this rather reddish shade was virtually bursting with energy. I thought that I heard the crackling of a lonesome tree in the heat. I worked at that petrol station. I hung on the gallows to be more precise. So they brought me silver and also some gold. And the brothers who came to save me were encircled by the same glow. I listened to music. I read a book. And getting gooseflesh on my forehead and under my hair I always had to think of a pharaoh’s crown that I obviously always wore, feeling it however only at important moments.
Once an acquaintance dropped in who I saw seldom and with whom I did not really develop what you call a close friendship. He eyed me with a doubting smile and began a deeper natter with me. I directed the talk to ancient Egypt and its pharaohs. Godlike kings. Of course I did not tell him about my flights of emotion hearing or reading certain lines. Almost anyone can boast with his melancholy that he sees reflected in songs or literature or at least identify strongly with it. There are only few on the other hand who can show external emotion in the form of high spirits that they draw from a walkman or a bundle of paper so that they don’t get caught and that their source cannot be identified.
“Hey! Once there were people on Earth who were considered to be gods, worshipped and whom you served as slaves.”
“Dictators…”, my acquaintance replied with most superficial thinking and interest.
“No, I think pharaohs were served out of religious convictions and gratefulness; after all they were gods. Can you imagine that?”
“Hmm. Well. So what?”
My eyes avoided my acquaintance’s fixed, silly stare. I looked at the sun-flooded orange of our station’s roof and the petrol pumps. A picture, dawn in the Egyptian desert, flashed through my mind.
“So you hang around here thinking about pharaohs? What are you reading there?”
“Steinbeck.” – “Something about Egypt?”
Sighing smilingly I said no and made a joke about the slow progress I was making with the book.
“Well, principally I am something like a slave here, too – a slave of the station’s owner; I get my wage instead of divine blessings. I just lack totally the conviction that the owner is a descendant of a race of gods!”
We smiled at each other.
“But what matters is that you get your money!”
“Exactly!”
My acquaintance left. I dangled on the gallows again. Silver and gold. And outside the orange crackled in the sunny rays’ madness. Songs slip quickly through one’s ears. Arduously the eye eats its way through old paper. A good friend came closer and he opened the door. He was encircled by the same fire of sun and orange.
“How’s work?” He asked shrilly and friendly.
I reported some small happenings that had taken place on that day, how the customers behaved or how meditative it is in all its boredom to put away cigarette boxes, finally I told him of our acquaintance and the conversation that we had.
“And how do you get to such a topic? Boredom?”
“Well, I am always bored.”
That was a slight lie I told. Actually I was caught up in an intensive, nice daydream all day long already.
“Perhaps it is also the bright light today or the station’s paint.” I kept on lying, for both just fitted my reverie.
“But probably I got it from television.”
My friend contented himself with that. We fixed a meeting after work then he went away.
It was shortly before knocking-off time when a ‘city-known’ shuffled into the station’s shop. He said his line that was deeply notched into his cerebral convolutions, that there was no work without god. I went without a far-reaching talk not to confuse him and agreed with him.
I dangled on the gallows. The sun set, the glow died. I counted the silver and the gold. And the tree charged with heat kept on crackling; soon it will have been cooled down and I will meet my friend, yet I always hang on the gallows.

http://www.papyros.org/cs/tankstelle.html