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BIOGRAPHY
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   After a two-day ride via Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to the Austrian border at Maribor I jumped from the bus before the official customs inspection and made my way alone into Austrian territory before hopping back on the bus further down the road. Once in Vienna, I went to Robert's place, he'd said that he would be in the city in a week and that I could stay there free.
   On arriving, first I went to Moglender gasse 4/1 in the seventeenth, but since a long time it was not more there. I found after the owner of the building (at Schuechat) throwing all his belongings out into the corridor. It had been a long time he'd seen my friend and wanted to free the room for another renter. My passage was the most fortuitous imaginable. He was about to put everything in the incinerator! I saved my paintings from cremation by a margin of just a few heurs.. Robert's place now out of the question, I picked up all my paintings and headed for an old acquaintance's house. I won't call him "friend". When I arrived, and although he had often been the beneficiary of my generosity in better days, he treated me like a stranger and I found that he'd rifled the baggage that I'd left with him for valuables and had sold anything that he could get a few shillings for. Fortunately, he'd overlooked what remained of my wife's jewelry. I'd hid these modest yet charming pieces very carefully in the bottom seam of the suitcase. I sold them a few hours later and had 10,000 shillings to hide in the special compartment I'd carved in the heel of my shoe.

  A few days later, while walking down the Mariahilfer Strasse, I saw a little figure limping along the sidewalk that reminded me of someone I knew. It was a little black man with Robert's bobbing swagger and, although he seemed much the worse for wear, filthy hair, humid, dirty clothing, ripped collar, it most certainly was my careless little friend back home in Vienna. Identification became more positive and the extremity of his plight became clearer the closer I got. He could barely stand up and went forward as if pushing himself off a wall at each step. I hailed him and when he turned, I had the fright of my life. He had been terribly disfigured, the left side of his face was a running scab, his lips had been exploded by punches, his left eye was swollen shut, the right was filled with blood. I could see that the drug traffic didn't tolerate his easy-going ideas concerning fidelity and keeping promises.