Story [Faraway, So Close!] [DDC 2017] Watching You Watching Me

Title: Watching You Watching Me
Author: Ewok Poet
Canonicity: Absolutely and totally AU
Timeframe: 2016/2017 (!)
Characters: Doria D'Angelo, Raissa Becker, Marion d'Angelo, Gertrud "Hanna" Becker, eventually Cassiel, Raphaella, Emit Flesti...

A/N:

This is a fanfiction sequel to two acclaimed films by the great Wim Wenders - Wings of Desire (Himmel über Berlin, 1987) and Faraway, So Close! (In weitere Ferne, so nah!, 1993). I am just borrowing Herr Wenders' characters and trying to imagine them twenty-three years after the duology's end. No copyright infringement intended, nor will I publish this commercially at any given point. I'm just a fan!

So, how did this come to be? The protagonist of this diary has the same name as my main Human OC in the Star Wars Universe, oh the confusion. Her best friend has the same name as one of my RL friends' main Human OC, which is also her handle on this board. Confusion, confusion. So, yes, they're not Doria Vorr and Raissa Baiard, it's a freaky coincidence. But yes, it all started when the name Doria, being so uncommon, caught my attention while watching Faraway, So Close! I loved the idea of a multilingual little girl born to a former angel and a human woman and living quite the bohemian life with her caring, gentle parents and I had an idea of revisiting her in our times.

While this story borrows Bruno Ganz's actual birthdate (now picture him ranting as Hitler in Downfall ), as well as the late Solveig Dommartin's and uses them as Damiel and Marion's birthdates, these characters are in no way meant to be based on these actors - I just needed believable birth dates. Similarly, Doria is in no way what the actress that played her, Camila Pontabry became as an adult. The birth date I made up for Doria tends to pop in all of my work somehow, and when it doesn't, some other references are inevitable.

All other possible disclaimers go here.

***​

Tell me, muse, of the storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal everyman. With time, those who listened to me became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, bur rather sit apart. And one doesn't know anything about the other. I'm an old man with a broken voice, but the tale still rises from the depths, and the mouth, slightly opened, repeats it as clearly, as powerfully. A liturgy for which no one needs to be initiated to the meaning of words and sentences.
- Homer, the aged poet in "Wings of Desire"

***​

Want to read my SW work? Most of it concerns Ewoks and the repressive society of the Corellian Sector planet Sacorria. Start here or here. The *other* Doria's diary is here and - once again - they're not the same person.

 

Table of Contents:
April 26th, 2016
April 27th, 2016

 

Tuesday, April 26th, 2016

Starting a diary on my thirtieth birthday was not my idea. I tried to keep diaries before, but they would end up as a waste of pricey, colourful notebooks. But Raissa suggested it. She even bought me this cute Nicci notebook with a giraffe on it – I love giraffes. With dad gone, she thinks that I might be in need of that kind of support – the void, as it is. Of course, she will listen, my mother will listen, dad’s friends will listen, but a place to channel my own emotions away from everybody else’s preying eyes sounds like an interesting experiment. Let’s see if I can stick with it – I could not stick with many things over the course of these thirty years, as if I was supposed to live forever! I can’t promise anything, not even when nobody else is going to see this, not even to myself.

So, how does it go with a diary, anyway? Anne Frank introduced herself in hers, so did many others in all these books I devoured as a child in the kitchen of our pizza parlor and the bar where mom worked before she got a better job. I guess I should introduce myself?

My name gets me more attention than I would like. It’s Doria D’Angelo.

According to an internet search I did recently, Doria is a very rare name and I only stumbled upon another Doria in some Star Wars fanfic, out of all places. Oddly enough, the stories by the same author did involve somebody whose first name resembled my last...talking about connections in the world. In the crazy world, of course. Why would anybody have the time to write Star Wars fanfiction, with the life as it is being stranger than fiction?

And yeah, there’s that naval admiral from dad’s birth country, Italy – the famous Andrea Doria. There’s a painting of him naked, for some reason. He obviously had organization skills, too, the kind that I don’t have.

Now, D’Angelo is a fun last name – no matter how common it could be, it ends up as the butt of all possible pick-up lines.

Dad listed his birthdate as March 22nd, 1941. He was twenty years older than mom. He lived good, good 75 years and he spent his last birthday in quite a memorable way: throwing a party for himself at our pizza parlor, Casa dell’Angelo. Everybody was there. There was a lot of wine, a lot of dancing and cigarette smoke that burned my eyes.

The very next day, dad was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer that already spread to his brain. He was given less than two weeks to live. He did not accept his own, well, mortality the way most people would – at some point, he winked and quoted Luke Skywalker, out of all people – that “not true, impossible” thing he utters when he finds out that Darth Vader was his father.

He died on April 01st. Have I mentioned that the Time tends to troll our family? Time with capital T, yes – not because I was born in Germany and because I have the Tendency to capitalize Nouns for no Reason, but because I really feel like the time is the biggest troll in the world, standing there with that “trollface” expression, while we’re all wearing the “okay guy” frowns.

We had a quiet funeral. What confused me more than anything is that nobody from Italy showed up, other than the friends dad made running the parlor. I know that most of his family hid Jews in the WWII and that they were persecuted by Mussolini for it, but it baffles me that nobody else other than him made it. Then again, as much as I loved dad, many things about his past are contradictory. Perhaps I’m paranoid because of Raissa’s mom having been the daughter of a Nazi. Perhaps I just have vivid imagination, another thing that would make mom say that I’m a feather of dad’s wing – whatever that was supposed to mean.

Nothing was ever normal at the D’Angelo household, come to think of it.

With a birth date like mine, you just cannot expect to be normal, I guess. I had people compare me to the “disaster girl” from that internet meme. I had random trolls ask me if I was a “social justice warrior”. Neither of these things are funny.

 

Wednesday, April 27th, 2016

Okay, I made it to the second day of this little experiment. And I told Raissa about it. She laughed, she couldn’t believe that this feels like pressure, in a way.

Speaking of pressure, this ringing in my ears is odd, too. Dad used to complain about it a lot, and it was gone briefly – when his friend, Karl Engel visited us and, unfortunately, died in that barge accident. After Karl died, it started again. And dad seemed to be happy about it, he even smiled at the funeral. Now, that Karl was wonderful, but so disturbingly odd. His last name was odd, too – and he insisted on calling dad Damiel and not Daniele!

Anyway, the ringing has been there ever since dad passed away. That makes it for almost one month. Not sure if it’s work booking an appointment at the doctor’s. Mom never had issues with it, neither did anybody I know. Raissa’s son, Konrad, seems to be the only person whom I have ever heard complain about a similar problem.

Perhaps it will go away with time? If I’m stressed, or something.

I said “time”. The troll.

I should probably sleep more. And stop making shadow puppets.

 

nm

 

I know nothing about these movies, I don't know if I've even heard of them, but your characterization is so vivid, I don't think it matters.

Right off the bat, I identify with her. I've tried many times to write a diary/journal and just end up with mostly empty notebooks. The few times I did manage to do write a few entries I get embarrassed and destroy it.

I love the meta-ness of her finding her name in a SW fanfic!


I'm curious about the ringing in her ears, but with the trolling the universe is doing to her, I'm not very hopeful as to the reason.

This was delightful and made me smile. Even though life has thrown her quite a lot, she seems to still have a fun nature about her.

 

definitely qualifies as an interesting idea, i have to say. experiments are always fun... i've done a few of them myself over the years. >_<

i loved the tie in with the SW's fanfic. that's just an extremely amusing tie in, i have to say.

i believe i'll be following along with this one as well.

 

Too sleepy, one day behind the schedule. Comments will be added tomorrow, hopefully. Until then, a placeholder.

So, Moody's comment contained a bunch of useful details about the whole setup here, but it's gone. It was one of the most beautiful comments anybody's ever left me and I would like just to honour it before I move onto the others.

---

This will be explained in the spoiler at the end of this comment. It makes sense.

I had to do that. I really, really had to. She read my story - can it get more meta than that?

Why, thank you. <3

Sounds better than what I did - I wrote it for many years, but I applied strong, strong self-censorship.

Once again - see the spoiler.

Most certainly.

Glad to have you on board.
So, the spoiler most of you WILL need.

Spoiler

Doria is the daughter of Marion - a trapeze artist that worked in a diner and Damiel, an angel who became human and basically became an Italian guy running a pizzeria. Damiel's friend, Cassiel, attempted to become human, too, but he could not fit in the human world. Emit Flesti or Time Itself shows him that he does not fit, by putting him through horrible circumstances. In the end, Cassiel dies and becomes an angel again.
Damiel hears ringing in his ears and know that Cassiel is there. Otherwise, only children can see angels, but they forget then when growing up.
Raissa Becker is a girl slightly older than Doria, whom Cassiel saves when she falls off the balcony. Her mother, Hanna, was separated from her brother and father while the whole family, Nazis, were on the run. She was raised and taken care of by her father's chaffeur, Konrad, and her mom, of course.
I recommend both films, greatly!

 

Thursday, April 28th, 2016

Third day in a row? I’m doing well.

Other than making sure that this diary is being written, I have done some research. Apparently, dad is not from Italy. The D’Angelos that seem to have perished are from Locarno, in the Swiss province of Ticino. The snobbish town on the banks of Lago Maggiore, the one with that famous film festival and, as of recently, a music one called Moon and Stars, both of them taking place at Piazza Grande. That reminds me of a Lucio Dalla song. Dad loved him and it was always an argument what we would listen to on family trips – stuff from previous years’ editions of the Sanremo Festival, or mom’s favourites, such as Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed and any band that ever had Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld as its members.

I met Blixa once. Or not really. He was performing with Alva Noto in HAU2 some five years ago, as ANBB. There was this point where he invited all of to come closer to the stage, so we did. I was looking straight into his eyes.

I don’t know, maybe we met before. Mom claims she met Nick Cave and that dad did, too, but that he didn’t remember. Now he’s dead and so is Nick’s son. A colleague from the gym classes said that his angels failed him. Angels? Come on, the kid fell off the cliff.

Anyway, famous people are not important right now, neither are these little anecdotes. What I want, what I really, really want – oh no, I quoted an earworm from twenty years ago – is to search further into this whole thing with dad’s family. The thing is…

…how do I introduce myself to them, if I manage to find them through public records and all those heritage and genealogy-related websites?

What if they had changed their last names seventy years ago, to avoid the surviving Fascists’ vendetta?

What if they don’t know that the little boy they probably hid somewhere, in a foster family, was alive until recently?

Will they be angry with me if it turns out that he could have contacted them and he didn’t?

I can always tell them that dad was that man who really, really liked colours and who seemed perpetually fascinated with life. He died with a smile on his face. And that was when the ringing in my ears started, but that probably has nothing to do with dad’s passing. I have an appointment with a therapist next week, but I doubt that she will connect this to my grief in any way.

What if they end up thinking I’m crazy? Kerstin, our former waitress, said that Ticinesi are like most other Swiss folk – kind of dense and way too disciplined, even compared to us born in Germany.

I sat and thought about this for a while, totally having forgotten the books before me and I had to report to the financial inspection and make sure that we didn’t miss one single Abgabenordnung. And then Salvatore blew at the back of my neck. He thinks it’s funny. He’s been our pizzaiolo since about 2006, he was born in 1980, and he still thinks of me as a twenty-year-old. I confronted him about this and reminded him that I have recently turned thirty, he swore that it wasn’t him and that I snapped at him before he could say a word. He brought me a plate with two arancini and some caprese and said that I look like I had suddenly stopped, as if I had run out of energy, so he brought me something to eat.

I would never fire him, anyway. Where would he go? He wouldn’t go back to Rome, definitely. He only speaks Italian, and he picked some German and English, but it’s kind of funny. He’s not a sprachentalent, he-he. With this frightening refugee crisis, everybody is looking for somebody who speaks Arabic. And somebody who would be good with Halal meals and not Italian cuisine. Understandable. People lost everything and then somebody mentions angels. I am kind of sick of all these people talking about angels. Would angels allow so many innocent Syrians to suffer? Not to mention the countries that preceded it? There are no such things as miracles.

On a completely different note: why I never break a plate when I drop it?

 

(it is to be assumed that Doria made more entries in the meantime, but that they were omitted, for the sake of relevance - this note won't be repeated )

 

Friday, May 13th, 2016

I have never been superstitious. Yet, each Friday the 13th, people confuse me – their superstitions are taken to the extreme. Salvatore was reluctant to walk under the ladder the window cleaners were using and he only opted for it after he had spat on the floor. There’s no other entrance, so of course that he didn’t want to miss a day of work. Similarly, Kerstin, our newest waitress who has nothing to do with that other Kerstin, nicked a clove of garlic from the kitchen and put it in her shirt’s pocket. I asked her what Friday the 13th had to do with vampires, out of all things to be scared of, and she shrugged – her mother and her grandmother do the same and she is a creature of habit.

Raissa too has one weird quirk that she claims is from Konrad. She is doing her best to avoid black cats. I only vaguely remember him, because I was very young when he had died, but I have never seen that happen. Is she sure that this quirk didn’t come from somebody else?

It seemed very logical that I had my ORL appointment on this very day. I complained to the doctor, Frau Wagner, about ringing in my ears and she had me tested for hearing impairment. There were no signs of any problems, so she made this assumption that I must have been at some rock concert – apparently, she thinks that all “kids” like Die Toten Hosen – or that there were men at work near our pizzeria. She sent me home and told me that she had to drop by for our delicious calzone one of these days. I reminded her of dad’s joke about her and spaghetti alla putanesca. She claimed that this NEVER happened.

And just then, there it was – the ringing in my ears and a shadow on the wall. It was then that I realised that it always happens when I’m talking about my father. Perhaps I should have gone to a neurologist instead?

On my way out of the clinic, I looked up and there was…this…brick…falling. I swear that it had almost hit me, but it changed its direction in the last moment and broke to thousands of pieces right next to me.

“A good angel is responsible for you.” Said an old lady walking by. “Especially if he or she can save you on Friday the 13th.”

I jokingly said that my last name is D’Angelo and that dad’s best friend was this Karl Engel. She told me that there is no such thing as coincidences. Now, if I was to look up every single coincidence, ever, I would have probably found similarities between the conquest of the New World and production of shoelaces on Taiwan.

However, I still told mom of this little incident before we went to sleep. She seemed pensive, to say the least. She said that there had always been this aura around me, and that whatever it was, it was like a protective layer cast upon my person. I am not sure if she’s been reading new-age books like most women in their fifties do, or if that was supposed to be a joke. Either way, I am even more determined to take that trip to Locarno and not tell anybody about the real reason behind my trip?

But…perhaps I could get Raissa to accompany me. She’s been real supportive about all this since day one.

 

Thank you, Mira_Jade. This Doria and the other Doria have two completely different voices.

And yes, that is what Damiel was like - nothing about him is a coincidence. Nothing.

 

Saturday, May 14th, 2016

I told Raissa about the trip and while she couldn’t quite get my attentions, she agreed to go. She has some free days early in June and that’s where we’ll be going to Switzerland.

Until then, I need to find a decent job. Is anybody looking for polyglots?

I remember this one childhood phone conversation – gosh, did we have an old phone – when I told dad that “Paul and Paula were two inseparable birds”. He remembered that on his deathbed and, until the very last day of his life, he could not find any deeper meaning to that. And he was always looking for deeper meaning, even though Paul and Paula were just fellow performers at mom’s troupe. And they were kind of…flying.

Maybe that is why his last word was “wings”.

 

Thank you. My muse is currently having major problems with it, but I'm doing my best to complete the next entry soon.

 

Sunday, May 15th, 2016

We have never determined...are those two inseparable birds birds that can fly or are they the way they are because they're flightless? I really don't know why I have said that, but I wish that I could hear or see dad and that he could tell me more about it. After all, I was so little and I wasn't making much sense.

That said, I have been to dad’s grave. I wanted to tell him that I would be going to find out more about his past and that Raissa was to accompany me, but I felt like I was cheating. I had to be there on my own, in order to understand both myself and dad better. Similarly, I didn't tell mom about it, and then...I spotted her there. She didn't want to tell me about it, either. We hugged each other and cried there for a while, then went home.

There is something connecting all of us. I always had a much better connection with dad, but ever since he died, I seem to be having a good connection with mom, too. You know, as if somebody had wanted us to be in the same place at the same time. I am not sure what kind of an emoji or slang would some teenager used to explain this, but the only one coming to my mind is .

So, I need to plan that trip. And I absolutely need to concentrate on it, as it will be a walk right down the lane of the memories I never knew, the heritage I never knew I had. Hopefully, I will find out why dad went by Damiel, which is technically not a name, when the documents he had clearly said Daniele. What caused all those misspellings?

Is my name a misspelling, too?