Albert Ostermaier

It's raining. Unceasingly. There is only one table in the forestry inn. Hadesser sits there, a writer, in front of him a collection of notes and, of course, a beer. Across from him sits the carriage driver, drinking beer stoically. Between the two a card game: Watten. The driver wants to play the game with the weary poet. Maybe for the last time. All his other fellow players have been lost, and last of all the doctor, in whose barracks Hadesser now resides, and whose collection of notes he sees as a legacy. But Hadesser does not want to play with him, he only wants to play and rant in his own head. Against politics, against literature, against Austria as well as against Bavaria, against the insensibility of society, and not least against the "disastrous weather, in which even the healthiest become sick". But as much as Hadesser defends himself against playing Watten, the last round is yet to be played played. Played to the end. He can’t escape the carriage driver, when he plays his last card here in this inn in the darkness: the trump of hearts.

In Herz sticht Albert Ostermaier offers an artistic variation on Thomas Bernhard's tale Watten – Ein Nachlaß into a "piece that performs and writes itself."