Anton‘s Bark - Twelve

Chapter Ten embroils Otto even further into the unforeseen,
during his second day in Vienna. By early evening he is ready to
meet Marie again, and take her out on a date. His plan is to
rescue the relationship he’d had with her, some twenty years
before. He is sure that it is Marie he is about to meet in the
lobby of his hotel, because his prophecy had always been that she
would be with him in his hotel room by midnight that night. Anton
however, would have been able to remind him that prophecies too,
are open to misinterpretation. It is in fact, a surprise that
awaits the fictitious Otto in the lobby. And yet, it is left to
the real Otto to narrate what happens to Anton in the Unseen. But
while the writer is trapped in a cave, the fictitious Otto finds
himself trapped by a dog. He provides a detailed explanation
concerning how all of this could have happened, but despite
himself, the real Otto’s descriptions of Anton’s quest to escape
from the cave, by chasing after a Frenchman’s shoe, can only have
the effect of feeding back into what happens to his fictional
self in Chapter Eleven.