The Otto Loser Mysteries

This is the final episode of Anton’s Bark. It begins with Otto’s reading of Chapter Fourteen of Otto in Flames. The fourteenth chapter of Anton’s novel produces the miraculous ending the writer had always been looking for, but had never been able to find. Now that the writer is lost to the mire of the Unseen, and his book as been lost to time, the real Otto discovers he is finally free. What happens next, after the fictitious Otto manages to reunite himself with his family in Vienna, is the real Otto’s ending to Otto in Flames. At the conclusion of this last episode there is nothing left but for the real Otto to recall, as poetically as he can, how Anton was finally able to escape from the cave and return to his wife, Oksana, still painting a portrait of him in their loft, on 18 February 2019. Thank you for listening. For more please write to ottoloser@outlook.com

In an echo of the time Anton followed Urania through his own town at the beginning of the real Otto’s telling Anton’s Bark, Chapter Thirteen has the fictitious Otto following Marie down a street, on a dark night in Vienna. She has the fated money. He now suspects what her secret is, which is to say what the writer has in store for him as Marie enters a private club. A potent feedback-loop has begun to irrupt between the fictitious Otto’s life, and Anton’s experiences in the myth of Midas. The ending of Otto in Flames might ave been a foregone conclusion, yet the fictitious Otto would never have guessed at the true outcome. In the commentary that follows, we learn that as Anton never knew how his novel ended, despite his many efforts to find out, it falls to the real Otto to come up with an ending. That astonishing ending will be set out in Chapter Fourteen of Otto in Flames, next week. This episode ends with an account of what happened to Anton on returning to the cave with a puppet of the fictitious Otto in his mouth, a puppet answering to the name of Orpheus.

Ever since 1999 Otto has known that by one-minute after midnight, on 19 February, 2019, his estranged wife Marie, would be with him in his hotel room. And in Anton’s mysteriously unfolding novel that is exactly what happens. Today, the real Otto reads Chapter Twelve for us. Now that that special midnight has come and gone, there are no more prophecies he might use to guide his fictitious self. And his quest to be reunited with his family is marred by the fact that he is still in possession 30,000 euros, which he now knows Marie badly needs. There is a sense in this chapter that Anton may be aware of Otto’s repugnance at being in the hero of Otto in Flames. While preoccupied with his adventures in the Unseen there is a sense that the writer may even be enjoying his hero’s predicament in Vienna. When it comes to Otto’s turn to tell us what happens to Anton, increasingly absorbed in a medieval version of the myth of Midas, the telling is also slyly exuberant, raising the thorny question of who is taking who for a walk.

Otto’s reading of Chapter Eleven has him recounting how his fictitious self comes face to face with a ferocious dog.  His premonition, that he would be attacked by such a dog, within twenty-four hours of arriving in Vienna, comes true. What the fictitious Otto didn’t know however, is that this attack would happen in the midst of an unexpected encounter with his son, Jakob. He doesn’t lose heart. His final premonition is that he will be safely in his hotel room with Marie, by midnight that night. The episode concludes with the real Otto’s description of Anton’s continuing adventures in the Unseen, which by now have become a wild retelling of a popular Greek myth. Still chasing after the Frenchman’s shoe, Anton races down a passage, which takes him into the Dark Ages. As Otto explains, it is apparent that Anton’s mind is somewhat adrift. The writer seems to have forgotten his desire to find out what happens in Otto in Flames. He only wants to get out of the cave, and back to his wife. Yet what happens Anton will have its consequences in Chapter Twelve of the novel, where Otto’s own quest to be reunited with his family continues.