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Authors: Elfriede Jelinek

Tags: #Police Procedural, #Literary Collections, #Contemporary Women, #Mystery & Detective, #prose_contemporary, #General, #Literary, #Fiction, #Continental European

Greed (25 page)

BOOK: Greed
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It always makes sense to work at something, and mining has had the sense, over the eons, to throw the mountain bit by bit into the depths, in seconds if necessary, and even under the mountain there are things happening, which are perhaps beneficial to it, but certainly not to us. Because the mountain can in a short time virtually liquefy itself deep inside, yes indeed, in the depths, as if there were not already enough water there! So now it also turns to mud inside, and after that, watch out, it breaks through. And it breaks through into neighboring, already packed, old worked out chambers, and sometimes, if they have not been properly backfilled, these are particularly susceptible. Who actually checked the consistency of the packing material, of the concrete? No one? Well, then of course we'll need to call the Country Police to find that out, but not today and not this country policeman, he won't be on duty. But one day, one day some time, he too will try to find out whether it's true that lean concrete packing was used or not. Like all of us, he will need experts to do that. The information won't be volunteered. A subsidence might perhaps have occurred if the chamber had been properly packed, but not this catastrophic breakthrough, which took people into the pit with their eyes wide open and afterwards didn't let them out again even with their eyes shut. They're still down there. Ten head of them. No, you won't get anything out again, on the contrary, you're still in nature's debt and have to pay. So: What interests the country policeman about women also lies more below the waistline, which the more fearful don't even dare cross with their eyes. The country policeman, once the sunny credit side has been checked, always only looks there, an area about which he has already collected further details on many occasions, so that he knows his way around, if he ends up there again. It's nicest in nice weather, this area, then one can at least take a good look at the landscape, to see whether a couple of death's heads look back and nod to the camera. All these fit to use lives have been buttered into the landscape and then crushed by the magma, well, by the shit, until they themselves have presumably become as soft as butter. Don't follow this mine to the bottom, follow Kurt Janisch uphill, even if it's hard! Weighing heavily on him, as on the management of the mine: economic pressure. He must find success. He must. Failing which he must go broke and be declared bankrupt. There we have the mine, and there we have Mr. Janisch's fly, they stand opposite one another like two terrace restaurants by a lake competing for customers. What will you do for me? You'll get from me! With fewer people the mine had to produce as much as with many. It routinely had to increase the tonnage. What must Kurt Janisch do now? Be at the right place at the right time, have his arguments acknowledged and have the buildings and apartments of lonely women valued. The Leoben Public Prosecutor's Office is waiting, at some point someone will stray into their side street. If the mountain doesn't come, then its prophet of property, Kurt Janisch, will come to us in the cramped building, and then at last we'll have him, we don't have anymore room. Otherwise we have to come and get him. One hears rumors, these little liberties of the propertyless, but one hears nothing concrete. Welcome meanwhile to the Barbara shaft, where, however, there's nothing left to save.

In the mountain wind there's no question of forgetting. One can think things over very well while running, until the moment comes when one doesn't think at all anymore and just keeps running, like a machine, like a politician who wants to make his mark, as if he wanted to have himself hewn in stone or at least have his picture taken, just as he has become through running. Now one's happy at last. One will outlast all others living, because one is so healthy. Now some forward thoughts turn up as well, yes, they get the better of us, but they aren't very good. One would never have credited oneself with such thoughts. The colors of this Janisch track-suit: copied from the professional athletes, whom millions look at, to see what's on their clothes and which is the right stuff, too. So that they can likewise load their life trolley with it (as if it weren't full enough already!), except now the colors just won't harmonize with nature. They have, however, been chosen for the sake of miles of arduous running exercises, these colors, so that at some later point, the frozen sportsman can nevertheless be found and given a decent burial. He stood out very well from the white of the snow, thanks to his track-suit. The mountain rescue team will see you better against the rock face, against which one day you will stick like a squashed fly, and if you have your cell phone with you and its battery isn't flat, then nothing worse can happen to you before the alpine rescue service's bill for recklessness and anarchy and the telephone bill land in your letter box. Then you'll bitterly regret everything. Then there's nothing to be done. People in their eccentricity repeatedly gets into danger and have to be got out of it, so that everyone knows: They're back again. And on top of things. In sport people themselves have to be so much on top of things that they no longer need the mountain tops. But everything can also be quietly simulated in their very own personal fitness center. These feet, made for walking, running, or driving cars, now carry out one or two of these labors on the conveyor belt, which man should really wait upon, instead of it waiting upon him. Number three, the beloved car, which is by itself as strong as fifty pieces of fitness apparatus, unfortunately had to stay outside. One can always improve one's performance, if necessary. The country policeman, I think, seeks solitude, not only to train there in peace, but principally to meet someone who will flatter him. Look, a woman in love, how nice, and she has already been affected by his behavior, as I see. She staggers behind this person like someone with a fever or a mad person, in order then to be allowed to sit down on his cock. This woman wishes to allow, for the umpteenth time, a couple of parts of her body to be pulled out and entrusted to the cold mountain air. It is precisely those parts which this body table always laid with the best tableware has made available for this one man, to allow several tests to be carried out. What for. So that this man will once more be able to pass muster in the woman's eyes and senses. That's what for. She already knows that in advance. But the said parts will not remain free long either. A printer in a bank will later have stamped something as proof that they are no longer worth anything. Because now the country policeman has the money. The body parts are all occupied. To make up for that we are now unemployed. The country policeman will have confidentially informed a woman on the telephone, he's driving past the farm, you know, knows anyway where the barrier is and where one unfortunately has to pay, and then up to the last parking lot before the path up to the summit. Yes, even a country policeman, although he's got ID, if he's not on duty, has to pay the toll, and then, Gerti, you climb a bit following the red markings, you know, as always up to the bench with a view where we often used to sit. From there you simply go straight ahead, where there's no path at all anymore. So then we'll follow the path that belongs to us alone, right, where at most only the hunter is allowed to go, who is allowed to do everything, then continue to the right, as far as the point where you see the cross on the summit of the Windberg for the first time, you know, if one can see anything at all because the fog comes down early there anyway, you know, I expect, that you'll already have pulled off your panties or not put them on at all and opened your bra. Why. What for. We don't ask questions. Actually even the country policeman, even though he's got his mountain rescue certificate, shouldn't leave the marked paths without authorization, except in an emergency, nor should he encourage others to do so, especially not someone who is not really certain on her feet, nowhere, not in life and not in death, but who would want to start an argument with him. He's born here and knows the area as well as he does his own trousers, which, as already mentioned, are skin tight and leave no room for mistakes. It's easier to get into the mountains than into these trousers. But the mountains can be treacherous, never underestimate them! Even if one knows them, they like to get up to their tricks whenever they want. The country policeman doesn't believe in the legend that if one kills a person they return as the lost, because death supposedly doesn't like it at all, if one anticipates his plans. And the dead keep on coming until they are completely forgotten. Their ghosts meanwhile wait patiently at home, behind the barricade of the earthly, until they are informed that the time of being forgotten has drawn near. Young people (cf. Gabi) are of course forgotten more quickly, there are soon too few who have known them, and they have other interests, there was in any case not enough time to really get to know Gabi. The way she really was. On the other hand it is of course outrageous: so young and perhaps already dead! Her characteristics were hardly clearly developed yet, moist walls, into which someone pushed his hands, fleetingly The priest, should the unthinkable really be true, will have to lament an imaginative young life, which is now shut into a coffin, it's incomprehensible, inconceivable, that it could have happened, but the girlfriends will move away at some point or devote themselves to their own families. One surely shouldn't kill in full bloom, but in the bud it's perhaps not so bad, except for the one directly affected, who knows if it would have come to anything. Oh Gabi, I think it's enough to drive one to despair. In this weather, with all the road accidents, the ghost drivers on the autobahn late at night… you could have died so many times already, it's a wonder you lasted as long as you did. But now it has happened, I fear. Perhaps the murderer is in some danger? One can never know. A stab of pain tightens my breast, but not for long, my breast wants to go on breathing, and it's best if people arrange to be free right away, if they find someone with whom they can stick their genitals together, again and again, until finally it holds.

A girl disappeared from a village, it will be days before it emerges where she's got to. Nature already knows, even if only a tiny part of it, and we are likewise a part of it, but a quite different one.

The country policeman races uphill through the wilderness. Even if you, too, find him good looking, then suppress this impulse on the spot. At present this man has other worries, because of an oil-smudged cloth on which there was something else as well, and that he already threw away days ago, into a bush. In the forest, which is itself beautiful, don't you recognize it? Yes, that one! Everyone likes to be in the forest, there's not such competition for light and space as in the water. There the pine trees have long ago crushed one another to death, their interlaced spindly little branches have formed a scratchy web, and their roots have sucked up all the water, which others would have needed much more. Underneath, dead needles inches deep. Not even mushrooms grow here anymore. This wood should be vigorously thinned out. Nature puts everything they need at the plants' disposal, and they have the ability, which humankind doesn't have, of synthesizing all the necessary compounds themselves: Please give me a dozen chemical elements, then I'll just produce myself, and then there'll finally be peace! Is what I unfortunately don't say. Is what the plant says to me. We're choosier, we aren't agricultural products, we only eat them. Who please will now reduce the acidity of this soil for me? No volunteers? I would need nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Not available either? What else have we got on offer, in order to enrich the soil? Protective enamel and a grinding machine? Can this woman still breathe in the knowledge that she didn't even put on her panties and already unhooked her bra in the car, in the parking lot, full of anticipation and in a breathless expectation, which almost made it difficult for her to walk uphill as well? Her fingers trembled so badly, but she didn't need to be told twice, she understood properly the first time and hesitantly agreed to the unreasonable request. Someone who wants to set out on an arduous walk lasting for miles in her body shouldn't have to pay a toll a second time and then perhaps even have to lift up the barrier himself.

So there she steps out of the undergrowth, the woman, who hasn't often done something like it, still less in this condition. She steps forward as arranged with the man, she breaks clumsily, almost stumbling, careful! (over there is a vertical drop of at least one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet), out through the white channel between the boulders and the old glacial sand, which is lying around on the ground, and immediately tries to flit around the exotic beast, which is standing there scenting the air, as tenderly as an insect, and to pull out the yarn she has prepared for the net, and now the crochet needles, and stick the plug into the socket prepared for it and see what happens. She says what happiness is to her: that he's there now as arranged. I love you so much. Miracles can't be more important than they are now, because they have already occurred and every hour new miracles arrive, which could perhaps make us even more happy, or right now, here comes a new miracle, this very moment, as arranged between us. But it's only the old one, wearing different clothes. The woman makes the man, whom she could persuade to meet her here and now, even if only briefly for a moment, he hasn't said a word yet, but she has already said many, which I don't want to specially mention, the woman makes the man flinch with her words and appearance (he is not equipped to scratch her off the wall yet, behind which she has entrenched herself, but in a moment the whole thing will collapse, this silly wall between them), while she immediately he hardly has time to raise his hand, pulls her blouse out of the yoke of the stylized dirndl skirt and pushes the loose bra up. Now it's only hanging by the straps, which really have nothing to do anymore, under her chin, like a somewhat oddly cut collar, and then, didn't you see, then her heavy breasts, both of them, have fallen out underneath, past the open traditional dress, towards the ground. The woman has been warm all this time, for days now; yet as if out of embarrassment, to distract attention from herself by pointing at herself, she tumbles out of her container, meals would be astonished, for no other reason than to be taken out and polished off. She already acts like a woman possessed in anticipation of pleasure still to come. There's no restraining her. So there she's already handing him her meat loaves for starters in her cupped hands and simultaneously instructing the man, even though her senses have yet to get used to such coarseness, but it's already bubbling out of her, she instructs him therefore to lift up her skirt, she doesn't have a free hand anymore, and as arranged she isn't wearing any underwear. You see. That wasn't so hard, was it. Does he not first of all want to exhaustively probe her, before he comes into her and then, the obligatory part, as completion of the given theme, talk of his love in her ear, into which he should gently blow, that's nicest, yes, he should declare his love, so that she can talk all the more exhaustively of her own? We can by now ask for that at least. We're paying for it, after all. Instead the man strikes her, almost affectionately, lightly on the side of the face and indicates with his other hand, he indicates a little roughly to leave this path on which she's standing, which isn't really there, however, it really isn't a path. The woman doesn't understand right away and is still acting as if she can't wait a moment longer and so, right here! wants to obtain the promised and longed for importance, under him, on him, between him and the void, floating in the air, sleeping on the earth, it doesn't matter, here and now, as we had agreed. Perhaps he could for once at least anticipate her and be the first to pull down his trousers please, but she doesn't say it out loud, that is definitely a fantasy of hers, which doesn't need to be interpreted. After all he could unfold her right here on this little frequented path leading nowhere and penetrate her, no one else is coming, never, not at this time, which we agreed on, and when it's already beginning to get dark, and it's not a path anyway, at any rate not a public one. Down with you, on your knees, on the ground, I must, I must. I want to, too, but something else, wait, so, my breasts are already completely released, they can now, and with pleasure, fall against your hard male chest, and then you've got them ready to eat close to your mouth, if you want to take a bite out of them again; who doesn't dream of roast pigeons flying into his mouth or whatever it is one likes to eat, a pork cutlet perhaps, with cucumber salad. So, here I throw it down for you as arranged, my whole heap of flesh, you can rearrange it with your hands until you know your way around, you don't have so much scope. You can let them hang down to the left and right of you, my fun bags, my dust bags, or I can give you a suck and blow, or you can bite very firmly again, as you did recently, it doesn't bother me so much anymore, and that's what we firmly agreed; well and good, I shall now let my breasts fall and throw them to you, you'll instantly intercept them, right, it's good food for the hound in you, whom I've met one or two times already. It's no use running away now. But I only got used to it with a lot of whining, so quickly, I wouldn't have thought it of me, it likes to bite, if it's roused, the dog, what can one do, I know, I know. I'm happy that you still find me so attractive. But now I have both hands free and can pull the dress higher myself, up to my waist. But that's only possible if we lie down. Why are you wearing these silly jogging pants, you have to shove them down to your knees so that you can at least move yourself a bit, are you doing it deliberately? We agreed beforehand, didn't we, so you could easily have worn another, more practical, more sober pair of trousers, e.g. the jeans, as usual. Oh, I see, the trousers are supposed to be camouflage, because you're supposedly going jogging, and anyway we still have to talk about something that happened yesterday evening. There's something we have to talk about, a sentence from one of our sentimental films, where the Alpine dairymaid has a sweet secret and is itching to get rid of it again in the forest. Something that I know. You know already. But not now. The god of love is standing beside us and will hit us on our naked butts, because at this distance it would be a pity to waste an arrow. He doesn't need the arrow for us anyway. We already love each other. Look, the skirt is gone now, it's no longer in your way, and I've already climbed halfway on top of you, you see, that's how I do it, I'll be on top in a second, done. You don't have to do anything anymore. Except get a millionairess to appoint you her heir. The dirndl skirt and the breasts are staying firmly up, have you ever seen anything like it? kept there by their own gravity, we can forget about them, but down there, get a hold of that, it's already as wet as a whole lake, and look at the thick vegetation that's growing on it! Like dwarf pines, only with curls. You've been wanting to get in there all this time, Kurti, my Kurti, am I not right, or do you want something else? No. Nothing. Grab a hold, how wet my swamp down there is. That's all happened for you and because of you. That's what we agreed, didn't we? We can talk afterwards. So now she gets her second, now already considerably harder slap in the face, the woman, and at last starts, somewhat belatedly, to blubber again. As usual. The country policeman didn't even need to put a proper swing in it, and already she's wailing even louder, before she's caught by the second blow, which she didn't see coming, perhaps also because he really did pinch her nipples so hard, just as she had offered them to him. She had not thought that he would accept her offer. Her mistake. She comes a little to her senses again in her strident intoxication, which accelerated the importance as lover which she has assumed from zero to two hundred in a couple of seconds and then mounted to a frenzy. Then came the drop; having hit bottom, she at last listens to the man again, and allows herself, half-naked, the skirt already gathered up, almost dripping, not at all mistress of the situation anymore, a hunted creature, who a short time before still thought herself a huntress and as if raised high on the shield of a Diana with menthol bottle plus bow and arrow, to be pushed and dragged behind a group of somewhat taller dwarf pines, it's really a whole dwarf pine wood. One wouldn't be hidden standing up, but for what we have in mind, one would at most be able to notice a slight movement in the bushes. There wouldn't have been more than that. Now at last the country policeman drops to the ground voluntarily and smoothly under the assault of the woman and her weight, which has increased somewhat in the course of the dull, uneventful years, as if he himself were ground, gives way and collapses under the force of an event, with which nature senselessly, intelligible only to herself, babbles away to herself. And then the woman throws herself full length over him. She is so in love, she knows something like that is only available free or not at all or for a great deal of money. She of course will get it as a present. His cock is already standing there, well done, as if it had already been there before the man, first, from the very beginning. One can hardly get the elastic of the leggings over it, which one has to, so that there's a proper space for the explosion of two bodies. The woman has personally ordered everything for the table of her life and had it delivered to her house as Sunday dinner. A call is enough, enter my house. The man no doubt can hardly wait to be introduced to her smallest room, and to have her served up nice and hot, a room which may be small, but a bit all right, but you can get lost in it nevertheless, if you don't know your way around. Sometimes a man gets out of hand if he has chosen the wrong kind of sport and doesn't know what he likes. Is that a moving pavement or is it a tiled floor, from which the blood can easily be wiped? The woman should at last show the country policeman what she wants, so that then he can do something quite different with his living, headstrong property. The woman is good at pointing, she was, among other things, a kind of piano teacher, and so this here is her stick with which one can go walking, walking, walking. Mrs. Gerti, please show me at last, with this pointer, what you want and where you want to go. You don't have to say it, but you should tell us nevertheless. Then we'll see our goal, but we don't have to see you. Who still has self-control? Nobody has any self-control anymore. TV tells us that and shows it to us once again, if we haven't understood. Too late unfortunately. After eleven p.m. Her body strikes a rougher note than is usual with this woman. This isn't a game. The country policeman hasn't really got his mind on it today, but he's making an effort because he has to. His mind is on another matter, which he goes over in peace and quiet when he's alone: In the communal shower, the men's bodies, nice people to whom one doesn't have to be polite. Fine young bodies, in a bundle, one next to the other, all without clothes and simply unthinkable without their little man, at which one casts glances surreptitiously. Best of all the country policeman would like to carry them in his arms, their bodies dangling to right and left as if lifeless, what a wonderful, limp, and yet heavy burden that would be for this man. Everything open and spread out, what there is, nicely prepared and presented by nature and borne as if on one's own body. Weapons. Beaming, he would be allowed to see every last thing, precisely everything that is forbidden! That most of all. He would help matters along with his hands, if he couldn't see far enough into the other bodies. What is a woman against that. She's dirty. A fish factory. It is neither necessary nor advisable to fit into a woman's body. Something of this body always clings to one, that can never be washed off. The country policeman secretly likes to look at pictures of naked young men, which he bought far from his place of residence, magazines in which all the cocks seem to craftily eye him up, iridescent as snakes, with the bounce of steel springs. He thinks of these young men now, he knows each one by the first name printed under the photo. Perhaps the names aren't even true. One can hardly ring these men up. But no. That would not have been necessary at all, he gets his erection anyway, whether a woman lies here and offers herself or not, making an effort to be nice, but also passionate if so desired. Both. One needs both and can do both. One would like nothing better than to tear her to shreds, this woman. Instead, decorated like a fighting cock, with its little red helmet, his cock enters Gerti because that's what she wants, it would prefer to go somewhere else. And once it is standing erect, it can't do it fast enough, so that it's over and done with once again. Oh dear, already over? Please, here's the gate, where it always is, and as always it's as wide open as a barn door, and we eat human flesh like a horse. No music needed for resuscitation. The man can't bear to hear anymore, he's already had to hear so much, for him the whole thing is a process without any adornment. This process can just go ahead and proceed. It'll be over all the more quickly. The man really has no grounds to care one way or the other, all he needs is the ground, he can throw the rest away. Doesn't Gerti have a Walkman there in her bag, on which earlier she could listen to Mozart as loud as can be? Immediately it flies out of the bag and down the rocks. We don't need it. Yes, only now does he notice, as the gadget is already in the air: She did indeed have one in her bag, and one of the earplugs was still in her ear from the climb, but she had already switched the thing off earlier. A pity, perhaps the chamois would have got some enjoyment out of it. The earplug is also pulled out of her, the gadget falls silently past the rock faces. The woman disregards it. She is still trying, through hectic squeezing, stroking, turning and pulling, to at last get the man to come onto her wavelength where they can swim away all alone, but together, the two of them, in the ether, in infinity, for as long as they want, today, however, only at the time we have agreed. It's OK, Kurt, if you've got the cash, Gerti. The lovers. After all they belong to one another at every other time, too, just as they wish. At all times. The woman has ceased to exist and lives only through him. The lips of her vulva are briefly raised, he enters as agreed, and the lips close contentedly behind him. What was that noise, stop!, draws back for a moment and listens, darling, please don't stop, one listens with one's ears or the
headphones and not with one's cock. This woman can never tolerate a distraction from herself and her subject, which is again herself. Her soul now buries itself puffing, panting, groaning in his. Earth flies up. We've managed it: The grave gapes open. The woman pulls his hand away from his own genitals, they're growing out of him, so there can't be any misunderstanding. He has to hurry up and get started, and then it should take a very long time and proceed tenderly. She shoves it in with her own hands, what has been held out to her in one hand, grips the rest of the man by the ass, shows her two rows of teeth, cries out, and beats him rhythmically, if at first still somewhat cautiously, but soon more vigorously on the back, she's got a sense of rhythm, but it's her rhythm, not his. But it's precisely at this pace, hers, not his, that the man is immediately supposed to go on, but at the same time stay there and then: never go away again. Go away: no, he can't do that. I believe and see that for their pleasure such people can sometimes behave as if they're crazy, this woman here, for example, but where the pleasure is supposed to lie I don't yet understand. I shall read it off myself and pass it on, if I find it. It exists, this spark of love, but one has to blow strongly on it and stick at it, so that the next time the spark doesn't go out with someone else. When one's in love, then everything is much more beautiful, but also more terrible, knows the woman, probably because a little bit of the spiritual is also involved, isn't it? No, it isn't! He will bring her a beautiful weakness, the man, but not until afterwards, when everything is quiet again and one can think and talk about everything and add oneself at will to what has been thought, at the places where one fits in. But only after it has gone on like that for a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes or as long as you like, a stiff cudgel thrashing the inside of her abdomen and at some point she has to cry out loud involuntarily with pain and pleasure, whether she wants to or not. She doesn't. And she mustn't. Otherwise it will occur to a hiker to see if anyone's there. In between he has to place his hand over her mouth, she'll chase away the animals and all the other hikers with her bawling, and chase them exactly in their direction. But we can't be doing with that now. There's no one there, darling. Everyone's getting ready to go to bed or has already done so. Doing something like that in the freedom of nature could become a habit with her, fears the man, who prefers to do it to her in her house. As caretaker, so to say, no, we don't say it like that. There he feels safe and protected, because it will soon belong to him. Here in the wilderness he almost feels afraid, no, not that, but he doesn't like it so much, one easily gets dirty, and that makes the woman at home suspicious. No, not really. This woman here is a burden. A pest. Today he would perhaps like to treat her somewhat more harshly and also take her from behind, which she doesn't like so much, so that she gets out of the habit of constantly ordering him around. This way, yes, this way, too, no, not from there, please not, I don't want that. Perhaps then at least she'll manage without him for a while, but not too long. Please not. Please not. You're not made of sugar, are you. Perhaps then at least she'll be quiet for a while. He goes at it a little more easily now, the man, he's got time. He'll convince her all right, after he's plumbed her ass a little at the entrance, where no one's keeping watch, that pain is not an expression when someone is suffering. Because there is no expression for it. A scent is stuck in front of his nose, which he doesn't like so much. Now he's in the beautiful forest, he is master of the situation, no matter which, he turns Gerti roughly on her stomach and now he really gives her a chance to shout, but she's somewhat subdued. If she really wants to, then go ahead, she'll have good grounds. No, he would rather have the ground. From which mountain peak has he just come? He's only on his way there? What, hasn't she just asked him to stop again? What, already? He's hardly started. This way it's not quite as nice as usual, Kurti, this isn't the way I imagined it, another way it would be much nicer than usual. Wouldn't you rather like to come from the front, so that I can look at you lovingly as you're doing it? I like that especially, to look into your dear blue eyes. No. That I don't like so much. I prefer it another way. I like it like this and like this. Yet the man could now slowly and thoroughly subjugate a whole nation, and if it were up to him, he would do so at any time. No. He's not going to stop now. In half an hour it will already be pitch dark, and the newspapers would be unable to see the whole nation trembling before him. Someone unimportant, who becomes important, a big event as recently in Ischgl, where the snow turned hard as stone and rose up against the people, because they abused it for their own pleasure. Minus ten, and a terrific band stands behind the popular girl group, girls who can sing terribly loud, whoever they are. Next week it will be a world-famous boy group. We will no longer be able to read the newspaper and not know what is happening to us, when the snow turns into concrete and collects in a single place, where it doesn't belong at all. There's no kissing now. One can't call it rejoicing anymore either, what the woman there is doing, who tried to throw her weight about, but there the man has already shoved her face into the dried up, pointed needles and gleefully rubbed her face in them, so that the decayed, rotting stuff presses into her mouth, nose, and, ouch, into her eyes. He'll come to regret disdaining my genitals, she hopes, although he does love me, but I'll be able to convince him, he doesn't really know about these things yet, I'll persuade him to love and honor all of my genitals and always to support their unfolding. Coughing and spitting and with her butt involuntarily rearing up and twisting round, the body comes and thoughts go until the man, with an almost careless blow to the small of the back, can once again control the spring sacrifice, which he has laid hold of there, finally on this occasion, and she lies motionless. She succumbs to her determination as woman, but she has determined place and time, something at least, no, nothing. She can hardly make so free now as to prescribe all the things he's supposed to do with her and above all: where. How long? As long as it suits me. But you don't suit me, you're too tight for me. The: please stop now, I can't anymore, doesn't properly get out of her mouth anymore, because her neck is firmly pinned to the ground as if by a vise and she can only occupy herself with agitated waiting and involuntary flinching and twisting around, because of constantly being pinched, and thrusting her butt, until he's finished at last. Soon a little blood flows. Well, she'll survive, at home we've got a good antiseptic cream for wounds, for use both externally and on the mucous membranes, since we've known this man, but it won't be quite as nice as we had agreed beforehand and as this woman had imagined it. No, this time, unfortunately, it didn't turn out to be as nice as recently, she's almost unconscious now, hey, wake up!, but the woman will, when she takes stock much later, have been happy and content about so much affection and that at least he won't have killed her. Perhaps the next time. But a human being endures a great deal, I sometimes think: everything, but there are worse things than everything, and that is: when one doesn't get everything one wants. The terribly hard pinching of her buttocks wasn't very pleasant either, the woman registers, whose cash register rang and rang, because something was put into it, but without the man appearing to be at all aware of it. The woman counts up her takings-nothing there, how is that possible. Why does he do something like that? Presumably out of love and passion, neither of which could be controlled, and have swept their owner along like last summer's floods, but only half the street, they at least left the other half for next year, and next year the street still won't have been repaired. A fine weakness, in the local authority as among people, which is not to be confused with inactivity. But a new age has dawned meanwhile, don't you think? Do you know, for example, that age in which women determine what they want and when and where and how and why and above all: where they want to get to? Is there a secret compassion somewhere in him, thinks this woman, it must be there somewhere, mustn't it? Has it perhaps been half suffocated, because earlier she threw herself so intemperately and gracelessly on this man? But what should she do if she simply can't control herself in his presence? What, you don't know the forest? I do know the forest, except not this one here, how shall I find my way out again? No, there is no secret compassion in this man, I say in his stead, not for anyone. But at least he takes his time with what he does, one has to admit that. However, for some people even time itself lasts too long. They wanted a condensed, abbreviated version of time, so that afterwards they can enjoy the infinity, the eternity of pleasure all the longer. At any rate the man has long ago ceased to be afraid of shit, I can assure you of that. He had to wipe it off his own mother often enough or scratch it off somewhere else or pick it off the floor. Would his penis stand up like that if he didn't like to do all that and didn't like me at least a little, thinks the woman, just as with violent jerks she feels him discharge himself into her and after that fortunately quickly become smaller and slip out of her. No sound apart from loud panting and puffing. Well hello. Is he not pleased at his success, for which he had to struggle long beforehand with himself and with her? Is he not tired by now and would at last like to be a little tender? His grip around the woman's neck relaxes at any rate, with a sigh the man collapses into a loose bundle over her, unfortunately with his whole weight on her back. With that it's already certain that for a while, until he's had a breather, he will cement her breasts into the ground and her breathing will be considerably restricted. But she has enough breath, confidence, and voice left over, in order quietly, but in detail, to declare the following, which she can't hold back, it simply has to come out, now is that supposed to be a question or not? Gabi is supposed to have disappeared, at least that's what I've heard. You see what happens. Didn't you take her straight home yesterday? I know, of course, where she was yesterday and with whom, and what should I do about that now? It serves you right, if she's run away from you, and now you only have me. Where did you drive her afterwards? Why didn't you take her home immediately? You should really know where she is. Will you go to see her again when she's back and drive her to the office early every morning? Don't think that I don't know! I've known it for a long time. Once I even followed you in my car. Where is she now? Since she hasn't come home. I know exactly, that you pick her up almost every day, early in the morning. She tells everyone she takes the early bus or the train, but almost every day she drives to work with you, that's what I've heard. I've heard as a fact, no, as a rumor, she collects used tickets from her colleagues and hands them in for her travel expenses. Her girlfriend says that, and another one, too. There's a few in the village who know it. So if they check, she doesn't need anything else. That's fraud, isn't it. Or worse. They'll surely immediately notice that the number codes on the tickets she's handed in were bought at quite different stops or even for quite different journeys. I've thought about it for a long time. How has the girl got the nerve to do it. You saw her last. Or did you take her somewhere afterwards? Ouch. Don't hit me again, don't ever hit me, and if you do, then not in the face, I've got the impressions of your hands and of the pine needles all over me, people will notice if I have a black eye as well. No, personally I don't care, but I would prefer if you didn't do it and would be satisfied with the love that I give you. Yes. I love you. You love me too. Other people don't know anything. They're not there at night, in my home, it's impossible, no one can pretend as well as that! No one can. You love me, too, I know it, I know it. In fact I don't even exist anymore, only you exist. I would like to talk to someone close to me about all of that, but I have no one. You must love me, a little at least, and one doesn't send what one loves to its ruin. Perhaps we need more room for each of us, not only in our bodies, where space is quite limited, as I noticed again earlier. We need more room for the two of us. My house would be the solution. I agree completely. Let's move in together. Please. I'll let you know immediately if I'm planning a change in this situation. But what should I want to change? I want to change that you always return home to your wife. I want you always to stay with me. Asked about my most intimate feelings, I reply, I would not want to change anything in this respect. I would want to have things exactly as they are now. Except that then you'll always be with me. Then I would not have to long for your presence, because I would constantly have it around me. And if I didn't have it once, then I would, warmly wrapped in the distance which there would briefly be between us, wait until you were with me again. Thanks for that. We have nothing to give away, but we'll be able to afford a bit. I can promise you that. That's more or less what I wanted to say and now I've said it. I long day and night for the sight of you. Look how courteous nature is, it lets us go first, before night falls and one simply isn't noticed anymore. And the ground opens and swallows one up.

BOOK: Greed
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