Greed (11 page)

I mean well by myself, if I love him, but, for me at least, there's a limit to everything. He simply stays away after I have asked him to be allowed to be his wife one day. My panic leads to ever greater states of exhaustion. After three weeks he comes again, at a loss I try to teach him English or French(!), which he may find useful in future, when foreign women drivers would like to ask him something. But he just wants to have a pleasant rest without thinking, can only be induced to make the most essential movement, down to his fly, which he can do in his sleep, like a young dog, except a dog doesn't need one. I think it is this combination of sleepiness and alertness that attracts me so much to him, as if an innocent, unselfconscious writer were repeatedly to force himself to write me dirty letters. Apart from the physical he does absolutely nothing here, the man, no repairs, although in my house there is a constant lack of physical energies, to carry such things out. But then he does listen to me, when it's almost too late, when I tell him, as if I were the only girl in the world, and then he always grips my arm or my shoulder or my hips and looks at me, and I allow myself to be carried away again. Until the tide goes out again, because I never ask questions nor ever question anything else and have already lent him money again. I don't ask him anything either. Ask a stupid question and the postmaster of love replies: host not known. I run hot and cold by turns, if he reaches out to me in a particular way, which I could describe if it were not indescribably beautiful. The next day my description would already be askew as worn-down heels, because then he would do something quite different that I hadn't expected, and which would be much more beautiful. He is sometimes tender and attentive, for which I've been waiting for weeks, but then I'm over-nervous and have to take a sedative. But when he grabs my arm, he could immediately apply to make someone my guardian, it doesn't matter who, I would let him right away. Another time, if he feels like it, my hero drags me by the hair, bleached by coloring and anyway no longer of the strongest, through the apartment, although it should be the turn of my poor arm to be gently held. That's how we always begin. As we go on. One day this man completely tears the gusset of my trousers, although I'm feeling in need of some tenderness and sweetness, and plays around quite roughly with me down there. I fit in entirely with what he wants, but in doing so I at least want my dignity as a human being to be respected. If he doesn't grab me I immediately long for violations. I prefer it the other way, but I don't dare say so, otherwise he'll want a side-dish as well. It all takes place while one, as I do, trusts in love, as all people must. One should rub oneself well with lotion beforehand, otherwise one will burn in this sun. Sometimes he's like a naughty child, he burrows around in my female organism, in which all my organs, I hope, will keep their place into old age, but one can never know in advance. Hanging loose, gaping quietly and bobbing against each other, please, may I present my organs to you, they are entitled to everything, even to take your driver's licence or to fill up an organ donor form, so when he's there, I can't even say it-with him they stand up right away, the organs, without even knowing what's wanted of them, they at any rate are ready. Maybe I'm not yet, who's asking me. Like every child in school used to do when called out, when a teacher still had authority, there they stand. Like the number one. They're already gaping and they've hardly been touched by him, only by him, the lips of my vulva, although I already wanted to slam them shut behind me, but before the world, these little trap-doors with their very own feelings. They only feel something with this man. I don't understand them. I don't understand why. I don't understand myself either. Nevertheless: At least my body is talking to me again, a good thing, that it's not too late yet, a good thing that you have to remain silent while reading. Please tell that to your radio and the other pieces of equipment as well, phew, they're already quite exhausted, it would be a good idea for them, too! How precipitate of the man to go now, when he's only just come, he hasn't even looked at me properly yet. Apart from my hole he hasn't seen much of me yet, the eternal cave tourist. And if he had thought a bit longer, he would perhaps have had something quite different to say to me than what he actually did say. Drain in the bathroom, hot water tap in the kitchen, there's something wrong with the boiler, too, there's something wrong with all of them, there's something wrong with me as well, which would be worth investigating or leaving alone. I have my longing. I'm sure he could repair everything, DIY is his hobby. He doesn't do it. First of all I'm supposed to sign the whole house over to him, then we'll see. That's asking a bit much, don't you think, but I don't have any children and won't have any now. I'm alone.

So, now I wrap it in a riddle: Why am I nevertheless so content, even happy, if he's just nearby and silently sticks just one single finger to still me, to please himself, but of course to please me a little, too, am I wrong?, in my cunt, like a pacifier in a baby's mouth, only that shouldn't be shaken about so much, otherwise the baby's head will fall off. But that he should, hardly has he halfway finished doing that and I want more, much more, am even thinking of getting into a proper rage again, but that he should in all my beauty, onto which only a couple of days ago he vaguely squirted, without even looking what and whom he was hitting, that today he simply, earlier he was still quite tender, that the very next moment he would throw me out the door and down the stairs, that I've really never experienced. The man's got some nerve. I can hardly believe it, and I've never even heard of a similar case. I was not prepared for that. My expression has completely gone off the rails, and I am utterly shocked. All the rails rose up to embrace him, and then this. Not even a serious accident. Only a derailment. Now he's gone. No, I hope he's still there, the brute, the wonderful man, and lets me watch him through the door with a minor, that is, he doesn't even let me do that, although it would hurt me very much. Does he want to make me even more jealous? I hope he'll come again tomorrow, at least, my heart that's yours, em, his heart that's mine, and let me wash his shirt after he's, for a change, discharged himself onto it (he just doesn't leave his juice inside me, he seems to fundamentally, stubbornly avoid that. There my driver's licence was evidently enough for him to see, that I would like to do the driving I still have to cure myself of that. Says the loving woman who has met someone marvelous. Yet I would so like to leave the driving to him. But the car, my car, I would like to drive that) and had to put on a clean shirt, the uniform shirt. Although he's still there now, I'm already hoping that tomorrow we'll be all alone together again. He'll discuss everything with me in peace and quiet. Even an animal has more rights, am I not right? But an animal doesn't have any panties to take off, and that's half the fun. What is left of me for me, since no one will relieve me of myself? He has to go on duty. The policemen have taken care to organize who relieves whom a long time in advance. Then it's the turn of the next shift, who immediately keep the motorized public company and have to put up with a great deal of unpleasantness. But they never take pity on the vanquished.

Well well. Suddenly my country policeman is standing in the door, I missed that somehow. Because he opened it, the door, just like that. Done. Now you two girls can get dressed again. That's how fast it happens. The country policeman says something like that or thinks it, because he doesn't even have to say it. I'll take a look beside you both, he says, in case there's something lying there, and I'll ignore you because I never find anything there. Does someone still want to suck up my tongue, right down to the back of the throat, just the way you like it, but it really hurts me? My tongue would really belong down your throat, it would fit you better than me, my poor, spoiled tongue. That's what you think, both of you, don't you? I would be glad if someone at last took my organs away from me, because I'm sick and tired of them. But you want to hand yours over to me, and then I'll have a double set. Then I'll be saddled with them. The country policeman thinks: I'm not unburdened. I'm depressed. Have the funny feeling that rational control over myself could fail at any moment, and then something happens, which afterwards I won't be able to remember anymore. Is it not also an act of cannibalism, by you two against me, this continual lady-orgasm donation, which I'm supposed to present you with, and you simply lie back and wait for it? Why do you so much love to belong to a master, and why are you surprised at the risk, which no insurance company has informed you about, of then burning up like a matchstick? (Has anyone who called him ever heard him talk like that? This man says nothing most of the time, some believe he can't speak at all, this suitor, who likes to eat roast pork. But already the pullover that his Penelope has knitted him, doesn't suit him. Fate, don't you have an extra thread, and I don't like the color either, but the woman thinks: Now he knows that I've been thinking of him!) There is hardly a coarser, more brutal man, unless he gets drunk, as ever quietly and steadily. Then he becomes almost polite. Then he almost appears refined, but even then he plays according to his own time, which he beats, always into a stranger's flesh, with an industriously rhythmical hand. Yet sometimes, rarely, speech just pours out of him, as with many noticeably taciturn men: an almost feminine quality of Self Dissolution, as if there were a chance of a scene to be played between his whispered, casual obscenities, if he doesn't release them quickly enough from their body prison, so that they can become repeat offenders and earn a little more punishment on the side.

So he opens the door. He opens his mouth, and between his lips and mine there is violence once again, observes the woman at the same moment as its happening, but it's too late: He then sets me down, cursorily wipes himself off himself, and the beads of sweat are trickling from the corners of his mouth and his temples, look, there are more drops on his forehead and the sides of his nose. He doesn't really need the fear he sometimes feels, but it finds him nevertheless, again and again, very easily. It was only me he once told, already very drunk, that he was afraid of being eaten alive by women. He doesn't like kissing, and I've drawn my conclusions from that: I must protect him. If necessary, from himself. It's a pity I actually have to tell him that. He doesn't need to be afraid to get excited, at least when he's with me, I told him, with me he doesn't need to be afraid at all. Now that I know him, I'm not afraid either. He means something different. Women should be afraid of him. It's wonderful, how wrong he is. How many people are there, who don't want anything of themselves to remain? Not many, I think. Most want something to remain behind, even if only the lightheartedness with which they sat down behind the wheel of their car or their achievements in art, hard work, and industry. I don't want to say anything about shame, others will speak all the louder about it. Shame would like to remain, too, please, it wants to write about itself, it wants to state something. But that's rather unusual, after all. Its owner, however, already wants to rise from the tavern table, the food's finished now. He wants to go and look for other private parts apart from mine. Aha. I'm translating the country policeman's words into civilian language: One simply has to handle you and lick you clean uninterruptedly, he says. You women can't leave a man in peace. You do everything for it, you turn yourselves into my instrument for it. Or you turn yourselves into another instrument if I claim to like and play that better: into humming violin notes. I've still got to teach you the flute notes. What, you stick big banknotes, which you'll later miss, into the thongs of the stourists, whom you went to see with your girlfriends, for a change just for women, snigger yell! So you've forgotten yourselves twice already? What's that stripper group called? The somethings. No, not the Kennedys. And the shrieking, always the dreadful shrieking, when more of you are together, and which I nevertheless consider to be an expression of the remotest loneliness. Where else could you make so much noise than in nothingness, or no, the opposite rather. Women. Your weakness is: You can't be, like me, alone with yourselves. I can't imagine another reason why you want someone like me, of all people. The next moment you're already raising the sort of cry I hate, and then you object when we men want to go away from you. Because you think we're not coming back; shrieking yet again, shrieking, however, which this time, fortunately for me, is coming out of the other end of your body and so cannot tear apart the small chambers of my ears. It all depends, however, on which end of yours I'm bending over.

The country policeman knows the word "instrument" from the local brass band, which practices in the fire station. That's why I'm completely justified in using it here, otherwise things wouldn't have worked out so well, otherwise I would have had to make do with something like wood and chopping or with branch and sawing off what you're sitting on. Or I would have had to write down an obscenity, which I would not have liked to do. Baron Prinzhorn of the FPO, I'm telling you: The Personal columns are constantly playing with these words, which mean something different from what they say, why don't they just come out and say it? Why don't you just say what you want, Mr. Prinzhorn? Take possession of the whole country and fuck it?, well, the recipient of these words is a kind of child, fortunately a mature one, who doesn't know how big are the building blocks he has kicked out from the toy quarry, which he got as a present for his birthday. Even someone wrapped up in himself can say it to the deceased or the disappeared, and once again no one will listen to anyone else. I could carry on for days, keeping quiet among these people, thinks the woman, about as long as the period of his faulty development originally lasted, which probably already built up in his childhood, as a teach yourself psychology book I bought for 340 schillings in the bookshop and already consulted in the metro tells me, OK, I'm making an estimate: It'll last perhaps until he's seventy, after that the hormones slowly go somewhere else, or run out or don't run at all anymore. He knows no mercy, not with anyone, this man. He is a disciple of himself so to speak, who only rarely has grounds to break out in justified rejoicing with such exclamations as: I am the undisputed master over your sensitive organs, which at this point I would describe as quite acceptable but nothing special. That goes for both of you, Gerti and Gabi, and I've got lots of opportunities to make comparisons and many other opportunities, too, more than I can make use of. It's all no use, it always ends in the grave. As with my mama. It ends up as an object, more or less as I feel my own body, which can break out under me at any time if I don't open my flies fast enough. That's why it works so well. Because I just manage to control it, it's a worthy opponent, my body, even for myself it is unpredictable. I prefer to look for a solid foundation for it, before anything dreadful happens and my statue topples over, which I have blasted away from myself. So that I cannot be sucked in by the emptiness around me. I always have to run away, but property could just hold me. That's the best thing to stop me falling into this pit full of snakes, which are baled out in buckets, and they're all hanging out over the sides. That is the pitfall, of which I dream so often. No idea who dug it for me. Since I dream about it-was it me perhaps? Perhaps the dead snakes embody a superabundance of property, which has been confiscated. But there's a hole in the bucket, all the muck is running out at the bottom, and only the snakes are left and show me paradise, but I'm supposed to plant the fruit trees that go with it myself, if you please. Or I find a person who already has some: One can never have enough property because we're always striving after what's most difficult, that's man's fate, and best of all we would like to leave the rest of them to their fate, to take from them what they've got as well. So, women, I can play on you like no one else. I lay down everything-when, where and how often. I'm the best you've ever had, and there'll never be another either. I'm very conscious of my qualities, I always say: I am the sorcerer not the apprentice.