Greed (13 page)

The country policeman, however, knows yet other bodies. He can imagine them at any time, if he wants. They readily pass his lips. He talks as if he had already forgiven himself for everything, but for what? Women don't know how dangerous he really is, and if they did know, they would only steer all the more impetuously towards his powerful, somewhat thickset body cliffs, throw themselves forward, until their little boat breaks against a resistance they haven't seen, because it was buried down below under the women's foam. They would want to introduce him to their women friends, this man, even to their mothers, even if the latter had moved to Majorca or Bali or if they didn't have any at all anymore. But the country policeman obstructs her and him undertaking anything with others, and in particular he obstructs it with this woman and with Gabi. With these two. They are his problem children. He's very secretive. You nevertheless always leave feeling satisfied, the country policeman consoles his female clients, after they, often also on Sunday afternoon, when he's supposedly at the alcoholics' practice meeting of the volunteer fire brigade, have come freshly washed and appetizingly tender, warm, with a floury dusting from their underwear, onto the table without a stitch, their hands in front of their breasts (how curious, that they always make this gesture, they only do it with the country policeman, involuntarily, as if he could catch sight of something. When after all he knows their innermost selves. At some point something does seem to have made them suspicious), and then climbed down from the kitchen table or the settee again. And I'm the one who always has to stand, no, I'm not the meal, says the country policeman Jesus to his ardent admirers Mary and Martha and to his penitents Mary Magdalene etc. and to his people in general, enclosed as he is in his little box, the halo flowing round him (no, his name is not suddenly: our Jorg, as one says in this country, only because he's so adored). I am always the one who eats, and here you're welcome to my body, take and eat, you too, no idea why you're so crazy for it. I don't see anything special about it. I say insolently to this woman, who can be glad that I've come at all and say something, even if it were only to utterly trustingly confide in her, she won't do it for less: Gabi, for example, have you ever taken a closer look at her? Sixteen, T-shirt and jeans and a jacket with a shawl collar and black ankle boots, she doesn't need more than that to look seductive. Why do you always daub so much red on your lips, Gerti? Do you think it's nice? I for one don't like it. These rags in which you drape yourself so that one doesn't look so closely at what's underneath, really, they don't bother me at all. But they don't do you any good either. They come off anyway, they're the first thing to come off with you lot, and fast too, because you know in what order you put them on. The only time you're faster is when you're shopping for new clothes and shoes. I'm absolutely sure that Gabi loves me, don't you think, Gerti? She's so juicy one would like to eat her right out of the wrapper. Meanwhile you're waiting out on the stairs, Gerti, I'm not saying that because I'm annoyed, it's just more convenient: It's best if you wait on the stairs down to the cellar. It will cool you off a bit. It'll do you good. I know, I know, the stairs belong to you. But no one will disturb you there, you like to be left undisturbed, don't you.

Love doesn't pull down barriers, as is often said, it builds them up, so that behind them people learn to wait and are not always pointlessly kicking the iron banisters. Of course you're my main course, Gerti, always, always, don't worry, it's with you and only with you, that table silver and table underwear are lying around and getting bored, so all alone. We don't like to invite guests. And your house encloses only the two of us, and also, if desired, your whole property with a friendly little gesture, come on in!, a house without a guardian and fortunately also without an inheritor. I herewith apply for the job, for which this house has invited applications. One can knock at the door, who's coming in? The bodies wander around in crowds, sometimes I'd like to open them up and for once have a good look at what's inside. But the Lord above always helps me at the last moment, and restrains me or maybe not, depending on whether he's at home or not (and whom on the occasion of my last moment I nevertheless would rather not want to have at my side, after I've had to see so many last moments on the roads. Well, in that state, half burnt up in a Honda Civic, I would not like to be seen by someone, even God himself!), and smashes, e.g., this VW Golf full slap-bang against this truck there, on the left in the picture. It would be interesting to look at the open flesh under a microscope, all the cute little bacteria, how they all swarm around there after only a very short time. At some point the flesh is so broken up that it won't go any smaller. One cuts it into slices and places these under the microscope. One travels far away with the bodies they have, a long way from anywhere, even from me, an accident with the car or the plane and have to eat people, if they have nothing else. That's my favorite fantasy. No, Gerti, you're no obstacle to that, no way. I won't have to cut my fingers on your underpants, your panties have always mysteriously disappeared beforehand. I would rather die than be without house and shelter. I want to be the guardian of everything, that's my duty, that's why I chose the job of policeman. So I rub my hands smooth, spit diligently into them, and again and again, as if it were the first time, force my way into you, best of all through the back door, then I don't have to cover your face with a towel. I prefer this entrance, which is really an exit, even if making headway there is more of an effort. I'm meanwhile thinking about something quite different. You can't have noticed that at all. Why then are you already screeching like that, when the skewer hasn't even got there yet, to roar his commands? It doesn't matter. At least I can't get lost inside you, because your house, my most urgent need, is always all around us, playing, presumably out of boredom, with its dear twisting stairway, which you've polished so nicely with beeswax, yes, the banister, too, standing around looking dumb is the hobby of this house. After all, apart from you, there's no one to whom it belongs. You already cleared away the marks of the previous owner years ago, in the belief no one else would be coming along this way. The house was once old, now it's new. A gem of a house. All around only people who don't know the area. Well. I'm there now and write out a notification of an offense and place myself right next to it. Behind my fly I calmly trace out, because it's what you want, my cock, do you see it? It's like a statue, but not of the Mother of God, is it? I would rather show it to someone else. You look lovely, I lie, despite your age. I think you are arrogant. Well, not now anymore. Don't shout in my ear like that, you don't have to put on an act for me, I'll ram you anyway, until I'm finished, no matter what and in what pitch you shout, and at the last moment I pull it out again, no idea why, the cuckoo pops out of the clock, too, and doesn't know the time, which it shouts out for hours, I mean every hour. You can also twist around under me, to look me in the face as best you can, although you're lying on your stomach, and you can go on shouting if you like, as much as you want. No, no one's coming whom you could have called. At most someone passing the house, who knows you, will be surprised. He hasn't been invited to this engagement party, and your friends and relatives, I hope there aren't any now, haven't been asked to come for that reason. I imagine I'm the only one to come and wolf myself down in a kind of mincer. I alone should exist, and I, too, would like to disappear, but always only in me, not in you, you can believe me. I now know you inside out. I wouldn't like to stay there any longer than necessary. You look out from your elevated financial situation. I would like to keep that situation by the way. I've already checked the basic conditions in the land register, whether it might be possible, yes, everything belongs to you, no mortgages, and so, for obvious reasons, I shall go on leafing through you for a bit. It's interesting. I only enjoy what I can see, because I don't feel anything. For example, your new wallpaper. I like it and it can stay, it's quiet and it keeps quiet at least. Luckily I don't have to feel it, just see it.

The man naturally never talks out loud about such things, he talks, as has been said, very little, but I believe that's what he thinks, quietly, that's the best way of thinking, only TV hasn't understood that yet and gives us sound as well, so that forever sweet toothed we can pile a glob of whipped cream and another and another on top of reality, before at last we get really stuck in. We're going to regret it at some point, when we're feeling sick. Well well, so he wants to get lost inside himself, Kurt Janisch, not in someone else, because something like that would make him afraid? But I don't see much of that yet. Perhaps in the end he even wants to digest himself? Perhaps that's how he likes to imagine it. Then he would have to part with the least of all, is perhaps what he thinks. Why then is he always falling on others for no fault of theirs? That's how cannibals always start. First they want to eat themselves, and then it's always others after all, whom they get a taste for. And when taste has got going, e.g., on an excursion into the TV or a video, then if need be they get to work on the bodies themselves and that as large as life. And already, often of necessity, shit and natural bubbly are flowing out of these bodies, sometimes out of fear that one day one might have to pay for it instead of being currency. I've got the exact figures here. The man says very long-windedly and nothing is said in reply: Think of me as the unhappiest and at the same time as the happiest person if you have to detain me here. And how else should I (yes, me!) express it, than with these few diffident sentences, out of which I might almost have built a conversation between us, but only almost. I would have made a little crib, if I hadn't run out of nails. The bank isn't giving me any credit at all anymore, quite the reverse, the bank wants me to pay back the old loans, and all of them at once as well. Later, like his thoughts, which can never sit still long enough for them to be properly thought through to the end, perhaps by chance, perhaps through planning, this man will avoid prison, because he won't be recognized for what he is. He's meanwhile, but sometimes by the quickest route, heading straight for personal bankruptcy. Or not. I alone know everything, because I have executed it specially in water-colors, is that not unbearably watered down?, so help me. Or is that exactly how it happened? So I'll help you, too, even though I don't know you at all, with my word, which like a go-cart I slide under your uncertainty, into which, after all, I've steered you, and already this man, through the music of his words, can make contact with me, with us, and you can complain all you like about boredom while you're reading this, but please not to me. With this problem I'm definitely not standing right behind you. Not behind myself either. I'm not standing anywhere. I, too, would prefer to be doing something else apart from always reading.

Other people are even blown up by a laugh. But here real dynamite is contained in the owner of an extensive muscle mass that is still to be climbed. Who can do it. Who wants to do it. No one knows much about him. I'm the only one at the moment who's saying he's explosive. And, for all his dangerousness, it's a plain rod that this extreme walker plants in the ground of womankind, yet this rod is a tough one. Basically the man wouldn't need the miracle stick, he always finds his way wherever he goes and a suitable pace as well. He can still walk well alone. The fuse can burn, there can be an explosion, rubble flying up, just ask the manmade lake here at the entrance to the village, which didn't make itself either, what that's like! One wants to be left in peace, is even perhaps a little ashamed, that waves several feet high foam up around one, the underwater embankments, the gently waving pubic hair of the lake drifts upwards like a furry shoe thrown down for a woolly cuddly toy-one has something between one's teeth, which one laboriously has to pull out again, one slurps the rich content of a mellow slime, which perhaps consists of nutrients, perhaps not, but basically one doesn't want to eat any of it, one would prefer to spit it out, let it nourish someone else! A sermon on the mount will be preached now. There are too many who want to eat, and they remove the basis of the man's existence, and one woman or another is supposed to give it back to him: If this man goes and doesn't come back, I'm going to die off inside like a whole region, which has absorbed too much nitrate and phosphate, thinks the woman. He can do anything with me, but he shouldn't do it. This flesh, for example, is so cold, brrr!, because for half an hour it had to lie naked on the steps down to the cellar and almost spend the winter there, you exaggerate. The sun can't yet properly penetrate the walls of the house, but no, it only seemed as long as winter to the woman, it wasn't longer than half an hour at the outside. Perhaps this Gabi girl also has a life's dream, it doesn't, however, consist in giving a country policeman valuable gifts, but in receiving these gifts herself. Will you buy me this, will you buy me that, that's what it's like with Gabi non-stop. What am I going to buy it with. It doesn't matter. The young ones at any rate are still supple, you've hardly pulled them out of the wrapper and they're already jumping into your mouth. Their bodies still deceive themselves all too often in their addressees, they don't read the sender's address and the small print, they don't have any experience and then the wailing and the weeping start up again. They're hardly more than children, who see us again and likewise want to go to the cafe in front of everyone! on Saturday afternoon! They all want to. How will mommy, how will both mommies, how will the cuddly toys who have stayed at home respond to that? If we only knew. Days go by. Weeks go by. His rare visits. Time passes differently for young people. The old save themselves all that, because it doesn't do any good. They learned how to save in harder times, and where do they find themselves now? Nowhere. In no-man's land. They don't know that the hardest times have just begun. This young woman must surely see that a different recipient is marked on this body, which at this moment falls on her, like a wolf, who has at last found the leg of lamb in the fridge. And the second body we see here is likewise mad about the man, and unfortunately about the same one, and unfortunately it had to stay outside, the body. Nothing to be done. At least the body out there wasn't tied to the banisters. All one can still look forward to is loneliness and isolation and illusions. And one can get self-doubt and submission for it, say our entertainment experts with their pouting lips, isn't that so, Mrs. famous sex adviser Senger, you too, in your little newspaper column, where you've been imprisoned for safety's sake, just in case you want to say it to us in person. No doubt someone is about to leave again, although he's only just come, and who will that be? Right, that'll be Kurt Janisch. How dreadful for these two women, each in her way matchless, that they have to experience something like that. And that's why unfortunately they can't set us an example. They don't give anything. They might perhaps have a lot to give us, but they don't do it, they prefer to give it to someone else. But they don't want to go either. The confusion that often prevails in very young people who look at one covetously, because basically they would much rather have the latest computer game or the latest pair of flared trousers bought for them, is that confusion at all, is it not single-mindedness? They are as ignorant as they are greedy, these young people, but mostly they look cheerful, in the hope that then they are more likely to get it. I can't say anything about that, I don't know what they do at which time. I don't know what they do at the same time. This confusion among young people, therefore, is often the result, as one can read here and everywhere else, of too many families having been destroyed, because the daddy, ever more frequently also the mommy, has cleared off, and that's what exactly the same newspaper tells me, in the shape of a quiet different figure, however, it's the authoritative figure of a priest called Paterno, whom I already listened to yesterday, but then his voice said something quite different and his hand wrote something quite different. But the most amusing and friendliest thing, just like the saddest and most frightful one, are often unfortunately the most terrible nonsense, even though this newspaper has already said it one way or another. At least the other way here has not done so. It gave away a guglhupf recipe, hmmm, that turned out well again! Oh, if only they had occurred to me sooner, these pieces of information for the information bulletin of the school of life, sooner than to Mrs. Gerti Senger and the priest August Paterno, before I was able to start a new page! Then I would have also been able to write them down here, these pieces of information. So they're still written down, but written down somewhere else.