Greed (14 page)

There's someone who's earning nothing but blows from life and wants to be given a beating for it as well! In the case of this young woman, whom we've mentioned, the normal breakdown with the help of oxygen is sometimes simply not possible, as in the case of this lake, which we've also mentioned. Surely one should at least be able to breathe by oneself. Can you hear the wheezing? That funny sound? She's got asthma, Gabi, I diagnose with my razor-sharp mind, because I've heard that sound somewhere before, and once I had it myself, half my family has had it, and she can also get an attack at any time, Gabi, if she gets so upset. The man has just explained to her, from tomorrow he can't drive her to work in his car anymore, because his wife has found out. A lie, because his wife wouldn't care, she has her garden and her needlework and her soaps on TV A necessary lie, because the other woman, Gerti, would care, if she ever did find out. But she knows already, Mr. Janisch! But she shouldn't care, because she couldn't do anything about it. If she does talk to him about it, he takes offense and asserts: A man needs that because he's different from a woman. He has already paid her in advance for everything, with his penis, which in a man never lies. By which it often doesn't do its owner a good turn, I think to myself. Gerti should be satisfied and leave him in peace. She would pay for her own presents, many times over, I think to myself once again, for example, this little bouquet of early Alpine gentian in merciless blue, which the man, unwillingly, because what is all this beauty good for, one can't buy anything with it, has picked on the mountain. To Gerti the bouquet is priceless, but she will nevertheless try to cough up something for it. And now it seems as if Gabi wants to get him into trouble, I'm telling mommy, I'm not quite sixteen yet: she's picked the wrong guy! It's legal for the woman, for the man and for another man it won't be legal until later on, that's how nature planned it, and that's also the way the laws of mankind planned it, which have imitated nature and which are then surprised when people now yield and go astray, instead of the laws. So from tomorrow it's finished, Gabi, and you take the bus or the train again in the morning. I've had enough. If you ask me, that's too heavy-handed an explanation for a girl, who likes to be taken to the disco in the next village by her official boyfriend and then simply disappears. Pop! When she needs oxygen so badly. That's why she's out of the house. She says, the oxygen was outside, where she got it. What has her father, whom she no longer has, her mother is divorced, to do with it? Her father has nothing to do with it. He would just order her to stay at home period. So here's Gabi lying about on the floor and throwing her head from side to side and trying to breathe out. What to do, she's completely out of it, and one can't just tie her to the carpet, so that she calms down and just keeps breathing in. Gome on, Gerti, give me a hand! Well Kurt, that really is asking too much of me. So much youth, that's far too much of a good thing, and there's not enough air in here, I think, because none of it can be broken down again by bacteria or fungi quickly enough. Take her outside immediately take her home, can't you hear! That's how it is with nature, with foresight it cultivates its own pests, but they, too, are nature's children and help her diligently in her work.

How easily an accident can happen, and one is called as a policeman, but is on the spot as a human being, when one somehow tries to hold still such a head, whipping from side to side, so that it doesn't just fall off. It's banging from side to side like a bulging garden hose that's out of control, but there must be a leak somewhere, there's such a funny gurgling in her throat, above the collar bone. All this fuss from the hose. Just because no one is holding it firmly. Whoever doesn't want to hear has to feel. When they're listening, people are quiet so they don't miss anything. When it comes to love, they then let out what they've previously seen and taken in of strangers, who just for them have laid themselves down on a strip of celluloid or whatever, it's magnetic at any rate, in order to produce that eternity, which lust supposedly desires. Some people would rather have change. Eternity. Everyone thinks that about a photo, but it's rather easily inflammable. Which one is oneself, too! You wouldn't believe it. We'll immediately send it to an Austrian Lonely Hearts magazine, the photo, the tape, perhaps they'll take it, perhaps they know who we are. I hope not, because we are the FPO candidates for the town council of Ternitz or Gloggnitz, somewhere over there anyway. How they must suffer when they're alone, these people, and no one is recording them! Ecstatic glances, smiling mouths, agitated poses, which were supposed to have been exciting, yes. I would not like to be immodest and I would not like to be to blame for anything either. The older people, expanding a bit, they stay quiet at least and if at all embrace one in despair, because they can't get anything else, in a vise of two thighs, yes one is oneself the sugar cube between them, the man just manages to put up with something like that if need be. He's learned to be a worker. He's an amateur bricklayer, amateur joiner, and amateur villa owner. Whatever one's doing, one can think of something else at the same time, he says, best of all to think, how nice it'll be when whatever one's doing is finished and the freshly painted or stripped and repainted door has slammed shut behind one and one is inside, inside at last. Yes, he would like that. Because no one in this world understands that one would like to lock the door behind one and the world, so that there's no one anymore, not even oneself anymore. And for that one absolutely must have the following: a house and home of one's own. No one should get in. Only you, sweet Jesus, uncomfortably fastened to the cross, so that you don't make any mess either. There's nothing that can be locked up so completely as something that belongs to one. There's no one that can be locked out so completely as other people, above all, those who think marriage, this prison, is the greatest proof of the love of a man for a woman and the other way round, exactly, so when are we getting married, when are you getting divorced? One thing after another, but in the right order please. The marriage, so this woman hopes, will stabilize our relationship, which not even a cellar would do for a gloomy tall office block, when an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale comes along. You can judge. But first there comes the executive. I hope it's not the executioner coming. Even if it sounds macabre to you, that ultimately I only want to die, although in busy traffic I have to be helpful, energetic and quick in my reactions and fulfil modern demands, WHY Asks the country policeman, who is also at his wit's end. Why should Gerti's love of Kurt Janisch be so different from the unhappy relationship with someone or other? No idea, as far as I'm concerned.

So do you hear this unholy racket now or don't you? At the moment it's taking hold of the whole household, where there's even a piano which has to be handled every day, so that it doesn't fall ill, this grand from the city apartment, which here squeezes desperately into a corner and still occupies almost the whole room, while its tone sinks down to its boots even standing in the corner because the climate here is harsh and simply too damp. That's the first thing we'll sell. The living room: where CDs and arts programs, indeed the whole universe, are eagerly monitored and preserved, because nothing in this world remains a secret. What you hear is bestial howling, howling of a harmless, masterless penitent, who doesn't know whom she should touch and for which master she should do penance, and she doesn't even have a veronica to wipe her eyes. So much sand has been sprinkled on them. Her eyes run and run. But nevertheless she's already waiting for the next sin in order to commit it immediately, as a precaution before someone else does it. The man is worth it, but earlier he was inside the whole time, with another woman, with a much younger woman. But the woman long ago wanted to suffer under his whip of flesh again, and he wasn't within reach. Can't be reached at present. Try again later! How disappointing. It's pointless trying to call someone else. If one longs for someone, he should come in person. But the country policeman we're talking about has now, much later that day, actually the next, if one calls the day night, when he left the house of the wailing, weeping woman who seems to be foaming in her own soap opera, arrived in the coldest place possible at the moment outside of a deep freeze: the shore of the lake.

It took him a while, driving with difficulty across stones and through undergrowth, to get there.

He couldn't have acted any differently, he tells himself. He once again feels quite the master of the district, but somehow it doesn't cheer him up. He doesn't care at all whether the water gives up its booty or keeps it. First of all the water gets its packet, nicely packaged at any rate, earlier the country policeman had to go especially to an out of the way tool shed to fetch the tarpaulin, actually he's already been driving around with it in the trunk for a couple of days, what for? (Question as to premeditation: Did he himself put it there with intent, in case he would need it at some point?) Let's go on, then we'll have it behind us all the more quickly. Then the water can chew at the package for a bit or a bit longer, and see whether it likes the taste. It can open its jaws to draw breath, at the same time spitting out the human roll with the plastic cover, then snap at it again, or it can also keep the meat roll of course. Is it meat at all, or flesh? Everyone's always so nice to flesh, if it looks nice and is pretty in the right places, perhaps even transparent?, at least just barely covered in transparent motives, so that nevertheless a bit pops out of the wrapping which is scooped out in exactly the right places, and has been placed there for that very reason. So that one suspects what anyone can anyway see at a hundred yards. But it's important to the man that something more comes of it. The flesh is only the means, the mean value is the money and the highest value is a plot of land with a house on it. For that the country policeman carries out duties, of which he has deprived the community, because instead of directing the course of traffic he has been having intercourse himself, one of my tiredest jokes, I know, but I'm happy that I've found it, I had been looking for it. I know, I know, you've heard it all before. But consider this: There are nevertheless unbelievably few of you worldwide. The man, however, would do quite different things than I would (or than would occur to me), so that his desire for belongings is fulfilled. Two legs spread, for him alone, just like that, and a whole house puts in an appearance right in the middle. So this man puts himself down as an advance, but in the same breath demands himself back again, because himself is all he has to invest. But perhaps he needs himself again later, for something else. The country is supposed to be safe because the existing small stations of the Country Police are not being closed down, which have made and still make a valuable contribution to that.

Here's the charming, artificial, inner Alpine lake again, it's always getting into the picture when we don't want it to. But this time there's a special reason for it to turn up, we had almost lost sight of it because it's already so dark; it's not exactly soil protection, that nature and landscape pastoral care have done to it, but neither are they to blame for what has happened to the water. Nor is it because of prevention of air pollution and waste disposal, no, wait, perhaps it is because of waste disposal, because right now I can see how some kind of waste or whatever it is, at any rate someone wants to get rid of it, is being put into the water there. One wouldn't keep watching mere household refuse so long, out into the barely rising, gently rippling waves, the lake can also toss the roulade around a little, play with it, we'll see if we can't get the wrapping open later, it should be a snip. The man has tied it up well, made double knots, attached something to weigh it down and removed it again, because it could perhaps be traced back to him. He surely doesn't seriously believe that all that will work as permanent medication against the reappearance of the packet! Water can do a lot of things, but one thing it can't do: digest all the things thrown into it. Cyanide from a gold mine into the Danube from its tributary the Tisza! A gigantic dying is just starting, and you can watch it live, you're still alive at least! The poison speaks for an hour, and the fish would have to swallow it for fifty years, if they weren't dead now. Or shall we leave it wrapped up for a while yet, this death role, which someone is playing here? No turbulent river current is playing with it, and the lake is too dull to embark on a proper scrap with a completely motionless, tied up body. So now even the most stupid reader knows what's in there, because unfortunately I couldn't keep it to myself anymore. How does one do that, say something by not saying it? I fear everyone has known it all the time, from the beginning of time, even if not all of it through me. And the Austr. Food Standards Code does not lay down what people and their inland waters are supposed to eat. It only states what they're not supposed to eat. Meat is of course excepted, otherwise the whole of Austria, which subsists on meat and alcohol, would go on strike together with its mountains and lakes. This country always wants a little bit more of what there is, it doesn't matter what, at any rate always more than it can take. Cannibal country. And we like ourselves best when we are well disposed to ourselves, because we've been well behaved, that is our spice, in which once again we want to let the others stew until they're really hot for us. Perhaps, also, because no one can change the thousand schilling note for the taxi for them, not even the bank. Whenever the bank is really supposed to do something, it can be guaranteed not to, it would rather pester us with demands. And what the inland waters are supposed to eat instead, that's written down here, please read it immediately, although it undoubtedly doesn't particularly interest you: at least two hundred years of biodynamic, organic and ecological farming, in order to recover from its own toxins again. Everything should always be healthy. You, too, should start immediately by eating healthier food. Finally, I've attached a number of signal lamps, reflectors and colored adhesive strips to my poetic art, so that if all else fails you'll hear all the bells ringing at once, until you're almost deaf. It'll turn into a wonderful chorus once I've given the cue. And with the words "meat" or "flesh" I've provided an additional hint, superfluous of course, I didn't need to say it at all (at least when a heavy object is dropped into the water, then it's not hard to know who or what is meant), and now it's all no longer art, a pity, really.