Greed (18 page)

Our Gabi doesn't rely on nature, she has seen too many mean tricks played by nature in this district, without much sweat, but costing us a great deal of sweat. Gabi has accumulated a whole collection of eye shadows, mascaras, foundations, and lipsticks, nowadays it's pure stupidity and ignorance if four-year-olds don't paint their fingernails, but they do it because there's always someone else who has started, and so they do it, too: keeping pace with us and our relaxed behavior. There's always someone else, but one doesn't like to acknowledge them. After all, that's why we go to nursery, to remain forever young and still look the same later on. Until the undeferrable duties come, which take up so much time that we don't have time when we need it. So they don't do like the swallows, who instead industriously build their homes against old stable walls. So they really have not stolen their homes, the poor industrious little birds. The work they have to put in. Children can go where they want, madame, and your child is already almost sweet sixteen, for the Country Police a case like any other, in fact not a case at all yet, just wait another one or two days, we know all about it, a young runaway, an item in the local edition of the newspaper, of interest only to the inhabitants of this village or the neighboring villages. Even in the county town not everyone knows the sweet name of your little place, and you really want to know for certain? Where your daughter is? For the rest of us a quite different caliber of person evades the cameras, photographic agencies, and educational institutions, for example Princess Caroline with her newborn daughter from Vocklabruck Hospital. They escape just like that, a source of concern or of fun, depending on what's in demand at the time: No, I'm mistaken, it's always for fun, yes, we do something, and we do it properly from the start, two or more together at a time. It's well known where they all come from, they are children of the country, of the country disco, where around midnight the sons of the carpenters (and joiners) and the daughters who are at last going to see some drilling, get undressed and show each other their juicy organic pork fillets (hand-reared! No need to stand on the grill and fall through, it's better on the new beige fitted carpet!), because they know what they want: big city life, without having to go there. There are no distinctions at all anymore, as far as entertainments are concerned, it's big and beautiful everywhere where we are, wherever we are. It would be a great help to us, if we could be everywhere at the same time. And here it is already, your entertainment! They nevertheless feel, I don't know why, constrained and want to get away from here as quickly as possible, and wherever they end up, they get nothing for themselves, the children of the villages, nothing, that someone else hasn't got already. And there's even a legitimate claim on nothing, and it is inevitably made, when even just the first pink nipple flares up in the stroboscopic techno light and immediately fades away in a wet mouth. Chunk chunk chunk hammer the bass lines. And the sons of the Alps carefully filled up to the permitted measure pull their height of fashion trousers, which have already penetrated the most remote mountain valley, but not by themselves, they were too slack for that, there always had to be someone inside them, whom one doesn't know, down below the hips, open, belt buckle! Open up! Where is thy sting, I mean: your tongue? Show what you've got under there! and they show cocks and tits as God made them, mostly not very carefully, once again there were too many people working in the shop who wanted to grab some for themselves, in the branch of a gigantic megastore. Right, God, you won't get any thanks for this fourteen-year-old already having droopy tits like full vacuum cleaner bags, to make up for that everything else about her is rounded and bulging, oh no, now she's puking at my feet, and now someone's falling down right into the puke, in a moment he's going to drive off again in his car, relieved. My opinion is, it would have been better if God had put in some overtime and created something better. Something beautiful like a mountain, a valley, a lion, and a Jaguar car and a lake and the like and so much music besides, rather too much than too little, always, no, not this lake, don't claim someone else's glory for yourself, someone else made the lake, but as far as I'm concerned, you, God, could have done it much more often. But the lake was made by humans, but I don't like them either anymore, says God, after all these years they're no longer up to date. They're not the right size anymore, and they don't look right either. I'll go and get the new magazine, so that I can do it better. The difference is really not so great, I do believe that on this point I really am right this time. The people in town and country are becoming more alike at terrific speed, in some countries there is no country anymore, people read the same magazines, and they all wear the same things, there are just two companies that make all the stuff, and soon there'll just be one, which will assume so many names. It is human fate, I've now forgotten what, and some wear it earlier than others, so then it's also over and done with earlier or out of fashion. What counts ultimately is always only all the fine, good flesh, which, since one can't eat it, is again and again and then once more thrown onto the counters in the bars and is downgraded and dressed down, if it doesn't measure up to our ideas. Even the lingerie factory is more generous to us women, who need something different from a man. The bodies have been puffed up in various places by a sensation-seeking press, which shows no consideration for feelings, and feelings are just the spice of bodies. Afterwards at any rate one should take the taxi home, that's healthier for everyone, particularly for the taxi driver.

There go a middle-aged woman, who once gave birth to Gabi, a cheerful teenager, that's exactly what she is, like all the others, a young person, who preferred to be with someone else, no matter who it was, rather than alone, and a young lad, who at the moment is still going to a technical secondary school, hopping from electricity pole to electricity pole (when they've gone rotten, they're butchered and new ones are planted, then new men, whom the country still needed, clamber about on them like squirrels, a Mr. Janisch Jr. among them, he too already the father of a schoolboy, young as he is. A final squirt of milk, milked from a jolly evening in the dance hall, and after that: intermission, then close-down and curtains), and both together are sticking up notices that show Gabi's face, a black-and-white photocopy of an original star photo, yes indeed, that's what it was selected for, but was unfortunately returned by the addressee, and now everyone can read it whether he wants to or not. These photos can't be avoided. It's afternoon, the sun is already decently warm. The thumbtacks bore zealously into the tarred wood of the poles, which bear it patiently and with heads held high. At last they are important, not just for light and telephone calls (both essential to a tragedy! In a good light something even worse could happen, and one would see everything quite clearly and certainly immediately pass it on. So we've got everything here, when on TV a man would like to make up with his girlfriend and both of them cry cry cry so loudly that there's almost not enough power for it). Gabi's mother and her boyfriend knew right away: Something's not right. Our Gabi doesn't simply disappear like that, without telling us where she wanted to disappear to. Life is a crime story, it's unbelievable, all the things that can happen to a person, mostly it's little things, but that's just what one has to have an eye for, because at a second glance people are completely uninteresting. Well, not to me, I live off their diversity, which makes for more work, however. I'm not allowed to declare anyone boring, and if I do, then I have to explain at length why. And why do these two, mother and future son-in-law, have such a bad feeling? Already early this morning. They walk along the route which Gabi usually takes, whether by bus or on her bicycle, even stop car drivers and ask them. The pair of them will end up going on foot to the county town, where the building firm, Gabi's master, is spread out under the vault of heaven on the greenfield sites, which border all our towns, even the least among them, yes, those above all! Only there do the customer and employee parking lots cost nothing, because the ground didn't cost anything anyway. Why stand there at all? Dusty road, paper-strewn hard shoulder for dead animals, I don't want to write everything down again and again, that happens here, but I must. From time to time a wreck is towed away. Injured people have to be cleared away, too, they can't simply be left lying there. They leave their blood there, part of it, and the modesty of their possessions, the half-open handbag, keys, well-worn purse, little lucky charm attached, a little teddy bear, at least it's still alive. Yes, when one drives a car, one has to rely on always looking, straight ahead, but also look in the rear-view mirror from time to time, please don't forget!, and one should trust one's eyes, when a truck comes round the bend doing sixty, it means it!, when it comes up from behind, big as ten water buffalo, and takes one on its horns before one has even heard it snorting. The country roads here are blood roads, and the landscape is the circulation. That's why we're always going round in circles and not getting anywhere, because we couldn't read the map.

Now the flowers go on flowering. No one takes them for a walk without killing them first. But dear hands are already waiting and are held open, perhaps there's a new piece of jewelry as a bonus. She never said anything to me about problems, says Gabi's boyfriend to the Country Police, who would rather follow new paths in traffic surveillance than implacably pursue people on their old well-beaten trails right into their most intimate spheres. One has to catch them in good time, before they go missing or have been so squashed on the road that they can't even be recognized anymore. At the moment local traffic sections are being set up step by step in individual districts which were equipped with the necessary equipment-including unmarked cars! Yes, indeed, just you watch out, something that looks just like you and your familiar little boat through life, which you get into punctually early every morning in order to bring it to life with a divine spark and a whiff of gasoline from the atomiser, careful: A rapacious wolf in a BMW can be hiding there! Since 1991 completely new possibilities also arise from the possible use of laser guns to measure speed. There's one already, who flashes and is not God. It can't be, protest immediately! What do you need a light for, you know very well that you were driving too fast. Big Chief Nimble Forefinger also doesn't need much more than this one finger for the camera gun to achieve a convincing (and lasting, there's a photo as a memento!) success, and the target is always you. So why the gun, we can easily make a rough estimate, that one was doing sixty. No no, it's not so simple nowadays. It was doing seventy-five. The gadget made such an effort. We want to know exactly, and the legality of all measures of criminal prosecution, which were admissible until now, also remain effective when the new police security law comes into force, so pull yourself together! A pretty throat, a pretty pharynx are soon squeezed tight or torn open with no other tool but the mysterious eye, which finds the area, which death particularly likes to visit for a picnic for two, even if only for a couple of seconds, but that's enough for him. Yes, this is a good place to live, thinks death, this flesh is still new or as good as new. It wasn't expecting me, well, so I'm coming unannounced, and no one knows anything about it. So I can easily come again, since no one saw me the first time. The next time perhaps I'll even come in broad daylight, which I don't need to be afraid of. I wasn't caught the first time, although police patrols with two officers each were in the area providing minimum cover! Luckily death, which was informed in person, knows where each patrol is poking around: I'm afraid of no one and always do the right thing, he says, or he can do it another way- whatever I do, it's always right, I am my own court of last resort, so there's no right of appeal, there's no higher court. I see how anxiety takes hold of you. You're asking yourself, why does something exist with which there can be no bargaining, you even bargain in the electrical shop and in the builder's yard, even with the country policemen!, and really do get a lot of things cheaper than you'd thought, just think of your new garden grill, the demonstration piece on which the demonstrations left no trace. Me, you'll even get for free, but in return I make everything you bought beforehand completely worthless. So it's better if you don't buy it at all, you're better off buying a candle, a few schillings, it'll be worth it, to someone, just to you! Well, who will do you this good turn, I don't see anyone who would do it.

Please have a bit more fun while you still can, so that you get to know even more people who will take care of something like that for you. But unfortunately people never listen when they're having fun, even if you bawl in their ear, they're having so much fun. A way of speaking that's meanwhile out of date, this passage should in any case be deleted, I think, but then the whole thing will be too short. The cries of passion, this bawling, with which the genitals, our subjects, distend as if they were frogs and were now being pumped up even further, almost as much as their owners already are, well, we still have mastery over our bodies, don't we?, so these cries should be adjusted to contemporary usage, isn't that so? So, e.g., you can easily dispense with the meaningless courtesy of having to address a country policeman as officer. And then when he forces his cock, lovelessly pulled out of the trouser leaves wrapped around him, between your legs, sweeping aside with his hands the troublesome thighs, and drags you, preferably even before you've grasped who this is, into the bushes, hitting you on the back of the head so that you are involuntarily forced to lower it and keep your mouth shut, because you can't yet speak German well, the language of our country, the country policeman's thoughts are already somewhere quite different, with someone who stands as solid as a building and isn't thrashing about all the time like you, then, then it's quite all right to call him by his first name and say Kurt to him, where on earth is he? Where on earth are we? Perhaps you haven't even met him yet? That's just too bad. Then you can also go alone into the booth with him, and not to cast your vote, which I wouldn't do if I were you.