Greed (22 page)

For his age, but then again he isn't so old, he's in the prime of life, Kurt Janisch is in very good condition. After all he trains to stay that way, he's already done his stretches today, he usually does that at home in front of the mirror in his parents' bedroom, perhaps to check whether he's still there in the mirror which is firmly fitted into the wardrobe which already belonged to his parents. There has to be a mirror in every house, and if it's too small for our height, then a bigger one simply has to be put in. Strange, such a good-looking man, married, R.G., and then he doesn't like to do his stretches in public, although people would like looking at him, no one would be biased against him. At home, there he likes to look at himself, sometimes endlessly it seems; so where does this aversion to the unknown, but even more to the people he knows, come from? He always does his running in more out of the way places, all of which he knows in his sleep, he grew up here after all. Glances turn to follow him, involuntarily, of men and women, under the firs and pines and larches, often glances of strangers, who are on holiday here and among whom ill-humor because of the weather and the people, with whom one can't have a conversation, but who are fitter than oneself, who only has three weeks in the year to make a proper go of it, is at all times very much in fashion. But at a table with a decent mid-afternoon bacon snack and a large wine and a couple of glasses of rowanberry schnapps good sense soon evaporates and is replaced by senselessness. One can also knock it back at home with a roof over one's head, above all if one's a teetotaller, but, as already mentioned, the country policeman doesn't like the glances of strangers, which he easily takes to be disparaging. To him they're like slaps in the face, which really he should be dealing out, glances, which make his body inwardly devour itself as if of its own accord in a kind of shame, yes, that does occur to me repeatedly: devour. It's really true, what the poet said: Shame always outlives one, no matter whether one's inclined to it or not, and inclination's always downhill anyway. There's someone who only wants to be away, cleared away, and yet does everything in order to be there. Someone who wants to plant his house-signs in the landscape like totem poles. They are supposed to stand and speak for him, because he doesn't like to do it himself, although women in particular are constantly demanding it of him. Their wish is that through speaking their interesting personality becomes even more interesting, that it will be interwoven as if by a glittering lurex ribbon. Something flashes, what is it? Oh, I see. It's the pullover, not the gold filling. They first want to go through many mouths, women, conduct amusing verbal skirmishes, but then again they want to be stilled, when, e.g., someone takes the lips of their vulva in his mouth, sucks them briefly and then bites them as well, which wouldn't have been at all necess-ary, but one liked it nevertheless. Yes, please, once again, please, next week as well and the week after, until nothing more is left of us, that's just what makes it so especially good. That's love. The country policeman would now rather look for a roof, under which he would like to go up and downstairs. And the car, it stands on the parking place that goes along with it or in the garage. The country policeman has covered a large part of the garden in cement for his car, although his wife would have liked to grow flowers there too. Now only a teeny weeny patch is left for something so superfluous. The rest is paved over for eternity, even if the mother earth below has long been healthy again and would quite like to breathe again. So the country policeman's wife only has this narrow strip left for the flowers, but boy, there the double-blooming garden plants throng together, deluxe models only, it's something she has achieved by her obstinacy, the patch of garden is her hobby. At the garden center the grower has all the plants looking three times as thick as they would normally be produced in nature, only in the garden catalog do they turn out like that, creations of God, notorious for putting a gloss on things; I would not have thought that a civilian, who is not God, can bring forth such plants, but I see it's possible, nature really puts up with it. Yes, I could love such plants, but they only exist twice, once in the catalog and once again in the front garden fragment here, so that people can see them, yes, that's part of it, what do you mean see?, but of course!, through the gaps between the fence posts or over them. A woman is different. A different woman would be different again. This woman wants her work to be admired, she is not the secretive type like her husband, quite the reverse. She's happy that she can make a fuss about her garden, which her women friends admire, which, however, she is not allowed to have, she only has neighbors. Her husband doesn't like to see her gossiping with them, nor does he like to see what others see or have, precisely because they have it and he doesn't. He prefers to see, if it's true, that this woman is clinging to her possibility of existence, or whether perhaps she would let go if one talked her into it. He doesn't want the consequences; he's so mistrustful he doesn't even trust the sunbeams, which descend on his wife's garden like an army, one that doesn't destroy, but brings fruitfulness. Yes, that's where it rises, the dear sun, over there, go on, take a look, it's free, but put on tinted glasses first. Not a speck of weed between the larkspurs and the columbines, which both equally look as if it isn't really them. To me they look like rare orchids. How does the woman do it? She could win prizes, but she wouldn't be allowed to, unless they were paid out cash. This garden is like a wonderful silk cloth, preciously woven in the most marvelous colors, so beautiful, just fantastic. In front of it a solid gate, at the sight of which one would prefer to get lost, in order to be saved by it. Others would like to be transparent, so as to be able to ooze through the fence and have time to read the notices, which were stuck into the ground beside the plants, where on earth did Mrs. Janisch buy them? With the husband nothing would be any use. Although: He's not really shy. It is as if his body were a language, which he himself has first of all laboriously to learn, while others already know it. There are others who sometimes even speak themselves as a foreign language, and then they don't understand themselves anymore. But it doesn't bother them, because occasionally they like to find out something new about themselves, and regret that it will never be in the papers. They say to themselves: How could I have married this or that woman. They wake up between the legs of someone whom they've only just met, these brave people. Today they are in charge. Yes indeed, these decent, hardworking, and competent people have become a power in the land nowadays, and I wouldn't like to get in their way if I were you (I think I might be able to do it!), unless you were sitting in a shiny Jaguar, like the one which the new Minister of Justice would like, and I would like too, gone all gone! The minister is already gone, too, and a new one took his place. The country is called: Austria. Get to know it properly or get lost! The country policeman at any rate always knows where, but not who, he is. Instead women want to get to know him better and even better. He wouldn't care, their building plan would be enough for him. Then nothing would be unfamiliar to him anymore. Nothing would have to be fought against anymore, one could offend everyone, and one wouldn't even make enemies. Everyone would be like us. Like us. The country policeman thinks little or a great deal, depending on whether it's necessary. But he doesn't say much, and if he does then his mouth moves as if held in place by a steel bracket, that's how greatly he restrains himself when speaking. He can hardly get his mouth open, not even for a greeting. Can it be, that women find something like that really so interesting? Because they don't listen properly to what he says, and in no time at all he can rise to be their hero (and not a zero, well it's a rhyme, if not a good one), because heroes never have to say anything and can just hit one in the mouth? Perhaps. They know how to speak at any rate, that's something that women can already do, they don't need any previous knowledge for that. They manage it, even if they've never gone to the university of life, which one begrudged them, because they had one or more brothers, who in turn would have died in the hell of dissatisfaction if they hadn't been allowed to study. They never finished it off. Studying. But look, this woman here managed it under her own steam. How peacefully she carried on her modest dealings for decades! Playing the piano, what do I know. She had already conquered heaven before she showed up here, and brought heaven with her, to fit it into the jigsaw of the mountains, in exactly the right place, well, here it also has fresh air right down to those lying at the foot of the mountains as well, who all wear sturdy Goiserer boots, which, as the name suggests, come from Bad Goisern as do only a few of the chosen of this world. It's a small place, we can't all come from there. Only Little Jorg H., he can. Back to heaven. First, this woman had been looking for heaven for a long time, probably she mislaid it, but that's precisely what it isn't: a floor. And now, hardly has she found it, she has immediately invested it in a certain person. Unfortunately he, too, has meanwhile got lost, without the woman having noticed. This man and in a way world peace and in many ways music as well and reading: her hobby, these things had all been the stuff of her life. Now it is nothing but this man alone. Patience, I'm running too far ahead. I'm not going to reveal my whole army to you already, it stands on clay feet anyway, but not in China. What does patience mean, everyone's already gone to sleep. Why did I start sticking the twigs and flowers on it, which were caught by chance in my camouflage net? So that you wouldn't see everything at once, which you've seen coming, and now you've turned me off. A flick of the wrist was enough. Before I could get around to the business with the apprentice and Miirzzuschlag, and you could talk and smile about my many earlier remarks, which today I bitterly regret.

I hear music, it's like my wasted life, one hears it from far off, the music of life, and a moment later it's faded away again. I can't do any better unfortunately. At least be quiet when you get up, and go home, any book lying there will be able to do it better.

They often cling to him, women to the country policeman, like the members of a society which has a code of honor: stick at it! But he always makes a particular preselection, this man, before there's real fun and games with the women beneath the foaming clouds, before a thunderstorm, behind the dance floor, up on the rocky slope, where the last fruit trees are almost lost amidst the boulders and, startled by the first frost, shed their fruit before it could ripen. The women who have left their cars on the windswept lower mountain parking lot (here there's a panoramic view, and further up another one, where in the wind the flags crackle) and throw themselves into the mountain wind, who crouch down among the dwarf pines to answer nature's call, except when they can hear someone, at the same time panting in fits and starts because they're not used to such a gradient, in short, these women have become ripe for love, without yet having found the pleasure of harvest, which is what they themselves are, these red-cheeked commanders who have lost their whole army, on their way ahead, doggedly, to the peak. They nod to every passing hiker, a little shyly, almost embarrassed, and no one notices that there's only one whom they mean to see, who has sent them a special summons for today. Now they want to comply with it, so that he can look important, which appears neither advisable nor necessary to me because ultimately they will lose everything, instead of getting even one bouquet. There's no doubt about it, there's one man they particularly like, but they don't admit it, the women. He's a country policeman by profession. They shouldn't do it, commit themselves to this person's charge, of all people, and sign on the bottom line as well, so that they may be bound accordingly at any time in an oath of disclosure, by which they swear Jesus appeared to them and told them that they will certainly find happiness with this man. With him. They only have to renounce all others. Such men have already arrested mothers of small children at red lights and simply abandoned the children to the traffic and nothingness, the rattle of the salvoes of headlights on the wet asphalt. And if they throw themselves into his arms, although I've warned them, the women, then they should at least finish it before the glue is dry, but in his place now, the wall, on which they wanted to hang his picture, is vanished, simply gone. Their affection should turn to disaffection, I think, while they still have time. Unfortunately it's again and again enough for the women that they're given a feeling, afterwards they can no longer tell whom they showed it to. In any case, suddenly it was gone, who had it last? Unfortunately I can't remember that anymore now. No matter, the relationship carries on, the tensions with the family also grow, one is called unstable and doesn't know why, because he's the one, as sure as night follows day. One doesn't doubt a love and doesn't entertain a suspicion. There is someone who reads her and doesn't even have to turn her over, because he already knew her inside out. One day it could be too late, how often have I written this sentence, and it's still good. It's indestructible, the sentence. Unfortunately I always have to say when it's too late. This time I can't say so yet, but I have a bad feeling. Well and good. Here's my clock, right in front of me. Writing, that's taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Silly cows, women. All of them. Above all, the educated ones (at least I'm not one of them), as a man I once met who specialized in deceitful promises of marriage personally assured me. But they squander themselves precisely because they think it's all too late for them. Who would promise marriage if he could also get on the train without it and get away with other people's anonymous savings bank books, you see, and these are people for whom the train would even wait! Not the other way round. Instead of women in their maturity beginning to save and to be economical. Every decent liter of wine knows that it improves with age and roughly how much it will cost. Do you know what a care home will take off you? You, and everything you own as well, and your children have to pay the rest, who will be up in arms that they have to raise so much money. What, you didn't know that? One can't really say squander with respect to these women. They rashly expend themselves, but at the same time want to hold onto themselves and even pocket a juicy profit, because they've still got a couple of things to take care of in future, intimate care included. Things which they believe someone needs. First locked up then cared for by staff in white coats. That's what we needed.