Greed (24 page)

Now the country policeman walks briskly ahead of a woman, trotting lightly like a wolf, across the mats, where hayricks will soon stand. He can write more than just his name, he can draw something up so that a notary can make a fair copy of it, whereas I have an unfinished manuscript on a screen in front of me, which glows it's true, but only illuminates a small part of my brain at once. The country policeman, however, has the overview and keeps it in mind, too. He always keeps everything. The name of this person counts more or less. That is, where it stands at the moment, on the promissory note he has issued, all he can do is keep his fingers crossed. But the man knows where he can get something. There's hope yet. If there isn't, then I could stop at last, you've said it. Don't you see it, this body I can see in front of me, I could almost take an interest in it myself, my eyes want to see something indecent, and my hands want to attack something indecent and play around with it, and then unfortunately I always want to say something unmentionable, how embarrassing, even if only for me. Not so fast, my room has to be tidied up first, I can't let anyone see it. Yes, this body, which we're going to keep running with, this arrow taut against the desolate sinews of the landscape, and he, he is supposed to have become the prize of this woman? No, personally I don't believe it. I thought it was she who had become the prize? One day she'll eventually wake up, and then bingo, but she doesn't win anything. At some point, one day it's payday, when the bank statements drop as deep as the unfathomable ocean, except with a balance one can fathom why it is so low at present. It won't be her day, thinks a woman, but her time will nevertheless have come. Then he'll get a divorce and marry her in order to get the remainder from her as well. She believes it, she is imbued with this conviction. She wants to give him a very affectionate answer, very softly in his ear, for this party of her lifetime, but he isn't there. At last he'll listen to her for once. Yes, the time has come: Her answer isn't enough for him, it's not concrete enough for him, not adult. He tells her loudly. Do grow up. In a moment he'll be raging noisily on the street again, because the door will be locked, but not seriously. To the woman, it's as if he's always sending her back into the corner, although she even had years of musical instrument tuition and, perhaps out of revenge, even gave some herself. But she is unable to play this instrument. The greater her love for him, the smaller and more insignificant she feels. Often, when she catches sight of herself in a mirror or reflected in a shop window, she finds it impossible to grasp that he is with her and that it is her. I, another? Don't I hear pounding live beats as an accompaniment there? Please not! Do I have to listen to them as well, even though I only know the classical music of life, like the woman I'm talking about, and who likewise loves only classical music? Unfortunately it doesn't mean anything to the country policeman. In a self-analysis he would say, if he could: This woman is completely fascinated by me. I radiate an inner strength, which she has always longed for. How nice for me, it's a real gold mine. No, this man is like no other I know. Perhaps he's like the sea or the mountains, I know them too, but only superficially, the mountains a little better, one can at least build on them, if they don't throw themselves away first. Here building has been forbidden by the countryside commission and two hundred other organizations. One is only allowed to trample around on the mountain soil if one is a summer sportsman or a winter sportsman or an all-weather sportsman. The mountains simply belong to everyone. Only in heaven will we conquer them. The country policeman belongs to this educated and charming and attractive and active woman alone, as she hopes. She wants at last to find an inner home and shelter. That's crazy.

She can throw him alive into boiling water, for all I care, and jump in after him, and once he's heated up, eat him up inclusive of core and stalk, or whatever it is she wants to do with him. I've held her back long enough, in order to adopt her cause, let her gobble him up and in return present him with all the dishes and the house that goes with them. She will be digested by him and disappear without trace. I can see that already. He turns to her, as he always does, it takes quite an effort on his part, he tends always to turn away from a person. As a child only bed-wetting, and he didn't really want that either, accompanied him for a long time, like an annoying pet that won't go away. Wait a minute, where has the woman got to now, she hasn't gone to make another coffee, has she? Doesn't she know what to do with her time? He quietly follows her and studies her like a schoolboy, as if she were a text, which one has to learn in order to make the grade, and that is always property property property. The party he supports says so too, it tells its supporters that they clearly stand out from the others and deserve everything and more of what they have and still want. Except the members of parliament shouldn't earn more than 60,000 schillings a month, but that no longer applies now either. Property can become a nice hobby, but one has to train really hard with the tax office in order to keep some of it. This man here should be properly acknowledged by me, as a student, main subject: Live, but don't let live. As student of the university of life, if you like, because he knows what matters, the quiet values. Property. Or have you ever heard a house speak, except through party noise and TV from an open window? What appears easiest to us, this man finds difficult: to be a human being, so say the poets, who have understood nothing but want to talk all the time themselves. Well. The High Commission of Curtains is closed now, so that one doesn't notice right away that official business is being conducted here. This man, therefore, is a fellow student, but one who doesn't really want to learn anything, nothing, from nobody. That one can buy dolls in a sex shop, whose bodies look in a way unappetizing, well, the head's OK, that while masturbating one can pull a plastic bag over one's head and tighten it at the throat, till one almost pops off, and then one pops up again, the bag abruptly, suddenly open!, please, don't forget that!, and there's our orgasm, which we once had and have missed for some time now, there it is again, stronger than ever before, stronger than with any woman, stronger than any arm. We had begun to believe we won't get one at all anymore. But the shelves are full. Every poor man wants to be rich, that is just as natural a phenomenon as the fact that one can introduce all kinds of things into one's asshole, both small and surprisingly large objects. That, however, one has to do with the other hand, one hand is supposed to tighten the bag. So one hand always knows what the other's doing.

He goes to the hairdresser once a month, the country policeman, to get a haircut, today is not that day. A conviction abruptly pervades him, unexpectedly, he then wanders through the territories of idleness, nothing, he wanders through the territories of his job, there he has often struck lucky. While driving, women make mistakes out of carelessness, absent-mindedness, or incompetence, and already the country policeman has them by the skirt and doesn't let go again, if they're to his taste and he has got hold of their address. How quickly they consent and more as soon as he has unpacked them. It was the handy packaging with the thread, pull here, which opens even the most buttoned-up. He stirs up a fire in them. The bodies can be thrown away, the heads one would keep, so that one can make sure that they don't talk incessantly, the women. They're real gold mines. They immediately offer him traveling expenses, gifts, then themselves, then the rest as well. In return they want to build on him. The same thing he has in mind with them. Except that he also wants to get hold of what they've already built. What appears difficult to us, to destroy someone and obtain a cement collar, in order to reliably sink the booty to the bottom, this man takes all that for granted, if you please. That's what he's there for, and he wants to put himself in every other place as well, which at the moment, unfortunately, is still occupied by another body: one or more rooms in one or more houses. Squeezing into the bodies of strangers, that's good too, then only oneself is left over, a bird, which hoarsely, hoarsely crying, scrambles around on a corpse and doesn't know where the eyes are now, which it wanted to pick at first, so that the dead, with whatever senses, could no longer distinguish him. He wants to remain unobserved, the man. It didn't, unfortunately, work with his dead mother, he must still succeed. But then he would like to get into everywhere else as well, squeeze in, in order not to let go of himself, to be by himself and to stay that way, when he inflicts his wounds, of which others with small twitching body parts always die, after they have watched anxiously for a month, for years, what is to become of this child. If someone looks at him like that, the country policeman would rather eat himself up, so that nothing, not even himself, is left to be seen, only a house, another house, and another house, house-proud. Then at least he would be: gone. What kind of man can he be? He is like an angel with inner eyes, no, not an angel looking backwards in case someone is standing behind him with a stone. His muscles and sinews don't know why they are inserted into a thin but firm nylon skin, which can contain simply every body shape no matter where it leads. But not for long. In a moment it will clutch a tuft of hair again and pull everything attached to it to the ground. Exactly the same thing will happen to this suit, there was a very similar one in the advertisements for holidays in Austria, encoded however, otherwise no one would have put up with it, the suit-here we are shown the population in the dress of the country, and all the things it gets up to: Sport, please take over! But the whole population has been locked up in its clothing so that it can't get out and do any harm, as so often, our population, oh dear, too late, now it's out, now it's out-an endless mountain panorama in the background, which is supposed to represent the boundlessness of this in fact rather small plump land. We've meanwhile given up this goal again. People don't want to visit us anymore. But yesterday on TV they showed us the new ski suits for the world championships, and we were all annoyed at the way they looked; I saw nothing but shininess and lightning flashes. My eyes were dazzled. In history: boundless crimes. In the present: boundless pleasure on the high crags, to which the paths lead, so that we can look down on the others, paths on which we sportswomen and sportsmen can roll or slide around. We are the party, which is the only one to let us join. We are the party, which we have already joined, because: We are who we are. And not anyone else.

The rumble of thunderstorms is approaching now. We are all in the dark about ourselves, but to make up for that our conscience is clear again at last, it wouldn't have had a chance against this weather anyway, which we didn't ask for, which was given to us as a present, and which now only harms us as far as the strangers are concerned, because today it's coming for the third day in a row, thunderstorms, rockfalls, hail, avalanches. Who will keep the children in the Alpenrose Pension occupied until it's fine again? How wonderful, altogether elevating, after the mountains have risen up against us, when we are at last allowed to enter the mountain refuge, and the landlady hands us the strong hunter's punch, the parson's nose, the smoked ham rolls, while outside the world public walks past and ignores us instead of dropping in. It's on its way quite without trousers, the world and its organs, without sweatshirt and even without walking shoes, we bought them all, we chose them from the catalog. That's the way we like to see the world, naked, bare, and dumb, so that we can again and again lead it up the garden path. We're somebody again, but which somebody? We are a European, fallen from heaven like the first sunbeams, which are now coming out at last, we have done so much and more to make it happen, that the foreigners will be happy and be our friends! But it was worthwhile. The civilized nations have taken to us again! Well, thank you very much!

He is otherwise something of a disrespectful man, the country policeman, and so he demands all the more respect from the young recruits. He doesn't care about anything except this house, this one and that one too. I should explain that in greater detail now, but it's not necessary, because anyone can put himself in the same situation and immediately sign a savings agreement with a building society. But I don't know, there's something, it's better not to visit people like that, they always only serve themselves, perhaps because they're stingy. That means that people who join up with them always have to live in reality and are not allowed to dream. Someone who one day falls in love with them is soon looking anxiously at them. Where have all the dreams gone? Such people can always hold onto themselves, even if they briefly give themselves away or rather: lend themselves out. It only looks as if they were expending themselves and spoiling others with their presence. We've got plenty of time, it only takes half an hour of my time, but not this one, to explain it to you in greater detail. You're yawning. You've heard it all before. I know. Even the country policeman's trainers are of the opinion, with respect to the rocky ground, which they briefly but firmly touch, that everything on and over which they climb belongs to them. We take care of our homeland, and we like to keep it under control, and these are brand name shoes, even if I got them a little cheaper. Oh, a little herd of chamois, there are even two kids with them, how nice, about ten yards vertically below the gravel path. They don't crush anything at all under their hooves. How lightly these animals whose bodies appear so heavy jump from a rock on their thin little legs, we look enviously above our allied walking and trekking shoes at the same time trampling a couple of tufts of grass at the edge of the path, where a short time ago they were still found alive, so that the animals could eat them. High above, a pair of buzzards, crying loudly so that the little animals can disappear in time, who still have to live off their winter fat, and are keeping themselves upright with their last reserves of energy. The district has become noticeably lonelier since the springs can no longer be marvelled at on the surface. We've been struck by that. For that reason, as well as for others, tourism has declined considerably, many have got alarmed about it, what's happened to our attractions? Where are the foreigners? Why don't they come? Are we being boycotted by our own guests? What have we dished up here? We've dished up the same as usual, haven't we, schnitzel, chicken, sugared pancakes. The mountain, which is one thing that doesn't consist of food, we're not the Land of Cockayne (or are we? or are we nothing else?), has been locked up long ago, but it can easily be unlocked. Like an envelope, which anyone can tear open to read what message the landscape has and the one over there, too, the message is different for each person and so it's no problem to recall the messengers, our ambassadors. We are not to blame for anything. That's accompanied by loud music on the radio. And those who remain are already more elderly fellow citizens and prefer to walk around on the plain, look up in astonishment at the snow-covered peaks, take photographs and turn themselves into a reference work, which inns in the valley serve the freshest trout straight out of the stream. We'll go there afterwards and open the filler pipes. Come on in. All right, but here the path already goes up into the mountains, it's not my fault, it's better if you just stand still. Snow on the felling areas higher up in the forest, on these breaks between the trees down which the avalanches raced with particular abundance this winter. It is now late spring (spring comes rather late here anyway) and still correspondingly cold. The noise of the inn died down long ago. Here, at least in the more low-lying parts, agriculture and forestry used to be carried on, but now an eternal water use ban has dawned. Further down there's a catchment basin, but you won't catch anything. It is the area, measured horizontally, which is bounded by watersheds, yes, shedding can hurt. In between there's the water, one hopes likewise permanently separated from us. Sports which are kind to nature are always welcome, but others not, absolutely no mountain bikes-strictly forbidden! This poet doesn't want them, and I don't either, but can't say it as nicely as he can, who would like to kill the poor cyclists, who would also just like to have fun. But running or walking, that's OK, isn't it? No, the poet has nothing against that. Although: Every step crushes approx. one thousand insects, a mighty spectacle, which is unfortunately also coming to an end, but only if one were as small as this ant here, there you are, its time is already up. That wouldn't be any good for us: being crushed underfoot. Nothing is grown here anymore, here there is no chemical treatment for plants, and the plants of course look as one might expect, somehow wild, tousled, worse for wear, puny, don't you think these are chance creations? They've got no breeding. Once they wouldn't have been allowed to proliferate here in such numbers and take away space that could have been used productively. To the country policeman, the thought that something could not be useful is unbearable, and yet he involuntarily relaxes in this dramatic landscape, from which he has learned, at least, to appear wild and romantic when necessary. Nature belongs to all of us. Too little always belongs to the country policeman. Nevertheless. There are some who say they have observed that sometimes he also went here at night. Sometimes he deliberately stands on every cluster of flowers, no, today he doesn't want to pluck and pick up anything, not even edelweiss, nature isn't that interesting after all, it's not an animal (put it this way: An animal is nature, but nature is not an animal, providing milk and eggs which we can use, and to be honest, nature doesn't provide me with much either). It's called an eco-system, only Kurt Janisch doesn't see how and where there's supposed to be some kind of system at the bottom of it. To him nature is a green chaos, like the party associated with it, and like the chaos in his brain; and only his body, so that its performance improves, is worth being first looked after and then honed, one thing at a time. From such people we should learn to obey the state, without them needing to waste any manners on us. When they kick down our doors because we're black or have worked in the black economy, we're harvested and only then cut by the neighbors. A policeman is always right.