Greed (9 page)

With a terrified expression, as if in the middle of the darkness he were also seeing the end of the world before him, a single figure (male, 54) stands on the shore. All remaining figures in the area have withdrawn to personally protect the species in front of the program Austria Today or even to maintain the species, no matter, in any case into their little houses. Until now, so it seems to me, the figure has proceeded in a very purposeful manner, unlike nature, which takes what it can get and gives whatever it has. Only giving and taking are one and the same thing with it. This time the figure has set itself the goal of not looking its deeds in the face, I'm telling you that because I already know everything about the figure. That's the nice thing about my job. The man has wrapped his deed, not very carefully, because he was in such a hurry, in a green plastic sheet of the kind that are used to cover the freshly hewn wounds of building sites, so that no water can ruin the damp, expensive concrete, but the things are never quite watertight. And in any case now the opposite of what it is usually supposed to do is being demanded of the tarpaulin: Water, please, come on in! The packet is supposed to get heavy very quickly, not like the earth which is supposed to get very light for one. As far as color and shape are concerned, it is impossible to tell what the packet contains. It doesn't appear to be anything big, but it's not small either. So, now you know exactly as much as I do, that is, everything, but that's entirely thanks to me: because I've attached a couple of pennants, bells, horns and flashing lights to this packet, so that now really everyone knows what's inside. But how else should one say it in a proudly inflated life's work, which one would like to trot ahead of and impetuously toss the feathers in the headdress before the wind does so and there's nothing more one can do about it. At all events one should be able to say it better, much better. The package is heavy. The man has quite a job shoving, pushing, and pulling. The water is at last supposed to do its destructive work on the parcel or it can do whatever it likes, just eat away for all I care, it really makes no difference to this man here either. I think his behavior is so unutterably fearless, as if he wanted, indeed dearly wished: This package should be found again as soon as possible! But then why is he hiding it at all? He could put it down right next to the highway, the effect would be the same. No. Modern tyrants who have long ago won the right of self-determination for themselves and their refuse compete relentlessly to dump rubbish there. So perhaps the effect would have been the opposite, since no one ever clears anything away. The package could still be lying there in three years' time. It wouldn't be down to us. Why is the man not smiling full of anticipation? Inside the plastic sheet there, I'm saying so, although there's no need at all to emphasize it, there's a nice piece of body, belonging to a woman. Just a moment, I'll take another look, that's right, it's not a man, it's exactly what I've thought up. A woman. A man would be heavier. One would need accomplices and a cheeky little river, which, after one was finished with the body, would carry it away. I once knew someone personally who with someone else drowned someone in a real river. The cock of the man, whom you see here, is still erect, it's like that nearly all the time, fantastic!, almost like a skier at the bend, which threatens to carry him off the track, but he counteracts it, so his cock stands up straight to the end and refuses to get any smaller, what else is the man going to do with it? He's already done everything with it that was possible. It was no use. He even tried to build on it, but this foundation might perhaps give way unexpectedly and on the way down to the cellar one might at least once briefly have to look a human being in the face instead of the ass or the breasts or the legs. For which one would first of all have had to find the necessary peace and quiet. No one should be there to observe one scaring oneself to death. The hearts of women are often of a cheerful spaciousness, so that it is also possible to go into reverse in them if one wants to get away again, yet in a car, which is often the most important thing in a relationship, even inserted as obligatory by senior citizens in their Lonely Hearts advertisements, one never quite gets there, it always has to stay outside unfortunately, the car, unless one is in the woods, then one has to park first; but hardly has this man stolen into one of these hearts, which he has been looking for, than he is completely indifferent, even cold again, forever unimpressed by sights or events. Beauty does not touch him because everything he finds beautiful absolutely must be dead. How I could have laughed about him, if only I had wanted to! I could have been afraid. This man rarely laughs. If he ever looks in the mirror, it's as if he can't remember what he looks like, perhaps because he longs for nothing so much as material goods, so that as if as punishment he first of all has to visualize himself. And in his greed for property he then forgets himself, sometimes quite suddenly, but he never forgets what he wants. If asked, he replies, correctly even intelligently, indeed quick-wittedly then again obligingly smiles, the question even stays in his brain for a while, so that he can look at it very carefully or change his mind before giving an answer or evading it. Perhaps he can after all draw some advantage from the ever-repeated question of his wife about eternal values-life or death, kitchen bench or chairs, couch or easy chairs-please, Kurt! Perhaps he'll finally say something, he has already been asked so many times (well, we don't have a digger to clear the old kitchen furniture away, that's expensive, more than new stuff!). So that for once his dark soul, like ours after the cinema, which was the last time it came to life, may rise up and stretch its legs. Even plants feel more than he does, I swear to you, e.g., they respond to music, as it says in this magazine which this man's wife, who grows flowers, brought home yesterday, pure waste of money. There's much that he does quite correctly, some things are also wrong, he sleeps, he gets up, an overgrown child, that has learned nothing yet, not even children's tricks, but he doesn't pick up on stories or songs, at most on instructions for use and building plans and bank statements, which show him that his money unfortunately has been recently withdrawn and the rent for the last three months is still owed. I see something there, it's true, but don't say anything yet for the time being, something about his work, which he does really well, even if always with one foot on the wrong side of the law, which in his job is very practical (you get to know villains and part-time villains) and is actually quite usual. Nothing that went beyond the everyday duties. He is what he is, no, he lacks something. He completely lacks a whole dimension, that is, the dimension that there are other people apart from himself. It's as if you knew what time it is, but not which year, which month, which day, these are units, which even if strange, distasteful, have our life terms in their hands. We request them to be considerate. They are superior units, which can indeed be made a little more refined by the addition of the spice of life, but we can't quite get rid of the bitter taste. The man is completely normal as far as I can see, but he speaks as if with a child's voice roaring out from deep inside, and always only to himself (long ago, as a child, he had still felt something, it had been nice then, everything OK with his scooter, his bike, his ball, the sweets, over a hundred times, such a spoiled, a pretty child, no little Mister Guilty or Mister Ugly, quite the opposite! Golden haired. Good as gold, to get used to the inevitable, that is: gold makes the world go around), whose vocabulary is very limited. It doesn't matter, the man always knows what he wants to say to himself. Or, let's see the picture, where have I put it, oh yes, there it is: as if it were a paper cut-out, onto which one can clip his clothes, uniform, jeans, the good suit for his own funeral, the braided gray Styrian suit for Sundays or the Country Police Carnival Ball, the track-suit for nothing, but no one has ever thought that one can also pin feelings to people or that the sweetheart can carefully pin her eyes, but she's not going to be doing any sewing again, is she? Shouldn't her dear eyes open at all anymore? This man doesn't have room, it doesn't matter what for. He needs space, it doesn't matter where. He wouldn't know on whom he should waste anything. Odd, that people are never suspicious of him and, on the contrary, often immediately expose their innermost secrets to him, perhaps because they suspect that otherwise he would be gone again, before they can even take their clothes off, lie down on the couch and display themselves to him without anything on. I correct myself: He does have dreams, the man, they are, however, nailed to one or more houses or owner-occupied apartments and so not at all times freely disposable. Well, one house, a little house, he already has, his wife brought it into the marriage, that's also why he keeps the wife who belongs to it, despite the cost. Ah yes, I see, other houses have now come more within his reach, his son, e.g., pays a small life annuity for his, smaller than the life of a certain old woman, her body meanwhile almost wasted away because of alcohol. Fortunately the person will die, but the walls within which she hid away will still stand.

But then again there's no doing without bodies, precisely the most decayed and frail cling surprisingly fiercely to life; this man lets nothing rest, he always wants more without letting go of a thing again, now everything has to turn out for the best. There he stands, steady as a mountain rock (sadly he has less and less time for the mountains, they often come last now. Besides there's no building land up there, only wasteland struck by rocks), stands outside the shops which sell only the cheapest lines, outside the inn, where the teetotaller and sportsman drinks no more than a Fanta or a soda pop, into which he then, under the table, pours his schnapps (which he never pays for either, because he has always entered as a figure of authority). We are dealing with that mysterious continuation of ourselves to which everything falls, because it belongs there, like gravity, at the bus stop, where the car driver doesn't take the bus but prefers to take someone else instead, before darkness falls, which he penetrates with a pocket lamp, but only if it is absolutely necessary. Batteries cost money, too. And here he knows the way at any time, even in the dark, every stone on it and every protected plantation of fir trees, on which he himself need protect nothing and no one, when he sits down in the middle of the spread table of a woman.

What's coming down from the heights there? It's them, it's always them, the mountaineers, the hikers with their own or other women. But of course it's always a matter of where you're standing. Who touches a meadow full of flowers with his feet, and yet the meadow remains untouched? Unbelievable, that there's such and such a number of women, particularly ever since they've been driving around in cars just as much as men and can also turn up in a different place from where they are at home. They are drawn out into town and country, into the county town and onto the country road, and that they are so different from one another is likewise unbelievable. And then they stoop to this man, they've hardly clapped eyes on him and they're on the ropes, he cuts them down or not, in his hands they soon gleam like polished pieces of furniture. Yes, indeed, and afterwards they are alone and have been taken for a ride, with the itch, but not sewn up, I can already see that from this distance. There have been a good five of them in the last two years. Not all that many, I know, but it takes time to look after them, because nowadays they demand quality in order to be satisfied. It's not enough for them to rub up against the wall of the house, which is badly plastered or turning damp, the house should also belong to them after they've been saving themselves so long for the right man. They don't let their cars do something like that either. That they wipe their dirty tires on someone or that someone takes the liberty of doing such a thing with them. Cars also belong to many women. Many cars belong to women. Thus one becomes a vessel, they probably thought, once they had chosen this car in their favorite color and even had to wait for it. One spreads out the bed for that already there. It's recently been specially acquired, together with an orthopedic mattress, for a very special person, who will lie down where no one has lain down before. And one already knows all that in advance, after talking to him just once on the dusty road, where one showed him the driver's licence and the vehicle documents, and he was such a wonderful, unique man, one never saw one like him before, and one knew: He's the One! And why? asks the shop assistant at Billa, with whom, since moving here to the country a couple of years ago, one occasionally has a bit of a heart to heart, next to toothpaste, soap and detergents. I don't know. That's the answer. The rather stocky, but muscular-looking, dark-blond police officer is considered to be a loner, a reputation which he has never really resisted. A man who hides his feelings behind a robust manner, but who can also show small weaknesses. How sweet of him! He effortlessly overcame the barriers with which I have protected myself until now, says this woman to the supermarket cashier, who doesn't understand her and who would at last like to go home. But hardly has anything so wonderful happened to one than one is immediately buried again, and that is the disadvantage with lonely people, worn by miles of worries and suspicion, as if one were the landscape itself, which is idly waiting for what will be inflicted on it in the shape of mudslides, avalanches, and rockfalls. One finds oneself in the water, instead of being water, which can travel anywhere, but unfortunately on one condition: downhill only! So it's better to stay at home, so as not to miss the telephone ringing, or you just take the telephone with you, which can play Bach's D Minor Organ Toccata, which it's been taught. After that you only have to wait for your number to be called.

Then miracles happen, an angel enters and with his wings cuts in pieces what divides two people, and it will come, it will come!-the best-loved miracle, which is no miracle at all, for a human being is as if made for love. But that is deceptive, often a human being only looks as if he is. On the contrary, God never does well by the good, and they, although they, too, love and want to stay, fall apart even more quickly than the rest of us with our ordinary joyless life, and later on one doesn't recognize them again, the good people, when the seams of their genitals come apart and the sawdust pours out, which once lent them a bit of shape at least. Even wood would have been affected by such an experience, the glue would have fallen from it. Because no one reassembles these tender lovers who wish only to forget themselves in love, and this time it reinforces them right from the start with some plywood, so that they can at last stand up by themselves and can stay up a little longer in this position. Afterwards, nevertheless, a human being is never the same again, even after just an hour. Take a look, I'll show you: This miracle happened to the woman there, and to the one over there, too, I think, and over there are five together, but the miracle caused that one a lot of trouble, this self-absorbed, retiring, quiet, shy woman, would you recognize her as someone who moved to the country because people in the city who got close to her which she had always invited, hurt her, mostly without wanting to or knowing it? This woman is too sensitive, she's already paralyzed with fear and I've caught it, too. At this moment the man opposite her is devoting himself entirely to his career as a lover. He has already made some progress, and has got just as far as the little cafe, where they know him and so where he doesn't like to go at all. But this time he didn't want to contradict the woman's provincial loneliness, the relationship is still too new, the woman is already touchy enough, so he let her have her way: to show herself in public with the man! At last! She gets a lot out of that. And so there they sit side by side. On the other hand something like that has never ever happened to the man before, but in the daily tabloid he can read up where it leads: to love. In sequence. Until marriage. Until death. The country policeman's wife reads whole novelettes about it, from start to finish. The man holds his own in his hard job, which one can carry out with a dog and/or motor bike, but one can only bring the dog along in the car, or it has to be left behind altogether. The man holds his own in the atmosphere, the climate that goes along with it, and which until recently was purely man's business. Whether it rains or snows or whether the sun shines, it doesn't matter, the men made it, complains one or other woman to no one in particular. The man is quite different in this respect, usually doesn't even know what she's talking about, at this little cafe table, someone who gave up her career, but who had such a good income in the city and out of fear of disappointment again and again avoided close ties, as she declares, as she already declares, because again and again she was abandoned, abandoned like a stone in the road. That's how the sad Carinthian song goes, but I don't know the rest of the words. I should know them, because soon the whole world will be Carinthia, and then there will be terrible punishments for anyone who doesn't know these beautiful songs by heart. Well, why does she come here, the woman, where no one needs her. He needs her so! He's not interested in what she says. He's interested in what she has. He goes to open up the millionairess, but no, it's not millions, let's make a rough calculation back and forward: it never works out. What one needs is only her property, but she's still using it herself, and even if only to start out from it, to explore the area, its rare Alpine flora and fauna through books and then to cuddle up all the more cosily on the couch with a glass of wine and a book. No, Kurt, today I don't need you, today I want to be quite alone for once, but call me, definitely. If he doesn't call, she goes off the deep end. While we're on its beauty, this area would never get adequate attention if it were not beautiful. Otherwise no one would bother about it, apart from the scantily dressed tourists who get everywhere, and to whom the woman for her part feels superior (among the tourists there are also some who are overloaded with clothing, they just have no sense of proportion). In the man's cheerful disposition there is in principle no room for any woman, which he doesn't say. But for a house of course, always, even though in the nature of things it would be much larger: A house of one's own, somewhere to feel at home. Charm is already lying ready on the plate, today it has to stand in for butter. It'll manage that. This woman would be much smaller and manageable than the house, she could prove that if the country policeman would only take a proper look at her from top to bottom. And in the house there would at last be enough room for his expansiveness, his mountain bike and his hobbies, which are a waste of time. He should rather spend his time with her: Yes, take a look at that, I would describe him like that, too, before allowing myself to be hit. He isn't capacious, but expansive, not in the sense that there is truly anything cheerful about him, but clean and empty. The furniture has been pushed against the walls, so that his body can more easily be encouraged to carry out the much, thank you, practiced movements, which should cause the furnishings no more damage than absolutely necessary. When things have got that far, one wants to have them along with the house. At most the bed will collapse at some point. One sees a person standing in front of one, and then suddenly it's a woman. One sees her waving her arms about, shouting, weeping, saying please please, because he wants to leave so early again today. One can see her performing tricks in order to seduce him, now she's even getting up on her hind legs. She threatens him. Funny, we're already at home with her again. Earlier she calmly made coffee, although earlier we already drank some in the cafe and are now eagerly waiting for the sniffing course in matters of tenderness and trust, which had been promised us and for which we have already put down a payment: Two people who can't stand one another, but don't let go of one another either. For various reasons. In time they will learn to fly and take flight, because there's no other way they can get away from one another. One of them at least has to go so that the other can stay. But why all the work at the stove if the woman in the end-she doesn't quite know how to offer herself up completely yet, she would rather offer food and drink-throws a hot cupful in his face, why all the cooking and raging about so little? Why such a devil of a temper? And now she has to wipe up the coffee again alone and spoon up the soup alone. It really wasn't necessary to throw things around with people who haven't done anything at all. After this noisy scene, the woman, unappeased, but well brought up, is allowed to cook a less solid meal, this time something exotic with pineapple slices and spices, which were brought here specially from the Naschmarkt in Vienna, would you like that, Kurt?, no he doesn't know it and doesn't want to know it. Now this time he doesn't want to, he would rather practice his power of attraction. Please please, eat something, then there's dessert, then I personally will get carried away with you!