Greed (15 page)

But then again, the dumping of wrapped perishable objects is not entirely without risk, if only one man is available to do the job. I have a suspicion that otherwise, and ever more frequently, illegal waste is dumped from this point on the shore, because I've several times seen trucks with their lights out parked by the upper bay, where it's easier to drive up to the edge, and where one can also see more easily. There are no fish here who would like to turn themselves into sharks on a special course, to first of all eat out the eyes and then the soft parts of their catch. There won't have to be a long search for missing persons, because one will soon know and see on photos, that someone has gone missing and is now unfortunately going to be found in a terrible state. It really would be better for this young woman if she were in the middle of the ocean, with forty pounds of cement around her ankles. A father recently even inflicted ten pounds on his child, a little girl, and a beautiful, cool, merry river, whose secondary movements immediately rocked and pushed the child around, although it soon made no difference to the child with all the foam in her lungs and upper respiratory tracts and all the cement attached to her bound feet. Tomorrow the mother and the boyfriend of a young missing person will from the start have been convinced that something must have happened. They'll have some copies of the most recent photographs of the missing person made by a photographer they know and go with it themselves from house to house, into the shops, into the inn opposite the bus stop, and into the bus stop and show it, the photo. They will stop cars on the road and ask the occupants whether they haven't seen the missing person, a certain Gabriele Fluch. Finally they will have had just enough time to stick a kind of wanted poster of the missing person to the electricity poles along the route she usually travelled to her apprenticeship, but the adhesive will not even be dry behind the ears yet, when the packet, not a day too soon, will have been found in the lake. All without any success in life, on a day like any other, life rented an extra room in order to do something extra in peace and quiet, which it usually never does.

It's all basically a world one can keep track of, one can see as far as one's sight allows, that is, differently in the case of each person, and some can see right through bodies, because there's nothing there that could interest them. How copiously this water spreads its wings, how generously proportioned is its space, how assiduously it has increased its biomass and the detritus, so that its need for oxygen has grown exponentially, it's got nothing else to do the livelong day, because it has already killed everything in itself. Is that not a nice symbol for this man here, who is facing fairly critical times, because he would like to digest himself and make himself disappear, and instead always has to be hunting and chasing himself in order to find out which of his hobbies could keep him alive a little longer? Which ones definitely won't, he already knows. And as if there had to be a last straw on top of everything else, now something dead has been added to all the lifelessness in the debris of his life, a daughter from a good home in the village (with a single mother), that's what I've been told at least, but it's not quite right, I think, a present time that was pretty as a picture, and then this human sausage plops into the water, just like that, without the least grace it may have possessed while still alive. The longer I look at this face, the more certain I am: The disappearance of this girl is no problem at all, because she's available reproduced so many times. She has made herself up to look like all the others, in the shop she even chose thick rubber mats as shoe soles, so that the adjoining legs look approx. four inches longer, and from tomorrow her face, which wanted to smile out of magazines, will instead be fixed to the masts a hundred times over. So wherever one looks, this girl exists so many times over that she has simultaneously gone and stayed here!, a whole photo wallpaper has been made out of the young woman. This sweet little mouse, as the poet says, exists so often, even if in another, foreign shape, nothing else has any room anymore between her and her pictures, which all: don't show her!, all photos, which had previously nodded to her, and were immediately cut out of a color magazine with the weapons of a woman, a small pair of scissors. No, these are, rather, weapons, which are such that woman (whoa!) doesn't even need them, there would be nothing for them to do. That's why one doesn't need to be in the pictures in person, one can also let oneself be represented there by other women; I've seen it myself, this nothingness, all the photos as if from the magazine and from the other magazine, I had the time to glance at it, that was enough for me, and I learned something from it. Down, into the water, always just down, and then not again: down. Once is enough. It works the first time, while the photos really always have a considerable effect each time we look at them, unless of course we were in them ourselves.

If it were up to him, the man would row out specially in the boat and there, where it's deep, further out, where the lake snacks on the tree shadows from the steep shore, heave his food parcel in its own snack pack into the water. But there are no oars in the boat, and one can't very well run around the village with a pair of replacement oars, what would that look like. Alone is the night, it always does everything alone, that's why no one offers to help it. The night is the night, that's its attitude. One sees nothing. No street lighting by the lake. No light during sex, that's lucky, because we haven't specially washed our feet, they're quite black between the toes. And the pedal boat, it has a key, even if not for an ignition, otherwise it would be a motor boat, we don't have one available. The man can't get far enough out on the water with his meat (his catch). Yet the killing of his prey cost him as little effort as a cigarette, the end of which burns one's fingers a little and which one quickly stubs out; we see, no, of course, we don't see, it's dark, you don't have any choice, you simply have to believe me, so look at an embrace, which for months has been usual between the two, in the car, in the front seats, while a cock which has been brought along for the purpose is already standing there upright and expectant. One hand stays on the steering wheel, one head is shoved under an armpit, nestles into that damp, cozy hollow, oh how deceptive, as if it wanted to hide away in a cupboard. Long, thick hair, generously heaped with tips from Brigitte on how to shine, but a nut-sized amount is sufficient, spreads out on an arm, a living mass, as one says, everything as usual, otherwise no one would have made the effort to prepare memories of it, and then to hang them out to dry on a TV screen or a poster where everyone can see them, models for everyone for the next time. Then one can do it oneself. There's no such thing. Yet another of those, who behave exactly the same as always, after having read several how-to books, about exactly how not to do it, better a smart short hairstyle, your hairdresser deserves that once a month, than an unkempt flowing mane!, so one of them will unfortunately do it nevertheless just as usual, in the hope of being acknowledged as a good, languishing, eager woman in love. But today she's in trouble, when really it's the man who should be: Does he have someone new? No, daddy, that's not allowed. He can't do that. The capacity to act will be taken out of her hands, since the young woman, Gabi's her name, to the accompaniment of laments, accusations and pleas and already precipitately giving herself up, without any address marked, or what is to happen to the body in the event of death (although one might be able to get something for oneself nevertheless, if one were smart and already donated one's corpse to pathology beforehand), pulls down a zip and takes out a cock, as so often now, it's been going on like this for many weeks. The skill is in doing it again and again, but differently each time. Someone who is easily bored would never manage it. Thanks, the pleasure's mine, says the penis, so now I have to pass into a stranger's hands again, I've hardly had time to get used to the previous pair, and my owner is also somewhat in need of a routine, I would say, run away if you ever catch sight of him in the distance! No one listens to me. I find it rather unpleasant. They always find me, feels a not very pitiable piece of meat in addition to some more pleasant feelings, which are now beginning, have your ticket ready and fall to your knees in front of the bouncer, please, on your knees now, this moment! Gabi's groping, often clumsy fingers are unerring, as if the country policeman's cock had a lighthouse beacon, or a flashing warning light, so that one can avoid it in time (no man is an island, he stands above everything, he is an airplane or at least in an airplane) and not grab it right away, without first pausing and thinking, or if thinking is at all desired, to think about the rubber for insulation purposes. And then perhaps at some point you produce a short circuit, well, you know where the country policeman lives, if you want to phone him there. Women. If this man happens to be somewhere else, they immediately become suspicious, because the country policeman has gone out and couldn't leave a single contact number. For example this house, in front of which he's standing once again, he would absolutely like to have it. And if he had to fight for it, with the clumsy and also somewhat too sensitive weapons of the flesh, then it can't be helped. Flesh. This house belongs to a woman. Its facade already has a skeptical expression when the country policeman enters. We certainly can't fool this house. This house is already made. In the house a commodity wants its eyelids to glitter and present itself with the eyelash flutter of a new striped awning. She has rubbed herself all over with something, the woman who lives here, but she didn't have to make the effort for the sake of this man. He overlooks everything that has no value, nor does he have to ask for patience or look for some peace and quiet, before someone comes up to him, on his own stairs, likewise made of the best, well-hung meat, that no longer longs for anything except to be released from its place of custody and to get away again. Then I would be, says the meat in its own voice, which we like to listen to, and its owner, to whom someone or other will also listen, then the two of them, the flesh and him, would at last be at one with themselves: alone. They, too.

No grave should be made of me, thinks country policeman Kurt Janisch. That would be the worst thing for me. To end up in a small container. No. Preferably in a large one!

The girl on the other hand. Her body still belongs to her, passing its time like a song bird, hopping from branch to branch, until she hits the ground below, but by then she has long ceased to have herself in her hand. So please, what's she getting up to now, she's banged into something with her pointed tits, which she can keep for all I care and whose production in the nearby district hospital is still evident. The man cannot even take Gabi properly in hand for his almost dreamy, yet precisely directed hand manipulations, she slips through his fingers every time, which doesn't, however, annoy him very much. But it would certainly be no big problem for him. Standing on the shore as the life-saver of a small child or a car, he would like that better. He would jump into the waters without hesitation. His penis nods when it's squeezed, but also of its own accord. How the girl has to laugh when she sees that. She asks especially for this movement, which he wrests from an implacable life and from a body which is deaf to entreaties. Women are mud and that holds onto everything. Slime. Something can be drawn out, a sledge, a wheelbarrow, and before one can pull the cart out of the dirt, it's already disappeared again. The mud has it. Only occasionally, during a thunderstorm, do women voluntarily part with something, rushing in fear out of their emergency accommodation with their families, which they must be ready to leave at any time. For once the mud has time to spread, calmly and deliberately, I mean with deliberation. Then there come the women, a whole flood, stir everything up, themselves most of all, because they are so in love, and then they lose themselves, in their own mud, because their partner has suddenly gone, for no reason. What, already? So soon? That's a gloomy prospect! We can't see any reason! Perhaps the mountain will come after all? For the time being its stones are coming down. It can take a while before it comes itself.

I don't know, there's something different about the girl this time, the country policeman is still thinking, as her blissful gaze at him is suddenly as if extinguished. So. Yet another veil over her pupils. Finished. The man's peace of mind is gone. Now he has thrown the older woman, in whom he places some hopes, out of her own living room, just because of the girl. She had become quite unbearable with her constant demands for more, without even knowing everything she's got. She doesn't even have all her wits about her, one is always missing. She should for once go and rub her gusset herself, with her own hands, so she sees what that's like. But when she's supposed to whack off in front of him, then it only makes her all the greedier for him, precisely because he wants to watch her. It is one of many variants of the heightening of pleasure, all of which she would like to get to know later at her leisure. Eager for knowledge she listed them all, the variations on her flesh. She even gives the man orders, because she's waited so long for it. She has a right. He'll take that from her. He has a method for that. He's already dreading it. He knows: As soon as he opens his shop, she's already running in, and he's the one who's supposed to be directing the traffic. He hardly has time to start his engine, and she's already trying to throttle it. He thinks, she wants nothing else except to feel number one in his books. Can't she hear her expiration date, even if she can't read it? Doesn't she hear, on the other side of the door, the moaning of an adolescent still under sweet sixteen? Well, that's a different tune, isn't it? As fresh as a folk song, as resolute as the federal anthem, but one doesn't know the words. All the notes the older woman has mastered, the man knew long ago. Because he reads them from her red, sweating, enraptured, blissful face, which she puts on when she sees him. And the tune she strikes up underneath him is false, he thinks it is even deliberately faked. It is a strange whimpering, which begins to turn into an almost practiced groaning, hardly has he touched her. He wouldn't have believed it, if he hadn't heard it with his own ears. This woman doesn't have anymore devotees than her house. In reality an unpropertied property-owner, that's what she is, who believes she resides in the realm of the untrue but beautiful. That's love. Jealousy upsets whole goods trains, it upsets me too, but the goods are what count. Get your doll out of my house and do it this minute. Oh no. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so rude, please, don't leave me. I didn't want to order you to do something, which could be terribly painful for you, but even more so for me. I haven't once doubted your love or entertained the least suspicion, even if behind this door you're ramming this little girl into my ground. I love and sacrifice, and I don't draw back from that, because I see that you could never deceive or exploit me. Go now and get rid off her! Before anything else happens.