Greed (19 page)

Grand, wild water, you fall with little head held high, even if you've already been tamed! Here, where you're just foaming, you haven't even been chlorinated yet for your domestic users, who in the city stand under the shower and want to drink you as well (but they prefer to drink something better, stronger). You tumble down from the slopes of the High Alps, which is where we are now, to get away from us and do something useful, perhaps also undertake something entertaining, one thing at a time, work first, then pleasure, cool and clear, free to your home. The limestone High Alps of Lower Austria and Styria can fall down without you as far as I'm concerned, they wouldn't know what to do with you, but no, that's not quite right, it wasn't here, but right next door: A whole lake together with the shoreside trees disappeared in the limestone mountain range! One gulp and gone, as if the lake couldn't get along by itself, as if it wanted to belong to someone else, to the mountain, a big lake, yes, it made progress, only in a backward facing direction, inside, away from the astonished visitors. And it took away all the gawking trees standing around as well, so that nothing would be missing in its subterranean mountain dungeon. The visitors were left behind. You sweet water you, you are gathered up by the steep forest roads, the inclines, the plastic slopes, the rocks, at first you look enchanting, transparent, glittering, then you turn to mud, become soil, while we, along with you, fall into the bottomless limestone pits, but only into the little ones. Here there are no dolinas, which could eat up whole lakes. You have to go further south for that. Water: You come, yes, this, too, along with all the soil into the houses of the area, in order to take a look at what you've been missing when you decided to remain wild. But they upset your plans there (and you had a sparkling water as well, didn't you? Yes. I ordered it, but it didn't come), when they contained you and sent you down the pipes, with no message except purity itself, for which you first had to be caught and held tight. How pleased they were at first, to have got hold of you in the middle of the alpine pastures, you're always trying to run away. But soon you've become a plain fact, which one can also eat, if one still can't grab hold of it; so of course you were contained, so that, even if very diluted, like all truths here, you could be believed nevertheless.

Here, at the start of the snow line, and soon he will spiral even higher up the mountain, a man in a brightly colored track-suit is racing along, as if he were flowing himself, a shadow on stones, away from the eyes of the world. If you ask me: No one will very easily outdistance him, after four miles he's still running quite easily. That's typical again: A restless man who can hardly keep his secrets locked up inside his skin, to make up for that his clothes are a good fit, and they fit him like a second skin. His vigorous ambition, I like it. Yet he is not one of those who want something good in the world. A spirit, who's always negative, except when he sometimes says yes. Fine. His constant dissatisfaction, I like that too. So I put him together for myself and now pass judgment on the result. To each his own. What would satisfy him, now that I don't like so much. So I pass judgment, and my judgment is harsh. He constantly wants to get something for nothing, even if it's a whole house, I certainly believe that. I merely hope the one he has intended for subjugation, whoever it is, will play along when the time comes. He's made a contact, which will be important for his future, and he's not going to let go of it again: Something big can come of it: The obedient oppress the submissive. Neither side will get anywhere. This man would even pit himself against the water, if he could find it, but the water has finally been shut up down below, it is itself a very large place, and it flows away, whereas the man is looking for his limits. Nobody is going to show them to him. Wait a minute, now I see the boundaries, they're made of steel, look like railings, and they are transportable. He didn't set them down himself, the country policeman, his colleagues in the capital did that in front of parliament, to protect the demonstration-free area which the representatives of the people have raised up against the people in order to show the latter: You're not part of us, but don't worry, we'll represent you anyway. The country policeman's commanding officer announces to this mercenary, so often late for duty, in bitter words, that overtime can no longer be paid, because the regional government doesn't have any money left over for it, and Mr. Janisch receives these bad tidings with apparent subservience. Another house less, in three hundred years at the earliest he will have one less. I like that too. The fact that he can accept that. In other respects the man definitely has to be tamed, but no one can do that to his desires. He would need support, because he can't find them, his own limits, and goes unhurriedly onto the wrong track of his being. Well, he won't find the water either anymore, we've put that under the earth. The earth a pair of lips that has received it. The man in his persistent angry darkness would not want to lay himself down in that. The water is already there, no place is reserved for him anywhere. The ground even swallows up houses, think of Lassing Mine, which disappeared, and the consequences! The house, almost all of it slipped inside the earth, you can still partly see the part that's poking out of the pit, if the people living round about let you, you can even see the window boxes usual in the area together with their colorful inhabitants, whose heads are meanwhile sadly drooping. You can still see the very tops of the furniture pieces, dear guests, toys, junk, stuff accumulated over time, but once again no one has time to water the flowers. To do that one would have to leap thirty feet and be able to breathe in mud. The locals don't want any people who find catastrophes beautiful, but now they have a place themselves to which visitors can travel at any time, just to take a look. And they wouldn't even find this place by themselves, they would have to look at the map and ask the locals, because there, where there is supposed to be something, nothingness has stopped over, to be drunk down eternally at the break of dawn. Only in a more solid house could he feel safe in the long term, thinks the man, despite everything that can happen to houses and that can also happen to one with people. We don't need to make any allowances for people who have disappeared, we won't see them again. Right now the country policeman is planning an extra storeroom in the cellar, under the stairs. If he takes something away here and instead builds something over there, a radically rustic cellar room, for example (the bones of the deceased could easily decorate the walls), then it'll work out all right, and even if it were a hollow space, a nothing, which also needs walls, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be nothing, otherwise the whole house wouldn't exist, which is itself a hollow space and only, like the clearing in the forest, becomes one by acquiring limits, consisting of itself, we place an order for them in wood or stone, and then we sit down inside and make ourselves comfortable. Could that be due to the fact that this man in his intimidating loneliness has long ago lost his limits and would like to meet someone who points them out to him again? And this time they should enclose a larger area than before, please. We would be happy if we could see his face, the face of the country policeman, for once, and not only have it described. Or is he himself the drawer of limits, is there something about himself he wants to forget? What does he need so that he no longer hides his light under a bushel, but can forever cast it across a well-furnished room? If the room remains quiet, the light will always strike him right between the eyes and then fall on the Persian carpet, just where the cigarette burnt a hole. After all, we got the carpet so cheaply because of the hole. We, however, with our sense of legitimacy, don't have to go so far at all, to find our limits. They are frightful, luckily they are as a consequence watched over by armed guards. It's enough if we run for three hours till our tongue is hanging out. But for the half-naked marathon man five hours aren't enough either, then we, he and I, read the newspaper, which doesn't want strangers to cross our borders, unless they book hotel rooms or find, somewhat cheaper, shelter on our farms together with the animals. This last three-quarters of a line, but only that, not one letter more, I can't afford to give anything away, I dedicate to the poor man from Sri Lanka, who yesterday was fished out of the Danube at Hamburg as the sole survivor, the remaining fugitives capsized with their rubber dinghy and drowned and have disappeared. Heat-seeking cameras have been specially developed to keep the borders under surveillance. People who are looking for shelter can be identified in the view-finder, even when they're lying flat on the ground. On these human carpets, at least they don't have any burn holes, because in this case we've burnt the whole carpet, we practice our fawning manners, which we require for those strangers who are to be stroked, slaughtered, and gutted. The rest get a good smack around the face and are then eaten by our dear rivers, so they don't cause us any extra work. So here no one slips on carpets of human flesh anymore, people are now enclosed like our springs and thrown into grated refuse containers. And then if they throw a fit, a lid gets shoved on top as well. We once again know everything that we forgot about humanity, when we looked at animals and they looked back at us. And we know even more, when we have looked at these strangers through these heat-seeking cameras and they haven't looked at us, because they don't have such cameras. Indeed. Even when they're lying flat on the ground, the strangers, we can still see them: Aha, so there it is, our own, sole border, we'll find it all right, once we have moved it. At least when our partner plays around, we'll certainly be able to show him our limit then.

The country policeman, whom we actually wanted to describe before we slunk off behind a tree, has a special watch just for running and a pulse rate gauge and a solo gauge that cost a lot of money, oh no, that's not true, they're presents from a woman! With that he could feed one of these poor souls for a week, if he's keen on watches, and knows how to prepare them. The country policeman is informed about that, and his information is very modest: Once the water was still here, right below me. He knew his way around this geo-information system, this hiker and sportsman. This man of the law, his own law of course. Soil, water, forest were indispensable, like him they have an extremely complex range of duties and must not be mistaken as to what they should do when. Now unfortunately we've lost nature; when we were looking for it, it was a handy opportunity to set things right at the same time. The water belongs in the ground, the forest belongs on the ground, the water doesn't belong on top of the ground, and the forest doesn't belong in the water, otherwise the water overflows, I mean, comes over us. I constantly have to make such decisions with respect to politics, economics, and extraction techniques, with very far-reaching consequences, when I want to say something about nature. There's no other way of putting it, because nature doesn't exist anymore, so why should it suddenly come back? Just so that I can look at it a bit more closely this time? Nature is the opposite of something that has something to say to us, although it very often pleases us. That's why we now have to express it somehow, so that everything really does come out. At present nature is nowhere to be seen. Please hand me your efficient planning and decision-making outline, on this basis I shall then be able to write something entirely new about nature, should you in all seriousness expect that of me.

As a child the country policeman sometimes biked along the stream down in the valley with his father, while the water comfortingly bubbled up from the depths, only just arrived from the mountain heights, and still with the vigor of its origins fairly high up hopped over the stones, its own work, because all water comes out of itself, so it belongs to itself and no one else, and so we have stolen and used it, haven't we? or not? And the son also walked around with his father, I can still remember it myself. His father was friendly, sometimes even kind and protective like a hut up in the Alps, unlike the weather house, one never knows where one is with it, sometimes the girl is outside, then the boy, and it's impossible to decide which of the two one likes better.

There comes the nice thought, that one of them sits down on one's face with their naked buttocks, the legs hanging left and right over one's ears like a pair of cherries, and then sometimes one thinks involuntarily: rather the boy. There's more to him. Perhaps the character of the father, also a country policeman, was a bit lacking in color. If we're talking about water: To the son the father appeared dull, as if nothing recognizable could be reflected in him, as if his feelings had been impoverished under the pressure of his advancement and the constant performance of his duty, with which the former small farmer's son had to prove himself. Although everything was always there for the son when he needed it, it works like this: Sometimes pay no attention to the child, then again be strict with him, which is only fair, since for a long time one ignores the child whom one was raising up, until then it falls down the cellar stairs. Keep a close eye on the child, if possible frequently step on his toes so that his legs grow heavy. That will do him a great deal of good, because he will be able to recognize at an early age the difference in his father's behavior, in accordance with the Domestic Animal Husbandry Index. Behavior is fair to animals, if the following points have been addressed: possibility of movement, ground conditions, social contact, hutch or coop climate (air! light! God!) and intensity of care (teacher! cane! stone! scissors!). Points are awarded, and the score should really be higher than 25, if the child is to sit the test and his elders, who, as the word says, are older, are to pass it. As he walks past, the father nods absent-mindedly to you, so, he's not going to hit you, at least not for the next ten minutes. Perhaps he'll hit your mother, because he likes doing that more, but not you. Not yet, this time. Perhaps again the next time. Let's just wait and see. The father has died meanwhile, of cancer. Wasn't he still there, only yesterday, when he had his son read the signs of the shops in town as a reading exercise? The boy looks at what's displayed in the window, then he says the name of the shop. Wrong. But if one can't see it, it doesn't exist, does it? Even forests, though not of course those with a primary welfare function, because they are supposed to protect us, ward off dangers by crushing people, settlements, and buildings, which did not comply with official provisions or prohibitions, to pulp. Yes, they come down in person, the forests, if they've got into a rage. Who would have thought it of them? They're not sorry to make you suffer, when your house was standing on this spot just a moment ago! Was the father not nice to his son, who almost jumped as high as the father's parting when the latter deliberately stood on the boy's toes? The son should please raise his feet when he's walking! Not shuffle along like that on the gravel of the inn garden. When after all one only comes here once a month as a treat. If you think that's nice, then you might just as well regard the struggling bushes in my front garden as embellishments.