Greed (27 page)

In the meantime the need for action has become very urgent, but the last time someone else acted, who discovered her in her car at a crossroads, stopped and gutted her without even giving her local anaesthetic. Everything was taken out of her hands. Who could suspect it. We need something in writing. So sooner or later we go to the notary. The people who now want to act, no matter how and with what, they get first choice, and they choose someone they like. He tells the truth, is decent, sporty, clean and energetic and stands out from someone whom they just don't like so much, although he, too, is decent, sporty, clean, and energetic. But unfortunately one can't tell by looking at him. Fortunately only someone is chosen about whom you can tell everything by looking, above all, that he is steady on his feet, but he stands or sits even more steadily in his Porsche. The decent and able. The hard-working, too. What is their secret? I don't know, otherwise I would pass it on. Perhaps we want to be deceived, because we are constantly deceiving everyone, that is, if we get the opportunity. This woman for example has had herself sterilized, which she candidly confesses, although now she couldn't have any children anyway. She doesn't want children and has never wanted them, since she herself is a child and wants to be like a child for the man. Another child would always only have got in the way. The other, Gabi, herself hardly more than a child, also did nothing but get in the way. Which is the proof. Of what? For whom? No matter who it is, at the moment one sets the life and the soul of the party on him, and already he's off to the carnival at Villach or looks at it on TV and feels altogether at home in this country. Others live in the lake, no, you can't say that Mme. Author, if someone is sleeping in a lake that doesn't at all mean that they're living there. Didn't you see the rubber dinghy? It lives in an attic room with photos on the walls, baby animals and pictures of models, both of them public and private projects, it just depends who is making use of them and what he is exploiting them for. Exploitation is the main thing, in order to feel good oneself, simply fantastic. Every glittering snowflake tumbling down insensibly would say that of itself, while it's still in the air, it's looking forward to the soft landing, and then it's already melted. Not even a hot stone was needed.

The crucial detail, which no one saw, or everyone who paid no particular attention to it, was a car, which in the cold nights of the previous winter, before it went off in the direction of springalingaling, was parked nearly every morning very close to the bus stop. There was a high degree of probability that waiting at the wheel was the man who for more than six months secretly drove Gabi to work in the county town, and occasionally, when his own working hours permitted, also drove her back again. It's certain at least that more than half of the girl's journeys to work on this relatively short stretch were made with this unknown man, we won't even start on the other journeys, at night, mad with delight, otherwise we would sink to the ground at the thought of all the things these two got up to together and how they did it. Gabi must have deceived her mother and her boyfriend. Others she couldn't deceive, but they never said anything about it. No one knew about it, let's stick to the official version. Once in this sequence-if we stepped closer, then we would see more-Gabi's breath completely stopped coming, when perhaps she had been too much of a burden to the man, who after all only wanted to spoil her. That's not right. One does need a bit of it! It was achieved through gentle pressure, because Gabi, spoiled by tenderness, became pretty naughty. The tongue, the larynx, the carotid arteries, the lungs have been trained for public appearances. If one denies it to them, because one wants to leave a person entirely alone with their breath, then these two become feeble in their ambition to maintain the functioning of the body. They mock the rest of the body, call out to it: Without us you are nothing and can do nothing. You can try if you like, you are at liberty to do that, but you will fall down, dear body, and rising up will be possible only with great difficulty, or, if you are God, who rises again, then that will become evident, at latest, at the moment when the women roll away a stone and begin to weep and wail. But if you are God, then you don't need us anyway. The oxygen has been diverted from the brain, the brain surfaces have dried up, the environmental conditions in the brain biotope have been drastically altered. Anyone who believes species-rich life partnerships of thinking and thought would be more stable is right in principle, but not always. A maximization of the number of thoughts should not absolutely be an aspiration in a project like this, in case you're wondering why so few ideas are to be found here, in this place. Then you just have to search! Apart from that it is not absolutely necessary that there are many. More important is: which, and also important is the analysis of my thoughts with respect to the parts they play in my brain, because my brain gets so easily bored and longs to instigate something new. And then there would still remain to be decided which strategies, with respect to what I shall stuff into my brainbox, would have to be represented, so that they then represent me and that I in turn can here decently represent and act as counsel for people living or once living. The more diverse the TV films I empty into my upper story, the greater the number of species of organisms I will then later be able to harvest from my tables and benches. I consume dead stuff and make life out of it. I then have it well prepared. One should also perhaps read the newspapers. Thanks, I'm pleased to do it, it's always worthwhile. Here, e.g., I've copied out many pages, but I haven't joined them together yet. I'm always astonished how the natural things of life are revealed to me, but then I immediately slam the door shut again. It's a paper chase after facts, just you start, you won't, however, find anything anymore, because I will have dismembered the bodies, and then I've poured the highly effective Andy Pandy drain cleaner, a British product, unfortunately no longer obtainable nowadays, on top. Now they're gone, like the two fried eggs earlier on. Oh no, now I've dropped the vague hints of one of Gabi's girlfriends, who one or two days ago looked thoughtfully up to the sky (she could never look as pretty as Gabi, that's why she's sprayed something around her, from a L'Oreal box, so that she can't be seen so clearly), and she said something nasty, which, e.g., would not turn up in a story of the Virgin Mary. Now that the road is clear, this girl is groping around in her friend's life, hesitating as to what she can pick out of it, to make better use of it, a nice calm faithful husband, children, a home of their own, holiday, and then she drops a vague hint, pointing in a direction which is still hidden from our eyes. We see nothing. This hint will only be returned to later, when suddenly others will also point to it, like the sun, which shines back in the evening before it finally lowers itself to the other half of the globe, where the soles of people's feet are already burning and they at last want the sun above their heads.

Which car then, student driver? Fellow employee, please step forward and speak loudly and clearly into this microphone, so that our diligent officers can hear it! Well, I tell you, the lighting effect when Gabi came into the office, it was as if she was wearing diamonds, as if she was floating in the sun. One would have liked to squeeze her there and then, she wasn't a mother yet, but everything else, even Carnival Princess and Harvest Princess, so probably there was nothing else to come. I would really like to describe what a glow there would be in the folksy hut, around the beer and the music on the radio, where the regulars stare into their glasses which, dulled by the dishwasher, cannot give back a single ray That by the way is why the regulars at their tables usually don't display a ray of hope or anything else. Such a pretty girl, our Gabi, as if she didn't belong to us. She laughed a lot, perhaps not quite so much at the end. And on the edge of the washstand in the Ladies lies an oblong case, containing lipstick, liner and mascara, which make her look even more beautiful, Gabi, a little ring with a rock crystal, a friendship ring from her boyfriend, is also there, when she gently lowers her head, looks nice, lets someone brush her hair from her shoulders and idly wastes a little time, which has been given by someone or other, oh if only everyone had as much time for themselves or they should take it, one would see the result. That's what's written up at the checkout in the Billa Market, where cleaning things for the times are on offer: eye shadow, moisturizing creams, even pore cleansing strips. It's always supposed to go deep, although most people prefer shallowness and chatter away, as they buy a velvet hair band, that they would like to see this or that musical. Plants and animals are dependent on one another, and which eye shadow shade goes with a complexion, that also is dependent on both, which with a bit of good will could work very well together, if nature would only let them and would possibly accept cosmetic help. But it does! At all times. Please, come in and make my lumps and spots invisible! No matter what they want, we let the colors onto our skin, as we were advised, we also allow phosphates into our lakes and rivers, although we were explicitly advised against it. Gabi had a secret, so what, nature has its secrets too. Today nature is going out with this soil type, found at the edge of the lake. And tomorrow it will go out with another one. But with whom is Gabi going about, if not with the official boyfriend from the tech college? No one knows. No idea. But there is someone. No one knows how many manifestations of water there are on earth, but many would like to know, because wind-surfing, racing motor boats, sailing or swimming are their hobby. And no one is supposed to have known anything more about this young neighbor from right here amongst us? The wind treats the water cruelly, another hundred yards, and there's death waiting already and looking at his watch and tapping the ground with his scythe. Where on the other hand is Gabi, is the question some others are asking, who are also slowly getting anxious. Not many. Boyfriend and mother sit opposite one another and outbid one another in everyday normality, so that there are no silences. What else do they have to talk about with one another, apart from Gabi? The mother is meanwhile anyway thinking only about her friend in Germany, when will she be able to go again, what will he say about it, she'll soon be with him. They, the mother and Gabi's boyfriend, also outbid one another with Soletti pretzel sticks, which are always there. That makes things easy for me, otherwise I would have to think of something else. The boyfriend muses to himself how often his cock stands up straight at the sight of Gabi, although he hasn't even finished eating yet, and he was only halfway through the porn magazine; unfortunately she's not there now. She's probably pushed off, the house feels dead. An emptiness reigns, which today the young man can't fill with immature thoughts. Hardly has he entered the house than he is overcome by a strange shyness, he asks nature for once to leave his lust for his girlfriend right out of his thoughts today, but doesn't rightly know why. Thoughts are free. Today he wants to think about her tenderly, even demandingly, and the demands are supposed to end with a visit to the cinema in the county town, and beyond that for once there are to be no more demands. Will she once again grip his cock so firmly right above the balls as recently, and then slowly stroke upwards, to the very end, where she would grip even more tightly? She says it gives her the creeps, she doesn't like to look, but he's patient and can wait for her to do it again and again and again, just as he has shown her. The main thing is that she lies there quietly and lets him enter her again and then moves her hips a little. A dream, I tell you! If you and I together were a house, we would collapse now. By nature Gabi is not very explosive, but a bottle of wine can do wonders. Earlier he briefly went up to her room, opened, has no idea why, the wardrobe, smelt the clothes, jingled a couple of thin gold armbands on the dressing table, he listened: nothing. The cupboard probably wants to go to sleep. Everything neat and tidy. Have you already spoken to the essence of absence today? No? Tell it, I'm looking for it! How quiet it is here. The approx. 2,000 cuddly toys are all happy as every day, at their own beauty and about how lovingly each and every one was chosen by their owner, one has to collect for years, that's why they're the only ones here looking really self-satisfied. Now the room could surely gradually dispense with the darkness in the corners, couldn't it? Everything's all right, isn't it? The technical college student opens the other wardrobe doors as well. As if Gabi would voluntarily sit down in the wardrobe for two days. The water balance of the earth continues to diligently wash out its cups, which are constantly being stolen by people who are wasting water all the time, it's probably not their cup of tea. Oh dear, that doesn't work, and it's also a repetition. Forgive me, I often can't keep up with myself, at any rate so many landscapes depend on water, this most precious commodity, think of the Carinthian lakes and those of the Salzkammergut, where the rich have firmly and safely stashed themselves away and if they ever have to vote then always choose freedom and the Freedom Party. You can set your clock by them. The mother draws on a cigarette, already the fifteenth today, that will do her good and calm her down, if Gabi stays away much longer. The mother's bronchial tubes ask leave to speak, but we ignore them. Water, of which a human being is made up, so much so that one shouldn't put them in water after their death as well, water to water instead of dust to dust. Somehow superfluous, I think. Ground water research in the mother's lungs would say: Enough is enough, in ten years at latest it will be possible to raise cancers here, but then we'll be dead and won't have to look at it anymore. The mother is crying now and needs yet another handkerchief, because this one can't absorb and store much more. What should the ground or even my hard disk say, when I've served everything up so nicely and have explicitly let the earth know! Without the least twinge of conscience we expect them to put up with everything, how mean.