Greed (30 page)

Kurt Janisch has stopped, for a moment the car seems to him like a paper bag which has been filled with air and then burst. An animal has hit it a little too forcefully. The country policeman's heart hammers right up to his throat and into his leisure shirt. It's as if he is held tight by these two giant hands which clapped together above the car, as if they wanted to applaud him. The heavy impact of a living thing can produce such an effect in anyone, above all if one was not prepared for it, but one can also drive off with a feeling of indifference until something even worse happens. Whatever was hit, torn, thrust aside, it has been thrown onto the road and is already lying behind Kurt Janisch. Where on earth did the car get the rage and the strength for that? It got them, this much-admired creature, brought up to kick, punch, shove, to show off and murder, from us. And another animated creature now bleats and scrapes the asphalt, scratches the surface, drowned in itself, but nevertheless half on its legs again, gone head over heels, but on its hooves again and on course, one of the inhabitants of the night to which it, too, wants to belong. What distant light could have drawn it? Here there is only the sparse illumination of the federal highways. The bridges are for people, on their way into the beyond, who wanted to have another drink or two beforehand for the long journey, who knows if we'll get anything on the way, so it's better if we first fill up with as much as the disco clothes will take, which should actually uncover us, a covering which unfortunately doesn't take very much, when a tree and the like or similar living thing gets in its way The stag has hurried a little bit further up the wall of time in its eagerness, it has bounced off the pliant membrane which separates this world from the world on the other side, and which is permeable in only a few places, and has been catapulted back into the here and now, bounced back like a trumpet note, which was thrown back by a rock face, it was wedged in by the confinement of a road, which now returns it to nature. So. Nature is handed a present, for which it will certainly still find a use, because the hunter, too, is close to nature and deserves his pleasures. This stag will not escape him so easily. It will find it hard to get away. But still. Kurt Janisch reaches for his revolver, he'll have to shoot the animal if he's seriously injured it. But that doesn't appear to be the case. The fall was far but not fatal. Only yesterday an express train tore up a whole flock of sheep not far from here, over forty dead animals, flung through the air like cotton-wool balls, the good shepherd fallen asleep drunk somewhere, the dog in the field alone, not a hope. Now the shepherd has to bear joint responsibility for the whole loss, or don't you think he bears a responsibility, dear television audience, write and let us know what you think, it's your views that count. We will clarify the legal position and look thoughtful as we do so, and everyone will want to clarify it differently, I'll put a bet on that already. Kurt Janisch doesn't want to take part, he's thinking of his own legal consequences and resolves to pursue others, with his own law and rights, as the vultures do, and other birds of prey. Some take from the living, some from the dead. There are moments when one should smile, best of all at the camera, which is thrusting into one's face. This is not one of those moments. The stretch of road here is notorious. Per year approximately fifty or sixty red deer, mainly stags, they don't stay with their herd as they should, it seems to me, are mashed up. Do you hear the cries from the dreadful warmth of their pools of blood? Their carcasses are lying around everywhere, mostly on the hard shoulder (though not properly dressed). But often they also lie in the middle of the road, just wherever they've been tossed, not stirred, a few have even been stuck to the windscreen or were hanging over the bonnet like a fur stole, while no sun could be found in the dark night sky to wrap them in warmth a little longer, the dead animals. This whole landscape sometimes seems to consist of steaming blood and long-drawn-out cries. The cars conduct a campaign against life, which still continues at this very hour. Terrible things with wings, mostly crows and jackdaws, glide over it all, they come because they've been summoned to pick out eyes, they always have their tools with them. Crows can be quite wicked and spear the faces of the dead with their thorn beaks. This stag, however, will soon be eating and drinking again, though at the moment it's staggering around a bit, because it can't understand where it could have got so drunk, but it'll be all right. If no one comes from the opposite direction now, he'll manage to make it into the timber forest, yes, he's made it, up he goes. Down to the river would have been the wrong direction, then sooner or later he would have turned back frustrated, would have angrily reached the road, and a little later someone else would have got him and this time done the job properly. Fate never rings twice, one has to open the door the first time, it is too lazy to do so itself. The area is very abundant in game, and the spirits of every single person who lives here are completely different several times a day. Kurt Janisch's brother-in-law from Garinthia once related he had hit a pregnant hind, which had immediately expired beside his mudguard. That already doesn't sound good. Does this sound any better? The fawn spilled out of the hind's burst stomach and lay next to it, it had to be personally killed by the driver with a stone, not a nice task, but what can one do in such a situation. No one, absolutely no one should suffer unnecessarily, that's certain. Because it would only have suffered, the fawn, so we put it out of its misery, with one foot still almost in the hot monster that brought us to this spot and yet only wanted to gobble its gas at the next filling station, it wants to live, too, it's so nice and it took so long to choose it. What happened to the rest?

The engine, rapidly cooling in the cold night air, now ticks over quite gently, starting up again at last, listen, no, no sound of anything else here. Life was preserved and returned to the earth, thank you very much, but the address was wrong. Nevertheless the earth does not let go once it has something. It sometimes lends one something, if one complains long enough. An abyss was briefly open and now it's closed again. The blinds are down. The ravens aren't coming, they're almost only to be found in the Tyrol. They don't fly so far. To make up for that they can speak. But at the moment they're offended, because they're constantly confused with crows. Kurt Janisch smiles for no reason, he's on a campaign, and to this end he advances into the field, to the dead river bank, where, beside the rushing river, the paper tissues sleep in their nest, which they've built for themselves, only from themselves, like the eternal Being. The keen eyes of Kurt Janisch inspect the ground, his watchful hands now grip the flashlight switched to function 2 (don't flash, we need a steady light, we're already nervous enough as it is!). His hands are still shaking a little. He bends down and crawls reluctantly into the undergrowth, illuminates the ground inch by inch. There's nothing more to be found there, only half-frozen mud, dirt, but who knows what a couple of rigorously deployed sensitive instruments in the forensic laboratory, in the sure hands of experts, would find? The senses of man should be more acute than the instruments he created, but they are not, otherwise one would not have specially had to invent them. Dark slope, do you surrender now or not, what you've pocketed? With the human herd, who trampled around today in the mountains and glided around on the pistes and cycled around in the forest, one can't collect everything they've left behind, that's impossible. Not even the Country Police will do that, so it doesn't matter. This country policeman at any rate is only still crawling around in order to be able to have a response to the unpleasant reluctance in himself: I'm still looking, I'm looking, I can't help it if I don't find anything, just a moment, was it more this way or more that way? I can't remember anymore. The bush over there is a heap of needles, which prick unpleasantly and aim for the eyes, like the crows, a small malicious army, which, almost wiped out, has closed up in order to offer final determined resistance. No, we would never have crawled under this bush, it would have torn our skins and tattooed it with weals, instead of bringing skin together with skin. Gabi would anyway have refused to crawl under there, her hair, her jeans, her new jacket, bah, bah, double bah. The usual. Blubbering. The ones who get hit also cry out sometimes, there's nothing one can do about it. Apart from that it would have given her the creeps, a pile of shit could have called stop! like the blast from a horn, because tourists like to crouch under such bushes, if they want to save the money for the restaurant but nevertheless want to relieve themselves and not their purses. No. I think it must have been further over there, it gets flatter too, there's a little clearing surrounded by green bushes, oh, look, the buds, so delicate, so green already! The country policeman illuminates the way ahead, but he still doesn't see anything which might count at some point. Here and there a candy wrapper flashes up in the beam of the searchlight as if it wanted to mock the searcher, it still bears the warm trace of hands, this cough drop cellophane. It won't decay for centuries and will still be able to delight our grandchildren with its sparkle, this ancient number from yesteryear, if they happened to come here at night with their flashlights, discharged from the thousand suns, brighter than any disco.

Kurt Janisch, don't let yourself be interrupted, keep on looking. He searches, all the more avidly the more hopeless it appears, as if he now had to save his own thoughts at least, which threaten to escape him. No, we don't think, we'd rather dig with our bare hands in the frozen dirt of the winter which has hardly passed. Quite pointlessly Kurt Janisch tears at the low branches, shakes them like fists, how can something be lying there or even fall down? Do handkerchiefs grow on trees here? This man likes to surround himself with trees in order to enjoy the feeling of plenty, even when one owns nothing. He is always, in the first instance, after houses, and what has he got so far? Well, now I have to mock: Nature, nothing but nature, whose body he now kicks with his heavy climbing shoes, the tree trunks, in an ever more furious fit of rage. He races around in the wood like a wild animal, throws himself against the fir trees with a crash, though he doesn't get far, the branch work is terribly dense, impenetrable, he scrapes around in the half-frozen mud, which, thawing in the body heat, protrudes from his fingernails, because they can't hold anymore. Now he hits out with his fists as well, again and again, blood is running down his wrists. He resounds like a note running after its own echo, because it hasn't heard it and is entitled to it in the mountains, two copies attached!, into the forest by the river, again and again, it looks as if he wanted to passionately embrace the trees, the country policeman, yet, like many people, the trees confuse hate with love and cuddle up to him, the bad man, clasp him, who is plucking out all their little twigs and kicks their trunks for no reason at all, which after all are only lightly clothed in bark and lichens. They are not dressed sturdily enough. Now he is even scraping away the earth at the roots, our Kurt Janisch. Anyone who sees it will think it odd, perhaps there are even traces of blood, then the country policeman would really have achieved the opposite of what he wanted. This forest promises him only annihilation, and it promises that he, Kurt Janisch, will afterwards be cleanly cleared away. It's not like drowning, no, all the many animals come who also want to eat, and they eat simply everything, but go into the water, no they wouldn't do that. It works the other way round as well: Do you see this trout? The rear end of a mouse is hanging out of its open jaws. How did that happen? How on earth? I don't know how the jaws are supposed to close again. At any rate I'm not going to pull the mouse out. There, everywhere, is a great shepherd, who has left his sheep in the lurch, but he didn't let them go into the water. He is there for them, even if not always, and he stands by the ring, until finally an abandoned lower jaw, you must be joking!, grins at him out of the undergrowth, the upper part plus teeth has long ago been dragged away by other animals, hey, you, I've bitten the dust, my dentist wouldn't have liked that at all. He's even forbidden me to do it. Must have been a deer, if you like a deer above all else then please look the other way now, because this is exactly what it could have been, no, it wasn't, no matter, it threw away its body long ago, perhaps because you didn't love it as much as you thought. So, this flame would have gone out now, the teeth are gone too, the hooves have galloped off. Today another animal was luckier than this one. So it goes. One always wins, the others only lose. The flame of life, before it is blown out by a mouth puckered for a kiss, which was always easily able to deceive one, is indeed a very sensitive little flame, there's not much gas left, it's all used up, and consumption has already been paid for and debited from our account. What's puffing there as if of stronger, higher flames? A scornful night sky, which according to the position of the moon tells us the time and that Our Time in Pictures Part Three will soon begin in this little box here, and then a completely new age will dawn, and if we finally want to see this new age, then we must make our way to a more inviting location with more fashionable furnishings.

And there we have it already, THE LOCATION, LOCATION, a pretty kitchen-living room quite deliberately fitted out in a rustic look and nevertheless sighing with dissatisfaction, since it would rather collect itself into a nice crowd of kitchens by Dan or someone, preferably one for each family member, they wanted to form a kitchen circle, each one in his very own house, for the time being we only have one and a half housing units, because the son's house still belongs to someone. Into this kitchen enter, in their own character, without feeling ashamed, sure of their adventurousness, the TV guests of VERA, the hostess from the beyond, who collects the waste water of human beings and, giving a blessing, sprinkles it on the heads of millions, solemn water, which we crowd around, only in order to see: Others are even more desperate than we are. How fantastic is that, overjoyed I write a whole novel, if necessary. This one. They are not ravaged by hate, the family people in this kitchen, they are delighted with their new property. Patrick, the child, will get a whole room just for his video games. The son's wife will get the whole cellar as a washing and ironing room. The country policeman's wife will perhaps get a conservatory in order to sit quite alone with the television and find out if she wants to be a millionaire or to receive from the television a country barn dance, which will spur her on, quite alone, to laugh heartily, until she herself is locked up in it again. The country policeman's son will get a whole floor to himself in order-the hobby of every other young man-to assemble electronic circuits, which will seem completely beside the point to everyone else, because they already exist. There he can also pursue his second hobby, playing a home organ. But because this hobby is always running too far ahead of him, he's going to give it up again soon. The country policeman himself will simply get everything he wants and will feel unusually burdened by all his property. A sleepwalker, a chiseled body of stone (with a way of speaking for women), who has to bear a whole house, and yet one alone will never be enough for him, although he would not be able to bear anymore. We see: dark heads bent over a building plan, which they have boldly removed from a drawer and even more boldly will alter with their own felt-tips; in this bath they will soon splash, and in this extension with a bay window they will make quite personal gestures to one another, which, another personal present, nothing from a shop!, will be received as slaps in the face. We see eyes, which do not turn away from straight and dotted lines, but complete them or make completely different subdivisions just as they please, according to their own yardstick. My soul tells me that these people are not for a moment thinking of themselves, but only of their descendants, who, in the shape of Patrick, the country policeman's grandson, loaf around in front of the television, let the fate of strangers bounce impudently off them and instead absorb a whole pound of cookies, but only those that they know from the advertisements, which are explicitly and exclusively directed at our young people. The country policeman now turns up at home again, as if by magic, he's wet, rumpled and dirty, but he never has to give explanations anyway. Showers and changes his clothes, while in between what happened with the stag falls from his lips like dried clay. That doesn't particularly upset anyone here, at most, that the stag survived, that's very rare. Fancy that. The things life is capable of! Until now we've only credited death with surmounting such difficulties. Life ultimately does rise above everything, if one has been able to obtain it in the hospital, but the things a skillful mason, a joiner, a carpenter are capable of, if one lets them, that is more than thinking, it is the activity of the industrious and hard-working, of which I have often spoken here, but it has paid off every time. Apart from that, others have done it even more often, haven't they? It's difficult to talk about ordinary things. About the lamplight, which blows away the darkness, the TV, which shoos away melancholy, the conversations at the family dinner table, which snarling chase away the intellect, the clothes, which hide the ill-shaped bodies of people or sometimes also such a compact, home-carved work of art as Kurt Janisch, whom one could exhibit just like that in the museum of local art and culture, if only he were a little more kindly, or finally about a building plan, which subsequently discards its own house, I could talk about it endlessly, oh how beautiful it all is, because one can always work hard at oneself and at others. And how happy I am nevertheless to be allowed to say all that here. Thank you so much for everything.