Greed (35 page)

So now the doctor cuts this young dead woman open from top to bottom, the skull is sawn open, there's no cause for hope anyway, and a silver friendship ring is pulled from her hand, which once felt something, to be given back to her family. Death. It draws its terrors, I think, solely from its linking of individuality and no longer being. If we were all equal, we would be indifferent to death, because we could only die as species and not tell one another about it. Just look at this spirit, for example, it's a very new one, a group of people thought it up when they realized that they would never be more like God than in this film about pilots, in which they were able to achieve power over themselves and the likes of us by a kind of surprise attack. For once at least! You can see for yourself how the little bit of spirit that was produced will try in vain to reach us in further episodes every evening before the news, in order to outdo the news in advance in horrors, and so today, too, it rehearses it again from the TV set, because without rehearsal it can't do it: inflating itself. The spirit is unceasing rehearsal (one can tell its knowledge of the futility of its attempts from looking at it, I believe), desperate efforts, without success. If you don't understand it immediately, you can also read up on it in Austrian Broadcasting's Teletext service; the spirit is very concerned to make it exciting for us, so that we at last take note of whatever. Announced, e.g., today: Train crash in Norway, so you shouldn't travel to Norway. Have you understood that at least? But it's no use, because tomorrow there's something quite different again, even more horrifying, but somewhere else. The TV is the immortal spirit's favorite place to stay, perhaps even the place where it originated, because it doesn't seem to want to leave. No wonder, it's nice and warm, it's almost as if it were still inside the head. But perhaps television is also the only place where, against its better judgement, the spirit can still hope that we pay attention to it. And so it makes its compulsory contribution to the process of growth and decay, we watch the Universe program and see that the beautiful butterfly has already emerged and has inflicted a terrible fate on a cabbage leaf, and so we give it a good hiding. We would have managed that even without the television. But the spirit doesn't know that. Now it's offended! Yet I like it so much. You can also get by without it, but I don't say so. Basically everything can happen by itself. Once the spirit was the whole world, today it is, e.g., a family soap, which scorches its feet if it doesn't immediately keep on running to the next episode, always ahead of the advertisements, chased by them as by a bad-tempered lioness. Always keep moving, until we are allowed to see the Lord God, who will possibly provide a poorer picture, less clear (even though the set isn't broken!) than in the nice nature film before. Apart from that God's only on once a week, on Sunday evening before the prime-time film. And if he appears earlier, we switch him off. And if he nevertheless drops by unexpectedly, he sometimes comes disguised as a bishop, so that we can get used to the sight of him, and that in the shape of Mr. Horst "Derrick" Tappert, who has begun a completely new career, because this time he, too, would like to show a bit of spirit, at least more than before. It seems to be infectious. He would almost have died, this washout, he comes to us for bit of starch. Here I have to agree with Hegel's critics, all the pain, all the suffering, all the hardship, all the everything, all the death in itself, none of it will result in even one less innocent dumb sheep writhing on the slaughtering block of history. God created, and then he didn't waste another thought on what he had done, I'd risk laying a bet on that. I've gone on often enough about it, now that's that, once and for all, I have to accept it, and that is fortunately also the absolute end, and I don't ever want to write something down again. Now, poor child of this world that I am, I would at last like to meet the world spirit in person, so that it sends me a completely new bright idea, how I could shape my talent for invention-which I once, during carnival, in front of lay people, disguised as spirit, because for sure no one would have suspected that I was underneath-even more purposefully and ambitiously, above all in terms of content, that's my weak point, here I state a doctrine, which goes: I don't believe that myself! Or better, I avoid the spirit as I have done so far and instead show myself, quite stunned by my significance, personally, just as I am. I am I. We are we. I signify nothing, but I have a certain significance, as you see yourself. Perhaps I am even more important than you! Until now at least I've got quite far like that, and I don't have a car. If I don't believe it, why should you believe that one can get anywhere without ever putting anything in the tank? Your travel group met half an hour ago on platform four, but now this train, too, has left. So if contrary to expectations the world spirit does come after all, because I haven't come to it, I shall do everything to send it, which kept me waiting so long, back to where it came from, with a single haughty glance. Now I don't want it anymore. Off you go. To church. Because that's a place I never go to. So I shan't meet it and so will no longer have to relinquish my own thoughts. Bravo? Did I hear rightly? Bravo? So now I don't need the spirit at all anymore. I am acquitted, goodbye Rome, away, away to the Maldives, into the sun! To live at last, as a whole party with very many suntanned people in it shows us every day. I can't dive, don't swim very well. In addition I haven't maintained my species. I didn't, however, receive any child allowance for it, like the mother of Gabi, our young Snow White, whose awakening from a medical point of view is here formulated in an imprecise and scientifically somewhat shaky way, perhaps because she didn't wake up anymore at all. No dwarves, who cut a stay in pieces, so that the girl first breathes, then comes alive again. We have no mention, no indications of renewed activity of the heart in the wake-up phase, nor is there any breathing as further sign of a resuscitation process. Where is the corresponding opening of the eyes? Who hears the famous exclamation, with which the seemingly dead like Liz Taylor, she, too, a sister of death, return to life: I was only sleeping? Where are the journalists now that I want to awaken? No, our smaller, younger sister of death is not sleeping in her black wet coffin, in her green tarp. She really is dead. Absolutely. The absolute pure and simple. Eternal as the spirit, to whom unfortunately, although I have so little ability to believe in it, I've taken a fancy, as to malt cough drops, only: What did it do to me? She has, admittedly, been on TV several times now, but she can nevertheless no longer reach us, this young dead woman. In each one of us we all die, dies our quite unkind kind, but not mine, I did not found any nor carry any on. That others have decently done so is no comfort to them, when the scythe hisses round their ears. But usually we're not sitting comfortably anyway, why should we be just at the moment of our death, then we've got other things to do: weeping, breathing, praying, paying attention to heart activity, checking the funeral parlor, hoping for a resurrection scene and knowing that it won't happen this time either, taking leave, fighting against it, refusing to stand for interruptions, screaming and scratching the bed, water or snow blanket AND: at every, really every opportunity propping oneself up with a new significance, which is not due to one and will soon be replaced by a coffin lining, which is supposed to absorb bad smells and stinking fluids. One had no significance and does not have one now either, with the exception of one's nearest and dearest, to whom one meant something, who are also, however, pleased that we're gone at last and that they'll have no more trouble with us and we couldn't take our money with us and have left it behind.

It's all been said, perhaps someone said too much and is now holding his hand to his mouth in dismay, but God's always in his son's way, who's simply younger and better-looking, he's gathered a group of disciples around him, whom he's keen on, and God is already regretting having taken him back and taken him in. He himself became younger as a result, at least he looks like it, but it's also more of an effort keeping up with the young people until one's 47. Jesus wants to do sports, Jesus wants to make work for himself and catch souls, Jesus is constantly dragging in errors and cobbling together eternal truths out of them, always the DIY freak, well, he's not very skillful, the way he does it. And at the moment the Country Police are going tirelessly from house to house and conducting interviews, they've got to do that themselves, no one will do it for them. Narrative debris rains down on them, sometimes followed by stubborn, persistent silence, just like the rockfalls at the moody Neuberg Rock, from which they sometimes come thundering down for days on end and then for days there's nothing, and decorate car roofs with dents, but there the Lord God has much nicer decorations, big halos, which he could break off if he intervenes too vigorously in our life. He doesn't do it anyway. Here is the office of the company for which Gabi worked, and he's already hanging here too, the man on the cross, in the boss's office, not in the sand, but hanging in the corner. A plain, modern cross, bought in a craft shop, and the prominent victim is so full of pride at his stiff price that he's almost bursting out of the screws with which he is fastened to his instrument, which is, I believe, by now more immortal than the sportsman on it, we could just drop him; yes, you are seeing properly: beneath it a candle and a heart-shaped vase, with a bunch of dried flowers sticking in it, that's how the personal secretary likes it, who distinguishes herself from all the other women in the company and likes to emphasize this distinction in her appearance, she has, e.g., cemented her hair with hair lacquer. And then there's yet another figure who is distinguished from the secretary by not appearing at all anymore: a young dead woman. The company is in a state of agitation because of it. If the young commercial apprentice is already dead, why poke around in her life and leave behind prints that could then be mixed up with those of the murderer? It really was only a vague hint by a girlfriend. We're going to follow it up now, we followed up quite different ones that led us nowhere, and we've often had our heads in our hands, always one bit of head in two hands or a bucket of sand, which extinguishes everything it gets hold of. Can't you remember anything concrete, anything? Any detail, no matter how small, could be important, please try to remember. One colleague remembers that Gabi was the only person in the company who, because she was still attending technical school, got her travel by rail and bus reimbursed. The officers are instantly electrified: do you still have these tickets? Of course we still have them. Take a look: Neatly stuck to A-4 pages are all the tickets. Gabriele Fluch collected fifteen schillings for every ticket. One takes what one can get, and then runs and sees how far one can go with it. Not far enough. The officers take the sheets away and decode the number codes stamped when the tickets were cancelled. Result: More than half the tickets were bought at quite different stops, often even going in the opposite direction beyond Murzsteg and Frein. Now we've got another clue and immediately attach a belt, so that we don't lose it again and can hold on to it; given how our own ships of life sometimes pitch and roll, we can do with it. It turns out there are several colleagues who regularly gave the girl their used tickets. They say they didn't give it a second thought and never asked any questions. Only one female colleague, with whom Gabi often ate her sandwich at break-time and afterwards emptied her yogurt tub, throws a little find at the officers' feet, which she'd been chewing on for quite a while, so that there's not much left of it: She has someone who gives her a lift, she said that to me once, Gabi, but I shouldn't tell anyone. And another colleague remembers once having met Gabi at work, before the Mariazell bus had even arrived. (Is later confirmed by several employees.) Now the narrative water begins to flow, even among Gabi's colleagues; almost all manifestations of water appear pretty to me, above all the high-proof ones, ice is also nice to look at, perhaps to eat or for ice-skating as well, but not for walking on. And I don't really like steam, then I'd rather go on stumbling through the narrative debris, there I know where I am and what I'm doing, it slips away under my feet more often than I would like, but it's not as perfidious as steam, which obscures things, and ice, which comes up at me from below and unexpectedly smacks me in the face. Why is this road suddenly folded up, it's not a spare bed? An employee states that he saw Gabi one afternoon in the post office in Murzzuschlag, where she was posting company mail. She left the building before him. He himself drove straight home. On his way he passed Gabi's parents' house and saw her already crossing the road; it was long before the bus was due. The girl must therefore have been brought home by car, but by which one? At the time Gabi was not yet a spirit being, they're up to every trick, and so couldn't overtake herself, since she was not yet in eternity and still knew where front and back, past and future were, even though she would no longer experience her future in person. What does an outsider know. The only concrete lead from the neighborhood so far also relates to this car: A neighbor diagonally opposite confirms that once in the morning he saw Gabi come out of her house and without hesitation or hanging around get into a parking loted around the corner. This neighbor, a retired woodcutter and still active poacher, like most of the men here, states the girl had certainly given the impression that she had been expecting the car at just this spot. So she got in without hesitating or even talking to or conferring with the driver. When that was, what kind of car and who was sitting in it, the neighbor knows none of that. Most of the other neighbors say nothing. It's always the same. The country police officers, among them Mr. Janisch, whom everybody here knows, a good-looking man (strange, how often this attribute is applied to him. As if one had a blood purity medal to award, but knew he didn't need to accept it; because once he at last has an opportunity to do so, he will only accept cash or good old real estate, which always comes more than one at a time, because one piece of real estate alone would not be a match for Mr. Janisch; and he will take every opportunity to press up against younger colleagues, to pass his hands over their hips and to let them properly feel his little fellow, from behind, as if they didn't have any eyes there. None of them dares say anything!), knock at the door, talk to the people on their list and hear not a word more nor less, which would be less than zero. The people listen to the questions, but mostly they don't react at all, as Kurt Janisch and his colleagues soon readily have to agree. Their statement sheets are as empty as the Gobi desert, and their content tells us less than that of a prayer book, because we don't believe the people, as God doesn't believe us either. The doors are silently closed behind the officers, and Kurt Janisch and his colleagues go away from the houses again and their buttoned-up inhabitants. It is a world of silent witnesses, none of whom have seen how regularly for more than a year a girl didn't get onto the bus only a hundred yards away, but into a strange car, which really no one recognized. A pity. We all have cars ourselves, except me, and so cannot call each and every one that doesn't belong to us by its first name. Other girls often kept a place for her in the bus, but they also never saw who gave Gabi a lift when she wasn't with them. Nor did they talk about it. And her mother and her boyfriend heard nothing and saw nothing, for over a year. That's odd, isn't it? This one cup of cocoa, half drunk, which was all that was left from the party, luckily it exists, so that the forensic doctor is able to state, with considerable certainty, that Gabi was probably already dead one hour after leaving the house, at the very latest one and a half hours.