Greed (36 page)

Since no person can cope with his life, he should really wish to get to the end of it. But no, this uncertainty of existence is supposed to go on endlessly, and precisely in the shape of the person as whom one lived. Death only breaks off what in any case was never going to finish. The great unknown, the murderer, the phantom, who tore and garotted Gabi where the arteries divide at the neck, why search for him who put an end to a certain young woman? She must have been at a certain place at a certain time, unfortunately we only know her final address, the lake, the water, the watery dump, yet her whole life passed at a certain time and in a certain, rather small place. Her death doesn't mean that now she is everywhere and nowhere, there and gone, but her death has put an end to her having lived at a certain time in this village in the Alpine foothills. Strange how much people like to think of death as an entrance to eternity. I prefer to stick with the corpse, that's something that's there, for a while, the finality is superfluous, when one knows: It is the case that this body decomposes, till it, too, has liquefied and at some point disappeared, washed away, dissolved. I stick with this body, not in the posture of a mourner, as dogs do it, but more out of interest. No matter how insignificant this dead girl may have been, something of her is there nevertheless, which we can hold onto, she is such and such, and she is simultaneously not at all. Matter tied up in a plastic sheet, from which hair is floating at the top and socks are sticking out at the bottom. The shoes are gone. I cannot say anything about this bound spirit, nothing good, nothing bad. I can't see it, after all. I assume it is finally freed from its finiteness, but I fear it has not become infinite as a result. A puzzle, that the Country Police neither want to nor can solve. They want to find the murderer and what inspired him to snuff out the spark of another soul and perhaps other souls besides, because: Where are all the women who have disappeared? In retrospect on their photos they have such an odd expression on their face, we'll make a photocopy right away, so that we'll know, if we see one: That's one of the missing. For the times of the lifts Gabi got this much is known: There was no time for love. From the well-substantiated departure and arrival times of the very punctual girl it emerges that at these times the two never had more than twenty minutes free time together at most. Probably the time gained on the short stretch was just about ten minutes. What can you do in ten minutes? Briefly place the weight of your own body on another one, in order to keep the latter quiet as if with a dummy, to pacify it at least for a little while, until it cries out again? Take in one's mouth a very precious body part, which doesn't belong to one, anxious, but curious every time as to the taste (not everything comes in bags, otherwise it could easily be taken with one on every errand, but one could leave it standing somewhere), and whether something comes out and if so, what does it smell like? Lodge in Gabi's cunt as in a kind of institute, from which one is released having given an undertaking and with at first dark, later pale spots on one's trousers, but only so as to be able to return at any time? Simply a man who wants to talk to a girl about something? I don't believe that. Gabi never went out without her mother, her boyfriend, her girlfriends, says her mother, says her boyfriend, say the girlfriends. They also say that in newspaper interviews right after Gabi's disappearance. If that's true-then why did the girl make such a secret of these lifts she got? Presumably because the man had something to lose, perhaps because he was a close neighbor of Gabi and didn't want to be recognized, although or because everyone would have known him anyway. They just didn't know that it was him. It was no stranger. One can have a scrap with father and mother, a stranger dumps one like a piece of scrap, somewhere, such people have no environmental consciousness. Someone familiar won't manage that, because he knew the girl's purpose in life and never wanted to meet her again! Just don't turn into a purpose in life! He preferred to clear the girl out of the way for his own safety, the murderer, rather that than become his all and all, which yields nothing. So, now we'd rather put the body into this long-prepared green plastic refuse bag, which comes from a building site, because building sites are my whole life, to say nothing of the houses in the making, that's something one can hold on to, yes, the bones, the hair, the finger and toenails can stay too, but not as long as a house that was well built in a good mood. For all eternity, where the believer will be able to meet all these houses, or they meet him, boom!, a negation of the negation, because the perpetrator isn't building a house and probably won't get one as a present anymore. The concepts of finiteness fall out of my hand like the builder's hammer at five o'clock in the afternoon. Finally I don't know what to say anymore. I just say, there must still be this one minute left: Nothing is left. Death is natural, yet this was no natural death. Do you think Gabi wanted to own somebody who already belonged to somebody else? I don't believe that. I'm not a believer, that's why I always cut myself so badly when I come up against the limits of my existence. Then I believe that things go on, I so much want to follow the believers to where they're going. But it's not possible, and at the borders you can't go any further either. As if I were a foreigner from outside the wonderful Schengen states. Is there someone there. No, no one's there, because everyone wants to amuse themselves and hence at present and for all time to come are not and will not be at home. One can only amuse oneself outside, our European house is almost always too small for that, and now it's also too small for Austria, the model child, which never did anything and never will do anything. But neither do we want to allow others, since we are no longer welcome anywhere, to be at home with us, the inhabitants of Austria (then we would have to evacuate our common house! Anyone could come!). Anyone else there, who in return would perhaps like to see me happy? He wouldn't have to watch, because he wouldn't be at home when I came? Who, if I cried, would hear me? No one? Perhaps because no one has noticed me yet? And the perpetrator of this murder evidently didn't want to be noticed either, which doesn't surprise me. If he carried away any wounds of his existence, then they can't be seen at any rate. Otherwise we would immediately have him by the collar, as he runs bleeding through the estate, while something bigger looms up over his figure, the Beast, panting, which has lost its parking space and will never stop in its search for a new one. And if it has found one, then it would already always be too small, it would have to be a whole house at least. If a human being has to die of himself, why should he not be capable of creating a simple house with his own hands and the partly foreign capital of the building society? But its launches put out to sea, laden with interest, compound interest and gallons of our blood and our tears, and one never gets the interest, because so far the agreement always had to be renegotiated prematurely each time. With a pension fund that wouldn't have been so easy to manage, they are a work of the Devil. So it's easier to die than to get hold of a house. In death one still hangs around for a bit, with building work the ground gives way beneath one's feet, because it's already been secured with another plot, which was already heavily burdened or was insufficient in some other way. Mr. Schneider, the real estate shark, he always bid against himself, so that the prices of his real estate to the banks should go sky high. Who says real estate is fixed property! Against that a dead woman, every dead woman: She only moves when she's thrown into the water, and then she moves gently, very slowly, to the rhythm of the waves, the water moves her, of their own accord the dead don't move, this dead woman doesn't move. The water carries her around, gives her a shove when she weeps, so that she's quiet again. The water is sweet. I wish I would dare to enter it more often and risk entrusting myself to it. And all the purification plants, I wouldn't even see them. Do they want to clean the water? Then no living things could exist in it anymore! I don't want to permit them, these purification plants! Yet without them, things somehow wouldn't work either, we would have bits of shit floating beside us, and we would soon have water where now there's still land, one would have been exchanged for the other, trash and smut for clarity and truth. No, we're not going to do it like that, give oligotrophic and mesotrophic waters in return for eutrophic ones. No, we're not doing that. We're holding on to one lot, and the others can go somewhere else, so that we can send our dirt there and can feel good again here. We don't need anyone else, the water and I. Do we? Perhaps I, too, will be discovered one day, if someone dares to penetrate me. Who knows.

Let us treat small figures as something big. We become uneasy, because we ourselves could be among them, without having grown big. Likewise. To have remained forever small, despite everything: the judgment. Whatever we produce, it finds no takers, no one takes it. No buyer. We protest many things, we didn't mean it like that, but the EU tugs at us with its maternal hands, we can't even blow our noses anymore without being sternly watched by it. What have we got up to this time? A tasty dessert pancake. Mr. Fuchs with his arm stumps which went down a bomb wouldn't have managed that, he's not allowed to belong to us, although all his work was on our behalf. Now he's hanged himself on a hook in the wall. He peeled off the cable covering of his electric razor with his teeth, unpicked all the plastic with calm patience. At the end death was thirsting day and night for the sight of him. His chin he had described as Germanic, the nose does not express anything, Germans of the North, of the East, non-Germans and the remaining Slavs have one exactly the same. The battle is already over. Mr. Fuchs from Gralla says he doesn't need weeping and wailing, nothing comes of it. The battle is already over, he certainly thinks that he fought and risked a great deal. That too is over. The tourist trade is over a bit too now, because we're being boycotted in Europe. But that something, too, will pass, Europe will get used to us, it will also get used to people wandering around hanging their heads because they don't have a job. If you please, we'll give them one. Without money there is no customer whom we could get back to.

Let's drive to the capital, the woman says to herself early in the morning. Before, as every day, the feeling of anxiety comes, we'll get into the car. Life owes it to her to drive, she's sat long enough and looked at it. Now everything should move a little faster, even if not as fast as at the Villach carnival, where everything races fast-forward past us, so that it doesn't occur to us to want to grasp anything. Here's the gray ribbon of the motorway already, which looks quite like the lake, which on some winter days also looks like a concrete surface. Hello. The car gets the ribbon under its tires and resolutely measures it out, perhaps at the end it will give a little encore, the way in an old-fashioned haberdasher's the sales assistant adds a little extra, but not on the speed. It's never quiet, because here, too, the woman has immediately inserted a cassette and is listening to a piano concerto. Although I don't know her character, and so could not describe it, I think, in some photos, but not on others, it's as if she's waiting for something, but it's probably because one's not supposed to move for a photograph, yet at the same time at least look animated. Yet not every quiet person is waiting for something. Some wait at last to be allowed to move into themselves. They have made provision for that. Before one places the furniture inside oneself, the joys and longings, one should at least cover up everything that could remind one of earlier days. Best to give everything a new coat of paint. If that's not possible, one keeps on painting the outside.

I don't know why the woman, who has now already reached the suburbs of the capital, absolutely wants to drive to where she used to live, a spread-out suburban development on the western edge of the city. There no limit has ever been set to the human imagination, that's nice, but what arose is not so nice. Alpine high pressure systems-built villas with ready-made and clamped-on all-round balconies, laden with truckloads of begonias and geraniums, with which the house glows red, please hurl down a bolt of lightning, God, a more powerful charge, so that something more beautiful in us can dream of not having been here at all! Please, this impression in me must be erased immediately. Other houses again are a copy of big city houses, only much smaller. I plead in friendly fashion for the expression of this early Roman front garden, fountains, concrete bracing, rose hedge stress relief to be taken from me again, before it falls out of my eyes and onto my feet. On my feet it won't get far, this ecstatic expression. This is a nice little house, too, they've added extra stories of between 70 and 150 square yards per story and they could have gone on over ten stories, the dear owners. It is surely satisfactory to unsatisfactory to be able to make a skyscraper out of an Alpine hut, at least it would satisfy me, I wouldn't have to look for any second person, because my house would then really be enough for me. The woman always drives off with her car. Already in Spital on the Semmering she's longing for her partner, whom she would likewise, in order for once to enjoy life to the full before it's too late, want to expand into a house in which she can live, cook, eat, sleep, and afterwards escape scot-free. She suspects, however, that he would prefer to own one story of her house rather than her as a whole. He wants to have everything for himself. Even if he got her for free, he would still only be interested in the bonus, the house, so as to be put in it. This is a marriage that will not take place. The woman will have to admit it to herself, I won't leave her in peace until she does. She comes up to me here, sees my social circle, stops short, because only one person is important to her, then she turns round and disappears again into the morning twilight, a pity, because I almost had her in my hands! I had almost caught hold of her, I already felt her fingertips. I hurry after her, surprised that the woman has escaped me, putting my hand to my mouth, as often, when I laugh in my sort of institution, where I live. No, it's not an institution, because apart from me there's no one here apart from the Catholic Charitable organization, which says: here I am and wants money from me and has sent a Giro transfer form. The woman and I, are we one? We are not yet at one, as to whether we have the same plan, but it wouldn't surprise me. So. First we follow the arrow for Center, but then take the turn-off for the Wiental. There, too, a river rushes, but can only bite its immediate surroundings, and even then only at flood, three times a year, at the most. Otherwise one hardly sees it. Is it necessary, then, that the river, too, is as nice as the woman? The river could easily be more cruel as far as I'm concerned, just a moment, here's someone who would like to talk to me, he'll soon be past. I duck down behind the driving wheel, perhaps he won't recognize me. He walks on. I go on. The water will eat us all up and swallow us yet. Like these two men, two of many, who have disappeared and never surfaced again, in the water, this gate, through which some stride, the others, however, through another, where to? Imagine a Sunday evening, a collapsible canoe, which, full of water, is lying in a bed of reeds, a last resting place, so to speak, half sunk in the flesh of the water, at its widest the construction measures thirty-three inches. Two paddlers set out in it and have disappeared, two young men, which is something we would like to be, but not these ones, you're about to find out why. They set out on a winter's day, a cold wind was blowing, the water was ice cold, perhaps there would soon be ice, unbelievably still. Do you see the many children's hands holding up their rubber ducks or the arms that go with them, and they stick out of their water wings like corks stuck in by their parents, do you hear the squealing, the splashing, the laughter, do you see the sand pits? Or do you see, for example, the female figure skater, who in a fast spin cuts a hole in the ice, in which she herself will be the cork? That would mean that it wasn't summer, as it isn't now either. So we take everything back again, it's only words on paper. Now it's gone, I don't even need to understand it. Before my anxiety returns, which is dear to me, but basically always keeps me away from water. Let's just stay, nothing is going to happen to us, with the two men in their collapsible boat in the water. There's a fire burning somewhere, there's a tent somewhere, I'm also at home somewhere, where I can turn up the heating, but not here. Something is being heated up on a Primus stove, human hands curve over the flames, a pot reveals something, then it's on to the next stage of a journey, during which the signs of life become increasingly rare, disappear, also the most curious habits people can adopt, e.g. washing their hands before eating. A couple of pebbles scraped together, branches oddly crossed on top of one another, two bottle shards, a plastic bag half-filled with wind, I don't need to explain it, because it will soon disappear into finality, and with that it will be superfluous. No effort anymore. I, too, have a long journey behind me. A ship of life floats by, a boat that glides, threatened by ice and the depths, I hope it will come back. Markings on a hydrographic chart, which tries to convince us that water is solid, blue in color, and one could lodge in it as in a room and appear where and whenever one wants. Oh, if one could be part of a couple, it doesn't matter with whom, perhaps like these two young men who have disappeared, thinks the woman while driving. The two packed up their collapsible boat like a seabag and traveled by train, until they reached the water. Then onto the water with their awkward baggage. The trail, which places no value on itself, disappears, a trail for which only packing and sending itself forth are
the
most important thing, no matter where to, just away! That's then supposed to be the end of any cozy pillow business, and here it is already idly circling, the boat, drifting along, later, much later, within a radius of fifty yards, paddles, knapsacks, a tent, cooking utensils, food, an ID card, and a check card of one of the missing can be located, nothing more. You, water, what have you been up to again? Why are there such gaping holes at the bow and on both sides of the boat? As if someone or something had cleanly slit open the bow, as if with a razor blade. We're not the Titanic, and if we were, then we could earn a lot of money with having disappeared. Yet ice can form on shallow waters more quickly than where it's deep. Did it form? When a stretch of water freezes over so quickly, then the layer of ice is very thin, like a film, and so sharp that one can cut one's hand on it, that's even happened to me with paper, in pleasant, comfortable warmth. I really didn't need anything more than paper to do it. If such a collapsible boat collides with such a layer of ice, then things happen relatively fast. The water comes in, and the people have to get out. The boat is full. Let's take a look at the weather: in the morning not much cloud, intermittent sunshine. Until the early afternoon persistent early mist and low stratus cloud. After it disperses the daytime temperature rises to about 6 degrees plus. At night the temperature may fall below freezing in places. Then it's a question of either 300 yards forward or 300 yards back, because even fit athletes don't last long in ice-cold water, only a few minutes. After that they, too, are gone, the minutes and the people. They're still gone today, with their families I think of them now, please do so, too, wherever you are. If you have never thought of anyone, then it's good practice for the beginner. The beginner doesn't have to think of millions, he only has to think of two young men. Think of the dead immediately, e.g. of the drowned, of whom two here can no longer speak for the others and who don't allow themselves to speak either. The mobile phone is switched off. If you look down into the water, the shadows there, they're not people, they're tree trunks, which sank, there, yes, look, that is only a sunken, rusted boat, and that there, on the right, those are just boulders. Whether the dead ever emerge again, that would indeed interest me. They can do so from the past, no question. But can they do it from the water? Gabi certainly can, no problem. Take her case, pack up her worries or let someone else pack them, have worries or give someone else worries, take a deep breath, get wrapped up in a green tarpaulin, but a human being is no airplane, the air doesn't bear and keep her, a human being is not a boat, this water doesn't bear her, a human being is a piece of meat, herself made almost entirely of water and air, if she can get hold of them. Some do not come back at all from the dead, it simply can't be predicted. Current, depth of water, and temperature all play an important part, which unfortunately was not often granted people in their own lives, I almost believe that for some their burial is the best thing they'll ever experience. The colder the water, the slower the process of decomposition and hence of the gas formation, which usually forces the dead up to the surface, where they can happily have their say, if they meet someone. Why then does the latter run away? There was so much to tell him. Don't be afraid of death! There are so many already dead, you'll manage it too. Everyone has managed it so far, even a complete idiot like you, like me, can do it if he one to. Make sure that your body is stored, but not too long! You were already unreasonable beforehand, but now there's an extra difficulty, about which you won't be able to say a single word. If the water is cold, the body does not decompose, instead an adipose formation takes place, in which the soft parts, where fat had developed, are turned completely to wax, that is, what had grown is now firm and remains almost unchanged in appearance, imagine that. Later there follows a kind of chalk stage, which, however, I am unable to describe, because I have not yet penetrated so deeply into nothingness and can also only grasp what exists if I can see it or can put myself in a state of a caring relationship to it. I can't. But I could also turn to a pathology textbook for help, only: It wouldn't help me. This drowned angler drifted under the surface of the water for four months, and he is still as good as new. This girl in the lake with her dead dear soft lips-I urge this delicate area, this beautiful milieu of a lake, to at last hold its mouth, it has already spoken far too often here, but it wouldn't have been necessary, the lake doesn't say a word anyway, unlike me, but earlier it did let something slip, as I see-though it was only in the ice-cold water for a couple of days, but even if she had stayed in the water longer, her body would probably have been almost preserved, although this water is permanently at the tipping point, hop into purity, skip into greater gassiness, eutrophicity, where there are rather too many living things than too few, how often am I still going to say it, well, no doubt you'll reproach me with having done so far too often already: fertilizer, fertilizer, fertilizer!, but no animals, no, one can't see any of the creatures in here with an unarmed eye. It tipped this girl out in time, the water. Silent forest, why is no boat found in you? But there it is, exactly! Someone used this boat on the night of the murder. Rings of ice can form around the reed blades, but not now. Next year again. Goodbye. There are some who would like to stand close beside one another and are not allowed to. Admittedly, as already said, I don't know the character of this woman who's driving here, but from her photo I don't have any negative impressions. It's OK. She continues driving. The car, like every means of locomotion, wants to be active instead of inactive (there's something out of place there, but not my glance, I hope), so now we're already down in the Wiental, which is too jammed to allow one to do more than crawl along. The morning rush hour has started. More stop than start. This woman set out from her house, believe it or not, at five a.m. In the Federal States of Styria and Lower Austria she avoided the early rush hour, but in Vienna she was hit by the whammy of Hadikgasse. Going out of town is still relatively OK, going into town, just take a look towards Schonbrunn Palace, where the giant tourist buses, instead of decently waiting at the edge of the city, are scuffling for bathtub-sized parking places, which, since they are so small, can't be found with the naked eye at all. So we'll leave them to our Vienna tourists, for as long as they're coming at all, and drive on ourselves, we know our way around. Vienna is different, it has a cherry with a heart-shaped pit as its symbol, what is the silly Big Apple against that. Or we can just let the people get out in the second lane and drown out the cries of the disabled and/or enraged by revving our engine, which we can comfortably allow to run up against these and other fates, a moment's patience, please, we're about to drive on anyway, in half an hour or so, and if you hold us up, it'll only take longer. Then we'll drive to the parking lot amidst the greenery, in order to poison trees, shrubs, grasses, and bushes there where they have grown and not where there aren't any. The chestnuts in the Wiental were the first thing to die under a layer of lead and the greedy teeth of the sapper moth, more are to follow. The dead trees will certainly not come after us to take revenge. Living things are replaced by imposing dead ones or also modest ones, but nevertheless dead ones, that is a principle of this city, which has entered into a rather lasting marriage with death and for more than fifty years has wanted to get a divorce, but it never has the documents ready, and when it thinks it finally does have them all and can, for one last time, which will last a very long time, have an energetic and cheerful last fuck, then new clues emerge, that at one time this city lived almost entirely on stolen money and may only die when it has paid back its debts, which can sometimes assume the size of congealed pictures, all these stolen items of value, meanwhile turned sour as milk, curdled in time, because their owners went missing instead of them. How can one not turn sour. There stands a minor official and says: Gome back next week, then we'll have got the latest painting unveilings in and we'll see what was underneath, perhaps yours, who knows. A smart-looking woman like you, dear Vienna, will be able to wait a bit longer for the new marriage, you'll surely manage to get a bridegroom next year as well, and if we have to personally break off every bit of ornament beforehand. You'll say yes again this time, too, for whatever reason we're certain of that. No, we can never be completely certain, otherwise later on they'll say things we said, which in this form we never said in the first place, and if we did, then we didn't mean any harm. Even the opera ball doesn't mean any harm. You see! Do you see how, in its curiosity for the new, the present caught up in itself stands there in ecstatic unity with the future and opens the doors, as the Greeks would have said? The greed for the new, yesyes, it is true, let's be honest, that curiosity is not really directed at something in the future as a possibility, but in its greed curiosity craves the possible as something already real. Or something like that. Take a look. There's a man, he sees houses not as a possibility for living in, but, although they don't even belong to him and perhaps never will, as something that already belongs to him, and that because it MUST belong to him. So now the doors are open and you're taken aback, because someone has climbed on top of you who absolutely wanted to get in faster than you. And then we send you on a peace-keeping mission on another continent, let you spin for hours with the white washing, thoroughly plow you up a couple of times and look: You will still look exactly as you do now! And this house will also stand there just as solidly and be unable to take advantage of any possibility for relaxation. And no, there's no chance that you'll ever change. You'll have all the more need of the Persil voucher, so that you can still be washed whiter than white tomorrow as well and emerge unscathed from the soapsuds-spitting death mill, in which you swung together and were hung together, quite unjustly. There'll be a total write-off, if you don't watch out, but there's no total guilt, because of course this deer or this stroller on the pavement or this two-headed creature on this building distracted you from the car that was driving too slowly, a small car, almost breaking down under the weight of the luggage on the roof rack, yes, that one, in front of you, just a moment, but unfortunately the wrong one.