Greed (37 page)

The woman is now moving forward more quickly, she knows the exit, not many people do, to the right off Hadikgasse, follow the Meinl Blackamoor sign, the supermarket that goes along with it is at the back of the brand new apartment block, which the woman hasn't seen before. She still knew the old block, built for employees of the Austrian Fed. Railways, this street is called Kathe Dorsch Gasse, exactly. If she doesn't take the turning in time, then she can drive all the way to Lower Austria on the motorway and drive back from the Maschik side, as people say here, that is, from a long way out of town, by way of the villages before and around Vienna, via Hadersdorf, Mauerbach, Unterpurkersdorf and Oberpurkersdorf (do you know it? A man wants to buy a railway ticket to Peking. He goes to the ticket office window in Purkersdorf and asks for a single to Peking. The man behind the window says, You're putting me on, the best I can do is sell you a ticket to the Polish border, after that you have to see yourself how you go on, with the Trans-Siberian, the Trans-Mongolian, or by dog sled, I don't care. To cut a long story short, the rail customer gets to Peking, enjoys himself like the half-wit he is, because he's got as far as Peking, but then he wants to come back. He goes to the ticket office at the main railway station in Peking and asks for: A single to Purkersdorf, please. Asks the man behind the window: Ober or Unterpurkersdorf? Boomboom. What? What did you say? Please yourself.). Here's Huttelsdorf Station and we cross out the complicated street plans leading past it and make our own, which will likewise turn against us sooner or later. Then follow Linzer Strasse away from the city for a bit, up a steep road, on which the residents politely get down on their knees and beg in vain for the 30 limit to be adhered to, here our children play in front of their own houses and our retirees go out of their apartments and into them again, and others also cross the road, who don't want to die yet either, and don't have any eyes in their head, but the road belongs to them, they know that at least; it doesn't matter, all the people here, as far as the eye can see, belong to us, that is, to themselves, decent, eager to get on and hard working as they are, as a
reward for which they are allowed to live here, in the healthy western suburb, and naturally we don't want them to be encroached on or even harmed by outsiders. Who abides by that. No one. We are all precious, and when we possess something and lose it, we have to replace it. Time is passing now, too, yet again, well what do you know, we nearly didn't recognize it this time either. The way it's looking today. We must go to the hairdresser right away and get a manicure, so that we're perceived as well-groomed women, untouched by time. Yes, we have to subject ourselves to this torture, otherwise there'll soon be too much earth under our fingernails bitten down to the quick from working in the garden. There's nothing illegal about the black under our nails, we got the dirt under our nails from gardening, and we're going to go on with it now, this healthy activity, before we ourselves end up under the earth. Before that we should still be looked at nicely a couple of times, and be acknowledged as women. Today once again we clearly rise above the men. Do you see us? Today it can be taken for granted that we have a profession and are independent. The amount that I've written about that, and it was all completely unnecessary.

Well I never, it's you. The woman has stopped the car on a very steep narrow road where she once lived. Here, this little house, inherited from her parents, in order to keep it, now keeps others better than she could have done. A roofer's van is parked outside, evidently the roof is to be renovated at last. The woman sold the house two years earlier to settle in the country, an old dream that is now over. The seduction of dreams lasts for years, the seduction of people happens more quickly. Now, while I wasn't watching, the woman has been recognized by a former neighbor who's taking her dog for a walk. The dog is brand new and bored. Have you dropped by for a visit? I haven't seen you for at least a year. You're looking well. Oh, thank you. But this short dialogue, almost all of which I have left out, ensures that the woman doesn't dare to stop and look at her former house for a little longer. Nice people bought it from her, look, they've got children who are intended to grow up in the healthier air of the suburb, which supposedly comes straight from Schneeberg Mountain, but has for some time been living in sin with the Flotzersteig refuse incinerator (the partner is usually the last to know!), and in their own house. Look, there's a tricycle in the front garden, mommy didn't insist on the child bringing it into the house, although the garden gate is less than three feet high and anyone could climb over. Nice, harmless people, have they ever suffered because of something? Nearby four frog sculptures and two crow sculptures, in amusing poses, they're talking to each other, just look how nice they've made their stay here, because they don't need to go anywhere. The house disappears beside the woman, who reluctantly, she would rather be alone now, allows herself to be pulled along by the neighbor on the short lead of a rather one-sided conversation. No surprises emerge from this mouth still familiar from earlier days. It is as if time, which before could still walk, has now stood still and only the people had gone on, well, perhaps they've gone further than was good for them. The people haven't noticed that time has stood still, they were so deep in conversation like these two women. Who hears a weak cry, which has no need to emphasize itself and so remains almost inaudible? No one. The women walk on, the dog is supposed to be taken up to the camping meadow of the Municipality of Vienna and run, play, or scrap a little with colleagues. It is to enjoy itself in the good air like a song suddenly loudly sung across the meadow. Without any echo. The dog is allowed to repeat the exercise every day. The lucky thing. The trails disappear before they were drawn, people come closer to themselves, because no one else does it, no, they run after each other and never catch anyone. No, that's wrong, too, they would gladly come closer to one another, but it's usually not wanted. Everyone wants to look for something of their own, a house of their own, a child of their own, a partner of their own, entirely for themselves alone. No one is satisfied with a room of their own anymore. Everyone would even prefer to have their own TV channel, because they never like what's on offer. The dead are particularly inconsiderate, because they evade us and the media, which report on dead things (or have you ever seen a more live person than the folk song sprayer Karl Moik, the last thing you saw before you fainted? Well, and even he's dead, as soon as he ended up on the TV screen, although his face is still thrashing around as if he had to escape a shark), so have you ever seen anything alive outside of the nature programs, which had to be specially dedicated to life, otherwise we wouldn't know that this landscape lies here and nevertheless lives? We wouldn't have seen it, unless, thanks to the considerable magnification which the camera granted them, ants, beetles and larvae would fill the screen, blown up to giant size.

Please lend your ear and meanwhile watch as the woman now ascends the meadow, which tops off the hill, no, it doesn't
go any
higher, it only goes downhill again on two thousand more pages, which, however, I shall spare you. So, now we're there. The grass is meager, but already really green, greener than in green Styria, the spring is definitely further advanced, and now it is already somewhere else altogether. Summer will soon be here, but I shall likewise be somewhere else altogether, I hope I shall meet it there, too, the summer. The dog is let off the leash and toddles off, on the way he has already raised his leg several times at the side of the road, now that the whole hill, the whole meadow are available to him, he'll proceed more selectively with his urine. He looks for a lady to whom he could be married for two minutes, that's silly, none there. The dog finds a like-minded companion, sniffs around her genitals and then right away they hurry off together. The woman's former neighbor has long ago joined a club, which consists of dog owners. These are people who prefer dogs to other people. They get on, also invite each other around in turn. The
woman
takes her leave, relieved that the neighbor has found her doggy conversation group and has blended into this nice little circle, with many good wishes, visit us more often, don't you want to come for a coffee afterwards, no thank you, I just wanted to drop by the old place before you've all completely forgotten me, ha ha. A human formation strides through the play area of their animals, who mostly in playful fashion pounce on one another and form interesting alliances, just look at those two attacking a third, why on earth, no, they won't do anything, they won't do anything! Don't worry. They never bite, and if they bite today, then tomorrow they'll again never have done it, be like new or almost like new, because the vet will meanwhile have stapled two clips in their pleura. The group moves off, the people put their heads together and chat, the animals don't put themselves together, because now is not the right time for that. Some are weighed down by their corpulence, they are not at all weighed down by problems, they are very spoiled and well fed and altogether happy, although one cannot talk to them in their native tongue. The woman, who is barked at once or twice, because the animals have never seen her on their patch and are confused by the unfamiliar figure, who has not got a four-legged friend on a leash and isn't carrying a leash in her hand either, by which one could recognize a like-minded person, this person, who has perhaps never understood how to attach someone or something to herself, animals sense that, their hearts become completely indifferent and they take their leave without any visible sign, they simply take off, the figure stops now and looks down at the city whose southern segment, which lies before her now with the perfect clarity which sometimes follows the sunrise, which has released these pictures, which now break out impatiently from behind the cordon, and far beyond, as far as the irregular silhouette of the high rises at Alt Erlaa, the underground goes all the way out there now, which on the other side goes as far as Ottakring, a real triumph for the inhabitants, because it's just the place they always wanted to get to. Now at last they can. Here the corpse-like finger of the lighting tower of Engineer Gerhard Hanappi Stadium, the scanty parking lots in front of it are completely out of sight. To the right is the West Motorway, one can see a bit of it, before it disappears between the hills of the Vienna Woods, over there is the Auhof, look, they've built a Ginecenter there, the red neon sign can be easily made out, even in the daytime, because it's never turned off, and the lime green neon lights of the last gas station before the motorway can be admired in all the magnificence and citrus freshness which a company has provided them with.

The horizon gently rocks the eyeballs of the woman who has stopped to look across the city, which once, in part, at least, was hers, to sleep. Yet she convulsively opens her eyes wide, she wants to see everything, everything. And her gaze should also be garnished with church spires, domes, roofs, gasometers, Second World War tower bunkers. The dear places of culture, to which the woman once strode as to work in the fields, are not to be seen. Wrong part of town. The head hair of the city flows somewhere else, one would have to follow the Wiental further, but the Wiental doesn't follow one either. On the left there, the Steinhof, with the lunatic asylum and the famous, unfortunately dilapidated church built by Otto Wagner, which every child knows, and not many children will still get to know (apart from those who in the Nazi period were injected to death, after starvation, cold, sick (no, they weren't sick, but they were given drugs which made them vomit unceasingly, unstoppably) and beating cures, which no one had to invent, because they already existed, a relatively large number of these children are still represented by their brains in jars), because it will soon collapse, the church, one would have to go over that way in order to see St. Stephen's Cathedral, but there the view is vigorously limited and checked by a small hill together with an old quarry, by a hill which presses forward, perhaps because it thinks that people could not bear so much beauty. And then we have to call emergency again. The mixed canine/human group has meanwhile disappeared around the bend, it'll be about ten minutes before it re-emerges, although individual animal heralds, who have run ahead, again and again impatiently appear on the horizon with little sticks and the doggy rearguard, which has remained behind, is bending over something that it wants to eat, but will not agree with it. The woman is completely alone. She is not in Paris or London, she's in Vienna. She would have quite liked to travel to Paris and London again. Well, it probably won't happen now. In the country there's always something good and useful to do, is what she thought, until someone else took it from her, who is extremely interested in everything she has. Where it was necessary he took it in hand, also her, that is what one does in the country. To take something in hand and carry out tasks which are so complicated that the woman never saw through them and from now on doesn't want to see through them. She often cried out, when he, with his wealth of movements, climbed over her and, not to be softened by anything, tossed her little burden around, depending on which side he wanted to penetrate her, while she pleaded for him to give her love, but nothing comes of nothing. Through him she found her soul, she tells herself. It's no use, she doesn't know what to do with her soul. In her he found a building that he could slip into. So one dwells in the other in order to live at last. Only there are some who need more of that than others, who only need a partner in order to be filled with light and the capacity for love. Like this empty vessel, which she is without him, the woman, this dull cup, which is filled with nothing but itself and cannot even see to the bottom, why she does something like that. She doesn't see to the bottom of things anymore. She has poured herself out, but no one wiped her up. Perhaps it's all a form of madness, well, at best a little form, into which children press their sand in order to push it into their neighbor's eye. Town and country, what more did I want to say that has nothing to do with psychological self-analysis, which I have hereby brilliantly mastered? The land is its activities, because it has to be constantly created, wrested from the soil, also from the animals. The city is the activities of others. It is already there. Even if there's always new building going on, the city is what was always already there. Reflecting things flash in the sunlight, panes of glass, roof ridges, tin roofs, cars. Another reflects on houses, let him have them. He's no mere employee, that he would have to earn them. He's a civil servant. He has called something forth and thrown away the bones, no need to bone up himself, up to every trick, imposing no moderation on himself. A shared happiness will not be created, savings will not be put down anywhere. That's too bad, the bank can't always be giving, it has to take as well, of course always more than it gives, otherwise it wouldn't be a bank, but a Church charity organization, but not it either: We've got administration costs to bear and the rest is borne by others. Where do you expect it to come from? The city is more and more coming to life, the clock is moving forward, laughter, cries, the calls of the dog army are approaching again. Has she really been standing here for ten minutes already, the woman? It's not enough, it's never enough, but at least she will have gone for a short walk here. Crows rise comfortably and expertly through the air. They settle on one of the trees and talk to one another by copying us and breathing in a bit of air at the same time and, how amusing, eating a shriveled apple that they've found somewhere. If the bird on the top of the magnificent blue spruce (a sly cultivated species from some country or other, which didn't want to have it there and so expelled it, a plant, which could surely suddenly begin to speak and go away, so that I don't have to see it anymore, but I'll have to go sooner than it will!, it has got a permanent foothold here, the stinging, disgusting thing) now opens its beak in order to caw, the apple will fall to the ground. The woman laughs involuntarily when this is exactly what happens. A black dog hurries up, the crow unfortunately has to shout at it and so loses its precious piece of fruit. That's how fast it happens sometimes, although we don't advocate that animals should be dispossessed. And yet most of them even have to give up their lives, for one reason or another. As we do, only more humbly and painfully, we owe them a debt of gratitude, that they sacrifice themselves for us. And even if they do it involuntarily, it's still nice of them, isn't it? Whom are we supposed to eat? We can't even take what we sit on or what we've set our heart on with us, but some don't know that and measure people by their possessions. And then they prefer to take the possessions and just leave the people. So now a person stands there, looks stupid and out across a central European city, calmly examines it and doesn't believe that her eyes are really right in what they see. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything, if in a city one looks at the other inhabitants. It doesn't mean anything, if in the country one looks at the other inhabitants, it only counts more, because there are fewer people. That's why the woman moved away back then. In order, perhaps, to be more important somewhere else, where there's less competition than here. That's OK. It worked, she can still play the piano as well, which is rarer in the country than a shot fired from a rifle. Desires were told to her, and that she would be important for their fulfillment, but not essential. Now we'll make another impression and go to the hairdresser we always used to go to. It's likewise in this suburb, only on the other side, a small new building with shops on the ground floor. We're now proceeding there, please follow us at last. The dogs are coming, we're going now. We're going to look nice. We'll have our hair and our eyelashes and our nails done, and then we'll go away again, to serve them up in peace and quiet, somewhere else, to someone else. After the full treatment this hair will have become so healthy and strong that one could hang oneself with it. For one bird just one hair would be enough for this purpose.