Sports Play (19 page)

If a movement comes and wants to get us moving, we'll be able to do that without any sense of shyness. Because we like to be on the move. We just can't wait. Our bodies are waiting for it too. And at any time could set something much bigger in motion, today for example it could be this generous platter of antipasti with ham, cheese, sausage, fresh from the kitchen. Have you ever seen anything quite so ample outside your own body?

OTHER:

Our whole group now consists only of lateral thinkers and outsiders. We used not to be allowed to be that, which is why we are it now, but in-depth. We chose precisely this model from the catalogue because, when we look through it, we want to be able to perceive reality that's as restricted as we want. This model isn't at all expensive. You could even make it yourself. Hold a chopping block or a piece of cardboard in front of your face, in an emergency you could even use the latter, but then you mustn't spit too much when you're talking. If you want to properly devalue your victim, then you have to stick his phone card into this slit. You could also use your dick, if you didn't have anything else of value at hand and the ticket inspector is standing so close to your door that the only thing between you and him is a breath of pneuma.

OTHER:

Do you still need some orientation? Here, I managed to rouse this hiking map at the kiosk over there, it was easy-peasy. It can only be said of Jesus Christ that he rose again. But just now even I found myself able to buy something without cash.

OTHER:

I think that the next step of our crime will play out as follows: the violation of the norm will no longer consist of killing and destroying humans, we've nearly killed everyone anyway, just in case we by chance are citizens of partial Yugoslav states or some other terrible country. Under certain circumstances people, once they've been unchained, can go very far. They can even go round Africa. Where are we now, anyway? Have we perhaps gone too far? Oh well, at least we're outside, regardless of where we were beforehand. And what did someone place on our doorstep early this morning, sort of wrapped in newspaper. It's still moving! It's dripping! Did a conscience just stir, which the newspaper that we'd carefully smoothed out in order to read our debit account, has already transferred to our Post Office savings account without us ever having commissioned a transfer? Nevertheless, it's a good feeling to have gathered together so much conscience after such a long search.

OTHER:

No, I'm reading that the new model for conscience is not even available yet. Perhaps we'd have been better off buying the old, before this pathetic indefinite article is out of print. Of course! That's why it can't be delivered to us. We'd be better off buying this book by Madam Author, is what the mind-order business is saying. Well, when I look at the conscience in the shape of this woman, then I have to admit quite honestly – I'd prefer to have none at all. We have the courage to do something, we don't want to be self-conscious, nor shy. We do our best, just like this company that always mixes sugar into its children's teas, although they lost the legal proceedings long ago.

OTHER:

In earlier times one got such a lovely view from the church tower, and yet the church tower was the first thing we bombed with our new aesthetic methods. And the houses alongside too. And now we feel sort of alone. And so we withdraw back into our group, we haven't come across any
other group, because we cleansed the area thoroughly of manky and marauding groups. It's hard for me to bear the fact that my opponents too have this chic Gulf War haircut and wear the same boots as lordly city kids, yes, lace-up shoes with steel toe-caps. No, I can see now that our opponents are wearing sneakers made by their preferred brand, Nike. So. Initially it was apolitical collective offences.

Bottles, tins, hats, gloves, hands flew, bodies fell. Warmth wrapped itself around our hearts. Christmas carols rang out, even though it wasn't Christmas. Who on earth has personally killed or strangled six people by hand? No one. That's what I'd have said a few years ago. Today I know that it's many of us, in fact mostly desk-jockey perpetrators, who prefer to fall asleep than report for duty at their desks and dial a specific telephone number, garner a signature or pen a protest poem. It's possible that already by tonight no one'll be able to prove that we did absolutely nothing. We'd have needed another year and then we could equally not have done absolutely everything without any conviction and sense of value, with ease. No, we could not've done anything. But unfortunately the test assembly for doing nothing was interrupted by allowing in light and air and the absorption of foreign canned goods, that were finally allowed to start rolling because we no longer placed anything in their way. Today it looks as if we only lost because the others were stronger than us. There's nothing to be done. I'll just have to leave things as they stand, because the desk and all the papers on it are too heavy for me to lift. And yet I'd really like to keep my words piled up on it, for later, when peace returns. But maybe then they won't interest anyone anymore.

OTHER:

Yes, we were removed from the playing field before tiresome exercise could turn into the bliss of control. Sadly. Well, not for me. I just can't control myself.

WOMAN:

Nowadays no one's got any idea when one sees them, the young people, hanging around in the gardens of the bars and in the bars, that the perpetrators from long ago, actually those from tomorrow, were also young, will be young, will have been young. My eyes are always insulted by the baggy pants that haven't been seen in this form in New York for more than five years. Nevertheless. Now more than ever. Forever young. That's easy to forget. First they practise killing, and then the moment when it swings into skill. Skateboards. Inline-skaters. Snowboards. Snowbizz.

Whoever has control of that can take a shower right away, even though he didn't break a sweat. Or he kneels the whole day in his room on the floor and looks for his contact lenses, because otherwise he'll always have to remain without contact. Oh dear. What have I said now. It's not all the same, when one is young. And so these young men have finally shot me down, even though I, somehow, still considered myself to be young, and over there they rendezvous again, the young, who I believed to have procured honestly for myself by means of hair dye, lipstick and a stinking wrinkle-corrector on the never-never. Yet I'm still far from being an Amazon queen! I fell into the hands of these young men through the luck of the strong, yet I, a woman who belongs to the past, will be released from them without further ado. Some of them reappear several times to laugh at me, but they don't retain me, not even in memory, which they'd be allowed to do according to the rules of engagement. I wait. The ultimate humiliation is that they're always ripped away from me, a sharp-toothed old warrior nonetheless, yes, ripping each other away from me ever more energetically.

Nothing binds them to me, nothing holds them up, yet I'm a defence that smashes ships. A defence that defends itself. They come closer. No one sees me, not even once when it's already too late and the ship has already passed through my bars. Yes, how quickly it all happened.

This young man here is looking for eyesight material because the victims today are too small, so they're barely worth the effort of producing them. Or they have to be laid under the lens of a magnifying glass so they appear bigger before we incinerate them on us. You don't get anything more for them. Every moment of driving, of racing, of sliding has to be enjoyed before it tips over into the routine of a machinist. First of all, ladders still leaning against each other, then a light tremor, upswing and then upthrust against oneself – and suddenly you can do it! Super! Young young young! And high as a whole field staff. Perhaps that's the reason they shouldn't have done it, even though they did do it? Their names don't tell us much, these young and increasingly obese men are the same all over the world. Perhaps that's the reason why the same thing is done everywhere. They haven't put on aprons like us, nor cooked, nor washed like us. They're not dried, they're forever wet behind the ears. And what they most certainly did not do: debase themselves. Nor was it necessary, they were already tall and overweight, sadly, as they marched against me, and of course, won.

I stand up from my seat appalled. The whole lot's laughing. Shivering, I draw this land around me as if it were a jacket. How nice that there's no longer any barbed wire on it. Well, take my catalogues of values away from me, I can barely hold them anymore. Today these catalogues are also too heavy, no wonder, since snobs like myself take them on. They destroy the doorsteps, these one-time hooklets, no booklets, they're now bricks. I do think they could think about removing electrical appliances and microelectronics from these folios. As it is we live entirely under the totalitarian dominance of micro-processors, I mean microprocesses.

Something snuggles up against a young person's hand, it is the head of his cat that's immediately thrown against the wall, the next thing up is his joystick, that at least is subjugated by him and opens up the new world he wanted for his birthday, the lad. At least then there'll be no more
rattling at the door of the world. Another game is no longer in it, in this machine. Macro-processes the next book, the next hall. You'll find more specific information about the conditions of individual violence at the till, you'll get information any time from that point without having to pay for it. Collective happenings are only available at the main till on the first floor.

It was no effort at all for me to write all that down, but now I'd really like to get rid of it.

What distinguishes the moralist is that he gets worked up today about this, tomorrow about that and cannot find any auspice for an upcoming and yet shrouded answer. I am an idiot, the answer lies in the water, in that sort of darkness.

One, if not several DIVERS appear out of the floor. They are dragging a very reluctant ELFI ELEKTRA behind them, maybe in a net. As she eventually gets too heavy, or defends herself too hard, they leave her behind
.

Applause! Applause! Good. Thank you. You can stop now, I've heard it already.

DIVER:

I left the slowly moving ship, not one single immortal's crying cloud was to be seen in the skies, and what is that here on the green meadow? A spot? At bottom women are a lustful lot – they make such demands as have not been heard before, they challenge me. I prefer to wait until the right one comes along. Nobody remembers their own birth, that's why women are so unpopular. These weaklings! And yet today even they go in for all sorts of sports.

For example, my sister Elfi Elektra from Bregenz.
(He yanks at the struggling bundle.)
I'm allowing her a short rest here. Her problem is that something only appears to be visible to her once it's concealed in something hidden. She turns over every stone because she absolutely has to find a vipers' nest. Her sport consists of leaving nothing hidden in its place. But what she is digging up here, like a dog, is something that has been visible the whole time. Why does she imagine she's the only one who's seen it? It's only
once absolutely everyone has seen it that she allows it into her thoughts. And now she's puffing herself up in front of everyone, sits up and begs, just like winter throwing its snow at us. I've got better things to do. Us young men. The most of what there is, and there's still so many of us. Us latelings. I've no idea where we should all go, aha, now I see where, no, I still can't see it exactly, but I can see it roughly, and that's all I need: out with the individual and in with the mass, so that we can all beat one and the same time before we have time to be beaten down. Main thing is, we age late.

Wherever you look, everywhere there are some like us and none like you or Elektra Elfi. She always takes everything so seriously. She's shot her arrows without even one of them having hit. She hears nothing but contradiction and yet she does not and still does not open her legs, because she considers herself alone to be the most magnificent. A child has not been borne of her. She's cursed and sewn shut. Sun, come on, fall down. Net, tighten up. Cords loosen.

So many young men and yet not one of us is a puzzle. We're here and therefore we're it. But we won't always have been it. Our childish beginnings and our unchildish and irredeemable ending, who says that? No, we never stop, or perhaps yes, we break off at any point we want to and from anyone we want to, and that means that we're breaking off with you right now. None of us dies alone in the night. They go along! Young people. Young people. Yoohooo! We're just getting under our own influence, we're not listening to other influences. Why not orientate ourselves to the best, to ourselves? Or to nature, that is bigger than us and has just enjoyed crushing someone with a boulder. So of course we have to capitulate to it. Nevertheless, we do really cherish nature.

It also disposes of us soon enough. No matter. We always want to discover something new. Part of us is covered by trousers. Part of us is watched over by fear. Oh yes, your
eyes do not deceive you, there is something in us that's pulling. I personally wouldn't call it longing, yet after some time we do notice that it pulls us back into the shoe shop, no, one shouldn't underestimate this desire. So I buy these and the other shoes for myself: that's one of the most frequent sentences that I make in connection with myself. According to desire and brand, according to turning radius and turbo, super or supernormal. What, women want to say something on the matter? Well then, knock yourselves out. The city belongs to us. The countries are soon swaying in time to our music in their hips, warming themselves up, warming themselves up more, every police sports team, every fire brigade sports team knows that. We practise warming ourselves up before every deployment and then we put out the fire that we set on ourselves, again, and then we set another fire somewhere else.