Sports Play (8 page)

Look at this one, do, this sporting jock, now he's legionary, legendary, he neither respects life nor fears it. He flies around and hits something or someone. Yet another who might've been my son if only I'd kept the newspaper cuttings longer. He's become famous through sport, yet this child of quite ordinary people is, how should I put it, like a machine. And what he demonstrates is just so unvarying, I mean, think about it, it's so sad it makes you cry. I might as well turn on the telly and start ironing in time. If it were feasible they'd operate on him, so he didn't have to pursue his activity and could stay in bed. Liberate him. He says often enough that he carries a heavy burden: playing, forever playing, non-stop! On grass, on clay, on gravel, on plaster, on cement, on dog shit. Then despite all that effort one day he simply stops believing in
himself, even though he went off on his own to Australia, and surrounded himself with a fuck-off castle. He needs us, his machine-operators, to operate him. And yet he'll soon be gone from our minds like a shape-shifter who doesn't understand what has shifted to stop him winning. This man can even exist outside his body – in a couple of newspapers and on television – by now it's probably the only place he exists. That's right, I see it now, this is where he is at home, in our home, in his drains! Oh dear, now I've got lost. Oh well. Who wants to judge the performance of others when there's no over-arching purpose and no over-important meaning? Even God is allowed to be who he is. But our sportsman is always other to what he should be.

We complain every time we see his picture. He's not been training hard enough recently. Injuries have knocked him right back. We would never have knocked him that far! Now he's no longer winning, we feel injured too. We know what it's like, Gerhard! What's the matter with him? Is he still here? Hello? We never see him anymore, but we do see his plane disappearing over the horizon, apparently he's in it. We hop up and down. The cameras are off before he's anywhere near goal. And now he is what we have made of him: a loser. Albeit a fit one. He got too close to home. Get out of your hole and make us happy again. Onwards and upwards! Why does that boy live so apart in Monaco, he'd be driving round here if only the Red Bull Ring was still up and running. Come and join us in our adversity, not the sports reporter who knows you from a few old snowball fights. Come and zoom around with us, not over there where no one can see you. Solace, oh solace, the ending is so cruel. That man wants to travel better roads than the rickety stretches we can offer, copied from everyday life. Just look at his huge wealth. Oh hero of our glowing picture frame. What? He has an extraordinary personality and a wife as well? Just like us? On the high ridge of our bent spines we carry him away from the screen upon which we fix our heads, eight hours a day, frantically keeping them up like an inexperienced swimmer holding his head
off the water. Through us he is the eternal Being and at the same time the eternal Semblance. That sportsman and that one and that one and that one over there you can also wrap for me. He doesn't even have to be nice to us. But he must be polite to reporters.

We made these nothings into greats, into disturbers. Into heavyweights. We commoners, we who can never get used to our lives. The quiet want to be loud, but the loud don't want to be quiet. And I am the loudest amongst the quiet. I too want recognition. We yell 'til we're deaf whilst others call the shots. What can I say, we just work for this or that person. But the special one is an employee of his own activities, playing ball, jumping, running, thrashing balls, pulling his weight, or cycling around in circles. Through him we'll have learnt about death and destruction, about how to chain up our fathers and how to shove our mothers into shopping bags, or wrap them in dirty sheets and stab them. But all's fair in war! Why else would we have started it? Sportsmen are like soldiers, everyone puts their best into the kit. Olympia, on the other hand teaches them to be a cog in the machine. How they all die there, the great heroes, the commanders of the sea. We read all about this man with his ranking and his member in short trousers, but first of all he has to prove to us that he is who he is in his real life. That photo is true to scale according to its light, just a little underexposed post-shot. He too is part of a war, irreplaceable, and at the same time deployable everywhere, like the young of the world who are displaced by age, which is already cooling down over there. There's one standing there in medal-worthy shoes, it doesn't matter who he is, he's already proved himself and can step down. He was not my son, but it doesn't matter, my son wants to be just like him. I had envisaged another model entirely: three stripes, that's what my son is supposed to wear on his feet, so that if he died at least his feet would be recognisable, should his exhumed sneakers come rippling towards me from the earth.

I shoot my arrow and don't even look to see if I've hit anything. No, I only hit my ovaries but not the egg. And then suddenly the fatherland calls: one piece of son and, bulls-eye, straight into black with him. Into the earth, quick march! Well, I hope I'll be allowed to look at him beforehand.

The son should be a consort in case something endangers the fatherland. Nothing against that! Freedom and crime. If you lose then patriotism is punished because that means another country has won, as is so often the case. And the mothers there are happy. But our nation is not happy, because it's lost with all its sons. The spectators' chubby cheeks have turned blood-red! They're enjoying it. Finally here's a sport where even at my age I can join in. War. War. Celebrate! Be happy! Rejoice! And now I really understand that modern man has won. Because he's the only one who survived, conserved in durable and yet pliable synthetic material, allowing no one else to stay alive. Bravo! Hip hip! Adoration only causes one little problem, one has to forget oneself in it. I'm good at that, that's what I'm best at even. My son would not exist without me, it's true, but he is less. I note this when he limps and waddles off the pitch because he has strained his blue riband. I prefer to turn to those who feel better today. One just wishes to be simply a woman or remain one, er, be allowed to remain one, in order to have given birth to one of those cool-looking modern decathletes over there.

VICTIM:
(Now being kicked by the YOUNG MAN.)

Can I give you some advice? Sit down in such a way that he has to think the lengths of your thighs are just
incroyable
.

She looks with interest at the MAN who is kicking the VICTIM
.

MAN:

Look, why does the world damage someone like this? I don't understand myself. Along comes a defenceless guy who wants to watch a football match, just the evening before he'd experienced mass destruction, extermination and
vandalism on the television screen. His mother, meanwhile, belongs to the women of the world and loves peace as well as the music of Beethoven, something she presents to him every day in a sort of chant. This poor maltreated man wants to recover from the destructive effects of all these events in a football stadium, of all places, and just look what happens to him there. Suddenly he values his mother and the amount of empty pockets she'd ironed for him, suddenly it's too late and he unfortunately encountered me. I'm the one his mother always advised against. This is a horrible, painful theatre, seemingly never-ending. Thank you for the applause at this point where it doesn't belong. Look here, this unsteady guy, he staggers, a bleeding giant, comes towards me, and what do I do? I could not be more appalled by myself.
(Kicks.)
I will probably get into trouble, from his mother's side too.

A YOUNG WOMAN, bouncing around doing exercises:

I aim at the basket, of course I don't get it in – again, but I don't have to...the main thing is that I play my cheerful part! About sport and women, I wish to say the following: a woman must be beautiful because, like a sportsman, she too takes place only in her body. Otherwise she'd be constantly absent and no one'd notice how attractive she is. A slightly contemptuous “So, pretty woman, you're here too?” will normally suffice. One doesn't need television or
Hello
magazine to alight upon her noisily, spraying suntan oil and darkening the heavens like the wings of a swan in a terrible tumult of feathers and shrieks. Such words in their own liquid fertiliser have to be administered beforehand by a god with a pipette, otherwise it's pointless. That's when I usually say: “Yeah, can't you see I'm here” and then the spell that's cast over some shy people – certainly not myself – is broken. If I were one of those quick-witted people and said languidly “No, I haven't come yet.” Or, better still, “Hopefully I'll come soon”, then the gods of creation would've already won, regardless of whether the woman in question is an epilationist or not. I am most
certainly not. No, epilationism is not a skin disease but the delight in shaven body parts.

Then there's that great delight in tight-fitting knickers, so that – like between water and fish – there's nothing between my body and those close-fitted glances. Whatever, more than enough is on show. You won't miss a thing. What you've just discovered is my figure. If I weren't beautiful you'd probably call me an apathetic cackling failure, but at least I can flaunt myself. Which is something the others can't do. So. And now to the sportsman: he takes place, as I've already said, entirely within his body, but he still has no image of himself, because he's constantly presenting this image to others. Like when it comes to killing: you're entirely concentrated on the other, even though you know you're still present in yourself. Roll up, roll up, come and see this sportsman, how he exhibits his agility by day, only to get it out again for his night life. He has to slave away, because a sportsman, in contrast to women and God, is only what he does. Ski jumping goes up and down like a day-bright stairwell. Yes, you're seeing right, a good thing that you can see at all. Here is a day person, a bright one, surely he is still allowed to be such a thing. This person made of abundance. Don't be deceived, even if he does maintain that it's all thanks to himself and his trainer. Even more it's thanks to us, well, certainly not to me.

I'm not expressing this well, I know, but you try and make something of a clump of too moist clay. It'll be running through your fingers before you've even looked at it obliquely. Whittle something yourself. Try just the once to shape a juicy person, I'm not trying it here in any case, no, you'd not even manage the face of an Alsatian. Even a snake requires a certain effort, because they often come apart in the middle. You'll soon see how difficult it is. We are the movers of the to-be-moved, and have to learn to accept that the to-be-moved can move of their own accord. There are so many efficient and proficient people, yet one doesn't talk about them. We only talk about the many people who make themselves conspicuous. The sleepwalkers during
the day. Otherwise it wouldn't be unusual to be able to watch them be moved. We're already waiting to put them away again. Here is the button. Over there is a plant. A weed. We decide what has to go.

Even if the sun is not shining it can still get a bit hot. Over there's a little girl, practically still a child, who's turning somersaults. That turns us on. No later than now, and your phone'll ring, and you'll unfortunately have to stand up a certain Gabi. You stare and stare. You've also got a tattoo on your luscious bum, for your eyes only! Frivolity often leads to very short-lived group cohesion, sometimes limited to an active situation, with fleeting prior contact. Yet groups of only two people ought not to interest us here, well, they never fail to interest me.

VICTIM:

Refuse to take part in the duel with him, queen! Haha, the stupid cow thinks she's a queen just because she'd cut off her breasts in order to get a headline. Just because she dares to speak for other women. We'll show her before she can slip out of her stupid goose feathers. Her own sounds shall shatter her, the comical fishwife, although I don't find her comical at all. Stupid old battleaxe. An upright gait but not one single light bulb on! She exposes herself simply by opening her mouth, the stupid biddy. There are so many upright people in this country who don't give any cause to be talked about. So why does she, non-stop? She'll learn the hard way about despising the young, yet secretly she binds her knees, strengthens her elbows with nourishing cream, and practises her inline skating, she can do that. Fury! She doesn't look as if she belongs to women and yet she calls women sister-heart. Unwomanly, excuse me, unnatural, a stranger to the rest of humanity. Consent had consequences, allowing her breasts to be surgically removed and sewn on much smaller elsewhere, you can still see the stitches.

MAN:
(Kicking.)

Madam author, tell me, do: what should I call the four young people who this very night, on the way home from the disco, wrapped their car around a pear tree? I have no words for something so terrible, but for some reason I don't want to use your words either. They all look so old. What, you don't know? That's what I thought. Your thoughts are not healthy and you're not completely healthy either.

VICTIM:
(Whilst being kicked and carrying out his/her activities.)

Sport! Sport is the organisation of human immaturity, amalgamated in seventy thousand people, and then poured out over a couple of million more back home. Yes, on Monday mornings they slide back to work like slicked poodles. Every weekend in my living room I fall in love all over again: it is here my heroes appear, punctual as clockwork, even though it is said that famous people are often unpredictable. Well at least the sports programmes start on time – to the second. Once the runners have been finally released, then only the water-tap and the hand on it, is worried about mastering that uncertain element, time. I sympathise with the violence that makes our society so rotten. I hate people that turn this society maggoty for me. I just can't wait to be washed away by something, a real deluge, just like now. That's what I like. There's something going on. Madam author, I see that you've once again assumed to speak for me and I incriminate you from the right side, so that you can also advocate for me from the opposing side. Then I'll quickly slip to the other end of the bench so that you won't find room close to me. You only want to be famous! You always stand up for the victims. Isn't there some sanctuary light that comes on in the traffic lights that you've clearly and visibly hung before your heart, as if it were a tabernacle? I had green, the same as my opponent. I'll surely be allowed across, won't I? Over there are the many and I want to join them. My risk. Tomorrow they'll be somewhere else and, concerning my homicide, I'll stand before the Last Court sadly quite without voice, the victim: laid on the floor by my murderer, executed
and dragged over for a photo. Yes, tomorrow things will look different, only I will remain silently on my photo, unchangeable and quiet. What is going on, when a simple country gendarme becomes someone to worry about, just because he started in an Olympic biathlon or cross-country skiing event, or shot his wife and two children with his service pistol. Today it's my turn to be a person who stands out. Even in a group, albeit at a special reduced rate. The people travelling with me lift up their eyes to me, brightly-coloured eyes wearing their usual contact lenses, and then let them fall on me, ouch. If those are the modern masses, then I'm appalled by their self-indulgence, even if I belong to them.