Lust (14 page)

But what more do we want than to get our wages in the pocket of our failure. That is: no doubt we do want to become something, no doubt we do want to be a little more, at least on paper. And we want our feelings too, as we sit there at home, through our own fault, through our own most grievous fault, with none to keep us company but the phone.

He's heartless, this man. Like fire he consumes the house. He drags his wife around. The child starts to shout. Outside, a solitary exhaust struggles to attract the attention of sleepers who, like animals, register the tempest as it rages but don't dare say anything. Not even during the daytime can they join in the muscular games of the beautiful, wealthy flesh. Their pleasures are burdened with oppressions, society needs the poor, q.e.d. The young man drives off. And no sooner has he quit the shunting cunting yard where they linked their couplings than the woman pounds on the door which her longing long since smashed through the wall with the axe of desire. Eyeless, she stares into nowhere, anywhere, wherever she might see him again. But men are such creatures of violence, regardless they set fire to their houses where their families lie asleep, ignorant of what the figures in the bank statements mean. Let's get undressed and look at these other figures instead, deceive someone with our genitals. Truly, men cover all

the highways and byways with themselves. But you don't care, not you, that a human being is suffering wrongings and longings before your very eyeways.

Longing is a stick that this woman has fetched herself, fetch! She needs the excitement. For her house is in order and delivered too. So she quests abroad. And then she thinks continually of what she has found. And tips it like a packet soup into her turbulent bubbling boiling waters and stirs it round and stirs a stranger's heart. After all, the Catholic Congress needs its far-off Pope as well. Who journeys to join us, though when he is here in our fatherland, lo! he's suddenly just another human being like you and me, don't I know him from somewhere. For him, everyone comes last, a loser, last past the post. Not so with love. Men at least can get somewhere, they can thumb a lift, but women are always wanting a lift from their feelings, a high, and being let down. The whole human race is in a ferment of wishes, forever wondering what to buy.

Where have you been? The words batter Gerti, Father's blows strike the boy as well, his kith and kin, who claws tight hold of Mother. Let's not bother describing this Laocoon group, the three of them in each other's toils, holding tight, down they go.

The Man's rage is huge. Moil and toil and turmoil, he's coming to the boil, time to cool the heat with a jet of foam. He wants the woman to take off her clothes right away. So that she measures up to his size. He wants to conduct his lightning into her. Not that his wildfire could ever be tamed by her, and anyway he has plenty of matches. To create himself anew, as often as need be. To have the woman bake his baguette, cook his meat, pickle his gherkin, and eat. The child is put to bed with a glass of fruit juice, quiet now! Leave the woman to Father. Don't go yapping and barking at her and jumping and frisking

and grabbing. Mother's back, that's enough. And Father's bird is already chirping over her furrow. The Man drags her into the bedroom to force entry into her and piss on her. Good to have her home! The cow cud have been dead, cunt she?

The Direktor stands like a glowing cigarette butt by the hay of his bed and tosses himself away. Fear flares up in a blaze: holy night, a holy roll in the Austrian hay, where tales are told of the holy animal come to eat at the haybox of social welfare. It's not long since Christmas, now it's already practically time for springtime wishes. There goes Father, from one to the other, in all the majesty of his calling and becking. The woman wishes she were gone, she knows what youth is and she knows what she has lost and that time spent here now is time lost. That's how it goes, when you've played with life and lost! Now someone else's tongue is jammed down the woman's throat, take a good hard pull to wash away the taste. From the top of his ski-jump the Man swoops down on the woman. She covers her face with shadows, and yet what is hers is torn from her, no power on earth would be equal to the Direktor's hefty sex. He only needs to believe, like the whole national skiing team! Yet for the woman it is as if he had been as completely cleared out of her life as the prominent people of today whose names will merely sound silly in ten years' time. The woman wants nothing but youth. She would shoot young beautiful bodies on fast film in the hope of getting a shot at them, fast, wait and see what develops. These visions seem heaven-sent. Meanwhile her arms are* pulled from her face and Father descends upon her, leaving her cheeks red with wining and whining. What people live on, apart from their hopes, is a mystery to me. They seem to invest everything in cameras and hi-fis. There's no room in their houses for life any more. Once the act of purchasing is accomplished, everything is really over, though in fact nothing is over, or else it wouldn't be

there any more. After all, burglars want their share of the fun as well.

The Man waits till his water's come to the boil. Then he tosses his wife in after first removing her dressing-gown. His signal is up, the track's clear, here comes the express. He doesn't need any egging on from her, he has two eggs anyway down there with his sausage, quite enough for two. It is as if his prick were out of its mind with the thought that someone else might have gone grubbing in her cunt, driving his truck in and mucking her up. His anger wears the Man out before his time: too much energy is wasted on shouting, till the very vaults of heaven are echoing. Outside, everything has been overpowered by ice and snow. Nature does generally get things right, but now and then you have to lend a helping hand so she can enjoy her meal at our table in peace and quiet. The rain bursts from the Man, into the woman, the two little rugs of her dugs are given a good beating out. The two kilos of his stock and barrel hang down like rocks. Fearlessly he scatters his gravel on the woman, so he can go for a walk in her with a firm grip underfoot.

The boy has got up again, sleepy, he'd best not rattle at the bathroom door like that or he'll be tipped out with the bathwater. The Man forces the woman's head right back to prevent her from yelling. His bird is wide awake, it's locked in the cage of her mouth, which is where it likes to be, flapping about till the woman starts to retch and heave and her vomit travels along his shaft and dribbles down his dangling testicles. Too bad. His glans is yanked out of her pharynx and the woman tipped halfway over the tub. His prick is stiff as a bull-rush, and now he rushes her like a bull and tucks his prick up in bed where it belongs, he tolls the bells of her breasts, alcohol gushes from her like water, and potent drops of the good stuff squirt into her cunt. No, the Direktor won't allow this woman simply to tumble out of his nest. What does

she think she's doing, obeying her own senses, not him? Man and wife are one flesh.

The woman only appeared for a minute or so in the arena where consumers learn to swim. Now she is sitting in a filled bath, getting a soaping. The dressing-gown, long since crumpled, will have to be cleaned, trimmed and ironed. The Man tears whole handfuls of hair from her pussy as she goes about her washing and refurbishing. He digs into the gills of her privates and his soapy fingers invade her ground water where he shot his wad. She thrashes and whimpers, it stings! Out front her coveted fruits hang plump on their branches. The Direktor makes an investigative grab at the tips of the sausage skins which someone else has left, he twirls them round three fingers and then slowly releases them. Hard as buttons, the areolas' cold eyes stare at us. You can never do anything right for the lordsandmasters, not even if you were a queen. And already the terrible vessels that must receive the contents of the men are clattering. With a whiffle and sniffle the waiting-room doors swing shut on the boneyards of the unemployed. We shall find a way to tame those floods as well.

10

THEY MIGHT REST IN PEACE and security. But first the sunshine that peeps through the forks of their limbs would needs cast its piercing light upon them: there is something they can do that it's worth having a body for! They can doff each other's hats. With a few thrusts they work their way through to the other side of each other. Their dwelling place seems a very heaven. And before they (like the cheetah) have taken the few mighty bounds that will take them to the drinking trough of the mighty, they'll have coupled several times over. Like motes of dust in a sunbeam. Why else would they have and hold each other, care for each other with water and showers of emotion, as if they were to be canonized? Every part of their bodies has earned their partner's attention and love. Like the farmers who work on the side and get on the foreman's nerves by forever falling asleep on the job. Laying into the animals, slitting their throats, nodding and winking at blind horses: all the tricks that have been performed on themselves, dozens of times. Here comes the small farmer from the stalls and sheds, in Wellingtons, because his good shoes are at home together with his good wife. The blood of the rabbit the children loved is dripping from the sleeve of his jacket. But even this man, who is on this earth to have a life, has an occasional friendly side when he drags a girl off the dance floor into the bushes. And she scarcely notices what she's putting up her resistance to.

But those who dwell in the light that enters through their blinds experience things altogether differently. They are at their best for each other. Even when they oil the silent ointment of time upon their bodies. You hardly see it, time, that suntan lotion of creation, but those who have anointed themselves with it are safe from the rays and noise. Look at this woman, for instance, in this

photograph. Time seems to have passed her by without leaving any trace at all. There she is, in her locker, where her husband has stored her for safe keeping.

The big kids who attend the school of profit are filled with worries about nationalization, which tugs at our purse strings as this Direktor tugs at his wife's dugs. The owners have given him to understand that the big companies, wonderful in their greed as in their wrath, would like to play for mortal stakes with the people of the country. The children of those who lose out are the first to realize what side their bread is buttered: no matter how thin the slice, you need to earn your daily bread and save it up in your bank account. On target for the super premium. And maybe the Direktor will play along and sing a chorus too, hallelujah.

He has other worries, then, which he wears with a ruffled air. He wears his hair parted, unruffled, and his genitals in a bag he's brought for his wife. How her eyes will light up! Wait and see! His high monthly income brings indelible joy and cheer upon his weary but notably solvent head. We servants, though, are known for what we are. For there is life in the depths. The people flock to the pub. Soon we shall have all our sheep safely in from the rain and cold, we'll be feathering our own nest, doing our business. Our rapid growth causes suffering to the nobodies who can't see further than the ends of their noses and yet travel further than that, bare-headed and full of resolve, and still end up in front of the boss. Who says he can't comply with their wishes, and swish! — their wishes are scythed down in swathes by the company's resolution to rationalize (ah, these rational people). Truly, the Direktor is in his element. He takes the measure of others, for he is immeasurably wealthy in the eyes of the people who learn how to fall like autumn leaves beside

him. Softly, so that they don't disturb him when he plays the violin. He can see no reason why he should restrain himself inside his belt, which looks good on him, for perhaps another has dwelt inside his wife, where only he should dwell. My thanks for listening to these insults.

Tenderly, every inch the jovial deity he can sometimes be when he's in the mood for his wife, he leans over her skin, which is musky with animal vapour. She wants to sleep now. Not a well-advised wish. She is full of her recent past, and if we get real close we'll notice it too: the future "is wide open to the young, if they have studied and their parents have learned to play them off against one another. Let the neighbours' children rot like fallen fruit where they lie. And this woman is already wide open to a hopeless love, cosy as a rabbit hutch the day after the battle, she has already shlepped in all her furniture and there's flowery wallpaper too! From her pussy only a narrow path leads on, and there he stands, the student, together with all my readers, an educated youngster, mild of temper and tempest, waiting to get in again. If we all keep together and keep everything we've got together, our premonitions may come true. We are unnecessary! If we have any title to live at all, then in the memory of some loved animal we have fed or some loved person we have fed ourselves to.

The Direktor could batter his wife, bat her skull-first into the garden any time he chooses, she'd better watch out if she goes batting her eyelids again. But he doesn't bother just now because his urges are gathering like waters in a woodland spring. Useless tears will make her mascara run, she'll be masked, unrecognizable. Patches of purple will blossom on the moorland of her body. Poverty isn't the only way to beat people into submission when day inflames the early hours and coffee gushes into people's gobs. It is not good if we women have

nothing to love but the cleaning of rooms and are not subjected to daily inspection to see if our organs are all in order. Don't worry. We're all just as we were. Just the same. Soon the abyss will be full of us. Our detached houses will be o'ershadowed by the interest on the loan. And the boss will be off to the byre, to us animals on the chains of our wishes, waiting to be kicked about. Anyone with a smallholding and a little house of his own will be the first to taste the bitterness of unemployment: so say the people who have just been shopping at a divine little boutique and then squeeze in behind their desks where no one can soothe them any more. Not even the ever so slight friction of water on the sex brushes they use to paint each other's wishes can make them good to the goods and chattels they keep chattering with fear in the death cell. Often it's a drive of several hours till they're home with their human partners and can switch on the current that zaps through the chairs.