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Authors: Elfriede Jelinek

BOOK: Lust
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You don't go eating out if you've built a beautiful house of your own. Shadow falls on the street. Workers returning home want to turn in somewhere for a beer. The Direktor's brow is innocent of effort. As a violinist he is just a fart in a hurricane, but he can still service his wife in just five minutes. His suspension is good, look at him banging his little jug at her udder, did you see how he stuck it in her mouth? He's still having problems parking those wings. But the lordsandmasters always like shooting the rapids, getting their business done, they're always in a hurry. And your cunt'd be on fire too if someone took a slash in it every day! Outside a zealous policeman passes, making notes. There's many a one of you has seen a strong man weaken at the knee to see a no-hunting sign, but when it comes to the women back home where it's warm and dry, the season's always open and the game is waiting for the hunter. To come and play. This lordandmaster, in whom a need for excitement is stirring, appears like a sign in the heavens above

the woman. His tongue sets a pulse beating in the can of juice she has jammed between her thighs. You mustn't be wary of brandishing the fist you thump on the table. Elsewhere, people are seeing to their backfiring exhausts and brooding over their engines, so that they won't be late for work. But in the evening they flare up like flames if their wives' cooking isn't any good. What's this, they say, and the wife casts her gaze up as if she had just climbed the Alps. These people don't have much time left to languish after a beautiful object of their desire with breasts up front (no point having them elsewhere). Even our cars use up our last bit of juice.

The Direktor clings to the woman who shares the bed. She's been worn out and knocked about so long, perhaps he's intending to finish her off. Let's take a look. She really mustn't go prowling about to see if someone will be a real man for her and stick his tongue in her pussy.

The Direktor uses no contraceptives because what he'd like best would be to see a whole lot more miniatures of himself. Only small ones, mind, he won't be put in the shade by anyone. He steps out onto the path of light and cracks open the woman's mouth with his drill. His grip starts her coughing, a shudder passes through her from rudder to udder. The Man seems fascinated by the fact that he can give birth to the entire length of his dong single-handed. He is changed. He quarrels with the woman on account of his slow-burning stove. What an active substance it must be, blessed trinity, growing to three times its single size without divine intervention! No martyrdom required! What a man! And then he rains down on his nearest and dearest. Elsewhere they have steps leading up to the houses, though no one wants to live in them, given the choice. The poorest of the poor find themselves at last, with their small steps.

Yelling, the Herr Direktor drills his way into Gerti's

mouth. First he has to be beside himself if he wants to get inside her, these aren't the times to have a little something on the side, and the Direktor was always encouraged as a youngster to show his good side. Put up a good show, fight the good fight, and always make sure your instrument's tuned. His son already plays an instrument too. The slopes tip whole handf uls of acid trees down the mountainside. The woman kicks and is kicked. Till she screams. No, this isn't the time for wandering about the house or smoking a cigarette or boozing or behaving in an angry, threatening way to the staff. Her nightie is stripped off so that she can be groped from various sides, yes, the Direktor is a many-sided talent, right! We often use the bed. It is where we sleep off the war of the sexes. To think we could simply inspect the ranks ad infinitum there and work our way up to mediocrity. In no other field do you rise so fast, always supposing (in the case of women) that the face you have suits you. The crag, after all, doesn't go to the pasture; the animals go to it, to rub their heads on it. Now the woman is flailing and thrashing as if she were out for immortality there amid her electrical appliances. She fades away like the dying echo of a cry, the cry you give when in broad daylight the lightning, that incorrigible flasher, can't control itself and zaps into the TV set. The set, entertainment for the dark night of the soul, will have to be repaired. The Direktor wants to fire his gun again today. To be sure of his wife — lying there bleeding, breathing, retching. Sleep heavy in her eyes. Bile rising in her gorge as this intruder rises in her gorge.

Of course he can spread her cheeks any time he likes with those great heavy paws of his! Those buttocks are his property, just as God is ours. Her sphincter squeaks like an old shoe. In less than five minutes he'll have shot his bolt again. Keep clear at all times! For this Man can't stand life alone, and others have to stand him every day. The woman's body is at his service most of the time.

every now and then it seems as if the sun is going to shine. Get these people out of the way, the farmer's left the furrow ever so slightly ajar! I left them sated and sated I find them, and no lamp lights the way in this terrain. So they plough and rape their wives, and bow and scrape to the works committees, not that the committees have any real power left. Sometimes before you can say Jack Robinson a new skilled worker has been given a dressing down and is waiting in the workshop to be dressed and salted. His field is limited to the very end. There are few women seated at breakfast, which is served by the housekeeper. Opposite the man. With sunglasses shading their drawn worn forlorn eyes. One place exactly is occupied by them. At night they were ridden and rocked like the heavenly horses children learn to ride on. But the children sit more securely in the saddle! This Man takes as many liberties as our president, he is almost as great a burden for us wanderers to bear upon our shoulders. He says that Mozart was a wonderful composer. He too enjoys playing. But on a smaller scale, if you compare the frame. With a little space left over for hobbies. At the Salzburg Festival he has an opportunity to test his stamina. Father agrees with himself. Giving a merry wink, he penetrates his wife's sphincter. She restrains the cry that's straining at the leash, after all, she's a married woman now. Nobody learns to read without paying for it.

The Direktor dips a toe in her cool waters and then emerges from the gloom into the sunshine. In every respect he is at ease in the mansion of himself. He may as well be silent. You can live in a house like snow on the grass of course, but you can keep your chained-up member so busy that the clinking and jingling never stops. There are many women but only one Man. He bends over the woman's hind legs and whispers of the erotic kicks he could get in the brothel any time, instead of which he puts up with her kicks. Erotic! The word was

coined for the Erikas of this world, not the Gertis. It is what gives this solemn ceremony its meaning. The Man has to bear the animal within in mind, and what does the animal do when it's been bared? Guess. A conversation with the world and its well-oiled machine parts. In an ante-room where they wait till the women come to their assistance with the musty holes knocked open by the hail. The life's work of some of them will be completely forgotten by the earth. Reliably, though, the Man discovers his ejaculated semen below him, and wallows in the certainty that his child will live on after him, to torment others in his stead. Let's turn a blind eye to it all. Who lays everything waste and nonetheless is always wanting to start afresh? Right. He buys new clothing for the child, and Mother, since Nature has its limits, has to wash it. They show mothers doing so on TV. This mother plays piano, as far as the pedals will take her.

The Direktor has fucked his wife's tube enough, now he gapes at an empty screen. Takes a look at himself. And, an amiable stranger inclined over the engine now that it's idle, he fiddles with his pet. As you might stroke a dog. He dribbles saliva on her, 'scuse me. Your home territory isn't where some other man has been before you. For the Man, the woman is a constant factor/ factotum because she keeps her feet on the ground while he aims straight at the heart and writes computer programmes by way of a hobby. That'll leave them speechless. Light shines upon the field. Tomorrow Gerti is sure to be still there. He doesn't want any other man hanging round when she's hanging loose, boring into her when she's bored. Now the Direktor appears from out of his blind corner, works his way into place like the stream pouring into the valley. That's how he'd like it. Formula One impatiently pawing at the starting line. And all around the selfsame night can never cleanse the poor of themselves. Quite the contrary: they're cold, and they have to warm up at their wives' pussies. They don't want

to be too late tomorrow, at the factory, our greatest good, where they are not so much wanted as expected. If they are in flight, they are fetched down. Many of them have to saw frost-damaged branches off their fruit trees. The Direktor gobs terrible wads of filth in his wife's ear. She might simply be forgotten, like a rucksackful of rancid sandwiches, it's up to her. Any time at all! She can have the good life, just as long as she doesn't go overcrowding her knickers, just as long as the way inside is kept clear and gritted, so that the Man knows where to go if he's disaffected. Got to slam the ball home, goal! And what of her? He yanks her hair as if he were still steering. Nearing the end, his trembling member crashes into her undergrowth. The Man punches the nape of her neck and the voice in which he addresses her is awesome. Could it be that this woman is thinking of another, better-loved poker? Could it be possible? So it happens that the Direktor's brimful cup passes her by and its contents are deposited on her skin, a heap of refused refuse. This woman is unworthy that the Direktor should incline towards her at an angle of 45 degrees. Let us now drink two quarters, no, three quarters of our fill! At one time the jolly conquerors didn't have so many interruptions to contend with in their conquests. But now there blows a sharper wind.

The people of the country will soon have to rise and shine, harried from one place to another, even before they know where they're at. But wait a moment. Even they enjoy an advantage: springtime will be theirs as well, with its puffing and blowing and zephyrs and fresh air. But in the mean time we shall have achieved far more. Because we shall have forged ahead. We are confident, we go to the theatre or a concert or exhibition where we recognize our own image, cast by nothing but the light of their wretched eyes. Yes, we are on the list! If you take a look down there, you'll see a wild heap of unemployed believers at the mercy of the banks, you

wouldn't credit it. The light in those eyes, ah, at the end of the federal highway, has gilded nothing but factory dividends. But they forgot to indicate, and, misjudging the bend, dazzled by the glare of a job at long last, plunged into the river. One really shouldn't go falling asleep at the wheel early in the morning. And what is becoming of the taxes we pay in the mean time? The money is squandered like people, wasted like lives, an expensive sports car in a slim and talented country, see, where industry takes a sharp bend downhill. Of course people are run over elsewhere too. Now let us continue on our restless way, leaving barely detectible tracks on the federal tarmac and to our children a colour TV set and a video recorder per head.

11

THEN AT BREAKFAST THEY just can't get enough. The child comes racing down and bounds about before Father, what a young rascal. Little sunshine, he is. Worth his weight in gold. Father wants his son to be a plucky fellow, not a yellow fucker. But it's not plucky the kid is, it's lucky, pushing his luck, always out for the lucky dip at the joke shop in town, always wanting something bought. Me me me. He'll scarcely heed his mates in the distance. They have to watch as the Direktor's son runs out of money (just as they run out of time, time to knock at the door of the business world, which is ajar, neither open to them nor closed). At the Volksschule the son sits in class with kids from poor homes, which is logical enough from an educational point of view, but it's war out there in those cottages! Some of these sons and daughters reek of the byre from their long morning's work with the cattle, up to their ankles in leaden shit. There they all are, the bodies, huddled together, till lack of money sweeps them off to the factories. Never seen flowers like these blowing and fading in the factories? Off the child mischievously skips across the field, upsetting the precarious balance of Nature and natural law. (And the child's quite right to hammer a mole with a stick or whish downhill on skis. But then, you're right too, gentle reader, off for a healthy walk, wrapped up in a genuine, natural cloud of pure new wool.) From time to time a gun is fired into the guts of the forest. Cesspits are meant to protect Nature from human kind and its waste, but who will protect humanity from bank employees who get up early just to look up at the Alps? During the night, thank God, there's been a slight thaw, which keeps would-be skiers in suspense well before they're suspended from the lift. Round the bases of trees, ice is packed like the moulded polystyrene used to pack those delicate hi-tech gadgets that make our eyes pop out.

Some would see it quite differently, mind. Here comes the housekeeper with her shopping trolley. The ground, still frozen in places, drones under the wheels as if it were hollow. As well as above us, there must be something below us, too. Have you put your affairs in order, are you having an affair, do you have a fair weather friend? No? Well, just wait till there's a knock at your door. Who knows, maybe one of these slimmed-down well-built jobless fellows out to sell you a magazine subscription. So that you understand the arts and the economy and politics the better.

Being a man, the Direktor can look down on his wife, since she's sitting down there in her usual place where the light from the window cannot fall upon her. Falling upon her is the prerogative of her husband. It is still dark. Gerti is wearing sunglasses. The boy, agog from the TV, comes romping in squawking with greed for another new thing that this time just has to be bought, to take him out of this good old world fast gadgets and the clothes to go with them, so he will walk in happiness for all of his days. For he wants to go off out with the tide, the boy does. His father, from the dark and mighty planet that is his head, utters a word of command. His choice has fallen upon this morning as the right time to fall upon the mother of this child once again. Improving on his nocturnal performance, he has forced himself upon her, just for a short while, short being the operative word. Just as one sits in an armchair, absorbed for a brief moment only in the contrived honesty of the evening news, the Direktor has settled heavily into her, letting himself drop, docking his nozzle from behind at his favourite pump where he tanks up with the consolations and sacraments of life. If only a man could really work this pump to his heart's content! Super! His words force a way into her ear; he wants to go over her accounts of yesterday's misdemeanour again, he's her master book-keeper. Genuine grass will hopefully make

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