Lust (16 page)

an appearance some time or other, now that we've been sowing the fake seed at scrap car lots and service areas, where even a rubber needs a thorough warming before it's unpeeled. We are so orderly and so spendthrift, spending ourselves, casting our seed upon stony ground and then keeping the fact from our human partners', keeping it to ourselves so that the pleasure's ours alone. His wife's thighs are for him only, the Direktor, the terrible visitant. They roast in the hot oil of his lust. He deep-fries. Busily he unloads on her ramp, palpitating, and some time he'll bring her a present of a brooch or a steel bracelet. And it's over. We're free again. Home. Where we belong. But richer than before, when we laughed at the neighbour. You have an open invitation to come and take a look! Don't worry, nothing will happen when the gentleman with the fizz and bezazz comes knocking at your door to jazz you up and pop your cork! Quite the contrary: a woman's expected to be delighted! Next thing you know he'll be packaging himself up in a box! The blue heavens have serious intentions where the landscape is concerned. Business is flourishing.

This woman will doubtless be off at the drop of a hat to the hairdresser's, to have herself trimmed for Michael. Brimful of love, the parents clash above the son. Who is immersed in his playthings just as Father is immersed in Mother. Engrossed; it's gross. The manchild alone with his toy. Fetch that child, now. At one time blades of grass grew here, now the knife-blade's at the heart: who could stay calmly on his own pathway and merely look on? They all have to make a song and dance of their sufferings, piss out something creative so that everyone will notice and love them. Everyone asks the son in what way he is superior to the other kids. It's enough to make Mother's breasts squirt milk: the boy just doesn't seem to possess an immortal soul. At least, he gives his mother no joy. Already he wants to be off skiing again, off with the others being taken for a ride on the lifts. Let's hope

they don't dare too much and have an accident! Now the mother greedily kisses her child, who twists free of her grip. Benevolently Father paws at the carpet, wishing he were alone with his wife once again to paw her. Sometimes when the child's attention is distracted he shoves a finger or two into the most exciting part of her, that slit, which he finds so enticing that he buys her expensive things to wear so that she can cover it up. Secretly he sniffs his hand. It's a winning hand, as winning as he is, as relentless as the light. Meanwhile, Mother lavishes kisses on him, loving the boy and spoiling him rotten, lavishing toys and junk on him as if they were lovers. Father thumps the table goodnaturedly. He has already made use of the woman today; presumably a child has uses for a mother too. Still, it doesn't do to overdo these things! His son needs to learn a little moderation and modesty, it'll come in handy when he loans his nice new skis to those of more modest means, for a moderate sum, so that he can stuff yet more surprises into his mouth at the sweetshop. The boy is a lazy little local railway. Already he has a flourishing trade going with his various equipment, bearing happiness even to the most oafish ignoramuses (the kind of characters who imagine that roller-skating can help in the quest for a loophole in the system, when everyone knows the Alps are in the way). All these kids know is that it must cost a fair bit to have racing skis. This man and this heavenly woman — how alive they feel when they touch each other up! Their eyes are fixed on each other's as if nails had been driven in.

Father the fiddler, pardon me, the violin-player, would doubtless praise his son for working such fiddles. Let him be an example to you, you who administer the snow in this community, even demanding money for the use of this flaky white sporty stuff. There it lies, on the fields of home. And there you go, one of the numberless slaves of sport, wearing the brightly coloured overalls that you

sport everywhere you go, whether it's the ski slope or the disco. It's all one. And you're number one. But first you have to be hauled up high, to be close to God, where time is valued more highly than your downhill time recorded with a stop-watch by your lady wife who has come along on foot. Suddenly life is a more familiar thing to you when you're at the snowy brink holding a gadget to your guaranteed-to-wash-out body. The poor can't hold back the waters, they freeze beneath them; all they can do is cautiously step across, with the exalted majesty of the mountains above them, from where no help will ever come, we regret to say, yours faithfully etc. Here they all are, a colourful multitude scattered from their offices, nicely dressed, rejoicing in the taverns, bent over their skis as if over someone they loved, sliding and whooshing right on down, well, that's it, what else did you expect them to do on skis? And then they get together, full of good cheer like a care packet, bundles of fun on the air waves, live from the village inn where an Alpine band is playing, say, and the poor look on and have no idea what's going on or how it is that these stars of the TV screen are there before their very eyes, blown in by a wanton wind.

Coffee is administered to Mother by the housekeeper. It's not as if she didn't have an unopened bottle hidden away in the wardrobe, mind. It'd be better if the children's group weren't coming today to blow their trumpets. Oh no, they're not coming till tomorrow. To rehearse their song and dance and claptrap for the firefighters' ball. On holidays, various things gather on the turntable, the daily round, and turn out to be the St Matthew Passion or some other tune that pleaseth our ears. Horrified, the woman stares at her hands, which she does not recognize. Language draws itself up erect before her like her husband's penis, you rattle the chain and whoosh off you go downhill. On her day off she's been overwhelmed by a feeling, a sense of the white

radiance of Nature, if that's what it really was, mere Nature. Let's all try to look our best and get to know someone and be there just for him to see and no one else. That young man who crossed her terrain in a brief half hour: is he still thinking of her at all? He stepped in the heap she deposited. It's well worth being special, distinctive. The woman's going to ponder life as someone else's goddess. Perhaps we should go along to the hairdresser's too? Afterwards we could take a look at the mangy workers in the workaday Christmas manger.

In passing, the Direktor gropes deep in the woman's cleavage, where the most important parts of her general appearance are visible. That's right, that's how pictures are supposed to be. This woman won't be going anywhere. She has something to do: take a look at his tail and lick it and insert it into herself. She mustn't be seduced by some character off the street. The countryside is dully aglow, but those who might see it see nothing because their miserable shadows are colliding with those of the jolly sporting crowd, hugging themselves tight to glide, more slippily down the wind. Elsewhere, in places where the unstoppable tourist trade hasn't produced such liveliness and laughter, things are not managed quite so amenably, I fear. In grubby kitchens, cold fire crackles in the eyes of men who have to go to work at five a.m. The leaden sausage lies plumb in their guts, forgotten. Their wives burst loudly into reality, demanding work instead of children. (The children, for their part, can visit the scale-model city at Hadersdorf, Vienna, where the houses are tiny enough to play with and you learn to know your place.) Everyone wants to earn a little extra, so that they too can whoosh away on skis like a fury, come the holidays. After work, that zestful freshness they've achieved by using the right soap is long gone. And, in any case, no one gets anywhere in the paper mill's grey, oppressive halls: all there is up ahead is figures endlessly waiting to be writ down on paper. In

the club of the powerful, the Direktor has agreed to give women preferential treatment when it comes to dismissals, i.e. he'll sack them first, to ease the burden on the men when they're at work, at least. And so that the men will have a pretext to give vent to their feelings when the foreman happens to come by.

Undisturbed, the workers watch each other in the canteen. In the light, they sing like songbirds, singing for sheer life and to make the Direktor happy. Where does it all make sense? In their sensuous wives, in whom life has expressed itself completely.

The Direktor needs his own wife. To each his own; isn't that right? The light of day has already put in an appearance and the shops are opening, though many of the people remain closed. The Man regards his wife, who is nervously waging war over a hairdresser's appointment. He watches her from the side where (as he just noticed) her breasts make a sagging impression. In his memory they are alive, as if he had created and formed them like his own child. At all events — heavens, where is my sting — it will be possible to knead the woman once more. And she belongs to him, she belongs to him: behold how bounteous, the earth and all her fruits! After school, the boy will whizz down a divine mountainside faster than you can catch your breath, you'll be bowled over by the boy (who's inherited everything from his father) or at the very least he'll overtake you. The little creature's spoilt, tagged to Mother's apron strings and thinking it will be like that for ever. But the woman wants to buy youth, she wants to find a new store that stocks it, hence too the new hairdo. To be seen, and to pass by. To pass by that man's house. That man who fed the wild animal in her yesterday. Come to think of it, hasn't she seen other young men before, standing around in bars? Standing still or in motion, they're so lovely, before they too fade from this earth. They're

busy, they've got a lot to see to before the skiing weekend, when they'll carry on with their girlfriends, girlfriends who take your breath away, four-colour prints on the skin-deep glossy surface of life, and yet make such a deep impression on your mind. If you ask me, postcards treat landscape more sparingly than time treats women. The scenery, taking a day off, lies tranquil and restful in the picture you buy at the tobacconist's and promptly scrawl full. But time simply goes too far! Like a tempest it digs its trenches in the war-torn features of a woman's ravaged face. Oh no, she'll say, putting a horrified hand over her gleaming mirror image: this is going to need some work. Not just the hairdo, which can vary at various times. Such toil, for a mere variation on a theme, a little night music. Her image breaks free of the mirror's confines and goes a-roving, like her thoughts. She knows where he lives. There he awaits her, the skier, with price tags still attached. We're all of us waiting. For our sack to fill up, that wage packet of the senses, where clouds scurry on by. On the whole it's cloudy in those parts. Let's think how to make ourselves look good, let us think upon increase, for which of us by taking thought cannot add just a little something?

The woman is waiting for her husband to set off for the office as per usual. The man is waiting for a chance to get into this wife's crevice again before he puts her on ice for the day. The poor workers have long since been carried off on the avalanche, bags slung over their shoulders. Rest a while! The bus has gone. The child has been transported away; joy-boy will be feeling superior to his fellow-pupils. His life lines have been neatly disentangled, probably by fate, the boy's constant and skilful companion on the slopes, together with whom he's already visited numerous foreign cities. Things have been going well with him ever since he realized his cradle was in a well-to-do house. The other pupils indulge

themselves with icecream, which they spin out ad infinitum. Light shines upon this mighty house. It is as if the light were waxing and waning on the waxed parquet floor and polished wainscot. Today the sun's out, just for once: so say I. The woman wants to be off to town, to a boutique, as soon as she can, in order to look nice. Why can the young man not be satisfied with her as his daylong sport? Why must he be off skiing the slopes where they're at their most virgin? Why does he always have to be the one who got there first? Except for last year, when another young fellow with all his male and female friends were having a ball there already. All the woman can think of is what she's going to wear in order to get further ahead, faster, higher. As far as her feelings will carry her. Now let's pack them away again. Her husband cannot assuage her; off he goes now to the factory. To be fair (and, after all, he's one of those who run the fair), he is about 80% responsible for her fortune and happiness. He veritably steeps her in it. Why not call in on us some time when you're in pensive mood after your travels and want to sow a whirlwind in the eyes of a fellow-being? Just come on in and ask us to help ourselves and enjoy you!

To have a well-padded vantage point, a box of her own from which to command a royal view of time (it's only the poorest of the poor who can't afford a carpet under their feet), the woman leaves the house, having first painted herself and her fingernails. How wonderfully vast Nature is. All the poor see of it is the speed limit signs, which they disregard before being recycled in our fodder along with their unruly cars. This woman's vagina has been pumped full of her husband's fermenting product. Her thighs under the panty-hose are sticky with the Direktor's daily slime. He likes to show that he could duplicate himself if he wanted, even if there's not much ink in his machine any more. He'd have no problem at all toasting some other, much younger crumpet under

in awe at the face revealed thereon. What a difference between a hundred and a thousand note! A whole world of difference, enough to bridge the abyss between. The woman takes the highway's serpentine bends in her car. She wants to hear that young man say yes today, having heard him yesterday. As soon as possible. She will appear amongst us, at the foot of the inaccessible stairs. Rifts yawn wide in the mountains, but we remain below, too clumsy to handle the wildness in us. The young man will stare a wide open unlocked stare when he sees the new hairdo. It is much the same for people in these parts, caught between the creatures they care for (hundreds of dead trout in the stream because the sluices were opened too suddenly) and the work they do but don't care for. Their work is the careless gift of a factory manager. That is how we describe the progeny of the mind.