Lust (2 page)

state). They are not private. They do not have anywhere beautiful to live. What you see of them is what you get. What you see, and what you sometimes hear coming from the choir. Nothing good. They can do a lot of things at the same time and yet they still don't ripple the water in the pool where the Direktor's wife in her swimsuit stretches out on her blanket. The blanket coverage of Nature. Nature, immeasurably high and remote from us average consumers.

The water isblue and never takes a rest. But still the Man returns from his day's work to his home. Not everyone can have taste. The child has a lesson this afternoon. The Direktor has put everything on computer. He writes the programmes himself by way of a hobby. He has no love of the wild; the silent forest means nothing to him. The woman opens the door, and he perceives that there is nothing so big but he will be master of it, but neither must it be too small or else it'll be opened up immediately. His greed is an honest thing. It fits him just as the violin fits under the child's chin. These dear people encounter each other frequently in the house, for everything comes from their hearts and is proclaimed unto the light. The Man wants to be alone with his divine wife now. Poor folk have to pay before they can put in to shore.

Now the woman doesn't even have time to lower her gaze. The Direktor has other ideas when she makes to go into the kitchen to fix something up. He takes her arm in a determined grip. First he wants a crack at her. He's cancelled two appointments in order to have it. The woman opens her mouth to cancel this appointment, but she thinks of his strength and shuts her mouth again. This Man would play his tune even in the bosom of the mountains, his violin stroke would echo off the rocks, he'd stroke his rocks off. Time and again the same old song. This resounding banging tune. So astoundingly terrible. To the accompaniment of resentful looks. The

woman hasn't the heart to refuse herself. She's defenceless. The Man is perpetually ready to go. Greedy for his pleasure. To pleasure himself. Lo, this happy day is there for the rich and the poor, but unfortunately the poor begrudge it the rich. The woman laughs nervously as the Man, still wearing his coat, deliberately exposes himself to her. And there it is, the thick-headed thick head and shaft of his member. The woman's laughter grows louder and she slaps herself on the mouth, startled. She's threatened with a beating. Her head is still full of music, Johann Sebastian Bach, expressing her own feelings and those of others, music guaranteed to give pleasure, going round and round in circles on the record player, chasing its tail. The Man is chasing his tail too, or his tail is chasing and he is following. So it goes with men, ever onwards, their works ever greater but presently collapsing behind their backs. The trees in the forest are more stoutly and reliably upstanding. Calmly the Direktor chats about her cunt. How he will force it open in a moment. He seems intoxicated. His words totter and reel. He grips the woman's hip in his left hand and yanks her serviceable (easy to service her) clothing up over her head. She wriggles in his heavy-weight presence. He yells at her for wearing tights, which he long since forbade her to wear, stockings are more feminine and make better use of the available holes, if they don't indeed create new ones. He tells the woman he is going to have her real good now. Twice; At least. Women are planted full of hopes and live off memory, but men live off the moment, which belongs to them and, when carefully tended, can be gathered into a little heap of time which likewise belongs to them. At night they have to sleep and can't fill up. They are afire and warm up in small containers. Surprise surprise, this woman has been secretly rendered infertile through pills; the Man's never-becalmed heart would not countenance having no life gush forth from his ever brimful tank.

Beside the woman, clothing falls in a heap, like dead animals. The Man, still in his coat, is standing with his member standing firm amidst the folds of his clothing. Like light falling on a stone. The tights and panties make a moist ring around the woman's slippers as she steps out of them. Happiness seems to be making the woman go slack. She can't grasp it. The Direktor's cumbrous cranium worries amongst her pubic hair, he bites, his desire is always at the ready, ready to desire something of her. He raises his head to the air and now presses hers to the neck of his bottle, here, taste this. Her legs are in a tight grip. He is touching her up. He cracks her skull on his prick, vanishes inside her and gives her derriere a good hard pinch to help things along. He forces her head back so that her neck cracks, an ungainly sound, and he slurps at her labia, gripped and gathered tight, the life gazing silently from his eyes up to her. Patience: the fruit'll ripen yet. That's what you get if you stack your human habits one atop the other to pick something off the top of the tree, only to find you don't like the taste after all. Everything is hampered and trammelled by the bans and banns of lust and desire. Even on a low hill there's a limit to how much will grow, and the limits placed on us are rigid and extend not much further than we can reach, and we can't reach far, not much of a voyage in our little blood vessels, hard and rigid.

The Man pushes on alone. But it can't be good for the woman to stay in this position for long. This position she has in his house. She wriggles and jiggles and has to open her legs somewhat. His teeth pluck at her belly regardless. The Man inhabits a living hell of his own, but there are times when he has to emerge from it and go down into the pastures. The woman resists, but her resistance is doubtless no more than an act, she is welcome to another slap or two if she wants, if she's set on denying the Man's soul its light. A fair amount has been drunk. The Direktor almost spends himself entirely in his

expensive surroundings, in the gloom of which he rages about the food the woman cooks for him. She does not want to let him in. And he feels so big, as if he were all men in one. Just to unload a little here between the standard lamps would unburden him, after all, he has to bear the burden of many who do nothing but grow like the grass on the riverbank, stupid, never giving a thought to the morrow when they must get up. Hermann. Now, having lifted up his wife out of her shoes, he continues the uplifting experience by straddling her on the living room table. Anyone can look in, anyone can envy the rich the beautiful things they keep hidden away. She is flattened on the table and her breasts, big warm steaming cowpats of breasts, flop apart. The Man lifts his leg in his own garden and then off he goes and lifts it at every corner he comes to, too. Not even the haziest patch of ground is safe from him. It is as normal as erotic love, which has never started a fire in their dry wood, the dryness they are born to but do not want on any account to remain in. No, the Direktor will reply to small ads, to exchange his old Ford for a more up-to-date, more powerful model. If only it weren't for the fear of this most up-to-date of diseases, then there would never be silence in the workshops of the Lord. And in the home too there would be notices on the board: Desire, the white member (of a well-hung parliament). Mighty waves go crashing through Time, and mighty is the foaming desire of men, unceasingly. Far-off places are where they love to roam, but they'll also use what they've got at home. The woman wants to get away, to escape these reeking fetters. She has been drawn forth out of nothingness, out of the void, and every day the Man cancels her with his stamp anew, rendering her null and void. She is lost. Mechanically he flicks the woman's legs over him. Various objects belonging to the child fall off the table and bounce softly on the carpet. The Man is the one who still appreciates classical music. With one arm he reaches forwards and opens up the deck. There's

a sound of music, the woman puts up with a good deal, mortals live on their wages and work, but, right, music really is an essential part of the experience. The Director's weight keeps the woman down. All he needs to keep down the workers, as they joyfully return from their labour to their leisure, is a signature, he doesn't have to lie upon them. And the sting that hangs by his testicles never sleeps. But in his breast his friends sleep, with whom he used to go to brothels. The woman is promised a new dress as the man rips off his coat and jacket. He is fighting the good fight against alcohol, his tie is twisted into a noose. If I could only have this clad in brand new words this minute! Underhand the Direktor has lit the stereo's fire, and now the music is racing off the turntable and setting the Direktor racing: pick-up arms move forward to play their part, and a Direktor has to got his end away! For his pleasure shall last till you can see the bottom and the poor, drained of love, are sent off the rails and have to take a ride to the labour exchange. For all things shall be everlasting and what's more they shall be indefinitely repeatable, so say the men, and they give a tug at the reins which Mummy once held in her loving hands. Of course you can, dear. And now the Man slides into his wife as if he were greased, in and then out again. Nature cannot have been mistaken about this field; we don't want anything else growing here. It is a community of flesh, and the farmers, who are quick to cry if they're not taken on to earn a little on the side, grow angry if their wives stroke the surprised cattle destined for the slaughter. With Death the gentlemen like to be on good terms, but business must go on as usual. And even unto the poorest shall gladly be accorded the daily pleasure of their women's embraces, where they can be Big Boys after 10 p.m. But for this Direktor time doesn't count, he doesn't have to clock on; after all, he manufactures time himself, and the cards are punched in till the clocks cry for mercy.

He bites the woman's breast, and her hands jerk forward. This only excites him more, and he hits her on the back of her head and tightens her grip on her hands, his enemies of old. For his slaves he has no love either. He stuffs his sex into the woman. The music races ahead and-their bodies race ahead as well. The Frau Direktor loses a little of her control, the bulb's a little loose, better screw it firmly in again. The Man is a sleeping dog that shouldn't have been woken and fetched home from a circle of business friends. He carries his weapon below his belt. Right now he has fetched his pistol out; out it has come like a shot. The woman is kissed. Spitting words of love are slobbered in her ear. This flower wasn't in full bloom for long, won't you thank it? Just now he was wallowing and waltzing inside her, soon his fingers will be producing a fine sound on the violin. Why is the woman turning her head aside? In Nature's society, there is a place for every one of us! Even the smallest of us, even the very least member, though it won't be in great demand. This Man has emptied himself into the woman, he wouldn't mind trying out naughtier tricks in the pool some day! In the correct questionmark position for diving, the Direktor withdraws from the woman, leaving his waste behind. Presently she will be caught in the trap of the household once more and will return whence she came. It is a long while yet to sundown. The Man has poured forth his joy and now, the slush dribbling from his mouth and genitals, goes off to cleanse himself of the day's toil.

The community looks up to them in all things. Let's face it, it's a community short on sporting lasses to look up to. The woman beds down in her troubles and Hermann beds down on the woman, in the peace of the night. And then their son: he has mastered the other children more completely than his violin. Father manufactures the very least of the things that pass beneath the flame of his passion: paper. All that remains, wherever the eye looks

upon the works of men, is ash. The woman averts her gaze from the table she has laid, opens a hatch in her dress and tips the leftovers in, true unto herself. Today the family, en famille, is drinking in its own memories from the projector. The food is late, the boy is late, he messes it about terribly. He won't do a thing he's told, he isn't as good as gold. For months he's been promising to improve his violin playing, but Father finds it far more enjoyable to lavish blows on this friendly young creature. The whole country likes to be lavish. It lives on Art. But not all the good citizens and the faithful do so, and none would merit a Very Good in the tests.

The woman's tongue is a dress that covers everything. She absolves herself crunching the salted snacks that seem so much bigger on television than when the hosts dissolve to meaningless nothingness in the mouth. Still, we too, when our bodies are in an evening mood, tip the snacks into our very own personal sewage systems. Father bends over his son. Tender as sausage. Son is sure to get his BMX bike. The Direktor's son enjoys the village children's envy as one might enjoy a stiff pinch of power. Out he promptly goes into the open to smash something up. But the boy is Father's spoils, he spoils him: he has to bow his head over bow and violin today, so the sound that's produced can be used elsewhere to oil feelings. Father likes to show off his progenitorial profit at the instrument. And how Father makes use of this instrument, his child, as if the boy were a shell he had cast off! The boy's wrist has to be relaxed and flexible, it's better for trade, and with the delicate bow he shall roam to and fro in the pastures of the immortals, the family of the great, who are all to be restored to life with great, familiar, restorative sounds. Such horrid sounds, too! Jagged Mozart, if you're in luck. And if you've been tied down by the ankles to prevent you from wandering far afield to graze in other pastures.

The banks offer shoulder-bags in an attempt to win the custom of the very young. Even this riff-raff, the mere proteges of parents, want accounts of their own; there's no accounting for it. In a year or so the money will be looking good: it'll be a car, for death on the roads, or a furnished apartment, for death in your own four walls. Always assuming that — like the Direktor's son — you are a child under fourteen, guiltless, single, alive, but already singled out for a life among the clientele, the future consumer guild that will tax their hearts with the wish — consume their souls with the desire — to have some gilt-edged value added. Perhaps some of us are destined to be clerks behind counters, for what are all these benches doing here anyway? The boy, scarcely baked through, dashes out into the biting cold. He has to take the healing plunge and cool off. He has to listen to the cries of his people, so that he will know how to make them cry all the more.