Lust (21 page)

Seriously, the day isn't going to be laying on that blue for much longer. Gerti takes a lengthy break in a pub on the way. How pleasant this effect of drifting distance is! She drinks for the love of it, others drink dutifully, separated from the lovable bunch who airily want a drink just as they wanted the air to play about them as they whizzed down the slope. A whole horde of them to crown the day, they crowd to the bar and tank up, brimful. Once again Nature is simple and monochrome. Tomorrow it will be woken by human voices once more and will merrily hammer the public down the pistes. Ah yes, the public. The public has shed the blanket of Nature but is still wearing its today of many colours, the pub currently on duty is completely stuffed with these tourists. A brawl that's seething around the drink source is quietened by the barwoman. How nice, from far away we come, tumbling from mountaintop to valley, and already we're full of beer. A couple of woodcutters, the most amiable of those who tend the mountains, are already making trouble in the bar, egged on by the city folk, and will presently, like axes, split their wives open. Gerti sits silent, forehead furrowed, amid the party, who have their own snack with salad garnish to get stuck into.

Tomorrow or even this evening, this woman will be standing outside Michael's holiday home spying in at the windows to see his friends making good use of what is his. And she, spurned, will vanish, no one knows whither, into the distance, like a fleeting thought. While her husband deforests the region and murders music. I'm cold. They've screwed one into the other, rummaging about in all the garbage for that treasured picture which they acquired only yesterday in the photo store. Only yesterday. And today they're already on the look-out for a new partner, to charm him into smiling please before they press the release. Yes, us! Torn and tormented, we become visible, and we want to look good for others, to think of what we paid for our clothes, we no longer have what we paid and we notice the lack when we have to undress and caress our partner in love. But for the time being this woman is living on alcohol; and the harvest of other people who drink too, the merry multitudes, is not for her to reap. There's a slight dispute over her mink coat, which a skier has trodden on, but it's soon settled. This breed of people beneath the farmhouse-style lamp: how they do contrive to show off their shapes within the colourful plastic limits they've set themselves so that their forms and norms won't run over and out (and certainly not the models from which they were constructed). They decorate themselves wall-to-wall like their flats and take themselves out.

There's plenty going on, it's divine. The woman takes an unaimed step back. A glass is shoved across to her, the day seems almost in a hurry, it is already dusk over the mountains. The poor popular opinion is sprayed at Gerti like water from a child's hand. Ponderously the poor people of these parts are leaving their nearest and dearest, to be spilt from dirty hands in the pubs, to gush forth like springs because of what they put inside them. But this woman had best be off home. They won't have her drinking here. She'd best be quiet. This is where the

herd live, complete with their good shepherds, see the TV pages for the complete programme! The Frau Direktor is a bright cloud, at least that's how she looks, sinking from her seat to the floor, where she makes her bed and lies in it. The barwoman kindly takes hold of her under the armpits. A small stream puddles from Gerti's chin and spreads. This can't go on like this day after day. From outside, Nature gleams magnificently one last time, and the herds of Nature's users head patiently pubwards, glad to be able to raise the elbow at last instead of having to rebel at the lashes of Olympic broadcasts and be sent skedaddling across the hills. If these people are left alone, you'll see how quickly their true charm fades, which is that they look like film stars and look truly charming in their own photo albums, which is where we assess what we expect of ourselves. But here the waves spray up against them and they have to compete with Ideals all cut to a single format. They win by means of noise, colour, perfume and money. A song is struck up, the time of day has a-changed abruptly, the weather too. The wind is howling through the crystal ice hanging from the trees. Even more people claw hold of the woman's hollows, look, now two men are lifting her to her feet. Their loose change empties out over the woman. A glass of wine and one of schnapps are paid for her. They find pretexts, unable to conceal their coarse sexual parts, to feel Gerti up all over. A flood of laughter from their wives, who are also readying their hairy crevices, quickly, before the light changes, and taking up their positions. They are all still dripping with Nature, that is how much life they have soaked up. And it has cost quite enough, too, sitting like islands in this bar and vomiting. One man gives a woman a piggy-back for a bit of fun, she reddens between her thighs, which she squeezes left and right against the man's cheeks. Nobody wants to be missing this. They hop about, even the best of floor shows has to be over sooner or later. Just a short way, laid back in seconds with a little effort, the

genitals open, and already they're inside each other and squeezing the tube, whimpering for salvation, and their bowels are thunderous with what they have put away for the wilder times to come. In the dark, the first of them are already overspilling from the fetters of their clothes. Gerti's bust is pinched; as jolly and harmless as vegetables, we thrive in our lordsandmasters' gardens, ladies! On account of the higher regions where we dwell. Only to be pleasantly surprised by the instincts that shoot out of our ski pants.

Heave ho. Now the woman's sitting properly on the bench again. Another glass, in which the alcohol is rapidly growing old, is shoved across. She swipes it away with a sweeping gesture. The trouser-wearers who bought it her yell in fury and shake the woman by the arm. The barwoman sends a girl to fetch a rag. Gerti gets up and sends her purse flying on the floor, and people instantly start to rummage in it, their sweaty faces clouding at the sight of the money. The poor crowd in the back room and remember their work, which once spread its legs to them unforced. But now they no longer have any access. Oh, if only they had! Now they are at home all day long, busy with the dishes. And the others in the pub? All they crave is good weather and wicked snow. Tomorrow in the mountains they will lead dashing lives again, or else merely splashing lives if the temperatures rise steeply as the forecast said and it rains. The barwoman gently followeth the path of righteousness. With Gerti tucked under her arm, it is as if she were walking on the water, across the scummy froth of day-trippers floating on the surface. Just see with what certainty these travellers, born of the void, load themselves with gifts acquired at sports trade fairs and go off to their deaths in the mountains. A national anthem is thumped out, without any trace of embarrassment. The singers have but little in common with sirens: maybe the sound, but not the looks. But they go on and on singing,

let 'em haye it! Local people who cannot even work at the paper mill sit stunned before their screens and stare at the canny invention of themselves — does no one have a heart for their sorrows? And why are they divorced and dismissed from life even before they, plus their skis, can be safely stowed in the cellar?

In a state such as this one really ought not to drive, alone or even in groups, otherwise one won't be safe from oneself as long as one lives! But Gerti cuts her coat to fit the cloth of her modest privates, and pushes off from the bank. She puts her back into it and belts up. Free and easily she indulges in her feelings. Michael: now we'll go and fetch him out of his house before he goes cold. Presently this woman, impelled by her senses, will be howling outside a strange house because no one's at home. Let's move on. Switching on the lights is quickly done. In the number in which we usually remain, one, solo, single, but never mind, she drives after her quarry, the other drivers on the roads. As if by a protracted miracle, nothing happens. Wearing their homeshirts, the lordsandmasters rumble and grumble because they're kept waiting for their dinners, the dogs attack visitors and keep their jaws healthy and exercised. Which is why we all like to live in our own places and keep our own pet animals, ourselves, in safe keeping there. Just now and then we take a timid pull at someone else who claims to be brimming over with sweet sweet desire. But if ever you really do desire something of him, you don't get it!

14

THE DROPS OF GRAVEL spray up in front of the house, the dogs leap at our throats, and the door is opened. The woman even takes a few steps further, towards the balmy light that plays radiantly about her warm, waiting husband. The children have long since been sent home without the comforts of music and rhythm, and now they are half emerging from their lairs, beaten by their fathers. Relieved at seeing the springs of art dry up at the lips, and cheerful as in family photographs, the children have already attacked each other on the forest path, tearing each other's bodies and clothing to shreds. One oughtn't to get the neighbours together too often, all they do is make a nuisance of themselves! Everything the Herr Direktor wanted, he now has again, his word is our command. The kisses crash from his mouth. He holds his spoonful of distraught senses under the light, but nothing becomes heated. He kisses his wife like a mother licking her calf, his tongue even wants to get into her armpits. Automatically he warms at the sight of her, but for the time being his moist figure remains closed. He is built like a mountain, and streams have already coursed across his brow, though there's no comparison to what his workers are cursed with when, the mark of their health vacation upon them (insult and injury added to their lives), they receive the letter in the blue envelope. Not one of them, though, would see his wife as this inflated Direktor, who wants to channel her back between her banks, now sees his. What has she got there in her pocket, it's only her wet knickers, which he throws on the hall floor. As he so often has done in the past. Usually the servants do the mopping-up when the water in the tap's got out of control again. The charwoman will remove this sign of life tomorrow. Gerti has plenty of room to run around, it's time she was stabled. The boy, who's been running aTound to various stables all

day, now shoots out at his mother, his babble all too horribly comprehensible, sweaty with the vexation he's been causing his friends. Heavenly homely things about Mother are sent across his lips, Mother for her part is sent from heaven. She is the parcel whole peoples have to carry and to fear. Who pushed this family's button again? To set the realization in motion: there are three of them, at the end of the day, when they bed down snug against the weather. The family: the woman is no longer sober, goodnaturedly it is put on her account by Father, who has the chequebook about his person. His property is what he loves dearest. Smiling, the Man strokes the woman, but a mere second later he is grubbing about like mad, like a terrier in a newly-discovered earth, under her coat, pawing at the cleavage of her dress, which he wants to have off this naughty woman right now, oh and talking of having it off, her cheek is lovingly stroked by his fingers, as if the creator had broken his pencil and now life itself had to correct the job he started. The woman can't cope with the steering of her automatic. She is learning to walk, and listing badly.

Which of us would not gladly be forgotten on the meadows of life, only to re-appear suddenly in the rubble of his clothing (all of it small and standard size like terraced houses, though we wouldn't want to change, not even with a king)? To give oneself over entirely to another who comes by at just the right speed to make our passing acquaintance! To be singled out of the crowd, the tracks that lead to money! To fall upon the child who has made his blessed appearance at last is more than a mere thought to the woman — yes, the heavenly hosts want to celebrate now, a holiday amid vultures and fiddlers! Off to Vienna, to the concert! She rollicks with her son on the hall carpet, pretending to play, but her hand is already grabbing roughly under the child's waistband. The Man forces himself to smile, because he wants his wife to himself again, that is, if he can kill off that much

life all at once. We shall see. Already his determined lump of meat is hanging weightily, slung from his hip, heavier than the head with which he thinks and sees. Now there is a link once more already, but it won't stay put. The flesh often compels one to wait things out for a long time, as in a long-distance coach with the curtains shut, racing through the night, its windows passing other windows, and, since everything is in motion, people can never meet.

The Direktor already has his hand in his trouser pocket and is stroking his truncheon through the cloth. Very soon his generous beam will jet upon the woman. And the boy is beaming too. It is not simple with them, the child is already crumbling like petfood under Mother's cutting edge, slicing sternly into his flesh. Mother giggles, her hair in the dust on the floor, which the woman of the house does not concern herself with. The child would like to tell of the rotten things his playmates did to him. But Father hasn't got as much time to love children as you have. Helpless, he kneels over his family, over the one small item amid the huge entirety of his creation. They all laugh heartily. They are tickled by Father, first the one and then the other, as if he were out to shake the life out of them. All of them go on laughing, the Man is less and less touched. What does he care about the kid! He'd rather take aim at Mother's lap, he wouldn't mind sitting there himself. To the child, neither good fortune nor ill matters much, there must be something to be done about that. Time the boy learnt a little discipline, or better still, time he went and tidied up his room! In times of illness Mother is always the one who does the soothing. And women even have to preserve the Man within themselves, lay him out in the chapel of rest, safe from the fire storm which throws bodies out into the night like dogs, to do their business and sleep well afterwards. Opulent Christmas decorations are hung on spindly twigs. The main thing is to have lived, to