Lust (23 page)

greater nuisance, polishing his lists of presents for his birthday, though he doesn't plane away any of hit wishes. Father does things the same, on principle. He will refresh Mother with his bubbling spring. Life swirls about his ankles. Indeed, in the heat of his senses, which no rubber could contain, his body is at rest, and the fires flicker prettily from his figure. The child makes a great many demands, so that most of them will be met. His parents have finally been stowed away in the midst of their sensations by the sleeping car conductor (with the countryside flying past outside, and their urges growing too big for them and growing out into the open). For different reasons, they want the child to shut his open mouth. Agreements are violated. An hour of violin practice isn't the end of the world. Now the woman does eat a tiny little mouthful. The child won't be grown up for a long while yet. So let's get ourselves ready instead!

They can't sit around together in the altogether, the child would disturb them. The child is damned to seventh heaven. He has no secrets from his parents, spluttering the milk about behind his remaining milk teeth. It is quite a strong bond, the architecture that secures him to his parents, this child. As a matter of fact the son isn't only a nuisance when he's on the drip of his violin. He is always a nuisance. Superfluities of this kind (i.e. children) can only be created by the kind of rash actions that bring troublemakers into the house, so that they can start to shine bright and stupid as lamps from out of their awkward language. Instead of everyone being able to do it with everyone else in every conceivable hole in the place. Father wants to drag the fabric off his wife at last and run dashingly down her hill, but no, the child pervades the room like a holiday, his horn resounds throughout the entire house where all things conduce to love and particularly the specific construction of Father, who, like the big settee in the living room, is obviously suited for love. How nicely these commercial travellers

of sex flower by the wayside, these protected little plants, please do not pull them up, they'll be on their way of their own accord! Hide in the woods, but don't tread on their feet, amid all that green they can be incredibly poisonous!

In the kitchen, Father tosses a couple of tablets into his son's juice, to silence this fellow who's eternally on duty, just for once. After all, his son can't do much with his juice yet, but Father, oho, once there's peace and quiet he'll thrust from his suit into Mother and tramp along the well-trod path. God sends his ramblers far and wide, up hill and down dale, till they lay each other waste for good and can continue the journey wih the children at the family fare. They sing when they make their appearance and don presumptive sheaths, when they leave the organ they leave their own dung heap behind. That is what the regulations governing the lay-bys of our life say, and in the process the countryside remains lying in the valley, unattached. Down the path that descends from the mountains, just for us. Father will come, turning in for some refreshment at Mother's dairy, where he can drink it on draught. Not even a Direktor gets a special made-to-measure job. These nipples have been well covered up by time, but they feature wonderfully in his everyday life. The child had best lie down to sleep on the house at last, when he's pretended to play the violin a little more. That's it now! We're off to bed. Just one more lullaby for Mother, who can no longer properly make out her son before her own face, though. How often photos have been taken of that face! The child laughs and yells and fights a bit, till the very last of the pills has flowed into his blood. Yes, this son babbles as if he were planning to wallow within himself in the limelight of the evening, in the sauce of his wealth. Not bigger boys nor stronger boys dare defiantly pull their things out in his presence. In their houses there are cages, right up beside, where human beings eat too.

Mother tries to avoid intercourse with Father's sex, that devastation by means of which he constructs his works in her, with the support of the holy federation. She wants to dwell, yes, but not be visited.

What wouldn't we do to escape the countless speeches from the branches of the child, get into an escape account where we too could finally lie down and, like money, increase in our sleep? It is as if this bottle had been uncorked for good. Nimbler still than the ramblers themselves are their recollections, their bank statements clearly speak of a mountain of interest and sore interest rates. The boy had better sleep and be smoked now, as far as I'm concerned he can skip his bath today. Ah, at last, didn't I say so, at last he's stopped blabbing and is reclining in the armchair. Just now he was cheekily holding forth about the things he knows, and now he is already covered with air and time as if he had never existed. Everything, for nothing is in vain, flows into a trickle of drink from his lip and down his childish chin, where his smile flowered. The child, now that he is finally quiet, is given an inarticulate hug and kiss by Mother. There'll be peace till tomorrow. The main thing is that their son has been knocked out of the way. That child has well and truly surrounded us. At a time when we're busy, with all our orifices, gumming ourselves together in our current situation, which is love. The child's room is made of rough, heavily laden walls, Father carries his son up and drops him out of his clothes and onto the bed like a soft bolster. Whatever lies, sticks. The child is already sleeping, too tired to spray any more sparks from his little tail today. The grown-ups exploit their affinity and paw at each other's gills, to show that age cannot stale them. They are not inhibited and reap the harvest gladly, they have nothing more to lose. Like insects in the sky, Father will presently go into a dive, right into the freshly-cut grass. In less than five minutes he'll have impaled his wife in his lap, which is a miracle,

clumsy as he is physically. Gentlemen, you've sprayed your hoses around quite long enough! Now get the Ajax and use it, on your knees, in the evenings, in the haven of the house. Men: their eyes have been poked out and now they're always wanting to poke someone.

This child is so young, and already gleaming (dreaming). Tenderly Mother lays herself in the child's bed, as an extra, is it going to be a loving night? No, she will soon be extinguished beneath the rigid muscles of her husband, who wants to skim his own cream. The child is already fast asleep. Mother tires herself out with pointless kisses which she spreads across the blanket. She kneads the slack tallow of her son. Why has he stopped flourishing for today? For his spirit to flee so fast is unnatural. After all, she knows the child exactly. What tap did Father turn off? But Father has long since withdrawn to his hobby workshop and is pumping juice into his piston so that he will feel on high form. He poisoned his son's juice with sleep, so that the child might dwell in soothing night, protected by his sports heroes and chemistry. He will wake up again all right, to go slithering over the hills and far away, but right now he has been taken from his mother's side. And Mother has to stay with the child, for there's no knowing what comes next.

Gerti squeezes under the blanket, places her kisses beside the child on the pillow. She rummages in the entrails of the cover, is it gradually dawning on her that she is caught by the heel in her husband's binding, with no hope of rescue? To get in the track now, silent, and go down the slope! Only that binding still holds her to the mountains, till she sinks, mournfully. Now Father is already in his workshop, busy with the loading gear, a good bottle is never spurned. Is that a right that Nature, which gave it us, takes away from us once more? A while later he is standing at the toilet, pissing it all out again. Meanwhile the woman, cringing in her coat, is already

running out of the house. Like a farmer hunting shameful rodents she races across the front garden, backtracks without a moment's thought, and takes detours. As she runs, she has torn the car key out of her bag. When will the time that lies ahead finally begin? Already she is sitting in the car, the heavy rear end of which will slither away when she drives off, yanking the vehicle unsteadily out on the federal highway. The motor in the dark startles the last lost souls as they totter homewards to answer tenderness with brutality. The headlights are not turned on, Gerti drives as in a dream, since the sunny places are still far away and the hills all familiar and distant. Meanwhile the child is blossoming in his bed and letting himself go in his dreams. The Direktor is expressing himself on the toilet. He hears the sound of the car and runs onto the terrace, his prick, manipulated with three fingers according to regulations, still in his hand. Where is the woman off to? Does she want to get beyond her thoughts in the midst of life? And you, gentlemen, gripping your drill heads, how can you put your longing into words? The Direktor gets into his Mercedes. The two heavy vehicles plunge out into the countryside, making ferocious amends. Meanwhile, those who live along this roughly 3 km track are falling upon each other in love, there's a slight roar from the equipment of the unsubtle employees and already they're done yet again, through with the gestures of love. Yes, the guests of love! They don't feel at home with strangers. The two cars race along one behind the other. They climb modest slopes and slide down again. How happy we are that the motors under the bonnets are so powerful and can sweep aside the youngsters returning home from discos in their dangerous horsepowers as if they were toboggans. Just now, the Man didn't even have the opportunity to paw the woman's tits. They drive. Today there is no growth in Nature any more, but perhaps a new delivery of juice will arrive tomorrow. There is snow on the ground, but

there will be fruit again some time or other on this tree, the esteemed name of which I do not know.

The Direktor has got all his natural products together and speeds after the social amenity of his wife. He MUST catch her up. Full steam ahead, they both helterskelter along the roads. Soon Michael's holiday home appears by the roadside, oh you dear people who did not cross our paths today, how lucky you were! In the brightly-lit windows an officer of style, largely proclaimed to the dark. The many worn-and-torn parts of the human body, please see for yourself, can be transformed with the help of industry and foreign concerns into a pretty impressive colony of holiday homes where we can take our many and various interests for walkies on a lead. And up front our heavy steel muzzles peek out. Where the waters of desire flood upon the meadow, the gentlemen outgrow themselves by almost twenty centimetres. Then they lead us along their narrow path, and declare they won't stop till their electricity, gas and time have run out. Once in and once out, and then they take a rest.

15

MICHAEL OFFERS A THREATENING smile from his illuminated zone where he flows about beyond the vast panoramic panes of glass. His world is well disposed, at his disposal he has sufficient driving skills, and he has tiled himself up, young and saved for at least three years, with his shiny, sanitary life investments. He will not open his door now for anything. Noisily, two people sink on his doorstep, where normally the sunshine faces of friends make a stop. It is impossible to reach Michael. The woman kicks the door and hammers at it with her fists. What was appears to have been nothing. All those things he said and did with her, all in vain! But people are never at a loss for words, nor is there any more than words concealed in them. Snow begins to fall softly. That's all we needed. Contained in his fine fibrecast of clothing the student stands at the window looking. The spell of night has already been partly broken by him. This young man owns several skiing get-ups, and generally speaking he likes getting it up, he wants to climb higher and higher, to go far. With a faint jangling, and sporting trademarks on which he even sits, he makes his way across the ridges of the country. Never alone and never silent, and soon the sun will be shining on him again. A faint screaming begins. Clouds of game come out of the forests into the clearing, and this average member of the young herd stands there motionless, uncomprehending in his brightness, which also seems to attract other vermin. Michael stands there, affably charged, a live wire. He is at home and his own keeper. The woman weeps at his door, her heart is pounding like a wild thing. Her senses are put out because they are having to put in overtime yet again. Her senses are out of tune in the open, in these temperatures. Almost at the same time, the woman's circulation, overloaded with alcohol, collapses, and she sags in a heap by the door. Manure on a

frozen bed. By day the lifts thread by in skeins, affording access to the landscape, and people meet and fall upon other people, unloving. This woman, never will she properly feel at home on this earth. A little human feeling trickles into the bushes, too. Scandalous.

By day they plunged through the uneven terrain, the sporting folk, but now, when they might be needed, there isn't a single one to be seen, to hold back this woman from her assault on herself, take her by the heart, and stop her wheels. Generally the Direktor regulates the financial current in his company, he flows into its channelled bed and then, at one with his member, produces a perfectly respectable stream of his own. He sees to it that the water is drained off as he wishes and through his senses. The married couple are currently in the shadow of houses, trees, night. Gerti hammers at the pitiless door and has already slipped down it. She kicks it. The student, without even having to do anything more, is worth any effort. He smiles and stays standing where he is. After all, Hermann is there, her man, her husband, whom he would never want to resemble. And this husband looks up, above him, where he is not accustomed to seeing anyone. The two men's gazes meet halfway, they are both motorized. Almost simultaneously, for a split second, they sense their bodies rebelling against death. Preventively, Michael lowers his gaze by one or two tiny degrees. They have both heard the crashing of waves in the shell of Gerti's cunt, that's all there is to it. No point in flailing their arms, only to be shifted a few derisory centimetres off balance by the propeller of lusts that, tinkling and crystal, set a wind blowing at head height. At least one of them doesn't find it worthwhile moving his expensive clothes just for the sake of this woman's will. The young man lights a cigarette, seeing he's bearing the flame in his hand anyway, chained to his ski slope, standing there and hearing the mountain birds of prey swish about him.