Lust (4 page)

early and it's going to be there a long time too. Sorry about that.

Later one of the woman's neighbours comes to visit, unbidden, uncalled for. The complaints simply pour from her. The abiding weakness of the female sex etc. Which has now awoken and, climbing the stairs, can only break loose out of itself as a complaint. This neighbour is as bothersome as an insect. She shines her light upon the people in the meadows. She confides expressly in the Frau Direktor, and expresses her confidence in the Son of God, who created the people hereabouts out of the earth and transformed their trees into paper, and she hopes He will show favour to her daughter who will soon be finishing her business studies course. Her husband no longer meets her, he meets a twenty-year-old waitress in a station restaurant. The Direktor's wife can think of no more words to say to her visitor. She has no refreshments left to offer her. How lightly she wears her wealth. There she sits, surrounded by furniture and pictures that hadn't a moment's peace till they belonged to her.

Essentially the Man is a big creature of pleasure, a bankable piggy, a citizen singing and gaming. So that his wife's body will be in a state to report for its daily duty, he chooses lingerie for her from a mail order catalogue. And lo, his choice has fallen upon naughty items, so that she can try to be like the models in the photos. But the undies are wasted on her. She leaves them in the drawer, forgotten, and says nothing. No red lace to disturb her peace. But, come to think of it, that's just how he likes it: when his people altogether forget themselves when he uses their love against them. Peacefully they pass like Time in their homes, waiting for him. The child, hungrily stalked by sport. The woman, thirstily compared with photos and films. Families with no dependants and no dependencies simply drive up in their large family car, equipment in the boot: the whips, the birch rods, the

fetters, the rubber accessories, all for the big babies whose members are always weeping and wailing and whining for someone bigger than them to come and tame them. Some day their wives will be quiet too and the milk will come. The men even give each other* injections, in goes the needle, so they can stay the course longer when they go dropping their coins in the slots of the collecting boxes their wives beseechingly hold out. So that they themselves will be collected again. Calm. Pull themselves together fast. Pull a fast one on their business partners. Women are standing bowed over bowls of salted snacks, laughing, and presently the gentlemen dive onto the sofas, collapse, wag their tails, and then, as fast as they can, flee the ones they have charmed. How deeply the men desire that their shots should go far, far overshoot the mark, the game (what a game)! The women, stretchmarked by their children's sojourn inside them, have to serve themselve up, naked as the day their bundles of joy were born. The weighty wine glasses totter on the trays: their Lords and Masters embrace them from behind, from in front, from anywhere and everywhere, fingers are inserted and withdrawn, mouths suck between thighs. They break their favourite toys. Aha. Now they're resting after their labours of love, the loved ones and the thunderous horsepower that lay with them. The labours of sundry hairdressers have been ruined. There is garbage for charwomen to clear away once again. And then they all go on, and off, in their cars, in the loving arms of their wives. And who, in truth, will be embarrassed before his own car seats? They don't eat chocolate, mind you. The stains, which are all that remains of what we thought the highest of pleasures, tend not to wash out.

The Man can never simply disappear, all of a sudden. He is so settled in his beautiful house. In the evenings, the house is cloaked in the darkness of the forests and mantled in the gloom of the local people: handsomely

turned out! Sympathy would be wasted on the woman. The pores of her child are still so small. The woman reels beneath the heavy burden of her happiness. She is under house arrest, but her sentence may be commuted for good behaviour. Round and round she goes in the same old rut; she mustn't deny her circuit judge his rest and recreation, though. His same old rutting. Barely home and his whistle's wet again. Company outings generally end in wetting the whistle, then out it comes, wanting to be blown, wanting to sound off in the open. Life mostly consists of things not wanting to stay where they are. So be it! All change! It all makes for restlessness, unceasing social intercourse, people go calling on each other but have to carry themselves with them wherever they go. Well-ordered servants, there they stand with the sausages of their sex, banging their cutlery on the table, wanting a hole to be served up fast, a hole to hide away in, only to re-emerge greedier than ever, to offer their hospitable services once again to those who have no need of them. Not even secretaries care to admit that the groping that goes on in their blouses is like a denunciation. They laugh. There are so many of them around here, too many for them all to get enough of their improper nourishment.

The Man appears at daybreak. And stands revealed. The naked truth. He knocks the woman over, slaps her on the backside, he who has travelled from afar. The tubes are already rattling on the bathroom shelf, the slip-on cover is trembling on the toilet, the porcelain is gleaming. You can hear the silence that has prevailed in the Man's rod all night. Then he speaks. Nothing can turn him away. On the level floor stands the woman, weary from her long and toilsome journey through the night, and now her socket's due to receive his plug. She has long since seemed as intimate as a rolling mill: even to his business associates he brags of her, and in short and powerful bursts the Direktor's dirty sallies talk their way to the

top. And his subordinates maintain an embarrassed silence. The Man forces himself, well be hearing from each other. The Direktor reaches into the pocket of this body, which belongs to him. The loved objects are all there. Nothing missing. The Man is fond of easy talk and the woman is always easy. How could he possibly be expected to contain himself any longer, this silent can opener? Like a plant helplessly seeking the light the moment it's switched off. The child plays very nicely to order. How much better will he perform on his fiddle when one day, like his daddy, he's learnt to work the fiddles of manhood and fatherhood and perform the parts! The long and tedious breast-feeding lies in the child's forgotten past, but he still expects his every wish to be as automatically satisfied. For so long the woman gave of herself to the boy — and what has the trying creature learnt? That you have to try try try again, because heaven is a hill you have to climb, and the climbing has its price.

No, the woman is not mistaken. The boy will long since have put her aside by the time he is a man, and then he will be gone. Now Father drags her into the light, with all his strength, to open her dark tunnel for the express train roaring up. Every day the same. Even landscapes change, be it through sheer boredom, by virtue of the seasons. The woman is passive as a toilet, for the man to do his business in. He shoves her head down into the bathtub and, his hand clawing her hair, threatens that as you make your bed, so you must cry on it, that's love. No, cries the woman. She isn't asking for love. Already the Man is busy with his buttons. Her nightie is hoisted and wrapped around her ears. There is a whimpering in her entrails, like the whimpering of captive animals trying to kick a way out of their cage. The cambric nightdress, bright as a pilot light, is stuffed in the woman's mouth, and the Man appears as Nature made him. His innocent water is passed. Right beside the woman the water

splashes from the dark smoke of pubic hair into the tub, past her bowed head. The enamel shines like new. How quickly the Man's tail has grown into a fine upstanding fellow in these friendly surroundings. The woman finds she has to cough while her flanks are being prised open. The can opener is pulled out of the terrifying flannel trousers, and presently a milky fluid appears, in just the time it takes to make a grease stain. His member is hauled out far too early from its drawer into the light. The woman, whose arse has been straddled wide open, a shady lane for the Man to go walking, is left standing. He pulls the helm right round and forces her to look at him. In a rage, he addresses himself to her frontage, forcing her to take hold of his dying willie. There. Already it's starting to twitch again. It wants to dwell within thy hallowed halls! He pushes the woman's hair into his come, what's left of it, let her take a good look, the simpleton. No, they do not rest, the heroes, when their labours are done. The woman is smeared full of sperm. Building her a fine house ensures that a wife will not go missing, and outside stand the paltry terraced houses of the poorest and the unemployed, up for sale, for public auction, or to be torched. And what was once a home is now under the hammer of the local lordsandmasters. What once was work is brutally taken away from these dear hearts. The women/though, can recoup it in small coin. Where else should they go, the women, but to those who splash about in the pool of power? Those who splash out with worthless rubbish that flies from them like foam from teeth? The generators create unnecessary products, the generations create unnecessary problems. This time the Direktor has kept his assets to himself till the right moment. Up front he creams the woman's face with his supersensitive lotion, then she gets an eyeful of his supersensitive parts. To drink in his ichor, truly, is not what she wants, but she must, she must, Love says so, she must groom him and lick him clean and dry him off with her hair. Jesus came first, so to speak, in this. He

was wiped dry by a woman. In closing the woman is dealt a slap on the ass, time to close down, a crass lordand-master hand rummages in her slit and probes her orifice, his tongue licks at her nape, her hair hangs down into the tub, he tugs at her clit, and her knees give way and her arse snaps out like a folding chair. And lo, many others are obedient unto his command.

And the boy? What of the boy meanwhile? He's pondering a present he wants bought in return for not having seen any of his plug-and-socket parents' secrets. From every shop he sets eyes on, the child wants another slice of life, cut fresh, only the best, just for him. The child is a devious little rat. The new generation, this. The best is barely good enough. But soon this generation will be passing on as well, moving down the line. How else would we go on?

Father has shot a wad of sperm and now it's up to his wife to clean it up properly. What she doesn't lick up she'll have to wipe up. The Direktor strips off the rest of her clothes and watches her wiping and weaving. One moment her breasts hang forward, the next they bobble about in front of her as she scrubs, making things as new. He pinches her nipples in thumb, index and middle finger, then twists, as if he were trying to screw in a minute light bulb. His raging and weighty entrail slaps out at the window that opens in his trousers and whaps against her thighs from behind. When she bends down she has to spread her legs. Now he can cop hold of her whole fig tree with one hand and set his fingers angrily a-roving. Oh and while she's at it with her legs apart like that she can stand over him and piss in his mouth. What, she can't? Let's see. Up with her knee. There we are (applause, applause!) — the tender lips of her cunt, well part them with a soft smacking sound and we men'll be banging our tankards down on the table with a thump. If she still can't pee we'll drag her privates down by the

short and curlies till she bends the knee and splays across the Herr Direktor's chest. By the hairs he holds the lips of her cunt parted like a handbag and slushes it across his face so he can drive his tongue inside, an ox at the salt-lick, the mountain is on fire. The men bear the load. Her waters murmur incomprehensibly. And the women even soak it up with absorbent rags and clean the place with Ajax.

The woman drinks the cold dregs of coffee from her dismal cup. As if preparing to flee, she has pulled on her wispy tights again. There isn't a woman anywhere near who has it anywhere near as good as she does. Her lordandmaster's claw rests upon her head, to make her feel at home in the cage. That evening the Direktor will be smiling at his weary wife again and setting his sights on the target. Later his surging banks of foam will crash against her yet again, his Austrian bank safe against any crash. The woman reaches into nowhere, where the food's spoiling, as if she wanted to shake him off the place of her slumbers. And so they will always be passing each other by on the broad and perilous highway, the terrifying mountain railway of marriage. This woman is envied by the villagers for the fine clothes she wears. The dirt in her house is vacuumed up by a woman hired as a cleaner from the catalogue of villagers, who wanted nothing but to live in brotherhood. The child was born late, but not so late that he hasn't the time to turn into a griping adult. The Man shouts out loud with pleasure, and the woman's voice snuggles against him so that he will wave his magic wand and produce nice expensive things for the home. Such as a three piece suite that can be used at the stations where the two of them go to rub off their blessed sex. But no one can do magic. When the Man sobers up he is obliging towards the woman and good-natured, of course he'll buy her whatever she wants, he bought everything you see here

in full colour, ladies and gentlemen. So dry your cheeks! There, now.

In the evening, their plates will offer a refuge to food without a home. Fleetingly the dishes are introduced to each other. Then off they go to mingle. In the bodies. What must things be like beneath some people's roofs! Food is of no consequence in this house, all that matters is that there be a lot to eat, so that the stronger of the two can smile and yield in his largesse. Sausage and cheese of an evening, wine and beer and brandy. And milk for the child, to guarantee his growth. That is how the middle class works: safeguarded below and legally protected above. The protection of Nature is done by the ones underneath. So that the whole class doesn't go plummeting into the bottomless depths.

Early in the morning, the Man has already relieved himself. Big are the heaps he dumps, and he's been busy with his pitchfork heaping up more. And how the urine splashes from him! Everywhere under his roof he can be heard. His articulated penis roaring to a standstill in the lay-by of his wife. Where at last he can relieve himself. Lightened of his product, he goes again to the lowly beings who make their own product under his supervision. The paper they have manufactured is an alien thing to them. Nor will it endure for long. The Direktor yells as he bangs and knocks and thrusts. Competitors are banging and knocking at the door, you have to anticipate their next moves, otherwise one or two more of the blessed poor will have to be sacked, or rather: liberated from their toil. Out he goes, the lordandmaster, into Nature, his back bowed with responsibilities, he-carries them on his back so he has his hands free. Of his wife, to whom he is a lord, by whom he is restored, he expects that she will be naked beneath the gown of her house when he specially lays back the twenty kilometres from the office to the house. The child will be out of the