Don't interrogate the face of a human being, it will tell you nothing, it will grimace or dissemble. The country policeman is partial to the darkness of night. The scene of a crime lures him again and again, and other places, which only a few people know, even if they were born here, also lure him. Whom does the country policeman disturb as he goes on his way? Only the bright feet of time, or is it someone else's feet?, which rush away ahead of him, into the darkness, at a rapid gallop, as if they wanted to laugh at the country policeman. For the victims of murder, nature is a bed, should they have to lie out in the open. But for the murderers, too, it's a made bed, which they are free to use, and for their killing business they cover it with seclusion, so that no one sees them, but one always has to reckon on something happening by chance. The car plows through the night, in the houses lights are still on, slide by as if they were ships, but it's the country policeman driving past. Soon from right and left the forest closes over him like giant folded hands over a head, full of desperation. The village has slipped away from Kurt Janisch, and with the village life slips away, too. It is often poisoned by neighborly acts of revenge, but still, it's life. But also the houses, in which it takes place, they should all rightly belong to him, who himself represents what's right, here, if you please, he has the appropriate regulation gun, its barrel is just as dark as the night, not nickel-plated, not bright as this day, which as surviving dependent has remained behind with lowered head. So, now it reigns at last, for, let's say, at least another eight hours, pain and pleasure and pleasantries disappear together in the forest, snow hangs like a veil over the mountains, so thin that one can't even see it in the darkness. Today the woman didn't keep the meeting on the mountain, something like that has never happened before. A bad sign. Instead she constantly calls him at home and puts the phone down when his wife answers. She's slowly beginning to notice, but she doesn't think anything of it, because her husband has told her: Just you tidy up, and see that you don't forget anything, including under the beds. This revolver, a Glock, its 16 rounds lie properly in the magazine and concentrate on their big moment (it will come once and not be repeated!), surrounded by only a little metal and a great deal of polymer plastic, the butt fits easily into the hand, but it will not be so easy for someone to pull it out, at least that's what we hope. At the moment this weapon is just as relaxed as its owner, but inside it trembles towards an event, which will lend it importance. Night, transfigured night, let me be afraid at last! All right, all right. In the headlight cone a still winterblind embankment, spindly undergrowth, the stream only puts in an appearance right at the bottom, and will certainly work its way up during the summer, with gentle murmuring, at present inaudible because of car noise, a bit of car is already enough for a driver not to hear anything from outside. Here a passing place, right at the edge a stack of wood, a pile of shit, a bright eye, which a team of woodcutters left behind, is cut out of the landscape by the moving light, disappears again. On the left the slope drags itself up, covered in brushwood and dry, old grass, it will throw off its burden step by step, because it will soon be too heavy, the higher it goes, until it is empty, icy, pure rock, where only chamois can survive, will be able to rise up, alone, free, and single; the individual branches of bushes point in the air, the birches over there have already missed their first leaf deployment, on the plain they're already diligently putting forth shoots. Further up there are perhaps even patches of snow, until there is only snow, we also still have to expect night frosts, a tasty dessert to follow the day that remained.
The road grants us the not to be underestimated pleasure of the blue, no the gray ribbon, which only thunderstorms are allowed to cut. The country policeman is on his way to the place, where he has already tidied up the bed of a murder victim several times, but he is repeatedly drawn there, just behind the village is the spot, soil cheated of plant growth, wasteland, but today the country policeman is driving further. Strangely enough he cannot remember whether he removed all evidence. Did he pick up the tissue or not. And if so, perhaps there's another one left over. He would also like to see if something was left lying at another spot, further away, where he also was with Gabi, which also has to be tidied up. He removed every piece of fluff, every scrap, but perhaps there are, left over from earlier intercourse, somewhere else, still a couple of stuck together paper tissues, which he now also wants to dispose of, better safe than sorry, he has a powerful torch, almost a searchlight, with him, the country policeman. Its beam will playfully leap after every thread, until he has caught up with and caught it. At this time, in this cold, no one will notice its hard, strong cone of light, still less down there, right by the river. One wrong move and the water puts one in its sack. It's as if the winter had returned, it has suddenly become so cold again. Over there the crouching back of a sawmill, a giant shadowy shape, there, too, the bridge (lovelessly poured of concrete, but completely suitable for heavy trucks) over which one can drive back and forward, the saws are silent, the lips, too, but the stream whispers, which usually one doesn't hear for all the squealing of the huge, rotating, and wood-spitting metal bands. I say: Away with the stream! Down here at last, if you please: THE RIVER. In with the stream and off it goes. Thank you for your free appearance, but you're too big for me to describe, although I would be paid something for it if I asked. At the moment I'm practizing on the little things, though not with the modesty of some colleagues, e.g. a Mr. K. whom I know personally, no, not the one you're thinking of. Once again, my God, what a coarse language one sometimes has to speak, if even animals and plants are to understand one: If one switches off the engine, one can hear it rushing, use another word immediately, let's say: one hears it talking to itself, the river. So the stream has abruptly disappeared, and now the roaring river steps up to us, which had come strolling around a gentle left-hand bend, which it almost missed, and demands its quota of admiration. Now they are running along side-by-side the river and its embankment road, which has been leant against it, so that it looks halfway good, but the road stands there obstinately, stands firm against the river's desires to pull it down, to play with it, and only the inhabitants of the heights move, as fast as they can. To get away from it, because it is threatening to their tender feet or furs.
Dark alder thickets to the right, deep down below by the river, where one always finds them, I don't have to change much there. In addition there is now, a real rarity, a canape on this road, on which there's hardly any traffic at night, an approaching car with a roof rack: Skis rest in their coffin-like box, funny, it looks like a cap for the car, and this box contains play, sport, and fun in such a small space that it would be impossible to squeeze in people as well; how are they supposed to amuse themselves, when there's room for their apparatus, but not at all for them? The roof rack is practical in any case, I think, people can straight away be buried in it if they have an accident. The car shoots past and briefly finds itself on the fringes of a hail shower of contempt caused by the country policeman, who in any case feels contempt for everything that doesn't belong to him. No reason to get excited. So, it's gone, the fast car, like a wet poodle, but in truth it has remained master of the house, it was an S-Class Mercedes. Despite everything the road is and remains dry. The eyes go ahead, don't turn aside, here comes the turn-off we're looking for. The crime didn't happen here, but here, as already suggested, paper tissues from earlier unions could still be lying around. If someone thought of examining these as well, then they would have a scent, although a cold, dried up one. But we don't quite know what modern forensic medicine is capable of. Yesterday and the day before yesterday Kurt Janisch already drove along the road at night to all the places where he's been with a certain young woman, who disappeared, sleepwalkers both, almost asleep in what they were doing, sometimes also calling to the other body: You can't do that, no, or can you? You can do it better than that! Did we leave out any part of this body by mistake? Then we'll attend to it the next time, till the first bit has healed again. And if it can, the body then remains quite at liberty, until one's home again, where another will without fail take an interest in it. And where those already present there, who never go for a walk because they always have to patiently wait, want to suck one dry again for the sake of this obliging service, even if one has arrived back already completely empty and exhausted and cannot possibly be used again today, except for washing the car, where one has to do nothing else except to be and be there. The car doesn't ask for anything more than that. Nature provides the water. Past. Not a sound in the modern car, which glides more than it drives along. Now just don't make a mistake with the speed, don't attract the attention of a colleague (very unlikely!), until one reaches the river bank and then at a particular spot has to scramble down a fair bit, something only local people would think of. The others, who don't know the area, would think it's a vertical drop, and we're not going to break our necks just for a fuck and we don't want to drown either. It's much cheaper breaking one's neck on the road without having done any sport beforehand. Yes, there, about another two-and-a-half miles, that's where the entry to the path by the river, hidden beneath branches, must point the way to an extinguished smile, to a circling screaming, as if birds had come to visit and couldn't find the exit anymore.
It can't be, do you see what I see?, in front there, on the road, a large dark mass, a heated mass, swiftly coming nearer, but with no glowing headlamps fixed to it, why on earth not. Nothing that could sprout wings and lift up into the air, and yet, how strange, that's exactly what it does do now, and there follows, fractions of seconds later, the soft impact of a body, which only just now came swinging along like a not quite full sack, which earlier, still in the forest, no one could beat, and which is now quickly and briskly drawn up from the road over the windscreen, the wedge-shaped profile of this modern Japanese car, as if by invisible strings, before immediately disappearing again. For another moment the night is darkened even further by the powerful bag of muscles, which like lightning and yet at the same time also ponderously (as if workers were bracing themselves sideways with ropes, grumbling and groaning, their feet pressed against the car body, in order to heave up, heave ho, their burden), slides up over the front part and the front window of the car as on a snow plow and has disappeared again, hardly has it appeared, so evidently the whole heavy mass was flung, almost dragged upwards, by the forward ploughing car and now already, like an unidentified flying object (but the moment that it happens, the country policeman knows what is happening), has risen above the car and landed on the road behind it. For the hundredth of a second the huge, already almost slack sack of fur and bones and horns hangs still and immobile above the vehicle like a strange, black moon, then it strives a little higher towards heaven, on a parabolic flight path, whose zenith (delta t), since the object, commensurate with the speed at which Kurt Janisch's car was travelling, will land 15 yards behind the Japanese car in the roadway, in exactly the middle of this stretch. While the bag of bones flies, it turns without grace a couple of times on its axis, a cumbersome comet, whose horned head, heavily burdened by the weight, points almost majestically in rapidly changing different directions, depending on the phase of the flight, and then lands on the road, the body, and is, for a moment at least, completely still. Quite unexpectedly Kurt Janisch's car was deprived of the momentum (M) which was necessary within the time (t) to lift the mass of a huge stag (m), a full-grown ten-pointer, for the killing of which the owner of the hunting ground up there had coughed up quite a sum, if the stag hadn't anyway had to cough its last, from ground level to the apex of its flight path (a), which was located behind the car, as well as to propel the stag in the direction of travel. The result was a drastic deceleration of the country policeman's car by several miles an hour. The car struck the stag above the fibula, or whatever it's called in this and similar animals, the bumper, therefore, caught one of the hurrying, swinging hind legs, losing contact with the ground, the hindquarters sagged away, down to the radiator, and off it went, off went the backwards flight, right over the car. At the corresponding moment in time Kurt Janisch was no longer driving very fast, he had already been approaching the turn-off down to the river and begun to look round, to see where he could park in the seclusion of undergrowth.
For a moment the stag had been caught between a number of force vectors, to which it had succumbed. As if gripped by impotent rage, something had lifted it up, shaken it like a fist, then catapulted it away, to immediately put an end to the nauseating aversion of the earth, which at last wants a little company, which stays for a while and doesn't immediately run off again. The earth prepares the whole meal. In return it has to pay with one head of population, it always has to pay. No, just a moment, not this time! The cars and the open trucks loaded with wood are always in such a hurry and leave the earth so quickly. Only the dead remain definitely, even if not quite voluntarily, with us, that's no fun for the road nor for us. The dead: so many! What happened to the rest? In maddened anger, in towering rage, the earth, in alliance with the country policeman, has flung the heavy animal in the air, apparently on a whim, like a crumpled, damp handkerchief, like one of those which the hunter and collector has originally gone to look for, and has simply thrown it away, the whole bundle of bones, without thinking anymore about it. But only the earth itself has been struck, the gray road. The heap of meat has been thrown on its counter, now strip off the hide, divide up and sell the meat. Yet even as the animal, not visibly bleeding, turning somersaults, had plunged onto the roadway, the earth had evidently changed its mind, no we can't have such a good conversation with that one, who's interested in what a stag's interested in, acorns, hay, the backsides of hinds, well, and it now lets go the animal quite casually, the good earth. Let's just wait a bit for a human, there'll be one along shortly, at the moment the discos are still full of human tissue, skin, bones, hair, sinews, muscles, and all in the revealing splender of rave and hiphop clothing, sometimes one, sometimes the other, never too much, as far as the little honeys are concerned, our writing and TV-watching youth (up to the age of 50) will tell us what exactly. Correct would be this answer: Tomorrow three girls aged between sixteen and twenty will supply the earth all the more plentifully with fresh flesh, so we'll let the game go for today, without eating it, while we remain here at the meat counter, the sausage stand of life, and stuff ourselves till the grease is dripping from our chins. The animal is struggling up again, the forelegs are still kneeling, but the rear is already rising up, a hair-raising bleating noise, mixed with a kind of belling and groaning, listen, there it is again, what can that be, sounds like a siren. Fate is in such a bad mood that today it didn't even want to put together a decent carcass. The sound is quite close now. The stag stands unsteadily, still thrust forward by its own rage, to face the fate which it hadn't seen coming, after all it doesn't have any eyes at the back, but whatever has happened to it, it stands ready, its hooves lurching over the asphalt to fight with whomever; fate, sluggish as it is, has not even reacted yet to this attack by the meat mass of this animal weighing hundreds of pounds, and already the animal wants to fight it. So, now, with some delay, fate is at last handed the stag's papers, a little late, as mentioned, there's no hurry, it'll not be shot until next year at the earliest, it is an older, but very beautiful beast, and in a year's time it will be still older, still more majestic, perhaps have fled from a younger rival, no, it's not sick, it is, touch wood, healthy, thanks for asking, and has by and large remained so. Now it's back on its feet, it could be king of any forest, its head lowered, swinging, no, the neck isn't broken either, this is the confirmation: Fate's documents are always correct, it knows everything about us. What's happened to the rest? Our brand new Minister of Social Affairs will ask you that in all seriousness.
Kurt Janisch has stopped, for a moment the car seems to him like a paper bag which has been filled with air and then burst. An animal has hit it a little too forcefully. The country policeman's heart hammers right up to his throat and into his leisure shirt. It's as if he is held tight by these two giant hands which clapped together above the car, as if they wanted to applaud him. The heavy impact of a living thing can produce such an effect in anyone, above all if one was not prepared for it, but one can also drive off with a feeling of indifference until something even worse happens. Whatever was hit, torn, thrust aside, it has been thrown onto the road and is already lying behind Kurt Janisch. Where on earth did the car get the rage and the strength for that? It got them, this much-admired creature, brought up to kick, punch, shove, to show off and murder, from us. And another animated creature now bleats and scrapes the asphalt, scratches the surface, drowned in itself, but nevertheless half on its legs again, gone head over heels, but on its hooves again and on course, one of the inhabitants of the night to which it, too, wants to belong. What distant light could have drawn it? Here there is only the sparse illumination of the federal highways. The bridges are for people, on their way into the beyond, who wanted to have another drink or two beforehand for the long journey, who knows if we'll get anything on the way, so it's better if we first fill up with as much as the disco clothes will take, which should actually uncover us, a covering which unfortunately doesn't take very much, when a tree and the like or similar living thing gets in its way The stag has hurried a little bit further up the wall of time in its eagerness, it has bounced off the pliant membrane which separates this world from the world on the other side, and which is permeable in only a few places, and has been catapulted back into the here and now, bounced back like a trumpet note, which was thrown back by a rock face, it was wedged in by the confinement of a road, which now returns it to nature. So. Nature is handed a present, for which it will certainly still find a use, because the hunter, too, is close to nature and deserves his pleasures. This stag will not escape him so easily. It will find it hard to get away. But still. Kurt Janisch reaches for his revolver, he'll have to shoot the animal if he's seriously injured it. But that doesn't appear to be the case. The fall was far but not fatal. Only yesterday an express train tore up a whole flock of sheep not far from here, over forty dead animals, flung through the air like cotton-wool balls, the good shepherd fallen asleep drunk somewhere, the dog in the field alone, not a hope. Now the shepherd has to bear joint responsibility for the whole loss, or don't you think he bears a responsibility, dear television audience, write and let us know what you think, it's your views that count. We will clarify the legal position and look thoughtful as we do so, and everyone will want to clarify it differently, I'll put a bet on that already. Kurt Janisch doesn't want to take part, he's thinking of his own legal consequences and resolves to pursue others, with his own law and rights, as the vultures do, and other birds of prey. Some take from the living, some from the dead. There are moments when one should smile, best of all at the camera, which is thrusting into one's face. This is not one of those moments. The stretch of road here is notorious. Per year approximately fifty or sixty red deer, mainly stags, they don't stay with their herd as they should, it seems to me, are mashed up. Do you hear the cries from the dreadful warmth of their pools of blood? Their carcasses are lying around everywhere, mostly on the hard shoulder (though not properly dressed). But often they also lie in the middle of the road, just wherever they've been tossed, not stirred, a few have even been stuck to the windscreen or were hanging over the bonnet like a fur stole, while no sun could be found in the dark night sky to wrap them in warmth a little longer, the dead animals. This whole landscape sometimes seems to consist of steaming blood and long-drawn-out cries. The cars conduct a campaign against life, which still continues at this very hour. Terrible things with wings, mostly crows and jackdaws, glide over it all, they come because they've been summoned to pick out eyes, they always have their tools with them. Crows can be quite wicked and spear the faces of the dead with their thorn beaks. This stag, however, will soon be eating and drinking again, though at the moment it's staggering around a bit, because it can't understand where it could have got so drunk, but it'll be all right. If no one comes from the opposite direction now, he'll manage to make it into the timber forest, yes, he's made it, up he goes. Down to the river would have been the wrong direction, then sooner or later he would have turned back frustrated, would have angrily reached the road, and a little later someone else would have got him and this time done the job properly. Fate never rings twice, one has to open the door the first time, it is too lazy to do so itself. The area is very abundant in game, and the spirits of every single person who lives here are completely different several times a day. Kurt Janisch's brother-in-law from Garinthia once related he had hit a pregnant hind, which had immediately expired beside his mudguard. That already doesn't sound good. Does this sound any better? The fawn spilled out of the hind's burst stomach and lay next to it, it had to be personally killed by the driver with a stone, not a nice task, but what can one do in such a situation. No one, absolutely no one should suffer unnecessarily, that's certain. Because it would only have suffered, the fawn, so we put it out of its misery, with one foot still almost in the hot monster that brought us to this spot and yet only wanted to gobble its gas at the next filling station, it wants to live, too, it's so nice and it took so long to choose it. What happened to the rest?
The engine, rapidly cooling in the cold night air, now ticks over quite gently, starting up again at last, listen, no, no sound of anything else here. Life was preserved and returned to the earth, thank you very much, but the address was wrong. Nevertheless the earth does not let go once it has something. It sometimes lends one something, if one complains long enough. An abyss was briefly open and now it's closed again. The blinds are down. The ravens aren't coming, they're almost only to be found in the Tyrol. They don't fly so far. To make up for that they can speak. But at the moment they're offended, because they're constantly confused with crows. Kurt Janisch smiles for no reason, he's on a campaign, and to this end he advances into the field, to the dead river bank, where, beside the rushing river, the paper tissues sleep in their nest, which they've built for themselves, only from themselves, like the eternal Being. The keen eyes of Kurt Janisch inspect the ground, his watchful hands now grip the flashlight switched to function 2 (don't flash, we need a steady light, we're already nervous enough as it is!). His hands are still shaking a little. He bends down and crawls reluctantly into the undergrowth, illuminates the ground inch by inch. There's nothing more to be found there, only half-frozen mud, dirt, but who knows what a couple of rigorously deployed sensitive instruments in the forensic laboratory, in the sure hands of experts, would find? The senses of man should be more acute than the instruments he created, but they are not, otherwise one would not have specially had to invent them. Dark slope, do you surrender now or not, what you've pocketed? With the human herd, who trampled around today in the mountains and glided around on the pistes and cycled around in the forest, one can't collect everything they've left behind, that's impossible. Not even the Country Police will do that, so it doesn't matter. This country policeman at any rate is only still crawling around in order to be able to have a response to the unpleasant reluctance in himself: I'm still looking, I'm looking, I can't help it if I don't find anything, just a moment, was it more this way or more that way? I can't remember anymore. The bush over there is a heap of needles, which prick unpleasantly and aim for the eyes, like the crows, a small malicious army, which, almost wiped out, has closed up in order to offer final determined resistance. No, we would never have crawled under this bush, it would have torn our skins and tattooed it with weals, instead of bringing skin together with skin. Gabi would anyway have refused to crawl under there, her hair, her jeans, her new jacket, bah, bah, double bah. The usual. Blubbering. The ones who get hit also cry out sometimes, there's nothing one can do about it. Apart from that it would have given her the creeps, a pile of shit could have called stop! like the blast from a horn, because tourists like to crouch under such bushes, if they want to save the money for the restaurant but nevertheless want to relieve themselves and not their purses. No. I think it must have been further over there, it gets flatter too, there's a little clearing surrounded by green bushes, oh, look, the buds, so delicate, so green already! The country policeman illuminates the way ahead, but he still doesn't see anything which might count at some point. Here and there a candy wrapper flashes up in the beam of the searchlight as if it wanted to mock the searcher, it still bears the warm trace of hands, this cough drop cellophane. It won't decay for centuries and will still be able to delight our grandchildren with its sparkle, this ancient number from yesteryear, if they happened to come here at night with their flashlights, discharged from the thousand suns, brighter than any disco.
Kurt Janisch, don't let yourself be interrupted, keep on looking. He searches, all the more avidly the more hopeless it appears, as if he now had to save his own thoughts at least, which threaten to escape him. No, we don't think, we'd rather dig with our bare hands in the frozen dirt of the winter which has hardly passed. Quite pointlessly Kurt Janisch tears at the low branches, shakes them like fists, how can something be lying there or even fall down? Do handkerchiefs grow on trees here? This man likes to surround himself with trees in order to enjoy the feeling of plenty, even when one owns nothing. He is always, in the first instance, after houses, and what has he got so far? Well, now I have to mock: Nature, nothing but nature, whose body he now kicks with his heavy climbing shoes, the tree trunks, in an ever more furious fit of rage. He races around in the wood like a wild animal, throws himself against the fir trees with a crash, though he doesn't get far, the branch work is terribly dense, impenetrable, he scrapes around in the half-frozen mud, which, thawing in the body heat, protrudes from his fingernails, because they can't hold anymore. Now he hits out with his fists as well, again and again, blood is running down his wrists. He resounds like a note running after its own echo, because it hasn't heard it and is entitled to it in the mountains, two copies attached!, into the forest by the river, again and again, it looks as if he wanted to passionately embrace the trees, the country policeman, yet, like many people, the trees confuse hate with love and cuddle up to him, the bad man, clasp him, who is plucking out all their little twigs and kicks their trunks for no reason at all, which after all are only lightly clothed in bark and lichens. They are not dressed sturdily enough. Now he is even scraping away the earth at the roots, our Kurt Janisch. Anyone who sees it will think it odd, perhaps there are even traces of blood, then the country policeman would really have achieved the opposite of what he wanted. This forest promises him only annihilation, and it promises that he, Kurt Janisch, will afterwards be cleanly cleared away. It's not like drowning, no, all the many animals come who also want to eat, and they eat simply everything, but go into the water, no they wouldn't do that. It works the other way round as well: Do you see this trout? The rear end of a mouse is hanging out of its open jaws. How did that happen? How on earth? I don't know how the jaws are supposed to close again. At any rate I'm not going to pull the mouse out. There, everywhere, is a great shepherd, who has left his sheep in the lurch, but he didn't let them go into the water. He is there for them, even if not always, and he stands by the ring, until finally an abandoned lower jaw, you must be joking!, grins at him out of the undergrowth, the upper part plus teeth has long ago been dragged away by other animals, hey, you, I've bitten the dust, my dentist wouldn't have liked that at all. He's even forbidden me to do it. Must have been a deer, if you like a deer above all else then please look the other way now, because this is exactly what it could have been, no, it wasn't, no matter, it threw away its body long ago, perhaps because you didn't love it as much as you thought. So, this flame would have gone out now, the teeth are gone too, the hooves have galloped off. Today another animal was luckier than this one. So it goes. One always wins, the others only lose. The flame of life, before it is blown out by a mouth puckered for a kiss, which was always easily able to deceive one, is indeed a very sensitive little flame, there's not much gas left, it's all used up, and consumption has already been paid for and debited from our account. What's puffing there as if of stronger, higher flames? A scornful night sky, which according to the position of the moon tells us the time and that Our Time in Pictures Part Three will soon begin in this little box here, and then a completely new age will dawn, and if we finally want to see this new age, then we must make our way to a more inviting location with more fashionable furnishings.
And there we have it already, THE LOCATION, LOCATION, a pretty kitchen-living room quite deliberately fitted out in a rustic look and nevertheless sighing with dissatisfaction, since it would rather collect itself into a nice crowd of kitchens by Dan or someone, preferably one for each family member, they wanted to form a kitchen circle, each one in his very own house, for the time being we only have one and a half housing units, because the son's house still belongs to someone. Into this kitchen enter, in their own character, without feeling ashamed, sure of their adventurousness, the TV guests of VERA, the hostess from the beyond, who collects the waste water of human beings and, giving a blessing, sprinkles it on the heads of millions, solemn water, which we crowd around, only in order to see: Others are even more desperate than we are. How fantastic is that, overjoyed I write a whole novel, if necessary. This one. They are not ravaged by hate, the family people in this kitchen, they are delighted with their new property. Patrick, the child, will get a whole room just for his video games. The son's wife will get the whole cellar as a washing and ironing room. The country policeman's wife will perhaps get a conservatory in order to sit quite alone with the television and find out if she wants to be a millionaire or to receive from the television a country barn dance, which will spur her on, quite alone, to laugh heartily, until she herself is locked up in it again. The country policeman's son will get a whole floor to himself in order-the hobby of every other young man-to assemble electronic circuits, which will seem completely beside the point to everyone else, because they already exist. There he can also pursue his second hobby, playing a home organ. But because this hobby is always running too far ahead of him, he's going to give it up again soon. The country policeman himself will simply get everything he wants and will feel unusually burdened by all his property. A sleepwalker, a chiseled body of stone (with a way of speaking for women), who has to bear a whole house, and yet one alone will never be enough for him, although he would not be able to bear anymore. We see: dark heads bent over a building plan, which they have boldly removed from a drawer and even more boldly will alter with their own felt-tips; in this bath they will soon splash, and in this extension with a bay window they will make quite personal gestures to one another, which, another personal present, nothing from a shop!, will be received as slaps in the face. We see eyes, which do not turn away from straight and dotted lines, but complete them or make completely different subdivisions just as they please, according to their own yardstick. My soul tells me that these people are not for a moment thinking of themselves, but only of their descendants, who, in the shape of Patrick, the country policeman's grandson, loaf around in front of the television, let the fate of strangers bounce impudently off them and instead absorb a whole pound of cookies, but only those that they know from the advertisements, which are explicitly and exclusively directed at our young people. The country policeman now turns up at home again, as if by magic, he's wet, rumpled and dirty, but he never has to give explanations anyway. Showers and changes his clothes, while in between what happened with the stag falls from his lips like dried clay. That doesn't particularly upset anyone here, at most, that the stag survived, that's very rare. Fancy that. The things life is capable of! Until now we've only credited death with surmounting such difficulties. Life ultimately does rise above everything, if one has been able to obtain it in the hospital, but the things a skillful mason, a joiner, a carpenter are capable of, if one lets them, that is more than thinking, it is the activity of the industrious and hard-working, of which I have often spoken here, but it has paid off every time. Apart from that, others have done it even more often, haven't they? It's difficult to talk about ordinary things. About the lamplight, which blows away the darkness, the TV, which shoos away melancholy, the conversations at the family dinner table, which snarling chase away the intellect, the clothes, which hide the ill-shaped bodies of people or sometimes also such a compact, home-carved work of art as Kurt Janisch, whom one could exhibit just like that in the museum of local art and culture, if only he were a little more kindly, or finally about a building plan, which subsequently discards its own house, I could talk about it endlessly, oh how beautiful it all is, because one can always work hard at oneself and at others. And how happy I am nevertheless to be allowed to say all that here. Thank you so much for everything.