Please permit me to say the following once again, because it is important to me and because I can't now find the passage where I said it once before: If your vegetables are enriched by high dosages of nitrates, then you must on no account eat them! It's a sign that thanks to excessive use of fertilizers the ecological balance of the water has become upset, and with it of course your vegetables. It is therefore excessive and damage to health may result (if this has not already occurred), if the very good water, that we have, is polluted. What we douse our food in, we should even keep particularly pure so that it does not dose us. Natural bodies of water: superabundant plant growth. Yuck. How this body of water must feel, I'd rather not try to imagine. The water wants to be as hard-working and decent as the people who drink it, but the people don't help it, they don't give it a hand. Animals would be paralyzed with shock if they could read that. They have to drink water, too, after all. Aquatic plants would die off, excuse me, I can explain that: Instead of ceasing to absorb oxygen, like those of us who have died, they now really start, just as the rest of Austria, full of love and greed, receives the tourists, our dear guests who visit us, unless the government doesn't suit them. It doesn't suit me either. So I'm a stranger here myself. As already mentioned, excessive use of poison causes the whole orchestra of nature to strike up all at once, and even Bruckner wouldn't have wanted that. There is too much too much too much of everything. We have enough too. More than enough. We've had enough.
If you are contemplating wallowing in excess: You're better off taking the whipped cream and leaving the oxygen! Besides my little bit of water here, in this machine, is also overloaded with poison. Instead of answering genteelly when I'm asked, I tip my whole life, which is itself long dead, into this dead water zone, but deader than dead, that can't be. It would be a good thing if for once a decent flow got going into this zone, if the water at last got a decent employment policy, so that its trophic level finally improves. Otherwise we always only remain what we were-trophies of history, displayed as a warning to other countries. And what we grabbed we couldn't take with us, or could we? No, we're not going to give this Klimt painting back now. We must have got something out of it, for making all that effort, until almost no one escaped with their lives. How we would rather have more turbulent times again, how we would like to profit from the movement of the river, until the last particle of water in us, our upright little Austrian homebody souls, is carried along (that's how coarsely our bodies of water are spoken about, I swear it), in addition to the main movement (acquisition of property), by the dear little secondary movements, the belief in God, the heavenly Father, whom we have soft-soaped for so long for our own entertainment, until he finally gave us back to ourselves, newly redecorated, as good as new, no, better!, and we had nothing more urgent to do than hand ourselves over to a new leader, voluntarily, as if we were one and a half years old, at the outside, and couldn't understand what he's saying to us. As if nothing had ever happened. There are some who still can't get enough, we've already described them and now only have to clear away our own refuse. It resembles the leguminous plants, tenacious, yielding, slimy, but in this water, in the lake, it can't be done away with, at least not for a while. This refuse consists of owner-occupied houses, of which one always provides security for the other, until the banks, exhausted, raise a small white flag and decline. The banks are asexual, that is, they do not allow themselves to be mollified either by men or by women. They are not oriented towards propagation and regeneration like the plants of the earth, they are programmed for concentration, so, now they've caught someone again, who thought up some dirty trick with the interest redemption, he won't get far with that. If he were richer, they wouldn't have got him. They even caught the fraudulent chicken farmer and his brother, but not his powerful backers. The Freedom Party Building Society has been wound up, a pity really. They're also feeling the country policeman's collar, but he always removes his jacket very quickly, and the banks can once again take a walk. Yes, that's completely true, he is a person, a truth, a work, a property, yet in reality nothing belongs to him. Gather round me, if you want to hear once again, how many people this country has killed, no doubt you're asking yourselves why then I'm always only talking about the one person. He's not that important, after all. No, you're not asking yourselves that, and I can understand that. No one asks me about anything whatsoever. I have already described what you will find in this standing water, which has urgent need of a second leg to stand on, but now it's finally going to be found, the relic, the victim, that's quite different from just talking about it. On the other hand one imagines it to be worse than it is, finding a corpse; and I have hesitated so long to describe it, until I almost didn't feel like it, here, on the low shore of my resolves. Please throw the first stone now, but in such a way that it can hop around on the surface of the water a couple of times, as happy as a new federal chancellor.
The spoilsport, Gabi's corpse, who was searched for as a living person and so could of course never be found, not even with all the photos on the masts, almost the whole way up to the Semmering Pass, pops up now as a dead woman, although the dead are of course inactive and don't respond to anything anymore. In the deep water of our mountain lakes there are places where one never finds them, the dead, doesn't matter, we have enough of them, I mean there are plenty of them. There in the mountain lakes, the shores drop almost vertically, these lakes can be 600 feet deep or more. There are holes in the lakes. They have the power to make people disappear without trace forever, at the Last Judgement there will then be great astonishment, when the prettily packaged women all bob up from the bottom in order to avenge themselves for their discontent in the water's cold hell. How great will be their disappointment, when others, the hosts of angels in their fast four wheel drives, which have been acquired for them so that they can get everywhere on that day when the trumpets shall sound without pause, will first of all want to take revenge on them. Because, going by the book, the misdeeds of the living are not erased by the death of others. But the business with Gabi affects me so badly nevertheless, I really don't know what to say now, but simply can't let it out like cigarette smoke, quickly, as if in passing; description is difficult of course, if one has never seen a real dead person. A film is only a weak substitute, a little bench in Shudderwood Station. So horror turns up today, weighs me down unusually heavily, and yet I can't look away, although actually I wanted to read the newspaper. Two men who, after a big meal at the inn, wanted to stretch their legs a bit (they will soon have to be unhappy that on this occasion they couldn't stretch their legs under the table), their wives have remained sitting and gossip away, this time without making use of the corrosive rage at their families, which so often overcomes, e.g., me, now walk down to the lake on a cold, soon to be green path, which is already depressed at the thought of all the police boots which will shortly be tramping around on it. So. I now read, because I'm used to reading, from the two men's faces, what they're thinking when, close to the shore, they discover, re-emerging as unexpectedly as it disappeared, first of all just bobbing up and down, a man-sized roll of green shiny tarpaulin, such as is used, fairly pointlessly, because it's never quite waterproof (I can tell you a thing or two about that, since I had to bail out water from my balcony three times) as covering on building sites. The tarpaulin is tied up with wire. What's that? It is at any rate first of all curious. Because something is as big as a human being doesn't mean that it has to be one. But anyone seeing this roll imagines this plastic cover has been made the size it is so that exactly one human being or four square yards of soil or a five foot three inch tree trunk fit underneath, the one has no protection anymore, the other would have been very much in need of more protection, the tree trunk has no more wishes except for the nice damp earth, which it will never see or feel again. The circle of readers stands up to get a better view, the tarpaulin hides something, which for days seemed to have been swallowed by the earth, but the earth was unjustly accused. The water had the human roll the whole time and was playing yoyo with it, but the string was a wire tightly wound, and so the water was soon fed up with the game. It didn't work, there's nothing one can do with this packet and, whatever is inside it, we can't unpack it. We just have to pick up our textbook again, which tells us what killed us, who are all of us waters, in such a way that we consist almost only of water-nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and organic stuff, we got a fresh load of the latter three days ago, but don't know what to do with it yet. Apart from that, like many children, we are basically glutted, for which there are good reasons. These are the words of the water to us and to the two men, who don't understand its language. But the language of this plastic roll they understand instinctively and take a step backwards and are suddenly silent. What's that. The two men have already eaten, that's a good thing, because at this moment their appetite would have disappeared, if they hadn't earlier on arrested it in good time and taken advantage of it for their own ends. The lake is not deep, nowhere, and yet no one has made the effort to coax this roll a little further out. There it is now, a possible covering for a human being, but not a good one.
At first the two men try to pull the flotsam ashore with the help of a broken-off long stick, but they can't reach far enough. It's as if the roll is not for them. The men say to themselves: Today of all days, it's not our day. Birds circle over them screeching, it's still cold. Too cold for the time of year, even here. We imagined angels differently, as we were fleetingly brushed by thoughts of reprisal and wanted to kill someone, but then refrained from doing so after all. These are black angels. Inside this plastic sheet rests a human face and a human body, that's what it looks like to me, this sheet. The men think, it can't be what it looks like. The men know that what it looks like is probably what it will be. Soon we will know exactly, says the law of reality. They squat down and strain to look under the water, which is especially dark and opaque, but the sheet encloses something they can recognize exactly and with terrible certainty they understand whom they are dealing with, with death, this always cocked weapon, which is playfully turning in a circle, staring first at one, then the other, a nervous finger pointing at their cold bodies, whose turn is it today. I would like to be the first to know: Perhaps already the two men on the way home? They really shouldn't have drunk that third glass, this walk was supposed to serve, not least, as a sobering up. Well, that's exactly what it's doing. And as if with one blow of a hammer drill four eyes drill into the sight of the water-foam roll. It's a simple package, yet what will it not set in motion! In the future, 82 detectives of the regional force, of which 20 will be assigned solely to this one case.
Cell phone on, call out, horrors already prepared, packed, frozen, and discovered by two persons. Please come immediately, we see what's been hidden and would so like to know what's inside. Their wives are always merely covered up by quilts and these always reveal what's familiar, which grows more rancid with every day and which, furthermore, in order to get some pleasure out of it has to be flattered for hours. The things one has in mind, one never ever gets. It would be a good thing to remove this covering, that would bring us considerably closer to our bobbing, restless goal. We hear a frightful voice speaking, accompanied by a blue light and, as if that were not enough, a siren. We hear how the voice is trying to tell us something: You're dealing with death here, be quiet, perhaps it's still there and is going to fetch you. Oh, how exciting. Well, it won't be as bad as all that, says another voice from an extra-small telephone, which can be snapped open so that it looks bigger, and which may well appear more eerie than this manifestation under water, which is observed by birds not by fish, because there are no fish in this special element I'm thinking of. The Country Police force is at liberty to come, in fact, they must, and they do. Mr. Kurt Janisch is not on duty today, the man has the luck of the devil. Otherwise he would have had to take acting lessons in good time, and that too he has been able to save himself, in addition to his many other savings, which unfortunately are always gone when he needs them. He has only negative savings, that is, debts. More than hairs on his head. He wishes someone would take them off him. But instead houses are supposed to come and stay. Fortunately these are ponderous, stationary fellows, they are supposed to pour in sometime nevertheless, to serve as security for further houses. So something comes of nothing, no, a something comes of a nothing. But nothing, nothing at all comes of it. Not yet, but our prospects are good. Two men rise to their feet on the shore of the lake, who have done their duty as citizens, and no doubt they will sooner or later stand up impatiendy to the authorities, that is their human duty, that's why everyone does it. They only agree with the authorities, the people, when someone, who doesn't belong to us, is to be carefully deported. So now the authorities come jolting and bumping down what is no more than a track and will detain these men unnecessarily for hours. This track is the only one on which the Country Police can get here, if they don't want to go on foot, which would break a few points from their uniform epaulettes, which they will certainly still need on our eastern borders and that with Slovenia, quite close to here, in order to establish their authority. These officers after all have to patrol 90 miles of border in Styria in super uniforms, with parkas and peaked caps. The whole Spielfeld district is already quaking at their steps. The training in the annex of the Bad Radkersburg Police School lasted six months, that must have paid off at some point, because then they can protect the riches of the natives really very effectively and accompany the latter, once they have enjoyed it all in peace and quiet, with a raised signal disc into the Kingdom of God (which belongs to them alone in any case), so that no one can put a spoke in their wheel. So. Here it is, exactly in the water. Take a look. Do you see it? What is it. We'll need the boat. After some back and forth and pushing and now heave and crossing the dead water zone, in which simply nothing stirs, the load is dragged by boat into the microscopically small harbor and pulled out. Divers aren't needed. At the top there's hair, that's already: the first thing we see. But now we already know everything and lose our self-control. Jesus, hair, must be real! One of the men throws up on God and his friend and the feet of the policemen, who manage to jump back in time, but are already talking into their radios and have to listen to the din and crackle that breaks out of them like game out of the undergrowth. Soon the place will simply be swarming with men in uniform (and later also with the high-ranking civilians). A bit of smooth forehead under the saturated hair can also be seen, which didn't go under the plastic sheet, or not enough of an effort was made to tuck it in. Here someone perhaps wanted too much to own a human being and instead took this human being away from themselves, if you follow me. Perhaps this human being was simply thrown away, because someone had no more use for her anymore. Once again: The killer did not take the human being away from himself (that would not have bothered the killer, he evidently had no more use for his prey) but the victim from themselves. This person would miss themselves, if they were still conscious. No idea why. The eyes literally get stuck into the roll, but cannot take it over all on their own. Impossible. We can't grasp it. The birds are disappointed, the lake, however, is relieved it's rid of the responsibility, and it doesn't, on top of everything else, have to absorb even more fertilizers. Photographers, the search for clues, indescribable excitement in a short time overfertilizes the village as well and sweeps it along, heavy with all the stored up shit, which one will get to hear there, as in a spring avalanche, which in a swelling torrent, out of which poke our sins like trees and lumps of concrete, surges down the pedestrianized former high street. People who a moment ago were crouching out of sight, so that no one would see them answering the call of nature, now resolve never to do such a thing again. Someone can be lurking behind every bush, and in conclusion one ends up in the lake. Someone who has wrapped someone up and thrown them in will then also mendaciously maintain not to have known someone beforehand at all. We don't need that. To be denied in death like Jesus by his disciples, let yourself be killed, then you'll get the surprise of your life, what people will broadcast about you. But the people here are rather taciturn. You don't get anything out of them so easily. After the first photos the roll is opened and a body and a face of great charm are unpacked. Body and face still bear their delicate peaceful beauty, the face of the young woman looks as if she's sleeping, but in truth everything about her has long been divested of life. Someone has stirred up life against her, and so it went off in a huff. Not with her anymore! The black ankle boots aren't there, but there is the denim jacket with the long shawl collar, which we'd already missed, but not the handbag (where is it? It's never found!). The policemen see immediately who it is, they've had the young missing person on their computer screens and now they see her in natura, in this nature which takes offense at them. Let them sleep, the dead, there are too many for one to know something even of even one strand of their hair.
In future more than 2,000 people will be questioned in relation to the case, but what can one learn from people? They lie as soon as they open their mouths. It's always the same, it's what they've read and what they've seen on television, and they confuse that with what has happened to them and what really should have been in the newspaper, because it would have been much more interesting. Really it should only have been a matter of time, until the murderer would have been caught. It must have been a stranger. But there are hardly any strangers here and only a few tourists, and they are immediately conspicuous, because of their racy-sporty or rural-hunting costume, in which they dream of higher strata, to which they do not belong, and to whom the hunting grounds belong, no, they have no grounds here. In winter the frost's tender, sensitive hands chase away the strangers, in summer the rain, which mows down everything, even the bare earth. And anyone who's still left is driven off by us in person. Perhaps this girl, Gabi, wanted to see the whole wide world, but had not suspected that this small one would already be a size too big for her. Eyes bore into eyes and discuss and ask something. Names are mentioned, people are summoned for questioning. The Country Police are only doing their duty, the officers say again and again, when they once again stop in front of the hillock of a human being, who acts the boss in front of them, mole hill as Matterhorn; not much will come of all that. Each tells one's own truths, one more, the other less, the truths are, once one has got to know them, so hard to express, because they are probably not true at all. People are called, and they rush over in a state of agitation. Then they are sent away again. They all knew our Gabi, her mother and her boyfriend knew her particularly well, and they are questioned particularly well. They say, no one knew our Gabi as well as we did: There certainly wasn't another man. The two of them are sitting in the kitchen-living room again. They can no longer kiss the rim of the half-full cup of cocoa, which Gabi left standing the last time she was seen. She made it that evening before she left. She didn't finish it. The cup was rinsed. Where did she go after that? She shouldn't have gone out again, we definitely told her: stay at home or take your boyfriend with you. One or the other. The boyfriend didn't even know that she wanted to go out again, as he claims, although it's not much of a claim. She would never do anything without me, says the boyfriend. Funny. The boyfriend is at first naturally the main suspect, he doesn't, however, give the impression of having done it. He is altogether quite quiet. He was also quiet at school, except when he was required to say something. He did not have any greater difficulty than usual in expressing himself in the spoken exercise, which he delivered in the first lesson. There would have had to be something in the way he looked or in his voice. Nothing. He would automatically have had to make himself small in the face of something big like death, turn pale, stutter, something, sweat or stammer, if you like. His face seemed familiar to everyone, just as always. But who knows who he is, no, not the friend, who among us knows who he is. We, that is, everyone except me, knows how to make pheasant wrapped in bacon, but we don't know who we are. So, I am one of the few who really doesn't want to know. It's one reason why we always need variety, well, I don't need it. Perhaps we can find ourselves somewhere else? But to do that we always have to travel somewhere else. We also always knew everything about Gabi, apart from one essential detail, thinks the head of the regional CID even into his sleep, that is, even into his temporary death. It's the only way he can put himself in the position of the victim, by plunging into sleep and the next day hoping to have found a clue in his brain which he has not yet followed up. Again nothing. he's close, he knows that, but still: nothing. I'm sorry. I would tell you if I could. But I can't penetrate this dimension. A carton full of little wrapped sugar cubes from various cafes in places in the neighborhood, collected for the fun of it, which was no doubt as small as these sugar cubes, these keepsakes, which themselves don't keep their shape, but are happy if they don't have to dissolve and can first get to know two or three people to whom they are served, assuming their first owners have not damaged the wrapping with the signs of the zodiac too badly. But Gabi was always in these establishments alone, or with her boyfriend. There was never another man with her. At least no one whom we observed or whom we can remember. Her boyfriend claims she had recently perhaps been a little less passionate in love-making than usual, he says it shamefacedly. That points to something, but perhaps only that she had been a little lethargic or there was a lot to do at work. She wrote a letter, to a girlfriend: Mother and boyfriend hem me in, don't give me room to breathe, check up on me, pester me to do things, no idea what, it seems to be enough for them that I'm there, but I know, I'm their mistress, I know so, precisely because they pester me. Computers order these names, figures and dates, which in turn are shown to other men and machines. Many others note number plates and ask about the owners, who try not to look the fool. Too bad. One cannot know everything about a person, and one can know absolutely nothing about everyone, what does that mean. Even for someone smart it's hard to express, I already said so, and I'm not smart; I'll just have to take even better care to look smart, in order to understand life, although I already spend a fortune, otherwise in future I won't be admitted to life at all, and will have to let everyone else go in front of me. Would anyway be a bit late for life now, wouldn't it? If only I had learned something! When the mother wakes up, it hits her that her daughter is dead and she, the mother, can immediately go to her boyfriend in Germany, in Bavaria, but on first thoughts it's no fun at all, on second thoughts the fun will return. Yes, the two of them will return, perhaps after a really pleasant holiday together, Mr. Fun and Mrs. Joy of Living. The mother would in any case have moved away soon, why shouldn't parents be birds of passage for once? They want to move on sometimes, too. The mother has her own boyfriend and has put down a deposit on a house for Gabi, that should be enough, the couple, that was definitely the plan, would certainly have kept an eye on Gabi, lovingly hugged her, and Gabi would always have found ways and means of being horrid to them and to demand careful handling in return. Other people are also likewise burdened, no wonder that one would rather have their apartments instead of them; a wonder that most of them are still in one piece, given how often fate has struck them and wrested their few weak and delicate weapons from their hands before they could even read the instructions. So. Many are in the hospital. Mr. Westenthaler has smashed his kneecap for the umpteenth time, always the same one. All the rest are dead now, I decide, and so I save myself a lot of work, and they've already been cleared away by the good housewife's hand of death. So I no longer have to describe them. Thank you very much. The rest still lie under their burdens and wait for someone to put them back on their feet again and deliver them to someone who will perhaps be pleased about it. There isn't anyone like that, who sticks with one like the oak with the mistletoe. One cannot neglect oneself nevertheless, otherwise not even in the misty future will this long-desired partner turn up, who talks to one in a nice and friendly fashion. One must then on no account neglect him and not oneself either. When can one take a rest? It would be better if people had been on their feet long before that, then they would have had time to find someone better than the one they have. Only he who knows longing. Who knows what they suffer, the people? Oh, the one who knows and loves us is far away. In the water. Hardly is someone gone than one longs for him. Or not, who knows. No injuries of any kind could be identified on the girl's body, no visible ones at least. Someone got too close to her, but, to the forensic doctor's surprise, he by no means acted in a brutal way. What's even more surprising: in all probability no sign of sexual intercourse before death, not even traces of a violent attempt to penetrate her or ejaculate in or anywhere on her. The water obliterated these traces. Why did someone pull Gabi's trousers down to her knees and her pullover and shirt over her breasts? And yes, the open bra as well. Why these diligent pieces of work, which perhaps had nothing to do with diligence, but with necessity? And afterwards it wasn't necessary to pull up the woman's clothes again properly, why indeed, only the doctor is going to see her now, someone like that. It wouldn't have cost anything to make her look decent again and lay her out, the dead woman we see here. Two movements, one above, one below, but there are some who no longer have them at their command, ever since women can dress and undress by themselves. Did the taut weapons of a man take aim at this body, which came as suppliant or even as someone indifferent, which said no, and when I say no, does that mean no? You know, one can even lose self-control with suppliants in the face of their humility, which nevertheless demands everything, even as they throw themselves away, perhaps in order to create space for a whole lot more. Was it really necessary to pull down and push up her things so unkindly? And then this gentle, yet absolutely certain death, each one of its holds grips tightly-death, this free climber. He must be skillful, the fellow, sometimes he has to leave the scene of his activities very quickly afterwards. The young woman has not simply been choked or throttled, with the pressure and strength of firmly grasping hands, for several minutes, but gently through slight pressure of an open hand or a forearm on the throat, right on the nerve conductor center, which has its home there; dingalingaling sound the nerve ends with their integrated wiring, and then they're quiet and don't make a sound. No messages for you. Not on the display either. Time and date. In the year 2000 it will perhaps, at least for a while, be difficult to find the people whom death has marked with its expiry date. The computer will perhaps fail, felled, outwitted by time itself. And in 2001 it might get even worse, let's wait and see. Perhaps even death itself won't be working properly, because it will have been programmed with the wrong data. The young woman lying here with sodden head, armpit and pubic hair (so wet, it's as if nothing had ever grown there) lacks all marks of struggle and strangulation, which are virtually always found in such cases. Only a slight bruise on the right side of the head suggests that the head (in a car against the door cross-bar?) was struck hard and that then the dazed, but not unconscious woman was gently suffocated in this curious and unusual way. It can even have happened unintentionally, can't it? No, not that. An accident of love, which wanted something else than it could achieve? At any rate the girl didn't drown. The characteristic drowned lung, the over-inflation of the lung, the indistinctly defined, reddish to blue-violet discolorations on her body (Paltauf blotches) caused by hemorrhaging, are completely missing. No froth formation either? No, don't see any. The froth would arise during drowning through an intensive mingling of the fluid swallowed with chyme, gastric mucus and air. But did not arise here. Nothing to be seen. Any other questions? Make sure she's well preserved, but later I won't be able to answer them either.
Back to the country policeman Kurt Janisch: In the course of these days, as if there were a negative agreement in this respect, no more money is lent to him. Yet the sum of compliments, which women bestow on him, whom he stops, pulls over to the roadside, and leaves standing again, in ever more rapid succession (he hardly takes the time anymore to find out what significance each acquaintanceship could have for him, stares at driver's licences, at gold necklaces, fur collars, rings, watches, which grow towards him like tough, self-confident creepers, which know that not even the machete of someone running amok could destroy them. He hears excuses, which are delivered in a never-changing singsong, but he doesn't listen to these half-truths and excuses, he at last knows his own off by heart and doesn't need those of strangers, he prefers to note where the supposedly, presumably lowered eyes of the women are wandering, from the country policeman's penetratingly blue iris straight down to his fly, direct connection, these greedy, grasping eyes of women, and yet why are they so carelessly screened, with nothing but a protective coating of mascara, which probably only lends these glances weight and is intended to store them in a little fairy-tale forest, which one immediately wants to enter. But there one will probably have to pay admission, instead of taking something away and carrying it home, so we'd better just leave it), these extensive acquaintanceships add up, they mount like the snow up in the Alpine sphere, just as cold and just as pointless. Well, some get pleasure out of plunging in and down, strapped to my undercarriage, downwards, ever downwards, that already makes up half the profit. The country policeman, however, would need the whole profit for himself alone. For the athletes it has to be downhill. Or uphill, depending on the sport. But we can also certainly go up in the ski lift or the chair lift. Conversations develop, the women like the look of the country policeman, but they seem instinctively to scent his increasing desperation, at the moment that's too much for them for a nice date, you know, it's a bit too complicated just now, I've lived my life, it wasn't easy, and if I try again, then it shouldn't be such a strain this time. I have my job. And from time to time I just want to lie quietly in front of the TV and cry and laugh, one's never lonely with the TV anyway. That these women are supposed to invest something in this man is something they evidently suspect, previously they only rarely suspected it, and they recoil, these women of the country road, some humbly, some good-naturedly, few boldly. Yet they are supposed to risk their whole fortune to save the country policeman. It's not a good start, because it doesn't start at all. I'm telling you for the umpteenth time, this man is a somber figure, his uniform has already signalled that to me before a couple of times. Is he trying to get off with me, the women ask themselves, at whom he shoots his bright blue glances with the catapult of his strong, thick blond hair and eyelashes, glances which are supposed to be self-explanatory, but which can only write out fines, glances after which, with gestures which by now already begin irresolutely, he hooks into the warm flesh of breasts, to pull the blouse away a little and look into the cleavage, inside the cuddly soft sleeveless woollen pullover. How much wood does this one have outside her hut and how much gravel on her drive? Where is the old certainty of appraisal gone? The country policeman never used to be wrong before. Mr. Janisch, do you receive me, over and out? Everything has to go ever faster now, one thing virtually follows on the heels of the other, yet at the same time one must not forget the hottest iron in the fire, this one particular lady, not just for special moments, but at all events, that might turn up, and to whom it would be best he came as supplicant, she would like that, it would signal to her that he has been reduced in price and that she can at last afford him. It often happens to those with ambitions. They often appear so small to us in comparison to their desires and goals, which they spread out before us, dressed up as important concerns, so that we pay them due attention. And so we, too, slowly take less and less interest in them, these concerns of strangers. The woman, who loves, knows, and herself performs music, on a leash, always close beside him, the country policeman would like that, he wouldn't have to bother about her anymore, and if the music wants to sniff a little longer at one corner or another (isn't this sonata movement a little faster, and this finale a little slower, so that each note can be heard separately?), she's immediately roughly pulled back by the collar. I can't really grasp it yet, but this woman has perhaps, now of all times, at the wrong moment, discovered something like her dignity, that's what she calls it at least, and this discovery makes her so happy, like everything that's new. It won't last long. Sit! Basket! Music will do that for her, and wherever one tells it to, as long as it's the right person saying it; and it's always well behaved and comes straight back, when the CD player is set at start again, it only comes to her, the music to the woman, who alone understands music and it's all she understands.
So why shouldn't the country policeman keep coming back? Why should he not start to worry when this time she doesn't open the door to him, who so often only wants to put her down? Unlike him, music only wants itself, and so we can imagine it was written for each of us alone, only we can understand it properly. It makes no difference to music, it's easily satisfied, and it likewise wants to be repeated exactly the same each time in our concert halls, so that it always sounds as on the CD, which we have at home, although many people swear each time it's quite different from the time before. So that really everyone, even someone without ears at all, remembers it and, so as to be able to remember it even better, buys the corresponding CDs as model for reality. An eternal cycle, in great as in little things. The country policeman doesn't want to come to himself anymore, he'd rather stay away, and one can say: He doesn't know himself, otherwise he would still want to get to know himself. There's a new young colleague, but he really wants to get to know him better, recently, as if by accident, he blew lightly on the back of his neck, he was close to laying his cheek for a moment on the soft spot above the collarbone, but he didn't dare. He then merely gave the young colleague a jab in the ribs and conducted a mock fight with him, with fists, and laughed, after that for half a day he didn't need to let his head droop. It should really be enough for the country policeman, that he has a little house, a family, a grandson and that the cars whizz past him and he has the power to stop them at any moment, with nothing but a small movement. But he absolutely must have another house as well and another and another, why, he can't live in them all at the same time, this house-moving maniac. To tear the see-through plastic wrapping from women he doesn't know, before too much has been seen of them, to scatter the contents around, and all that work just to move into the packaging, which is still full of the crumbs of another's life. He wants to get hold of the property of women, this man, at which he possesses great skill, which now, however, increasingly seems to be leaving him. Men don't give up what they've got. But recently the women, as already said, seem to suspect something, not what this man intends, they would never guess that; but whatever it is, inconsistent as this sex is according to legend, they for their part no longer want anything at all from the country policeman. They don't know that they don't want anything from him, so that they don't have to give him anything for it. Love's mercy, this whore, which just takes anyone, but wants to give as little as possible for it, turns up, hardly has the church been unlocked, what, no customer here yet to whom she could be of service? God should rather have been hung up by the feet, not only to accelerate his death, but also to still humankind's longing for love more quickly, in the nuclear age, since although war is in principle a thing of the past, everything can still at any time be smashed to pieces. When people see something as horrible as someone crucified upside down, they will realize how good things are for them and have no demands at all anymore, is what I think. They've evidently already got used to the one dying upright, loyally obedient to his father, the credulous of this church, who have always got unsecured credits and are only waiting to be able to jump in themselves as apocalyptic bill credit sharks and drive the whole world, which never gave them a present of anything, to bankruptcy. Whole poultry empires sank into the dust or into the dead leaves of the embezzler hedges of the Freedom Parry's economics spokesman, Rosenstingl, and even our Lord had to bite the dust, without finding a single grain, just like the poultry that nobody wanted, it's a very human religion, Christianity, isn't it? He died for absolutely nothing, nothing at all, God. It's got a lot to do with us, this religion, don't you think? Little bells ring, and women look at one very strangely, when the priest is attractive, yes, even the most good humored. Everything's going down the drain, anyway. Eye for an eye. People have already got used to every imaginable horror. Love is the only thing they want to experience again and again and then once again after that, this time, however, exclusively with the right partner. They want the beloved to look cheerful, otherwise it's no fun for them.
But today this country policeman does not look at all cheerful to me. No one will one day have him as a husband, because he's already married and asks his wife almost every third day how she is. Then he's away again, from place to place, where he stops cars, as if he could stop himself. To see in love of all things the fulfilment of his financial longings, in a caring hand, which hands him stocks and shares, anonymous saving bank books and golden watches, in a soft body, which offers him its fantastic, firm, magnificent covering, provided with a super veneer, so that he, the country policeman, at last has security, what do you say to that? You are bored by such tenderness? What can I say to that?
No further lights went out, Gabi's will be the only one, I hope, though one can never know what will occur to the unappreciated mixed-up minds of the desperate. Other women have disappeared here, at greater intervals, no, I'm not saying anything more about that now. Growling, the tires get stuck into the ground, don't want to let go, then hurry on nevertheless, where to, fortunately it's still the winter tires on this cold track, on which they rush away in two deep well-worn icy ruts. The air rises up against the vehicles, which are driving along poorly cleared detours, which force them to go up into the mountains by way of the forest tracks, where snow is still lying on hidden routes which outsiders don't know. It plays happily with them, the oncoming air with the few cars, caresses their shiny, colored bodies, one of them belongs to the country policeman, his face is quite expressionless, what does it matter, no one sees it. A woman is supposed (he called earlier) to be stretching out expectantly towards him in her house, and she is supposed to snuff it, but not too soon. That would perhaps be the best long-term solution, for the house as for the woman. But not too soon. He just came off duty, now we're driving straight to her. Can it be that she didn't open up yesterday, although she was definitely at home? No. That's impossible. That she was eating thoughtfully at home, piling salami and ham on bread to the accompaniment of her favorite music, by candlelight, which is romantic, but only a deux, since it's a pleasure to make a fuss. Except every flame is a potential fire hazard, let's be honest, and should be avoided, if Christmas is over and a person hasn't disposed of his Christmas tree in time. The country policeman will at all events try, after some walking up and down and scouting around, to get into this house, which today he wants to conquer in a surprise attack. It's all taking too long for him. His fingers are itching to angrily beat the woman if she doesn't want to give up her house voluntarily, he clenches his fist on the driving wheel, just not to feel once again the steely firmness of her nipples scratching around between his fingers, are such tiny taps, which have remained shut to every child for life, only later to fall into the hands of a freebooter for free, I too now almost feel their contentless pointed stoniness between my fingers, I have properly sealed and hung these two old sacks, these skin-colored airbags with the milky-blue veins, the producers made quite an effort there on their silken assembly line, which-there's not much to be done about that now-forthwith and to the end will no longer contain anything that could even remotely serve anyone as nourishment. They are to serve purely for pleasure, the two of them, but please not for the pleasure of the country policeman again, who's not interested, and it's not a pleasure either, he doesn't care if they make more agreeable acquaintanceships, how nice for them. But the house for him! I wish I could say the same about myself. They would jump into the country policeman's hands with joy at any time, the two dumplings, because he at least, one among millions of the like-minded, who from time to time get instructions to confess something which they haven't done, so that they can remain silent about what they have done, he at least knows exactly how to turn a woman's switch between thumb and index finger, look, it's quite easy to be a creator when the corresponding creature is already present but doesn't know it yet. The desert lives, and in order to live, it must already have contained all this energy, this momentum. No? This desert wants to be decently serviced, if you please, that's the least that can be expected, otherwise perhaps it will wait in vain. You won't believe it, but to make it bloom requires only a little skill and the affection of a talented handyman who knows the way things are and will perhaps be moved once again, just once more, pleaseplease, through kissing and pleading, at last to step a little closer, even if he's already standing on one's toes with all his weight. We wouldn't even have noticed that. Please, gentlemen, come and pinch my nipples, pinch them really firmly! And we'll manage to go a little further down as well, my dear fingers, that little race track, not worth mentioning, down to the fleece, this matted material at the end of the stomach, made of organic fibers, which would melt in the heat if anyone could ever warm to them. Well, we won't set the whole house alight to get a woman on heat and to guide the turbulent flow movements of a cock into her, until everything goes down the river bank and disappears in the water. The house is supposed to remain standing. Then we won't need much more to be happy.
What do you want? The woman appears in the door, as if surrounded by a whole troop of guards. Why. This security will, as always, disappear completely in about ten seconds. She'll be trembling then and not know why. That's a start. The man pushes past her, as if he were avoiding a vehicle in the snow, he doesn't brush against her, will have to bump her later on, because it's expected of him that he'll be rough. And he couldn't act any differently anyway. He hates her. He could keep still, yet the coarseness would break out without him doing anything about it and crash through the thin fence in front of the feeding enclosure, while the more docile hinds are still politely showing their admission tickets after forming an orderly line. Have you already heard about Gabi. This is her bag. She forgot it here, you remember, the day before yesterday. Did she. Give it to me, I'll hand it over to my colleagues dealing with the case. I don't know where Gabi could have gone afterwards. Do you know? She must have been somewhere. Why haven't you moved out yet. Be quiet. I'm talking now. I told you, the next time you should already be undressed when I come, why don't you do what I say. On the contrary, you did what I said. Give me a kissy pleaseplease. I always want to be among the first, right there at the front. Perhaps that's my mistake. If my father were still alive, then my life would have been completely different. In my father I would have had someone who's got a similar character to mine, who understands me and protects me. He was killed in the war. I miss someone whom I never knew more than someone whom I know now. Most of all I miss someone who doesn't exist at all. Not yet. But one mustn't give up hope. Says the woman, whose home is warm, cozy and clean. No one is listening to her. The country policeman tugs absent-mindedly and clumsily at her top, which she has lifted up especially for him, she thinks there's something there just for him, that he will absolutely want to study. But he doesn't read, not in her eyes, not on her body, because he knows this book, every book, by heart beforehand. He gulps down the woman at the kitchen table, where everything is prepared. She quickly has to put the plates on the sideboard again, as she hears the material of her skirt tear, she clears everything away, though there's no charm in the arrangement, she can't bother with that now, when it comes to the last little bowls with olives, miniature corn cobs, more olives, and pickled pumpkin chunks, she can no longer see where she's putting them and hears the clattering of china, but it's only the good-humored collision of two ships, meeting at night on a sideboard instead of at sea, not the grinding squealing of things shattering. Hopefully, that will not all come flying down now and make a terrible mess, she's still thinking, as he's already shoving up her dress, pulling her panties past her knees and turning her around, all as usual, so that this time, too, he doesn't have to look at this charmless face, which would like to ask him something and doesn't dare, well, and now he presses the upper part of her body, her chest, which he has briefly and hurriedly kneaded, after he had first lifted the whoppers out of the bra and, squeezed together like two pancakes, because he's loaded the whole of the woman's weight onto them and basically squashed them flat, giving them a form, which was not originally intended, throws her down on the unfloured table top, and her head as well, gripped by the neck, like a whip, the hair gripped by another hand, giving additional assistance, down, down with you, you tramp, down, while she's still quickly trying to explain the Nice Weekend Program that she's prepared for him, together with the starting times, feverishly, as if what counted was to plan the whole weekend in five minutes and immediately put it behind one as well and if possible also quickly attach the instructions for the video recorder. So. She'll be quiet in a minute, the woman, and her hair falls over her, beside her on the table top, where to begin with she still tried to support herself with her hands, in order to take a little of the weight of her body off the hard table, to relieve the pressure. She can do that, if she likes, she won't keep it up for long, she has to bear his weight behind her as well, so, and now spread the legs and relax the inner muscles, otherwise you'll get a whack on the ass. I see she still finds this task difficult, and in such an uncomfortable position as well. Yet she planned everything carefully, even if quite differently. A leading role was to be played by a mountain hotel on the Semmering Pass. But God thinks and the director does what he wants. Rejected. Too expensive. Lend me the money. I can't leave. What could I say to my wife. Are you going to open up now, I don't have to get in there, you're the one who always wants it, what are you waiting for, I don't need you. Financially speaking I'm facing ruin anyway. A pile of ruins. And what are you going to do about it. The woman feels him breathing heavily on her neck and biting into the two tendons that attach her head to her body. Please. Please don't. Ow. Good, if one's honest. But one should at least know beforehand what one wants. You want it or don't you? Yes but. But why do I always have to suffer like this? Why is my hair so tousled, right after going to the hairdresser? Why is my new skirt torn? Why does the country policeman not feel sorry for the woman? Why does she love and sacrifice herself and not entertain any suspicion? Why is this woman so weak and often has very bad moments when she is alone? Why did he promise her a weekend on the Semmering if he in any case never wanted to go there? Why did she not know that he wouldn't want to go there? Why does her fear not subside? Why don't we often go abroad, where we, too, could feel like new? Perhaps because we like each other enough to just stay here? Why do we love and sacrifice ourselves? Why don't we change our approach, even if we have to admit to ourselves that we are deceived and exploited? Why does this man always stick his cock, after he has wiped it with a piece of absorbent paper (take a look at the screen, yes, that's the paper I mean, the one with the particularly absorbent honeycombs, your ears are nothing compared to it, and your mind ditto, one can even pour water onto it and put a pound of vegetables on it) from a kitchen roll, in so quickly again? Why does he always pat her head briefly like that, as if he would really like to hand out a couple of good slaps instead, that can drive one crazy? When will she come down to earth? After the journey back, which isn't necessary, because the woman is already at home? Why doesn't she have a photo of him? Why has he never given her a present, not even flowers or a piece of cake from the cafe? Why does she always have to wipe herself without him helping her? Where have the paper tissues got to again? There's only this paper towel, and its little dress is absorbent, that's true, but a bit stiff. And this careless pincer-pinching of the left nipple between the fingernails, did he absolutely have to do that, too? The pain is terrible, I've never felt anything like it, it'll turn red and swell up, and the next time he does it again, in the same place, hello. Yes, pinching and no kissing was definitely part of it. It simply occurred to the man, specialist and pleasure-seeker in one, and he immediately did it, it's not work for him, merely something to do. It occurred to him and he immediately carried it out. We can understand that, it was perhaps the final playful surprise, which an artist bestowed on his completed work, before yet again no one will buy it from him. When will the difficult everyday life of the woman continue? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Next week? The music still radiates in its case, but cannot penetrate the darkness. In a moment it will once again be allowed to pour out its treasures before these two people, who have not found their way to one another. It can hardly wait to break out behind the cordon of the CD player and be allowed to flood this home, desired like hardly another, like an angry torrent of people protesting against the government and prevented only by a couple of wire fences from sweeping away everything that is not in keeping with their will. Nazis out. The country policeman's cock has slipped in and out again, this loose bird, which knows its way around its little house, which is just as big as it is itself, but no bigger, a wonder, however, that it can move around in it at all. It doesn't only want to eat, at least it sometimes leaves something behind, its little doing, its dropping, that's the way they are, the birds. Basically they are no different from us. They can control themselves just as little, and yet our gaze rests on them with pleasure as they hop to their nesting places and away again. They leave their shit behind, but they themselves never stay. And: No, they don't treat anyone. They're treated, the sparrows, fetch their grains, sunflower seeds, nuts, cereals. The feed is there, so the birds are there, too. If there were no grains for them, they just wouldn't come. Nature has absolutely no mercy on us, not even in little things. Nothing comes from nothing. And if there were no grounds for existence, we wouldn't exist either. We do possess the honest aim of slipping through fate's fingers, but this country policeman is someone who gets a grip on things, on the neck, on the hair, on the ass, he doesn't leave off and he doesn't leave any bit of us out. Nor does he leave any of this cut meat, which he gulps down standing, straight from the sideboard, where the plates have been shoved under and on top of one another like icebergs. It surely doesn't matter where the plates are standing. Wherever they are, there I'll come and eat. Would be a waste otherwise. No problem. What's the problem about that. Only God, shocked at everything that he's forced to see, has determined at which bird table he expects himself to be distributed, in wafer form, as food. We're not allowed to take him home and perhaps even stick him in the oven to heat him up. Yesterday a lawyer drew up an agreement. Please take a seat, sit down and don't listen to me any longer. Just do it. I'll be brief. But not just yet. Please wait.