THE WOMAN WHO RAN away is now returning, driven in a stranger's car, to her domestic bliss. To pick up her role in the home movie. As an eyecatching housewife. A drool of saliva slobbering off her chin is the first thing to catch her husband's eye. Now the young man is worried about her, having taken a brief look into her furthest distance and pressed his damp hands to her face. Now isn't the time, true, to lie out in the sun and show off one's body. Suddenly it's snowing again. Has the Direktor phoned the insurance, so that the woman can simply have him replaced with a younger model? In the old days he often came home straight from the brothel, where he'd had a hard time being idle. Washed/cut and laid. In the town whorehouse he used to pole his punt with impunity, but those days are over. Now he has to amuse his own wife, solo, with only his claws, two testicles, and an anus – for it is with such props that domestic entertainment is staged, when the child is unconscious. On reflection, he's a ponderous individual, even when he casts the image of his new tie in the mirror. He slams into his employees loud as a shout, and they play dumb, hoping it won't be me, not me, not me.
The house has already retired for the night by the time we get there. In one room only a worried light is still burning, for the precious child. Throwing up his surfeit of lessons all over his bed. In the boy's room, the Direktor ventures to get all his anger off his chest. This isn't his territory. He doesn't like hearing the water gush to fill the flush. He practically exploded when he found the empty bottles of cheap white wine yet again. Why can't she drink mineral water and be a loving mother for the child? He has forbidden her to drink, but she goes on zonking back the plonk. Has the cow been spreading her hind quarters for some other bull? He bows his lips above the child, so softly that he cannot get a word out. The child is asleep now. Without doing a thing, the boy provides an explanation of why the Direktor is alive. There he rests, mouth open, in the chest of his room. A room of their own is more than poor kids round here have ever even seen when they've been ill. Where is the child in this country who has a room his body will fit into? And where he can look at teddy bears and pictures of sport and pop stars? Because of the sexual ruckus of his parents, this boy has been transferred to a quiet spot. He's a dab hand, though, when it comes to keyholes. And good at ructions of his own, too, when he's beaten for wetting his pants. How he can howl.
It seems he has second sight, their son. Often he will materialize out of gloomy corners; his parents know no reticence in their bodily functions, they still believe in hard work! The Christian society that married them blessed their indulgence in that pleasure. Father has official permission to enjoy Mother ad infinitum, to raggle-taggle her rags and togs till her fear of revealing her secrets has been altogether overcome.
Those who are far away from us are lying abed, touch wood, that they may be well rested come daybreak. Too tired to be summoned by a dread God to the summit of time, to their loved ones, who die too soon. Tomorrow they will hurriedly bolt their breakfast and set off by bus to perform their paltry works; and the least of their works, the children, are sitting there beside them, because they have to go to school. The Direktor of the paper mill strides up to the extra biggest of big choir stalls. Those of his workforce who are awaiting the company pension keep politely to the rear. It's little short of a miracle that these people aren't mere animals, though they do live like animals, as their boss observes to his wife. Their pallid flaccid wives do not inspire them, so what we lordsandmasters call the breath of life is not in them, too bad. Whoever would think that after holy mass the Direktor pulls down his wife's panties and inserts first one and then a second finger to check if the waters are rising, how high they are now, up to her neck yet? I wonder what is going on down below in other women. Whatever it is, perhaps it would fancy a spell on the surface to cuddle and canoodle.
Now all of us in this Roman Catholic country will go down on our knees for a while so that all can see us washing the blood of innocence off our hands, the blood that God, making a superhuman effort, has transformed into himself: man and woman, right, that was his work, his doing. In readers' letters to the paper they are true to themselves and each other, because they are true to the spirit of Christian architecture, forever striving heavenward. There is nothing to be said against the Pope. Who belongs to the Virgin Mary. How else would he know how modest and yet greedy for souls this woman is? For instance, the woman can pout her lips like a funnel to receive the Direktor's member when she is kneeling. Now don't you go pretending you've never seen it on your secret home movie screen! Just like yourself, supposedly Jesus, that perpetual travelling representative in Austria and related territories, went here and there to see if there was any need to improve or punish or affect. And in the course of his travels he met you. Whom he loves as he loves himself. And what of you? Do you only love the money that belongs to others? Right. So write a letter to the paper, sounding off at those who have no God, or, if they did have one, wouldn't know what to do with him.
All of it belongs to us!
The woman pays no heed at all to her glottis as the car grinds to a halt. She howls as if she'd been oiled, and in fact she is pretty well oiled, the effects of that cheap wine haven't worn off yet. She yawps and yaps and bawls till the night sits bolt upright in its bed and lights begin to go on all around. Including the lights in her own house. Where the ponderous person who is the manager of a paper mill climbs into his boisterous body. Doubtless rejoicing to have back what he believed to be lost. He stands at the mouth of the warm bear's cave, where all the instruments play, even at the touch of a child's fingers. Gerti, is that you, he asks, looking beyond his own limited horizons. Who on earth could wish to lose something he owns? Soon, thanks be to God, he will again be able to grab at her epicentre between her legs. To see if the bread basket's still hung high enough. Out of reach of others. Though there are more crumbs in it now. And then hell give her a taste of his baguette in the breadroom. His trusty tool will go to work, wielded by an honest master of the craft, where none else has ever been. You'd better believe it. The Man is slow to make his choice between different deities (sport and politics) but very quick when, fore hooves first, he clumps onto the stage where all the action concerns him and his works. The young man does not hesitate to make eye contact and offer good evening. The woman, complete with dressing-gown, is tipped sideways out of the door, displaying no desire to couple once again. The young rogue, that young body now idly thinking it would like something to eat, is buried beneath her. When her husband welcomes her back, she knows that the very least he'll be wanting is to nibble her ears. Soon he'll be feeling right as rain, ready to pour down on his wife, for not only the woman but also the art that dwells within us and our hi-fis is at his beck and balls. The Direktor whispers smut, tut tut, in the woman's ear, a promise of what lies ahead, lies willingly abed. How nice to have a woman in the home again! And the boy needs his mother, too. Who shows him important things. Things he can get a far better look at on TV, mind you.
God appears in the form of Nature. In voices. From the outside world. Where employees live, their arms wide open, forever clasping nothingness. Their food is bloody with the wounds inflicted on the animal during its lifetime. They also eat the doughy clods they've baked, lumpy and shapeless as their own bodies or laughter. Formless as their brood, the angry inheritors, running after them like snot from an unstopped nostril. Their children! Getting on people's nerves with what they and TV call sport. From time to time a specimen of humanity falls apart. Have you ever noticed? You're sitting next to someone, some perfectly natural specimen, riding public transport of some description because neither of you can afford a car. If you did notice, nobody else did. Some of the offspring they made on the night shift won't even make shift for the factory. They are the alcoholic vapour they exhale. Not even their serious illnesses seem to upset them. Warm-hearted togetherness such as you witness here in the Direktor's home, a family circle with wife and child, the shadows of bodies cast on other bodies, darkness at noon, while others toil and sweat – all this and more you can see on the screen, to satisfy your wretched curiosity (when all you really want to see is yourself, in a different role at last, and preferably not a cardboard character). Beneath the dome of his desire, the Direktor is seen by the villagers to have space still for at least one further person, of his own choosing. All of them work in his factory. These creatures in their commuter trains, jammed into their compartments, eating their wurst and waiting for the worst. Now night has gently descended and condescended to join us. Now let us sleep.
The Direktor half hands his wife from the car that gave her a lift, the woman half lifts, nay elevates herself from the clammy hands of the student. Back down to earth. The young man has prospects and no need of any paper mill, so now we see the rapid-fire colt politely helping the mare back to the stall. Now it is done. He hears himself describe how he picked up the woman on a country lane, drunk. She still makes a confused and disoriented impression. Shivering with the cold. At the threshold she is ordered to pull herself together and come in. This is her kennel. Right here. Where her loved ones, loved by virtue of her work, her labour, are resting now. The moment God's looking the other way, they're pawing between each other's thighs. Don't go expecting them to leave their sex in peace. They're forever wanting to cock their little guns and fire, bang! It's theirs, all theirs. In their tales, their tails are silent beasts of prey. Even the body is not-so-silently praying to be a beast with a tail. The Direktor loads and overloads the weapon slung under his belly. The child is interested not only in art and sport but also in pop music on the radio. To be truthful, I'm not really sorry for the boy. The woman sticks fast as tar to her husband's shoulder. From within, an instrument is already probing the trousercloth and wanting to go home to its hole. This woman is unlike the others, who are lucky if they can find jobs as domestics, since there are no longer jobs in the factory to afford an alternative existence to generating living things. Women are forever being picked, sledgehammered, drilled, forever worked at in the mine, all mine. Or the slags are tossed where they belong, on the slag heap. To bring forth children. Ever noticed that at night it's only the wealthy that enter the commonwealth of pleasure, never the common folk? That's when the rich do their work! Let's face it, they have to work some time or other, since the poor beggars do exist, when all's said and undone, with their Mercedes and their birthright to conquest.
The undressing-gown flaps about the woman. She's dead tired. The alcohol heat inside her has subsided. What's the point of all this noise the Direktor's making now? Why has this immodestly-clad woman returned to Nature's cave of games? Dogs don't go around off the leash! She coughs when the Man smites her on the shoulders and the conscience. His worries carry the day and he crushes his wife to his heart, wraps himself about her, we won't be needing this dressing-gown any more. If only that young fellow would be off. Who makes possible a comparison of the body in its present state and its original condition as approved by the planning authorities. Patience. In good time we'll all have the pleasure of casting off our mis-shapen outer self.
The original version of this paper mill manager looked better, too, than we in our cruel inhumanity can now imagine. This woman loves. And is not loved. In this she is not unique. Fate is as inevitable as this finger I'm pointing at you now. The woman is less than nothing at all now. The young man laughs at the gratitude of the Direktor, who's had his doggie returned to him. The disrespectful youngster reads the expression of the man who considers himself his rival. But he wouldn't mind a paper mill. Instead of having to toil over law and jurisprudence. He cannot feel the equal of the people who slouch to the factory, bliss in their eyes, for they are to see the one who has given work to one and all. And what is the student thinking of? Who he's playing tennis with tomorrow.
The Herr Direktor talks and talks, the flames of speech flicker, the tongues of fire lick, he's warming up. There the womenfolk sit, simmering, wearing naughty lingerie and provoking their menfolk so that their motors rev high and they want to burn up the highway. It is not on them but on the poor that the world heaps its wrath. The poor go walking along the banks with their children, where chemicals corrode the waters. The main thing is to have a job at all. And to come home from work with a suitable industrial disease.
Like a heavy unhooked door, Gerti sinks back into her husband's hinges. The question is, will she hold when the tempests of time bring storms and snows? She wants the young man to take another swig of her, preferably tomorrow. Right now, though, another man, a regular, is going to be messing with her fuses till the lights go out. The Direktor knows that this woman shall rest in that place only which has been ordained her lawful wedded grave. So that he can appreciate her best sides (left and right). This creature is his, belongs to him. To serve his regular needs, like a jar to pee in. Anything imagination can dream up can indeed be done with a living, lively member that distends and then shrinks again, the only question is: whose? Love opens the woman's eyes. Like knocking at the natural landscape, you rap with your rod and wait to see if water's flowing from the rock. The work goes quickly, but are the workers happy? No.
And the boy blubs, boo hoo, because he can't get to sleep. Not if mummy doesn't tell him how to wipe his feet clean of life. Mummy mummy, comes his whine from inside, and a malicious little head appears, the fruit of her womb complete with worm. It would be better if the child were asleep now so that he wouldn't have to witness anything. His dough has been kneaded long enough, now he can rise, arise and go. And early in the morning the weary people arise and go, free of the burden of beauty. They wander like deer. Now the child is there. Tomorrow morning it will be smeared as full of jam as Mother is with Father's slime. And the Holy Ghost's. Their son dashes in. Having missed his mum. Father shuts the door in the student's face, he wants to spread his wife's thighs at his leisure and take a look if anyone's been grazing in his meadow, where his sacred cow's at pasture. Mother crosses no-man's-land to her child. Welcome! The Direktor wants his wife to be a part of him as summer is a part of the year. All that's needed is for day to waken too. The child has a title to proper care. Who doesn't long hourly for that sneak-thief. Love? And I bet you have a cuddly lamb too. Now who's been missing whom? This mountain is here for only one reason: to put an end to this vale of tears, so that production and viewing will peak again. The snow is pale. The Man sets great store by good works, works where paper is made for the well-being of us all. Let me write it down, quite unambiguously: paper could cut me open as a paper knife slits paper. I'd like to meet the person who could make a new woman of me out of the things I say.
But what more do we want than to get our wages in the pocket of our failure. That is: no doubt we do want to become something, no doubt we do want to be a little more, at least on paper. And we want our feelings too, as we sit there at home, through our own fault, through our own most grievous fault, with none to keep us company but the phone.
He's heartless, this man. Like fire he consumes the house. He drags his wife around. The child starts to shout. Outside, a solitary exhaust struggles to attract the attention of sleepers who, like animals, register the tempest as it rages but don't dare say anything. Not even during the daytime can they join in the muscular games of the beautiful, wealthy flesh. Their pleasures are burdened with oppressions, society needs the poor, q.e.d. The young man drives off. And no sooner has he quit the shunting cunting yard where they linked their couplings than the woman pounds on the door which her longing long since smashed through the wall with the axe of desire. Eyeless, she stares into nowhere, anywhere, wherever she might see him again. But men are such creatures of violence, regardless they set fire to their houses where their families lie asleep, ignorant of what the figures in the bank statements mean. Let's get undressed and look at these other figures instead, deceive someone with our genitals. Truly, men cover all the highways and byways with themselves. But you don't care, not you, that a human being is suffering wrongings and longings before your very eyeways.
Longing is a stick that this woman has fetched herself, fetch! She needs the excitement. For her house is in order and delivered too. So she quests abroad. And then she thinks continually of what she has found. And tips it like a packet soup into her turbulent bubbling boiling waters and stirs it round and stirs a stranger's heart. After all, the Catholic Congress needs its far-off Pope as well. Who journeys to join us, though when he is here in our fatherland, lo! he's suddenly just another human being like you and me, don't I know him from somewhere. For him, everyone comes last, a loser, last past the post. Not so with love. Men at least can get somewhere, they can thumb a lift, but women are always wanting a lift from their feelings, a high, and being let down. The whole human race is in a ferment of wishes, forever wondering what to buy.
Where have you been? The words batter Gerti, Father's blows strike the boy as well, his kith and kin, who claws tight hold of Mother. Let's not bother describing this Laocoon group, the three of them in each other's toils, holding tight, down they go.
The Man's rage is huge. Moil and toil and turmoil, he's coming to the boil, time to cool the heat with a jet of foam. He wants the woman to take off her clothes right away. So that she measures up to his size. He wants to conduct his lightning into her. Not that his wildfire could ever be tamed by her, and anyway he has plenty of matches. To create himself anew, as often as need be. To have the woman bake his baguette, cook his meat, pickle his gherkin, and eat. The child is put to bed with a glass of fruit juice, quiet now! Leave the woman to Father. Don't go yapping and barking at her and jumping and frisking and grabbing. Mother's back, that's enough. And Father's bird is already chirping over her furrow. The Man drags her into the bedroom to force entry into her and piss on her. Good to have her home! The cow cud have been dead, cunt she?
The Direktor stands like a glowing cigarette butt by the hay of his bed and tosses himself away. Fear flares up in a blaze: holy night, a holy roll in the Austrian hay, where tales are told of the holy animal come to eat at the haybox of social welfare. It's not long since Christmas, now it's already practically time for springtime wishes. There goes Father, from one to the other, in all the majesty of his calling and becking. The woman wishes she were gone, she knows what youth is and she knows what she has lost and that time spent here now is time lost. That's how it goes, when you've played with life and lost! Now someone else's tongue is jammed down the woman's throat, take a good hard pull to wash away the taste. From the top of his ski-jump the Man swoops down on the woman. She covers her face with shadows, and yet what is hers is torn from her, no power on earth would be equal to the Direktor's hefty sex. He only needs to believe, like the whole national skiing team! Yet for the woman it is as if he had been as completely cleared out of her life as the prominent people of today whose names will merely sound silly in ten years' time. The woman wants nothing but youth. She would shoot young beautiful bodies on fast film in the hope of getting a shot at them, fast, wait and see what develops. These visions seem heaven-sent. Meanwhile her arms are* pulled from her face and Father descends upon her, leaving her cheeks red with wining and whining. What people live on, apart from their hopes, is a mystery to me. They seem to invest everything in cameras and hi-fis. There's no room in their houses for life any more. Once the act of purchasing is accomplished, everything is really over, though in fact nothing is over, or else it wouldn't be there any more. After all, burglars want their share of the fun as well.
The Man waits till his water's come to the boil. Then he tosses his wife in after first removing her dressing-gown. His signal is up, the track's clear, here comes the express. He doesn't need any egging on from her, he has two eggs anyway down there with his sausage, quite enough for two. It is as if his prick were out of its mind with the thought that someone else might have gone grubbing in her cunt, driving his truck in and mucking her up. His anger wears the Man out before his time: too much energy is wasted on shouting, till the very vaults of heaven are echoing. Outside, everything has been overpowered by ice and snow. Nature does generally get things right, but now and then you have to lend a helping hand so she can enjoy her meal at our table in peace and quiet. The rain bursts from the Man, into the woman, the two little rugs of her dugs are given a good beating out. The two kilos of his stock and barrel hang down like rocks. Fearlessly he scatters his gravel on the woman, so he can go for a walk in her with a firm grip underfoot.
The boy has got up again, sleepy, he'd best not rattle at the bathroom door like that or he'll be tipped out with the bathwater. The Man forces the woman's head right back to prevent her from yelling. His bird is wide awake, it's locked in the cage of her mouth, which is where it likes to be, flapping about till the woman starts to retch and heave and her vomit travels along his shaft and dribbles down his dangling testicles. Too bad. His glans is yanked out of her pharynx and the woman tipped halfway over the tub. His prick is stiff as a bull-rush, and now he rushes her like a bull and tucks his prick up in bed where it belongs, he tolls the bells of her breasts, alcohol gushes from her like water, and potent drops of the good stuff squirt into her cunt. No, the Direktor won't allow this woman simply to tumble out of his nest. What does she think she's doing, obeying her own senses, not him? Man and wife are one flesh.
The woman only appeared for a minute or so in the arena where consumers learn to swim. Now she is sitting in a filled bath, getting a soaping. The dressing-gown, long since crumpled, will have to be cleaned, trimmed and ironed. The Man tears whole handfuls of hair from her pussy as she goes about her washing and refurbishing. He digs into the gills of her privates and his soapy fingers invade her ground water where he shot his wad. She thrashes and whimpers, it stings! Out front her coveted fruits hang plump on their branches. The Direktor makes an investigative grab at the tips of the sausage skins which someone else has left, he twirls them round three fingers and then slowly releases them. Hard as buttons, the areolas' cold eyes stare at us. You can never do anything right for the lordsandmasters, not even if you were a queen. And already the terrible vessels that must receive the contents of the men are clattering. With a whiffle and sniffle the waiting-room doors swing shut on the boneyards of the unemployed. We shall find a way to tame those floods as well.