MICHAEL OFFERS A THREATENING smile from his illuminated zone where he flows about beyond the vast panoramic panes of glass. His world is well disposed, at his disposal he has sufficient driving skills, and he has tiled himself up, young and saved for at least three years, with his shiny, sanitary life investments. He will not open his door now for anything. Noisily, two people sink on his doorstep, where normally the sunshine faces of friends make a stop. It is impossible to reach Michael. The woman kicks the door and hammers at it with her fists. What was appears to have been nothing. All those things he said and did with her, all in vain! But people are never at a loss for words, nor is there any more than words concealed in them. Snow begins to fall softly. That's all we needed. Contained in his fine fibrecast of clothing the student stands at the window looking. The spell of night has already been partly broken by him. This young man owns several skiing get-ups, and generally speaking he likes getting it up, he wants to climb higher and higher, to go far. With a faint jangling, and sporting trademarks on which he even sits, he makes his way across the ridges of the country. Never alone and never silent, and soon the sun will be shining on him again. A faint screaming begins. Clouds of game come out of the forests into the clearing, and this average member of the young herd stands there motionless, uncomprehending in his brightness, which also seems to attract other vermin. Michael stands there, affably charged, a live wire. He is at home and his own keeper. The woman weeps at his door, her heart is pounding like a wild thing. Her senses are put out because they are having to put in overtime yet again. Her senses are out of tune in the open, in these temperatures. Almost at the same time, the woman's circulation, overloaded with alcohol, collapses, and she sags in a heap by the door. Manure on a frozen bed. By day the lifts thread by in skeins, affording access to the landscape, and people meet and fall upon other people, unloving. This woman, never will she properly feel at home on this earth. A little human feeling trickles into the bushes, too. Scandalous.
By day they plunged through the uneven terrain, the sporting folk, but now, when they might be needed, there isn't a single one to be seen, to hold back this woman from her assault on herself, take her by the heart, and stop her wheels. Generally the Direktor regulates the financial current in his company, he flows into its channelled bed and then, at one with his member, produces a perfectly respectable stream of his own. He sees to it that the water is drained off as he wishes and through his senses. The married couple are currently in the shadow of houses, trees, night. Gerti hammers at the pitiless door and has already slipped down it. She kicks it. The student, without even having to do anything more, is worth any effort. He smiles and stays standing where he is. After all, Hermann is there, her man, her husband, whom he would never want to resemble. And this husband looks up, above him, where he is not accustomed to seeing anyone. The two men's gazes meet halfway, they are both motorized. Almost simultaneously, for a split second, they sense their bodies rebelling against death. Preventively, Michael lowers his gaze by one or two tiny degrees. They have both heard the crashing of waves in the shell of Gerti's cunt, that's all there is to it. No point in flailing their arms, only to be shifted a few derisory centimetres off balance by the propeller of lusts that, tinkling and crystal, set a wind blowing at head height. At least one of them doesn't find it worthwhile moving his expensive clothes just for the sake of this woman's will. The young man lights a cigarette, seeing he's bearing the flame in his hand anyway, chained to his ski slope, standing there and hearing the mountain birds of prey swish about him.
They are out to pluck the last little flame from his lighter, to take it to the humans below him, who feel closer to God than he does. He doesn't care either way about the fire in the village, he doesn't have to take it there. Gerti has escaped the vortex of the stove, where things spatter and crackle nicely too. But now it's enough, it is time she was taken and set, this precious gem in the Direktor's home. Examining her closely, the Direktor takes her by the waist and begins to drag her across the nighttime ground, touched with hoarfrost. She stamps and kicks her hooves, that's the last straw! She is still wearing the silk dress she had on this morning, in which hopes were aroused, and from the front and rear, Gerti's figure being what it is, things are looking good, even though it is as if the day, weighted with snow, were starting to sag a little. The student is simply not a giving man, nor will he ever be one. He looks out, shading his eyes, but there is not enough light to present the couple in glory. He does not always spurn the unfamiliar. After all, he did make a try at striding out brazenly over the fields, annoying the game, breathing the air and then returning it, used, to the piste. Still, it doesn't reach much further out into the landscape, his shining aura. Nonetheless, it can supply a frame for this holy family and the card-format view that includes them. Michael shades his eyes to let them grow used to the dark. Nature is not gentle, Nature is savage, and people fleeing from its emptiness take refuge in each other, of all places, where someone else is already in occupation. Perhaps Michael will go for a drink with the Direktor, who would like to finish the picture Michael started with his own stupid brush, the little prick. Amid the firs you no longer need language. Let's just throw it away!
Silence sweeps the streets, and God transfigures the inmates of the region – indeed, several of them are still at work, some carving and snippeting at their furniture and homes, the rest looking after their current partners who are in non-permanent residence. New ones are forever having to be hauled home (and promptly their usefulness is at an end) to make Nature's standing promise of work and shelter come true. At long last they settle down! And so they keep the promises Nature mistakenly gave them: the gentle blunders that became human beings; and human errors have destroyed the forests that give them life, too. One further thing that Nature promised: the right to work, according to which every occupier who has sealed a pact with his employer can be delivered by death from God too (God's stinking delivery). Now I've made a slip as well. Nor do the lords of the land know of any deliverance from the dilemma. There is less and less work, there are more and more people doing everything they can to see it stays that way and to see that they themselves stay. Like now, wearily but proudly hanging their signs of life on the wall and handing in their cards. All around, bodies are beginning to develop, and the most oddly constructed of figures are coming into existence. If the architect who made these motorway-users could see the freaks arising flushed with hope from their crumpled marital beds (to think of all the other things they've crumpled!), he would promptly redesign them, given that he himself rose again in a far more thrilling way from his cramped sepulchre to set us all an example, which can be studied in museums and churches. The bad witness we all bear the creator simply by being there and not being able to help it: now they are all stirring and humming, and as their bodies work they move in the rhythm of pop music on the 03 station or a simple record. How calmly Marx responded to us! All the spendthrift debts which they are now collecting, hugging each other tight: who would give them anything at this hour! Not even the innkeeper by the bridge, obeying his dark instinct to earn more than he has spent in the way of drinks, trying the food he himself has prepared, where 86-year-old kitchen maid Josefa licks the plates clean and gobbles up the leftovers.
Something is always left over of the work, to which they are more devoted than to their dearest beloved. The women have been freshly prepared, or preserved. Yes, they too desire something, but not for much longer, the way they're roaring under the lash of the weather, which even dictates their attire. Thus their round fat bodies hum away, life goes on, man vanishes continually in death, the hours sink to the ground, but women flit nimbly about the house, never safe from all the blows that fate deals. How alike their habits are! Every day it's the same. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Procrastination, procrastination! But the next day has not yet come, the woman of the house cannot yet enter it, to be finished off by yet more work. Now they repose unfeelingly in each other, the pistons thrust down, a course is set for the pathless shores of bodies but the goal is missed, yes, we may fall but we do not fall a long way down, we are as shallow as the shallowness about us. If our deserts went by what we earn, we would just be able to buy ourselves some shoes for our weary wanderers' feet, but no more, and already our partners are lapping about our ankles, they want to play themselves and think they are trumps, oh horror, they really are winning the trick! And the distance to the heavens remains ever the same. Quick, let's place a foot on the runner-board of the car, which we have wrested from our bodies in the form of work, many many hours put in at the factory. We have entered as children of God, and after many a year nothing remains but to board the cheapest of mid-market cars, and we whose gears have meanwhile changed slightly are refused access to the works by a master of shifts who newly holds the stick. Right, they have eliminated our place of work entirely, and now the factory operates almost on its own, it learnt it all from us! But before poverty moves in and the car is sold, let us ourselves come back a time or two from foreign parts. Let us squander ourselves in someone else's parts a time or two more. We will not be driven away from this table by any thought that has eluded our possessor, nor by any suit advertising in the newspaper, any nonsense to put a prompt stop to our lives because we poor work-horses absolutely had to have a few more horsepower in our meadow. And then there's the Direktor: he is not the sole ruler by any means! Not even the firm, that captive buzzard, can soar as it would. Who knows what other beast it might encounter!
Thus we all have our worries: whom we could love and what we could eat.
One would not imagine for a moment that there was anything fake about their feelings. Rather, one would think they were genuine jewels that others bedeck themselves with: the throngs of thonged bodies, tricked out in their best (new shoes!) and wandering the paths of their little love affairs, turning to a restless trick or two in their rooms. A human choir sending their many-voiced echo up unto the father in the air on the chair-lift. It was he who created the erogenous zones with which Woman pretties herself up of an evening, rapidly shoving her work out of sight lest anyone pay her properly. Flabbergasted, the men gape into their women's holes, torn by life, and yes, they shudder, as if they knew that the box has long been empty from which the seeds have been shaken out for years. But the dear women are so attached to them. And tomorrow morning the first bus has to be caught, no matter how helplessly they have to thrash their wives, who are attached to them and their short barrels: shoot! Jobs don't grow on trees.
The others, too, take this road to death. They accompany each other for a while, and breathe loudly at the gate, for it to be opened to them. And there come yet more people who have fallen into each other's weakly branches, to tangle their limbs. So that they are a twosome when they have to face their foreman. One has to be able to do something or other! To be bigger and more numerous would be a good start, if one is sinking beneath the stroke of the factory's daily scythe. And from the spoils the owners pick out the very best that you experienced this year on the beaches of Rimini and Carola, where, blooming luxuriantly, you sank beneath the rubble of your short-lived pleasures.
The Direktor of this factory drags his wife back to the car, meaning to shorten this short break by breaking a record at the work he understands best: words of love from his transmitter sound in her ear, and she receives them thrashing and stammering as loving couples without a stereo receive their dance music after midnight. The window, where we can see one of those brightly coloured tracksuits such as generally fetch up in day-trip bars for filling, remains obstinately lit up. The young man stretches out his sleeves, gathered in at the ends with strong knitted cords, and stares out at these charmless people, who are nonetheless perfect in their way if one considers their income from the toil of humankind and their influence on state parliament politics. How wonderful to sing together with the rich and still not have to be in their works choir! To learn their ways and still not have to stand in the fields and have one's hair cut at harvest time! Like lumbering oxen the two cars are grazing side by side in front of the house, and one of the animals is now going to be disembowelled. The door opens, the light goes on. Words of endearment are sent to Gerti's home parts. This paterfamilias has not come to punish but to comfort and to resume possession, already there is a gleam as of a city beyond his gates. He has no desire but for his wife, who is sufficient unto him, unlike others who cannot stop making modest demands and singing and saying which of the photos in the relevant publications they prefer. How busily they bustle about at their sexual enterprises after work! And just take a look what these pikes in carp ponds have caught: it seems to me that at times Nature is inclement. The Direktor is attached to his wife. Her broad thoroughfares are familiar to him. And while the silent inmate of the home is still suspended in mid-air with his nice motorbike catalogue beyond the window, the Direktor slaps Gerti across the front seats (having first had to push a button, I won't say which), yanks her dress over her head and masters her buttocks so that, via her dirty and off-limits route, he can penetrate her interior. Tenderly hands knead the udder. A friendly tongue licks into an ear. This has often been done in the past, for people like to build a house beside one that is already there, not to support their neighbour but to torment. It is a little uncomfortable, true, summer is far off, the road is remote, the animals taste good, and everyone comes to the appointed places or at least is collected in the box not far away. This crashing surf can surge upon one as if in one's sleep, and hide on a raised look-out in the midst of Nature. Below, in the shimmer of the field glasses, the allied members liaising between work, money and the powerful who don't like to be alone, are flitting about. They forever have to lie on one another against one another. Human activity resumes with new aims, the weather is cold, and every time the Direktor withdraws his sturdy prick a little he casts a forceful glance at his silent admirer at the window. He only has to go through a slight contortion to do so. Perhaps the young man will cop a handful now as well! As far as I can tell, he's really doing it. From the waist down, we men are all members of the same club, when all's said and done. That is, our members belong to our women and in the street we allow fate to be pressed into our hands without offering resistance. Let us make ourselves comfortable in each other! Michael has his hand down the front of his tracksuit trousers, I think, and is cramming his clothing full of himself. And Gerti's dress is now completely unbuttoned too and her bags and pouches are flopping out, if you'll pardon my mentioning it. Never mind, even if the Direktor's feeling the draught, within himself he pays attention to festive-ness and quality, we forgive him. Face forward, the woman is squashed into the car upholstery, as if slumber lay concealed in these leather shadows. Her legs dangle to left and right out of the open door. And her husband, this bellowing native of the country, to whom we have entrusted our homeland for him to make paper out of it (the trees would have been condemned to a close shave anyway), he is far more at home here than we could ever be! I hear this bird shouting as he sings. He slips to Gerti's side and rams several of his loving fingers inside her. He speaks in friendly tones to her, describing the winners she still stands to score. Then he drives into her hole again with a crash. Briefly he withdraws and feels up his sceptre: as we see, his pace is unmeasured and immoderate. Now the woman is being examined by an expert who is harnessing his energy under the bonnet and sending his little salesman off, indeed, even accompanies him in person, we'll manage this, no problem, and then lock up afterwards.
Gerti's secrets have long been revealed, her closed doors are wide open, now she's dealt a few blows on her behind and back, that's how friends deal with each other, that way there's no mistake. The Direktor also drives the vehicle of his tongue in, who shall interpret that for us? A number of young village men have taken up their posts at the posterns of naked women and are hoping to be considered when posts are assigned. They want to collect but not pay. Their wives help them with their immortality and with the high mortality rate of their work. But the Direktor goes his own hot way alone. Everyone is familiar with his still youthful radiance. The woman, commingled with him in disorder, now has to put up with him in her arse, there may be any number of paths and some may be better surfaced too. While other people are at the mercy of disease, this lordandmaster is serving himself with equanimity at his usual counter, where his child came from too, right next door. No need to be afraid, his member is safe there. Now the excited animal goes for a trot in the woman where it has been taken in order to grow. It catches slightly in the chain it has torn loose, the calf. And so it stands stock still till it's shot down. The familiar trampling and traipsing has already worn the woman badly. Never mind, there's a good cream for everything and a cash present. Grease well and you get ahead better. And soon fresh greenery will be coming up for the man to pull out.
What a divine group, though soon they'll have to take a rest. Body to body, they are a threat to each other. Whimpering after a number of further slips, the Direktor collapses limp upon his wife, who was so well-appointed. He has reaped her high-yield region thoroughly, it has his recommendation, and now there won't be any fodder growing there in a hurry. His river shoots wrathfully out of him, and from the labourers who are presented to them on golden platters their gods and personnel bosses seize the share that is yours by force. Go on, choose the best from a wide assortment too, and see: you already have it at home, call it your better half and leave her doing the washing-up and scrubbing and sweating!
This time the Direktor is in valid order and his wife is satisfied. But tomorrow he may be running riot again, shooting from the hip and buying any ticket at all to who knows where. At least his wife is still protected and desired, though, there are so many paths to be taken, after all, to the theatre, a concert, a season ticket to the opera, opportunity enough to lick the thing which the Direktor reaches across with a whimper and wrap it up anew. Now he has turned her onto her back and is wagging about in her face. A thin thread of slobber dribbles down, and promptly the meatloaf and sauce is brought to the woman's lips, a soft tired suckling. Mmm, that's just perfect. She is requested to clean away what she has brought from the kitchen for presentation and thawing. First the banks, then the shaft, neat and tidy, all the tiny creases as well, after all there's a little driving still to be done today and we wouldn't want this quick-acting foam all over the upholstery. And then Gerti is expected to kiss the hairy scrotum, mind your eyes. As if he were stripping a snake, the Direktor rips the dress off his wife with a single tear, though at the same time whispering that tomorrow she will get two new ones to replace it. The dress is forcefully pulled apart at the front. Gerti's body is kissed from a convenient height and then belted into the seat again, where it remains caught, returning none of the looks bestowed on it. The Direktor goes on to rip Gerti's petticoat too, exposing her entire dilapidated facade; soon, albeit outside, beyond the battered attache cases, pleasant green will be appearing, one or two months of the yoke still to go! Let the airstream and the one or two stray people returning home take a look at the building if they want, in the warm shadows of which the Direktor has been sporting. The woman does not resemble any film actress, at least none I know of. It is quiet. Michael peers out of the window and makes an effort to grow once again in order to make the most and best of himself. Not everyone has a handsome member to amuse himself with. The Direktor is faithful by nature, that's how it should be. We are the hearth of the household and warm the lordsandmasters if necessary.
The young man, thinking of the countless friends whom he will make the repositories of his adventure, steps under the too needling waterjet of the shower. His senses are all present and stretch out on the floor like dogs lying down to sleep on their appointed blankets. Perhaps his girlfriend will stop by later on, while outside the oppressed take by force what has been granted them. Thus long he has deigned to watch a woman advancing in years, and thus long will he rest, a child of the world. I think he will even still be asleep tomorrow morning when the people who live in these houses trample each other to death in the bus and riotously batter each other about the head with their belongings.
As if by changing cars they had changed lives, the Direktor and his wife drive home together, one under the protection of the other, tossing from one position in life to the next. These people can fuck fearlessly anywhere at all, whatever they do is always put right again by love and their dear cleaning ladies. The employees are at rest, presently the jangle of their alarms will raise them aloft. Silently the car sweeps the flatland clean. The mountains stand in silence, till tomorrow the sun is again portioned out by the tourist office rep, to delight the sporting folk. And so the directorial couple return home on their great raft, along the federal highway in accordance with all the regulations and at a moderate speed. For a brief while the two of them took hold on their bodies to fill up with fuel, the springs were bubbling up all around them, right, the rich tank up new energy as often as they wish. In the little houses silence reigns, because the people there have to count out the money for petrol first. At most it's violence that reigns, till tomorrow they are under someone else's control again at the factory, these sons from petty homes, and their wives wade by day through the puddles of the powerful sex. Love comes fruity and fresh in its carton, but what does it become inside us?
The toil of the sexes, accomplished today by the Direktor and the Frau Direktor, has made them blossom with a shudder, only to wipe their mouths afterwards as if after a meal wolfed greedily down; and it may be but is not definitely finished for today. Till we meet again tomorrow in the radiant light from the mail van's headlamps, so early, when it's still dark, not to mention the years ahead! Nothing but those lights caresses the wretched bodies shamelessly confronting us in all their morning stench and exhaust fumes. But just think of the lottery tickets their thoughts are always dwelling on! One has to be able to take it as well as deal it out.
The Direktor stammers managerial, loving words, he announces himself and his programme, this private individual. Already he is in his element again: money. What would he be without his wife, as he insists on calling her. Jovially he embraces her with the arm he's not steering with, taking her body and doing some steering there at least. Like a warm tame animal the mountains lounge above him, he has already sheered them quite bald. They have left the superfluous car standing, put to sleep and locked up like their child. Let's face it, all they were thinking of was jolly sex. The woman can now go shopping for the kind of commodities that suit a woman. Now speculations are made concerning the next day and what it might bring. The Direktor describes the many and various ways in which he is going to screw his wife later and in the days ahead. He needs trouble up top, in the office, if his prick down below is to be satisfied and taken captive by the woman. Perhaps the woman will like something special which she will follow blindly on her shopping spree tomorrow? This man: the unwavering star of his wife will shine above him till tomorrow morning, he nuzzles tenderly at her throat, keep your eyes on the road, don't look away! The droplets fly from the man, sweat and sperm, which makes him no less, no slighter, no smaller. Smilingly he prays to his wife, whom he has held under his jet. His fleshy testicles sit still on their stringy stalk. What a relief, to go out into the spell of night, if one doesn't have to hurry out into the morning dark, one amongst many, dazzled by the kitchen light. If the fire is burning within one, and another, larger one is burning in the engine. Cleansed and renewed, the Direktor will presently be getting into bed again with his Gerti and making his territorial mark on her bush, no one cocks a leg faster than he does. Maybe the two of them will once again be flooded by the muted cry of their bodies wanting food, who knows? The woman tries to fasten her dress at her breast, the cold is scourging her. But the man demands that she provide a little more entertainment for him and the people who live in those parts in their little domestic limbos, please, Brigitte, I mean, Gerti. The dress, which is covering her now, he parts wide open again, she hasn't quite gone out yet, hasn't Gerti, I'm pretty sure there's still a glimmer in the ashes. The heating hasn't properly warmed up yet, but the man has. He is fast off the mark, on his chin he has a fingernail scratch dealt by Gerti. Not a single walker comes their way, to flower a little with an acquaintance outside the house. No one is out and about any more to witness the brand of power on the forehead of the factory Direktor. And so he at least has to stamp his mark on his wife, to show that she has paid to go in and really did bravely go out in the open from the warmth of her sex. In the kitchens of the poor, only the stove is kept alight.
The man calls the woman his darling, and yes, even the child is included. They live in the centre, the happy medium, the gusset of the village. And the government shrewdly ladles out the special offers to people. So that the owners of companies can take their decisions and come up with excuses for squandering subsidies and human bodies. They can be happy forever amid their possessions, and the rest tell of worries on their towel-sized patches of ground where they promptly plant out fences, despite the fact that their seed is scarcely enough for more than two. Already they have to be thinking of yet another person!
We are there, the child is asleep in his private parts and memories.
Meekly the son slumbers on the lead of Linz Chemicals Ltd. Now let us go to sleep as well, for a foretaste of what comes before death. To do this one first has to lie down, as the poor have long known, they die sooner too, and still the time till they die seems too long to them. The Man nuzzles up once more to the cosmetically caked skin of his wife, presently he will follow her into bed with a bang, like a shot from a gun. In the bathroom there is already a busy noise of waters and movements. Mercilessly a heavy body is thrown into the hot water to make it fit for consumption. The soap and brushes lie on his chest. The mirrors steam up. The Frau Direktor is expected to give her husband's back a good scrubbing, to dip her hand acquiescently into the lather and go on massaging his massive sex, it is entirely in her hands. Beyond the window, the moon slithers. He is already calling for her, the Man and the half kilo of flesh (or, if need be, less) which is his master. Already it is swelling again in the warm water and arising to lord it over the lavish cold buffet of his body. Afterwards he will bathe the woman after the troubles of the day, not at all, his pleasure entirely. All around, mortals are living on wages and work, they do not live for ever and they do not live well. But now they have exchanged their tribulations for rest, the sting is asleep in their breast because they do not have their own bathroom. The Direktor's body just goes in the water, but he still has enough cubic metres of solid flesh left. Once again he calls for his wife, louder this time, it is an order. She does not come. He will have to soften up all by himself in the water. Placidly he slides across to the other side of the tub, should he yell for her to come? How pleasant that water does not change one, and that one does not have to learn to walk on it. Such a pleasure, and so cheap. Anyone can afford it. Let the woman stay where she is, oh take me with you, swathes of heat! He runs the hot tap, massages it and feels peaceful, serene. The waters rush about his heavy body, the hard jaw muscles grinding life up small and swallowing companies. The poor too fall like water from the cliffs, but at least they stay where they are, in their little beds, and don't go begging constantly, these tedious people wanting danger money paid. One moment all's well, and the next, complete with all the sacred strings their wives have laboriously stretched on their bodily frames, they're blindly getting caught in the machines! All that blood! And all for nothing, including in the end the massive whiplash beating of their hearts, since there is no more blood left to keep them going. And I gather the children are sometimes still out and about at four in the morning. One or two of them, at least, still come home drunk from the disco.
But his son, unpopular here for so many years already, is lying in bed, and the placid moon passes on. He is breathing heavily, the boy, and is bathed in a cold sweat. With tablets of that kind in his juice, his sleep is altogether different. Comfortless he lies there under the eye of his mother, who comes to his bed and smooths the covers. The boy is flaccid and yet he is her whole world: he is silent, and so is her world. He is no doubt looking forward to growing up, like his father's member. Tenderly Mother kisses her little boat sailing around the world. Then she takes a plastic bag, slips it over the boy's head, and draws it tight at the bottom so that the child's breath will perish in peace. Under the tent of the back, on which is printed the address of a boutique, the boy's life force burgeons richly one more time, this boy to whom not long ago growing-up and sports gear were promised. That's how it goes when on.e tries to improve on Nature with mechanical implements! But no, the child still wants to live. Then the son drifts out into the open waters where he is immediately quite in his element (Mummy!) and uses the snorkel mask through which his fellows learn to see the world, as if through goo, from the very start: so utterly was he their boss, a little god of war, at work, rest and play. They see everything, yet they do not see much. Mother leaves the house. She is carrying her son in her arms like a budding cutting that has to be planted. From the mountaintops where the boy went sledging today and was planning to go again tomorrow (to be exact, the next day has already been impatiently begun on!), the earth bids its farewell. Outrageous imprints in the blanket of snow. Sure, go wandering about near the fire if you will: quite an experience, eh?
The mother carries the child, and then, when she grows tired, drags him along behind her. Discreetly clad in moonlight. Now the woman is at the stream, and the next moment her son sinks in, contented. Perfect peace is beckoning, and sporting people beckon and wave to each other at every opportunity too, if there's an audience. Now, contrary to expectation, it has turned out to be the youngest of the family who will be permitted to see the stupid face of eternity first, behind all the money that runs about at liberty on the earth, for purchases, if no one puts it on a lead. People compete in races, the events are thunderous but they don't want rain. And skiers go into the mountains, never mind who else lives there and might like to win themselves.
The water has taken hold of the child, and bears him on and away, a good deal will remain of him for a long time in this cold. The mother is alive, her time is wreathed and limited, with fetters she has twined in it. Women age early, and their mistake is not knowing where to hide all the time that lies behind them so that no one sees it. What are they to do, devour it like the umbilical cords of their children? Hell and damnation!
But now rest a while!