Elfriede Jelinek - Wonderful Wonderful Times

Behind him, all the light disappears, it is called Sophie and never stays for long. Rainer, however, always has to stay where he happens to be, because he cannot change the way he is. In this respect, for once, he resembles other people, who cannot change the way they are either.

NOW THAT I have seen larger rooms, small rooms like this one seem even smaller to me. And they really are small, says a petulant Hans, and angrily he kicks at the council flat which can't help its size and is humane nonetheless since it has everything that is essential in life. Which isn't much. Because mankind can get by with very little if need be. And so the flat does not have much to offer.

There is a wind blowing here as well, but it is a city wind laden with dirt and dust from building sites where the last of the ruins are being cleared in order to make Vienna even more beautiful. Gentle light passes through, from which you can tell that the gentleness of springtime has arrived early. The light is typical of this old quarter of Vienna, it leaves nothing unregarded, though neither does it reveal anything especially worthy of regard. The air is dry, splinters of glass, insects and 'flu bugs are to be found in it for brief spells. Girls with bobbing stiffened skirts and pony-tails sail by, their basic characteristic is youth, which they will shortly lose. They enjoy dancing and music, one floor higher dwells the pleasure they take in their future job prospects. They will be able to choose a profession because the economic boom is on, though it needn't necessarily shift you a floor higher. It might just as well fall on top of you.

Hans has a memory of the years of his youth. It goes like this. For five schillings you can sit in the first or second row of the stalls at the Albert cinema and see for yourself what the economic boom looks like, the boom you're on the brink of joining, though for the time being it's just for other people and you only look at it from the outside. It wears fetching tailored suits over corsets, or dirndl dresses with plunging necklines, and kisses Rudolf Prack or Adrian Hoven or Karlheinz Bohm. Everything is better now, or if it isn't better yet it soon will be. 1937: Managers 100, Workers 100. 1949: Managers 115, Workers 85. If it's a man, he kisses Marianne Hold or dear jolly Conny, who is to a younger person's taste. Sometimes he sings while he's about it. He often does so, in fact! What he sings is a little hit tune and his name is Peter Kraus. Often there are comical mix ups and you roar with laughter and it turns out that Christian Wolff is in fact the son of a company chairman, though he doesn't look it, his audience look like nothing at all and that's exactly what they are. Conny is saucy and promptly falls in love with him, when he still looks like nothing. This says something for her heart and character. Which are what counts. The slicked curls of the viewers bob in time like cocks' tails and are already looking forward to the moment when they will prove, under the caresses of girls' hands (those of trainee hairdressers or secretaries of the future), to be precisely what they in fact are: the slicked curls of apprentices and young employees. You shouldn't wish to appear to be more than you are, that is the message. At times the movie heroes even try to seem less than they are, on purpose. It is totally incomprehensible. Sometimes the girls' hands reach one storey lower to the pale tool that never gets to see the light of day, bathing trunks at most, but often it's tired from sitting around and simply won't be persuaded to stir. Sometimes it stands to attention instantly, but it pays no attention to the feelings of the person handling the tool. All it wants is to squirt off, then it's happy, and not into your hand, right.

And sometimes bumper-bosomed Edith Elmay turns out to be what she is: a factory owner's daughter, which you couldn't have told by looking at her. But the cinemagoer knows all along and enjoys the delicious mix-up situations where someone pulls someone else's leg, in the grip of a great love which is misunderstood at first but which will conquer all. We would never jeopardise a burgeoning love with misunderstandings, who knows when the next will come along, you're lucky if you find someone.

Many of the young cinemagoers (who see themselves as the hub of the action because the girl next door is the movie's heroine) are already dreaming of their own car or Vespa, their parents have barely had their war-damaged lives restored to them in good order, have barely had time to get somewhere in their dull, confined, timorous ways. Do those lives still work or have they gone rusty? They can't have gone rusty because the parents keep on working and working, they have to rebuild the Fatherland. Egoistic wishes have to be stifled, the only wishes that can venture out into the open are those for new vacuum cleaners, fridges or radiograms, thus keeping trade and exchange going. Trade certainly keeps going, but nothing changes. Not so very long ago, a Socialist Party paper in Graz called for the liquidation of strike leaders, and thus choked off one particular change, soon the only sign of life there'll be will be advertising, at least it changes the street scene into one of brightness and colour.

Ruth Leuwerik kisses O. W. Fischer, weeping. Maria Schell kisses O. W. Fischer, weeping. Weeping, a mother's heart considers the Sunday pot-roast which its negligence has let burn. Meat is dear and something of a luxury. The Alps jostle into the picture with ever greater frequency, and folk music makes itself heard. Twins populate the Wachau or the Dachstein, singing incessantly, till every one of them gets the husband that suits her and retires into private life with him. Their viewers are disturbed at the thought that these glossy people have any private life at all, just like themselves, if they lose it they won't get another. The main thing in that private life of yours is your health. You have to do as much as you can to provide content in that private life, which some seek in a villa at the Wolfgangsee and others in a council flat or a caravan, what counts is having the will. But not even the blonde long-legged Kessler twins have two lives at their disposal, that is to say, of course they do have two but each of them only has one. Peter Weck drives up in a new sports convertible and presently drives away again, but before he was on his own and now the enchanting Corny Collins with the dimples in her cheeks is sitting beside him, snuggling up and bubbling over with charm. For the next few hours she will not leave him, probably she never will. Nor would any other woman in her position do so, because it takes so long to find True Love and once you've found it you mustn't let it get away again. The girls in the cinema wouldn't let it either. They always stay as long as possible, and if they are uncouthly sent packing they shed lovesick tears, as Maria Schell has often done. Now and then some adolescent creates an unpleasant disturbance, puking beer and hitting people, then he goes home and is thrashed, to balance things up and restore the immutable order. Along the way, a lot of people hurl abuse at him, especially on account of his unclean leather clothing, which he likes so much precisely because it is dirty and which he saved up a long time to buy. He knows he won't get a Corny Collins anyway because the latter already belongs to Peter Weck, but he tries hard. Heinz Conrads, the local star, now somewhat advanced in years, also kisses a lass at last, he is more of an elderly person's star because he has human qualities, the unimportant elderly people who no longer play any part in the production process can make do with a native star, no special guest star need be imported from abroad. He provides the proof that the older generation have values whereas the young generation go by appearances. Youngsters spit on the elderly and their ideas, but a year or so later they haul out the same ideas themselves because they themselves are older now and have settled down. Hans is also a little older now, but he simply won't settle down. Then they even buy a flat of their own, if they can afford it.