Elfriede Jelinek - Wonderful Wonderful Times

The cupola reverberates with the bellowing of a school class turning up for a swimming lesson. Rainer and Anna observe them secretly in order to learn something and then try it out when Sophie happens to be looking. But they are too cowardly and don't like getting their heads underwater because you are helpless there, it's difficult to breathe, and you may easily lose out to a better swimmer. They'd rather look on from above. A youth, a fitter or lathe operator to judge by his build, dives between Anna's legs, and she squawks loudly and vanishes altogether with a splash. Cautiously her brother reaches down into the water to rescue her. Sophie trouts up with a hiss to help, but Anna has already recovered. Rainer trembles lest Sophie now notice that he is not a good swimmer, but Sophie doesn't need to notice anything of the kind, she is simply enjoying the feeling a body affords you when it is getting on with the private business of being a body and nothing else. Then she bounces under the shower because she is in a hurry. Rainer and Anna follow, cheesy white. Sophie is svelte and lithe beneath the jet of water. Rainer deposits himself at her side in order to expound his love. He says among other things that the abstract notion of happiness should be equated with the abstract notion of love, and he emphasises it once again, particularly strongly, because he has already asserted it repeatedly. Love is happiness, happiness without love is just inconceivable. The tremor of real happiness will (supposedly) only pass through your agitated heart if you become aware of it, if you realise that somebody belongs entirely to you, that he loves you with every fibre of his heart, that he'll be true to you, come what may, and then, that's right, then you can say: I'm happy. To claim as much if you get a good grade for a piece of school work would be decidedly ridiculous. I don't understand a word you're saying, replies Sophie to these words from the heart, letting the water patter down everywhere to wash off the smell of chlorine. She twists like a serpent, twirling into the jet like a drill in a bikini. Only he who loves and is loved for his own sake can be happy, and what produces that happiness is not so much the sense of sexual communion as of two people being together, right, as he (Rainer) once had the honour of explaining to you (Sophie), the sexual act viewed as a whole probably affords less happiness than a totally ordinary kiss or often indeed one simple word from the one you love. Witkowski Jr. keeps the thought of the sexual act at a considerable distance but he would quite like an ordinary kiss, only he doesn't dare ask for one. The thought of the sexual act has never occurred to Sophie. Beneath the jet of water, her face is as remote as if there were a motorway between them. With heavy weekend traffic on it. All one wants is one tiny kiss and one doesn't even get that. Not long ago, Rainer cut some pin-up photos of girls out of magazines, but he removed the breasts and bodies with scissors and only accorded what was left, the faces, a place of honour on the door of his wardrobe.

A huge patch of light slops across the tiled wall, some stupid cretin is playing with a pocket mirror. The narrow footbridges, stairways and galleries shake and sway under the wet feet of swimmers. The brightness is unmerciful. Anna sits on the floor, holding both hands to her because she doesn't have a bosom. She is speechless, which she has occasionally been at irregular intervals. Once at school, when she was fourteen, she suddenly stopped talking. Because she was a good pupil she was granted special permission back then to give examination answers in writing. Nowadays she is better again, but today's is a particularly bad bout and she can't say a single thing. So Rainer does enough talking for two, and says how much he wants to have Sophie, later, much later when both of them are at last mature enough. Not yet, because you have to have patience. Later, though. The moment you set yourself up beyond human nature and perhaps even try to force happiness and love, in what they call an open marriage, it's guaranteed not to come, Sophie. The latter steps out from under the shower, spraying water as if she had been born in that element and grown up in it (a feeling you have with her in every environment, regardless of where it is, on the earth or in the air). She does not confront the problem but gives Rainer a brief slap on the shoulder and goes off to get dressed. Rainer follows her everywhere, hither and thither, thither and hither, which gets on her nerves, as if he couldn't simply go wherever he wanted of his own accord. She pats him once again, like an article of furniture or a puppy, get out of my way, it's my very own personal way which I've leased, go find your own way!

Rainer says that (as in Faust) work cannot make you happy, at best it will satisfy you. Work is a means a lover avails himself of, to take his mind off things and partially work off pent-up tensions. By way of explanation: I don't think I'm mistaken in saying that you have loved, or you do love now, or at least you will be capable of entering into the emotional life of a lover. Once you have done so, you will know, perceive, feel, sense that, for the moment of concentration, work can free you of the burden that oppresses and constricts your young heart. Whenever you are near to the loved one, you are overcome by a feeling of profound tranquillity, which then makes way for powerful agitation, so powerful that your hands turn white and begin to tremble slightly. That's exactly how things are with me. Rainer clings to the railing, which is there to prevent him from falling in, because he isn't a proficient swimmer. His knuckles are white yet again, as he quite rightly said just now. And thus you live in two states, two conditions, which are in constant alternation, and both of which are happiness. Water's state is fluid, Rainer's is semi-solid.

His sister crouches at his feet in a bad mood, saying nothing, asking no questions, but merely deciding in that deathly silence within her that she won't go swimming again in a hurry because water is not her element. Her element is musical sound, the waves of which pound and foam and ebb away, they may shower down but they never shower. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out, not a word, not a musical note. Silence.

The water does not welcome her, it repels her. The attendant blows his whistle shrilly because one lad has been too beastly, leaping right into a group of people and knocking them over, but the people simply laugh. An inconceivably smooth smoothness creeps out from under the twins' wet soles and slithers away like a snake. There is nothing those soles can get a grip on. And somebody must have sneakily taken away Art, which normally provides them with a support to grip hold of, and transported it to some unknown location.

Anna opens her mouth again. Nothing. Again. If the whole writing business starts again, she'll kill herself.

Rainer states that happiness and love, which are identical, are feelings (or rather, one single feeling) of the kind you cannot describe. Any account of the phenomenon is bound to be inadequate and can never do service for true feeling, dear Sophie. Anna wants to reply to this stuff about love but cannot manage to, though she could think of the answer.

Together with her brother she shuffles towards the lockers. Sophie is already slipping wirily out of one of the cabins, completely dressed, her hair done, how sweet is the way her damp curls cling to her temples, Rainer would like to stroke them tenderly but she would probably ruin the little gesture. How sweet Sophie looks! But she goes off right away, saying: See you tomorrow, I'm in a hurry today. We've got a lot to talk about tomorrow, I've been thinking over the attacks. These words darken the clear overall impression made by the Jorger Baths today; where there was glistening brightness there is now dull gloom because Sophie has gone, perhaps for ever, but probably just till tomorrow morning at school.