Elfriede Jelinek - Wonderful Wonderful Times

Sophie says he can always beg her to let him off. If I put pressure on you, your fear and pleas are free, they're there of your own accord. It's your decision and yours alone, got it?

Hans says he'll do it because he secretly loves her. Which is no secret any more now. He eyes his cock with little favour. He'll never get a hard-on. That's for sure.

Now you have to stroke yourself, go on, says Sophie. For the first time she looks neither pale nor tanned but has red blotches on her cheekbones and almost looks alive. She says she wants to see everything, she wants a good view of all of him, she wants him to sit so that she can see and if necessary switch on the electric light, which he knows all about.

I'm doing it just for love, says Hans, and begins an unskilled tugging and pulling, rubbing and squeezing at his prick, which his anxiety has shrivelled with anxiety to the size of a twopenny banger.

It is a conflict of diverse forces, with Hans in the middle, making a rather powerless, indeed impotent impression just now.

Is that it, asks Sophie. No, that's not it, I can do a lot more, grinds Hans, who is working himself to a slow rage. He looks at Sophie, and instantly the fresh vitality of Youth and Fitness triumph and his member rises as it's supposed to. Youth and Health have won out over Age and Infirmity.

Sophie practically chews a knuckle off.

When he announces for the fifth time that he's doing it for love, Sophie says she doesn't give a toss why he's doing it just as long as he does do it, and she lays the palms of her hands on her throat to cool it off.

Hans works away at himself as if he were trying to jerk a wire through a wall, though all he's jerking off is himself. Sophie wants him to squirt and tells him so.

Hans doesn't want to mess the brocade of the armchair with his seed. Sophie says he can go right ahead because after all it's her armchair. Well all right then, I'll soil the armchair, puffs Hans in a regretful tone, and he goes ahead and soils it. Pretty soon there'll be sperm stinking of fish all over the room, thinks Sophie, and she gets rid of Hans in a hurry.

FOR ONCE HANS is wearing work overalls when the wages he has earned are paid out to him. He has a book tucked under his arm, a book that never used to be tucked there. For all to see. It is not a worker's book; but then, this worker has already ceased to be one. In his case things do not go as far as in Rainer's. Rainer wants to establish a whole new culture himself. Hans plans to work his way up economically rather than culturally. The economy is more to his taste. Right now he is already a tiny wheel in the machinery. Trotsky addresses him from the pages of this book, which Anna has lent him. Trotsky confides that in a society where worries about one's daily bread have become a thing of the past, where the children (all of them well-nourished) are cheerfully receptive to Science and to Art too, and where even the immense power of the ego will be trying to make the world a better place, Culture will have a far more forceful effect than it ever used to. This doesn't exactly knock Hans's socks off. What knocks Hans's socks off is Sophie's leather armchair. He plans to buy himself one just like it.

Today as always the Kochgasse knocks his optimism for six the moment he sets eyes on it. Any moment, enthusiasm for sport will replace this inappropriate optimism, and set Hans soaring high at basketball. Not long ago Sophie came and watched him play. Not a single loud or nasty word was spoken, the prevailing tone was one of relaxed politeness. Sophie seems a will-o'-the-wisp to him because one moment she's here and the next she's somewhere entirely different, cheering on the team she supports. Should he take her flowers or would an expensive perfume be better or maybe an extra-large bonbonniere? The best thing to do is to ask a woman, since she'll understand another woman's heart's desire better. Anna, in other words. He has to study later too, so that Sophie can be married and the armchair bought. Sophie is very complicated. The cause of this is her idiosyncratic nature. If you want to be complicated you have to be familiar with all the possible ways.

Rainer, the braggart weakling, has to get lost, hissing and frothing like Coca Cola, whenever Sophie says: Hans, you stay! It is a fresh pleasure for Hans every time the self-appointed leader has to beat a retreat. Rainer (the liar, the bigmouth) said he always goes on purpose so that he can test the tool of his imagination (the bonehead) on him and Sophie, patiently and calmly, as a locksmith tries a key. Rainer said he wants to make a tool of his flesh and Sophie's.

Hans muscles his way through Schonborn Park, behind the Ethnological Museum, swinging the briefcase containing his thermos flask and lunchbox to and fro, high spirits personified. He is not under any pressure right now because Sophie never strays into this area. It would be terrific if the girl stroked him just once or touched him in some other intimate way. But she doesn't. Because her pride is highly developed. Hans for his part no longer kisses women who are not that proud. His interest in Anna is dwindling in proportion to his love of Sophie. Already it has almost disappeared. Nowadays he only gives her hurried kisses by way of a thankyou for sex, which Sophie doesn't yet want to perform. The mental world Hans inhabits is inexact, as are the ideas of Life and values of the fellow-workers surging homeward in front of him, beside him and behind him. Three plane trees are swaying rhythmically in the wind and creaking because they are old and legally protected. Hans wants to protect Sophie for the rest of her life and be out in the open, in the fresh air a good deal. Soon the ice cream parlour will be opening its doors and admitting the surrounding Youth. Hans is already looking forward to licking away at a raspberry cornet and buying Sophie one. Soon summer will have arrived and it'll perhaps, correction: definitely be possible to get an eyeful of Sophie in a tiny bikini, the steamy mists of the water in the foreground, the steamy vapours of dewy forests in the background, and between them the steamy embrace of two bodies. Hans breaks into a bit of a run. He is running on ahead of himself, filled with a prospect of perhaps getting properly to grips with Sophie next time. If he imagines the place between Sophie's thighs he gets an instant hard-on and can't run or jump so well. No doubt her body is whiter and softer than Anna's, which is darker and harder. But he will never despise Anna in times to come. No, he will be understanding. Once he is studying he will give serious attention to her problems, and will be able to advise and help her, too. From time to time, he and Sophie will take Anna along on an outing in the car and try hard to teach her some sport so that she gets more out of life and develops a more positive attitude. Soon the chestnut blossom will be out, old people take greater delight in that than young people do because young people will see chestnut trees in blossom many more times whereas for old people the time is running out. A young man takes greater delight in it than a girl because he'll be kissing the girl's mouth beneath the chestnut tree and the girl will have to defend herself.

The city has a city smell. It is better than the countryside, which we have fled from. The city smells of adventure, jazz, cafes and exhaust fumes. Hans swings the briefcase round in a circle and this evening he'll swing Sophie round on the dancefloor the same way. The thermos flask is in danger of being broken, Life is good but in a moment his mother will be souring it for him once more with her talk of politics, cramming the embitterment into her rustling stacks of envelopes. Next month she may be getting a better-paid office job, as a full-time assistant in the accounts department.