Elfriede Jelinek - Wonderful Wonderful Times

Sophie contradicts. She says: Let me go, you're crushing my dress, can't you see it's chiffon? You're gradually degenerating, Rainer. Slowly but surely.

For the grown-ups there is even punch to mark the advanced hour. It's a weak punch. Children giggle because they're allowed a sip for once. Hans promptly gets in line for the alcohol too but is sent away because he is not an adult yet, as he is informed to his astonishment. Hans roars that he's been earning his own money for ages. An uncomprehending face that belongs to a doctor's daughter answers him.

You're not even allowed to smoke a cigarette here. The unavoidable Frau Witkowski hides herself and her teacherblood (she was once a teacher herself!) away in the crowd. What she is also hiding is her ugly pre-War dress, which she has tricked out with a velvet bow and a silk rose of the same colour, each as out of place as the other. Papa is looking elegant, his tie is screaming out loud: here I am, it's impossible to miss it. You can overlook a cripple deliberately, but not that tie.

Anna scratches feebly at the back of Hans's pullover to get his attention. Hans pats her as if she were a horse and asks if she's got the itch again, huh. If she's itchy she'd best scratch herself, hahahaha. Then he utters a high-pitched bray, plunges at Sophie, lifts her up high, and swirls her round in a circle a number of times. Then he tosses her up aloft like a ball and catches her again and addresses her as darling and doll and Sophiedear. There is a great deal of strength in him and now he's letting it out, who has he got it for if not Sophie and Sophie alone.

Sophie laughs slightly and says: Put me down, Hans. Before he can obey the command, Rainer races up from behind, pulls Sophie out of Hans's arms, and says he'll kick Hans in the balls, to which Hans replies that he'd like to see him try. Now piss off, we want to be alone.

The headmaster says in a loud voice that the exams mark the end of a period in Life and will scatter them in every direction. He trusts they will always remember their school. But their schooldays are over and Life is yet to come. It is completely different, but school prepares you for it.

Rainer and Anna tremble with fear. What they are most afraid of is change. Never again in later life will it be as easy to be a leader as here, because not everybody will know you later. Nor what you have accomplished. You'll have to accomplish things all over again. Rainer and Anna are afraid of the unknown.

Anna puts her hand up to indicate that she wants to say something on the subject.

The two young men who are too full of energy will be coming to blows in a moment. A calm and level-headed teacher steps between them and reminds them of discipline and religion. This being the religious instruction master.

Anna is actually hopping a little with excitement at being able to say something. She wants to say that Hans is hers and no one else's. Even if it may not look that way. At close range, Rainer mouths off at Sophie about what he feels for her and has always felt. Pride always prevented him from admitting it. But now it's stronger than he is. And won't be kept back. He thinks she may as well know. The next stage up would be patches of sunlight on the forest floor, rain starting to fall slowly and inaudibly, the smell of resin, Sophie wearing an old raincoat, stroking his hair, breathlessly, tenderly. After all, intellectuals need some physical pampering too. A country-style meal on a checked tablecloth and plenty of serious, profound conversations where even God will be present, in the abstract. This is every grammar school pupil's dream and it is his dream too. After dinner one lies on the bed and goes on reading Camus, whom one has been reading the whole time already. The passage where the condemned man suddenly grasps the world, a world that has lost its interest for him for ever. And he thinks of his mother. But he, Rainer, will think of Sophie. Later on, the camera loses track of them in the woods.

Sophie says that her mother is sending her to Lausanne after the holidays, so that she will be in different surroundings. Is that definite, bleats Rainer. Yes, absolutely. A boarding school. She's already looking forward to a completely unfamiliar environment and language.

Rainer asks why she wants to go roaming so far off when the good things in life are so close, to be exact: right here. What do you need an unfamiliar environment for? You ought rather to tame the unfamiliar, unknown animal within me. Now I would perform a sexual act, only it degrades the woman. That's why I need taming.

What I did in the gym (Sophie) was more of an event than courtship. Dynamite. Rainer says that no doubt she doesn't want to go away from him and she's just talking. And by way of proof that he trusts her entirely he is now going to confide a few ideas towards an interpretation of The Plague by Camus, because that is the next book they're going to read together. She mustn't tell anyone.

Sophie coolly moves him aside with her fingertips and says hello to her dancing partner's parents, who know her and enquire after her plans for the future, whereupon they too are told about Lausanne. They consider this good, likewise the opportunities for sports there.

Anna blows air down Sophie's neck where there is blonde down. Now she wants to say something about her own character for once. She hasn't said this much in a long time. Anna says that her character is one of blind hatred of the whole world. She wants Hans to pick her up like he picked Sophie up back then. Hans tells Anni to go fetch him some bread and wurst. Whereupon she promptly rockets off.

By now Rainer and Hans are each hanging on to one of Sophie's shoulders, listing the reasons why she should leave this dreary school party with them to have a discussion. Rainer hurriedly explains modern music, which is coming from the tape recorder. Sophie shouldn't go to French Switzerland. Hans doesn't say Switzerland till he's been told where Lausanne is.

Sophie slips out of the arms of both. They mean well but grip poorly. She slips out like an evil carnivorous plant that uses a sticky substance to kill insects, and says she won't have them bothering her in any way at all. She's going away so that she doesn't have to see the pair of them any more.

Are those your little admirers, Sophie, smiles the dancingpartnermother, have fun then, dear Sophie.

Anna comes home with the bread and wurst. Hans wolfs the salami, nervously, plucks off the little gherkin, and leaves Anna to polish off the remains of the sandwich. At his invitation. Anna eats and heads off purposefully to the toilet to throw up, hoping it isn't engaged.

Rainer says he may kill himself. This is sure to get Sophie's attention. Otherwise he'll slip through the net and be gone. The world is gently indifferent, says Camus. One has to put its hostility behind one, says Camus. Once one's hope has been taken away, one has the Present in one's hand, whole, one is Reality oneself and all the rest are extras. Which they are in any case.

You never say anything that someone else didn't say before you, breathes Sophie.

Because I already know everything that can be said, see. If Life has expired, Evening is like a melancholy ceasefire, as Camus assures us.

Hans hammers his fist at his skull as hard as he can, making a hollow sound. Nothing witty comes out, just the usual stuff, the foreman's words, to the effect that he has done some wiring wrong and is about to get a kick up the backside.

The disabled father clambers across on his crutches and tells Sophie that she plainly must be his son's little girlfriend, that's lovely, she's a trim little filly, the kind he used to have quite a lot of in the old days and only has occasionally now because with a job you don't have much time. He could show his son Rainer a thing or two in that line, too.