Elfriede Jelinek - Lust

THE WOMAN, HER BODY flailing awkwardly, strikes out into the wind. She has been made flesh and has dwelt among us. Her off-sales service has ministered to the hungry in every way: she has been worn out by the Man and by the child, sweetest of bridles and reins. Caught in the net, she tries to catch her breath for once. Throwing on her dressing-gown, she sets out trudging down the snowed-up path in her slippers.

First, in case of emergency, she has to put the cups and kitchen utensils away in the cupboards. Under the flowing water she scrubs the traces of her family off the china. And so the woman preserves herself in the very accessories that she is made of. She arranges everything, even her own clothing, according to size. Ashamed, she laughs at the fact. But it's no joke. Orderly arrangement is added to the blessings she already enjoys. She herself is left with nothing. Of the bloody bird feathers on the path there is little to be seen now, for even animals must eat. A sooty layer coats the snow, it took just a few hours.

In his office, the Man reaches contentedly under the lampshade of his waistband and lets a little air in. He talks of his wife, of her figure, without troubling to indicate that it's his turn to speak. Be quiet, now his works are speaking for him, there is a choir of many voices for that specific purpose. No, he is not afraid of the future. His purse is full, and the more he spends, the more he gets!

The woman senses the snow gradually invading time and space. Springtime is still a long way off. Not even today can Nature manage to look freshly painted. The trees are grimed with muck. A dog hobbles past her in a hurry. Women come along the path, looking as if they'd been stored in cardboard boxes for years. As if they had awoken in a fine house, the women inspect this other odd one out, who keeps herself to herself. The factory provides many of their husbands with work, what else? Unconscious before their time, they'd rather spend their time wih a bottle of wine than their family. The woman glides past them into the gloom, she hasn't even put on shoes to go out in the snow! Meanwhile the child is out and about somewhere, romping with more of the same. He refused the food she'd cooked, refused with words that tore great gaping gashes in his mother, and went off with a wurst sandwich instead. For much of the morning. Mother had been straining carrots through a sieve, for the boy's eyes. She cooked the lad's food herself. And then, a bent stalk of humanity, she gobbled up the boy's helping herself, standing by the bin. When all's said and done, she did produce the child from out of her own self. Her sense of humour has not grown, though. From the fence by the stream hang icicles, the capital is not far away as the car drives. It is a broad valley, and not many are employed in it. The rest, since everybody has to be somewhere, are at their onerous places of employment: they go to work at the paper mill every day, while others commute even further afield, much further! Up there on the mountain is where I love to be, with my flock. The woman's mouth freezes as tiny as a marble. She clings to the iced-up wood of the railing. The stream is bridged from both banks, the ice is slapping its back, Creation is groaning under the fetters of natural law. There's a faint gurrgling sound. Just as the that will melt all the barriers in this good life we all lead, levelling us so that there are no distinctions any more, so too Death may be the reductio ad absurdum of this woman's world. But let's not be personal. The wheels of a small car crunch and bite through the tightly-packed snow. Wherever it comes from, it's more at home there than its owner is. What would the commuter be without it? A dung heap.

Because when he's pitchforked into a carriageful of humanity he's simply dirt, that's how his parliamentary representatives see it. It's a question of crowds, of masses: they're what prevent our economy from collapsing, bunched inside our factories, propping them up from within. And as for the unemployed! A shadowy army of nothings, who do not need to be feared because all of them vote for Christian Social Democrats notwithstanding. Herr Direktor is flesh and blood and eats his full share thereof as well because ladies in aprons serve it to him.

You are advised not to drive in this weather if you can avoid it. On the other hand, you are expected to be at your place of work on time. To this tune, the trucks are out, gritting the streets, leaving their wares. All the woman has to offer is herself. Oh, and one more thing: don't call out the emergency services unless it's absolutely essential! The poor creatures. You wouldn't like it either.

The children howl down the well-ironed snow into the valley in their plastic birthday shells which stick to their skin or fly past their ears. Sullenly the older ones turn away, their chair-lift tickets dangling at their padded rotundities. Speed is not magic. They roar like railway stations. The woman is frightened of them. Alarmed, she cowers in the cornices of snow left by the snow plough. Grinding and crunching, cars loaded with families, whole cargoes of miserable beatings, trundle past her. On the roof racks the skis are at full stretch to restrain the hatred of the passengers. The skiing tackle stares down belligerently like machine guns. They plough through the many other containers of humanity because they merit a better place. So thinks everyone. And shows it by making endearingly filthy gestures out of the window.

Sport! The fortress of the common man! From which he can do his shooting.

Believe me, everybody, but everybody, cart afford to break a foot or both arms! Still, you can't help feeling that these people are dependants, up the hill they go and then come gliding down it and even feel good doing it. but dependent on what? On their own images. And, as if they themselves were no more than mid wives of reality, the images are screened anew every day, but bigger, better, faster. And thus, kicked down from the television watershed, they tumble to the other side, where the ordinary people mill on the hill of idiots. Ouch. In discussions they never get a word in edgeways. And if they do they are instantly interrupted by someone who ranks as an expert, who doesn't share their worries about rank. And the Supreme Being, who has studied the rankings, is deaf to their whining for a home of their Own, which they say they need so that they won't have to sally forth – they can sully sport, that silly Aunt Sally of an Olympian idea, on their very own doorsteps.

The woman slips and slides at every step she takes. In the car windows laughing faces appear, soundless. The driver comes within a whisker of death. The snow falls amply on one and all. But they all ski differently, just as no two human beings are alike. Some are better than others, and others want to be best of all. Where is the lift slope for every degree of difficulty so that there will quickly be more of us? What was slack and limp in its house just now is firmed up when it emerges into the air. But it looks all the smaller. Thanks to the sturdy Alps!

The woman emerges from the cover of her circumstances. Out of humour, she hugs her dressing-gown tightly to herself. Flails her arms about. Some of the children she hears yelling from afar have been torn from their weekly dance and rhythm class. These children were bred as this woman's hobby. After all, we've got enough room and love for the child to set him clapping rhythmically. That will help him to nod his head in time at school or stand up when it's time for prayers. There her son is, in the midst of them, demonstrating with every step he takes that he is a grubby finger above them all, poised to smudge them. He has to take first bite of every wurst sandwich. For every child has a father. And every father has to earn money. On his junior skis, the boy terrorizes the little kids on their toboggans. He is the latest edition of a bright star that has the gall to appear every day, always wearing different clothes. None of the others rebel. Though his back has to put up with a lot of covert and wasted gestures. Already he sees himself as a phrase expressed by his father. The woman isn't wrong, vaguely she raises a hand to wave at her distant son, whom she has recognized by his voice. He barks the other kids to attention, the way he wants them, and his words cut them down to dirty heaps as does winter the landscape.