Elfriede Jelinek - Lust

All of it belongs to us!

The woman pays no heed at all to her glottis as the car grinds to a halt. She howls as if she'd been oiled, and in fact she is pretty well oiled, the effects of that cheap wine haven't worn off yet. She yawps and yaps and bawls till the night sits bolt upright in its bed and lights begin to go on all around. Including the lights in her own house. Where the ponderous person who is the manager of a paper mill climbs into his boisterous body. Doubtless rejoicing to have back what he believed to be lost. He stands at the mouth of the warm bear's cave, where all the instruments play, even at the touch of a child's fingers. Gerti, is that you, he asks, looking beyond his own limited horizons. Who on earth could wish to lose something he owns? Soon, thanks be to God, he will again be able to grab at her epicentre between her legs. To see if the bread basket's still hung high enough. Out of reach of others. Though there are more crumbs in it now. And then hell give her a taste of his baguette in the breadroom. His trusty tool will go to work, wielded by an honest master of the craft, where none else has ever been. You'd better believe it. The Man is slow to make his choice between different deities (sport and politics) but very quick when, fore hooves first, he clumps onto the stage where all the action concerns him and his works. The young man does not hesitate to make eye contact and offer good evening. The woman, complete with dressing-gown, is tipped sideways out of the door, displaying no desire to couple once again. The young rogue, that young body now idly thinking it would like something to eat, is buried beneath her. When her husband welcomes her back, she knows that the very least he'll be wanting is to nibble her ears. Soon he'll be feeling right as rain, ready to pour down on his wife, for not only the woman but also the art that dwells within us and our hi-fis is at his beck and balls. The Direktor whispers smut, tut tut, in the woman's ear, a promise of what lies ahead, lies willingly abed. How nice to have a woman in the home again! And the boy needs his mother, too. Who shows him important things. Things he can get a far better look at on TV, mind you.

God appears in the form of Nature. In voices. From the outside world. Where employees live, their arms wide open, forever clasping nothingness. Their food is bloody with the wounds inflicted on the animal during its lifetime. They also eat the doughy clods they've baked, lumpy and shapeless as their own bodies or laughter. Formless as their brood, the angry inheritors, running after them like snot from an unstopped nostril. Their children! Getting on people's nerves with what they and TV call sport. From time to time a specimen of humanity falls apart. Have you ever noticed? You're sitting next to someone, some perfectly natural specimen, riding public transport of some description because neither of you can afford a car. If you did notice, nobody else did. Some of the offspring they made on the night shift won't even make shift for the factory. They are the alcoholic vapour they exhale. Not even their serious illnesses seem to upset them. Warm-hearted togetherness such as you witness here in the Direktor's home, a family circle with wife and child, the shadows of bodies cast on other bodies, darkness at noon, while others toil and sweat – all this and more you can see on the screen, to satisfy your wretched curiosity (when all you really want to see is yourself, in a different role at last, and preferably not a cardboard character). Beneath the dome of his desire, the Direktor is seen by the villagers to have space still for at least one further person, of his own choosing. All of them work in his factory. These creatures in their commuter trains, jammed into their compartments, eating their wurst and waiting for the worst. Now night has gently descended and condescended to join us. Now let us sleep.

The Direktor half hands his wife from the car that gave her a lift, the woman half lifts, nay elevates herself from the clammy hands of the student. Back down to earth. The young man has prospects and no need of any paper mill, so now we see the rapid-fire colt politely helping the mare back to the stall. Now it is done. He hears himself describe how he picked up the woman on a country lane, drunk. She still makes a confused and disoriented impression. Shivering with the cold. At the threshold she is ordered to pull herself together and come in. This is her kennel. Right here. Where her loved ones, loved by virtue of her work, her labour, are resting now. The moment God's looking the other way, they're pawing between each other's thighs. Don't go expecting them to leave their sex in peace. They're forever wanting to cock their little guns and fire, bang! It's theirs, all theirs. In their tales, their tails are silent beasts of prey. Even the body is not-so-silently praying to be a beast with a tail. The Direktor loads and overloads the weapon slung under his belly. The child is interested not only in art and sport but also in pop music on the radio. To be truthful, I'm not really sorry for the boy. The woman sticks fast as tar to her husband's shoulder. From within, an instrument is already probing the trousercloth and wanting to go home to its hole. This woman is unlike the others, who are lucky if they can find jobs as domestics, since there are no longer jobs in the factory to afford an alternative existence to generating living things. Women are forever being picked, sledgehammered, drilled, forever worked at in the mine, all mine. Or the slags are tossed where they belong, on the slag heap. To bring forth children. Ever noticed that at night it's only the wealthy that enter the commonwealth of pleasure, never the common folk? That's when the rich do their work! Let's face it, they have to work some time or other, since the poor beggars do exist, when all's said and undone, with their Mercedes and their birthright to conquest.

The undressing-gown flaps about the woman. She's dead tired. The alcohol heat inside her has subsided. What's the point of all this noise the Direktor's making now? Why has this immodestly-clad woman returned to Nature's cave of games? Dogs don't go around off the leash! She coughs when the Man smites her on the shoulders and the conscience. His worries carry the day and he crushes his wife to his heart, wraps himself about her, we won't be needing this dressing-gown any more. If only that young fellow would be off. Who makes possible a comparison of the body in its present state and its original condition as approved by the planning authorities. Patience. In good time we'll all have the pleasure of casting off our mis-shapen outer self.

The original version of this paper mill manager looked better, too, than we in our cruel inhumanity can now imagine. This woman loves. And is not loved. In this she is not unique. Fate is as inevitable as this finger I'm pointing at you now. The woman is less than nothing at all now. The young man laughs at the gratitude of the Direktor, who's had his doggie returned to him. The disrespectful youngster reads the expression of the man who considers himself his rival. But he wouldn't mind a paper mill. Instead of having to toil over law and jurisprudence. He cannot feel the equal of the people who slouch to the factory, bliss in their eyes, for they are to see the one who has given work to one and all. And what is the student thinking of? Who he's playing tennis with tomorrow.

The Herr Direktor talks and talks, the flames of speech flicker, the tongues of fire lick, he's warming up. There the womenfolk sit, simmering, wearing naughty lingerie and provoking their menfolk so that their motors rev high and they want to burn up the highway. It is not on them but on the poor that the world heaps its wrath. The poor go walking along the banks with their children, where chemicals corrode the waters. The main thing is to have a job at all. And to come home from work with a suitable industrial disease.