Elfriede Jelinek - Lust

The woman is waiting for her husband to set off for the office as per usual. The man is waiting for a chance to get into this wife's crevice again before he puts her on ice for the day. The poor workers have long since been carried off on the avalanche, bags slung over their shoulders. Rest a while! The bus has gone. The child has been transported away; joy-boy will be feeling superior to his fellow-pupils. His life lines have been neatly disentangled, probably by fate, the boy's constant and skilful companion on the slopes, together with whom he's already visited numerous foreign cities. Things have been going well with him ever since he realized his cradle was in a well-to-do house. The other pupils indulge themselves with icecream, which they spin out ad infinitum. Light shines upon this mighty house. It is as if the light were waxing and waning on the waxed parquet floor and polished wainscot. Today the sun's out, just for once: so say I. The woman wants to be off to town, to a boutique, as soon as she can, in order to look nice. Why can the young man not be satisfied with her as his daylong sport? Why must he be off skiing the slopes where they're at their most virgin? Why does he always have to be the one who got there first? Except for last year, when another young fellow with all his male and female friends were having a ball there already. All the woman can think of is what she's going to wear in order to get further ahead, faster, higher. As far as her feelings will carry her. Now let's pack them away again. Her husband cannot assuage her; off he goes now to the factory. To be fair (and, after all, he's one of those who run the fair), he is about 80% responsible for her fortune and happiness. He veritably steeps her in it. Why not call in on us some time when you're in pensive mood after your travels and want to sow a whirlwind in the eyes of a fellow-being? Just come on in and ask us to help ourselves and enjoy you!

To have a well-padded vantage point, a box of her own from which to command a royal view of time (it's only the poorest of the poor who can't afford a carpet under their feet), the woman leaves the house, having first painted herself and her fingernails. How wonderfully vast Nature is. All the poor see of it is the speed limit signs, which they disregard before being recycled in our fodder along with their unruly cars. This woman's vagina has been pumped full of her husband's fermenting product. Her thighs under the panty-hose are sticky with the Direktor's daily slime. He likes to show that he could duplicate himself if he wanted, even if there's not much ink in his machine any more. He'd have no problem at all toasting some other, much younger crumpet under in awe at the face revealed thereon. What a difference between a hundred and a thousand note! A whole world of difference, enough to bridge the abyss between. The woman takes the highway's serpentine bends in her car. She wants to hear that young man say yes today, having heard him yesterday. As soon as possible. She will appear amongst us, at the foot of the inaccessible stairs. Rifts yawn wide in the mountains, but we remain below, too clumsy to handle the wildness in us. The young man will stare a wide open unlocked stare when he sees the new hairdo. It is much the same for people in these parts, caught between the creatures they care for (hundreds of dead trout in the stream because the sluices were opened too suddenly) and the work they do but don't care for. Their work is the careless gift of a factory manager. That is how we describe the progeny of the mind.

They romp and ruckus on the slopes. The lifts haul their watertight load, sealed in a plastic container, with Nature's invitation dangling, up across the frozen-stiff landscape boarded up with skis. The land seems terrible under the skis, whereas at one time it was manifold or simply folded. Snow machines retch out in front of raucous day trippers from Vienna. Every one of them thinks he's an ace on skis. Perhaps we'll stay here a while longer. Already we've been on this earth for aeons, to change it, and now it is coming to an end beneath us. Skiers only toy with the landscape, don't worry, they're not too wary: they wander upon the face of the earth, with their enormous private parts, and stamp out every fire. City folk go up to the top for sheer love of speed, and sheer speed sends them down to the bottom again. Oh, if only they could get out of themselves again! They would fly about under the sun, honest masters, showing what they have made of themselves and of others. They have commingled with others and brought forth further sporty types. Their children will take skiing lessons with their parents' piggy sutures still before their eyes. Sport, that painful nothingness – why should you of all people go without it, if you don't have much else to lose? There's no furniture here, but the jump-suits, goodies and splendour plus the absurd and ill-matched headgear will bear all before them, and, if not, just jump over the wee mountain! Behind it there's sure to be another one that will swallow up everything that fits into us. The Alps have long since started feeling the ravages of modishness, murder and mores: in the evenings we all roll about laughing at some clown with a concertina going through his capers for us. All about, the villagers are asleep. For them the mountains do not part when they drive to work in the morning. On their bikes, or belted tight in their tiny cars, they jolt over every bump till at last they open the gate to the employees' enclosure. Some of them make it to the top, true, if they have well-steeled footwear and nerves. Quiet, please. When all's said and done, people are at work here with their animals, each in a separate cage.

And not one stretches out a hand for one of these skiing creatures making craters in the ground to stop them. Not one is exempt from the laws of the earth, which decree that heavy things must go down, they can test it for themselves. Some of them are wearing sunglasses. They look at each other. They think of gobbling each other up. Sex is planned for the evening a la nouvelle cuisine: not much, but choice. Redly the weather steams in its basin, our forks clink, the golden heads bow down, the mountains are motionless. Thousands of offensive persons come flinging down the slopes. And a few hundred superfluous persons are busy making paper, a commodity that is devalued even faster than people are worn out by sport. Still want to read on? And breed on? No? See.

The woman ventures into town, where her husband used to park his car and inhale hot water at the sauna.

Never mind. She hangs upon his balls and cliffs, aslant his genital stairway, his very own wife, beside whom he is found by Sleep when Sleep goes looking for him. This woman is now his luxury, he pours into her till she overfloweth. The man is there to have a small matter about his person put right, and the women, in order to renovate him, have dressed in the most risque of ways! Red lights burn at the windows of the establishment, but it is no longer as much frequented as it used to be. To snatch a breathing space, the men tend more frequently to catch the figgy snatches of their wives in their fists and squeeze them out. First they tie their pets' feet so that they'll find them again under a new dress. Now they're on intimate terms with their wives, without considering them their equals. The sun shines on the path. The trees stand there. They too are done for now.

The disease, gentlemen, is paving your way to the familiar sex, from which you always used to want to flee. Now trusting your partner is a matter of life or death. The only alternative is a visit to the specialist. To think that back then every route seemed open, and you, dear traveller, would take any one of them, happy in your immortality, and play all the tunes on your mouth organ. To think how glum you tended to be if your instrument was blunt! Now, watching, we twirl each other round on the spine and, steaming with greed, serve ourselves up in our own juice. That terrible regular visitant of sex eats at home now. He likes home cooking best. At last the man and the thing that dangles and dongs before him are one. In the old days he used to keep his wife well clipped as if she were a hedge, now he's the one who's overgrown. A bagatelle. Sooner or later, every man has to learn the knack of ramming his female partner's asshole in peace and tranquillity, for there is no other partner, this woman is quite enough. The men have plumped out now, refleshing and refreshing their senses, which are close to hand. In the old days, every woman used to be served up as the man wished. Now he empties himself into his own, no problem, she'll wash up after him. The terrible visitant revels in her bed-warm cheeks. He himself is concentrating on keeping up the erection out at the end of his pelvis, where it bubbles and froths. He's forever afraid of being off form and finding some amiable stranger taking his place. Ah, lust! How one would like to make it the cornerstone of self! But I wouldn't go ahead and build on it if I were you.