Elfriede Jelinek - Lust

Barely is the woman on her own but she goes out for a walk, escorted by money, securities and depreciation, fine company. Like a shadow she glides through the multitude who make the paper, the sea of paper across which she sails her ship of life, the sea that would bury us all alive, given half a chance! For over there the masses of unemployed fools are lying in wait till someone finally follows their trail. And we? Do we want to fly on, ever on? Smart alecks that we are, first we'll have to climb higher up, to them that shift their arses shall be given.

The woman puts her multi-purpose hand before her eyes. Soon the Man and the child will have to be covered in food again, and what lies ahead tonight? The Man, compact, loaded, fresh from the factory. Waiting to unload. He's been fermenting in his bottle and he wants to uncork the fizz. Tonight, that's right, we almost forgot, how could we, tonight is the legally appointed time for the transaction. And the woman waits with her absorbent cloth to soak up everything the Man has produced during the day. And the rest vanish into the shadows to bury their hopes alive.

The landscape is pretty big, you have to admit. It is a loose fetter upon our fate, which lies shrouded in mist. Two lads out on mopeds promptly come a cropper in the snow. They tumble and go flying. The woman laughs out suddenly. Just for once she would like to go forward decisively. Today her husband showed what he could do in her body, as if there were two of him. Just wait a little. Till evening. When you enter into the circuitry. Now the Man has been drawn off to his office by a steel counterweight about the size of a telephone. Setting the pebbles flying, he has made it to the armchair behind his desk, from where he controls the fates of others, and to a skiing event on a screen. He loves sport as well. The boy got it from his father. People would simply lie abed patiently and undemanding, if it weren't that the TV screen is full of movement, as are their own feet and hearts at times as well. When the Man speeds along the country road the hairs are flattened on the skin, that's how fast he drives. When he calls for someone, he roars as someone wearing traditional costume would roar. Soon an appearance by the choir will be called for.

On Sunday, as an example of the convivial social life in an army, they go to church. In their coops they have books and memorials of their own enslavement. Nor are the doctor and chemist averse to paying a call on the Pope and the Mother of God. They envy no man his labour. The well-groomed custodians of health, fine fruits of further education, they go to the pub to sit awhile and be jolly. The doctor envies the chemist his shop, the profits of which we wouldn't say no to. The chemist gets people straight from the doctor, with all their weight and blood pressure problems. Lavishly he distributes his preparations amongst the unemployed of the area, so that they will be of good cheer again and will sit outside their houses contentedly twiddling their thumbs. Their wives have provided something to eat, and offer them tasty fare in other ways as well. They won't be deleted from the menu. So the men shall lack for nothing, for men there must be something, the foremen of nothing. Some leave, though a moment ago they seemed at home with us.

Like the woman who works at the bank and is obliged to wear a different dress every day, the Frau Direktor is under certain constraints, and several times a day she draws the freshly cleaned net curtains between herself and the longings of the village women. She would be safer dwelling there than in her own living room. The Direktor talks to the boy. Who jumps and stomps so that he can visit a friend later on. The boy is not entitled to choose his friends to his own satisfaction. The other lads' fathers eat HIS bread! The child is a leader on this earth, steering the others as he steers his toy cars. Mother plays a piano accompaniment to everything, and out there the people rest their weary and discouraged heads on each other's breasts. Their eyes were too big for their bellies. They bought everything they saw. And now the village feasts its eyes when they auction off the houses, which stand all too cheekily on the bare earth. There they stand, the would-be people queueing at the bank, where blessed children in white blouses play with other people's money, to pay in their fates and the fates of their homes, pouring the trickle out of their wage packets into the mighty torrent of interest. The bank manager knows the lie of the land, and he's amazed at the lies people tell so they can keep the houses they built themselves. How they have loved their possessions! And still, so close to home, he has to take everything' from them. In his mind's eye the bank manager has fore-suffered all when, no monster he, he looks in at their windows. In this wintry place the poor squabble among themselves. The bolt guns and the hunting rifles crack. Nooses twine about the neck of life. The savings banks are happy as clams, simply messing about with money. For the farming cooperatives it's one long village fete, they don't want to know about the individual, they simply pile high their poisonous cheeses and rotten dairy products on him. And from the very humblest they still take the apple of his eye, and even his nuts as well. Till one day he goes crazy. Flips. Flaps above the nest where he has butchered his dead brood, screaming. How could he have hoped to cope? And in the tabloid papers, for a schilling or so from our pigeon-chested purse, you can read all about the lives of people visited by horror.

What you see from the window is pretty fine: that comely, shapely, strapping lass, Nature. The Man, still the bureaucrat even in his desire, is pursuing a human need, which is not to be confused with the unpleasant need for another human being! There lies the Direktor, like a landscape. But restless. He has smeared on his cheese spread, and what is it he sees in the face of his wife? The human visage of his dictatorship? It is as if the woman had been erased, wiped out, away, wearing her new naughty lingerie. At his request. As if the spatial contours of her life had been redefined. Money plays games with people. From time to time, in his lucid moments, a fit of remorse overcomes the Direktor, and he buries his great big face in the woman's apron. But then it's back to the bathroom to bang her head against the dirty tub again and see if the path that's been cleared goes all the way to her dark doorway. Behind which, there she is, sitting in her own lap, dandled, fondled, spoilt, waiting to have her pages turned to the very last. And how indeed are the unemployed to live in this world if there are not cheap novels to supply examples?

The Direktor, who speaks softly to his staff and has songs sung to him in return, prefers using his tackle on the woman by day, in the bright light. He likes watching his own health increasing. The woman begs him at least to be a little cautious with the child around; the feral creature might leap forth unexpectedly from his corner of the ring at the very last moment. Bang on schedule, the fruit of her womb puts in an appearance, idly looks on for a while as his parents sample the goodies (clutching their plates at the spotless and heavily laden buffet) and vanishes once again, to plague the neighbourhood kids who must grow up without artistic, artificial paradises with his sporting tackle and sporting talk. The boy has ripened in the sun like fruit. Father, depending on your point of view, takes a healthy head-dive into Mother. Words cannot describe it, we want action not words, we have to pay at the entrance to the convenience, and do our duty, which rushes constantly like water.

The little houses have to go to sleep now, but in the big ones there is still life, the current is flowing between the sexes, and, speaking of current, the water flow brings their bodies together. Now we are entirely private. Nor need we be embarrassed in public. And, once the lovers have found each other, they relax and sup at the precious drops that bubble from their gold-labelled bottles. And are at home. Resting in each other once their privates have been excited. They are one. The one and only. Delivered from the dust. And, while all about the poor are dying, the superior classes renew their unspoken rights to each other with every day that comes, and they come too. They have saved up their powers in their piggy banks and in their trousers and hearts. So that they can take a good strong bite from the peach that bloomed so beautiful but a short, short while ago. It is all theirs. Even sleep flatters them, the rapid eye movements of greed cannot be seen behind their closed lids. They must never go unobserved by their loved ones, so every day they sally forth anew, to harvest new finery and fortune, and come staggering home with all they've taken from the staggeringly rich – to be transformed, renewed, daily freshened and restored for the dear soul that they are, have and want to keep. But the weak live together. For they are what we do not want to be. And to crown it all, they imagine they wouldn't want to live anywhere else. They know what they like. Of course, they're not offered the option of liking anything else. And they're woken early, too. Work takes toll of not a single one too many. They are sufficient unto themselves. But we want more! Action! Let there be light – for us! We shall walk forth in the light, and even if it were the light of our own pocket torches, just enough to light the way for two, two members of the flock of the refined: we, we must be the ones! Let there be us!