Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

Stop, now she has a good idea, she will offer the man, who has already rejected her offer and who preferred to consume his nourishment in the disguise of sausages and fried egg at lunchtime at home with mama, his meal in a completely new, unprecedented way. He will be so happy that he will be unable to control himself, like a spring which would be worthy of control, but meanwhile still has to wait for such a thing. And so she's going to serve his food, you won't believe it, well, then again it's not so original either: wearing exclusively the new, expensive lingerie she bought just for him at Palmer's in town. Is that not a brilliant idea for her brilliant appearance? Is that not a change for his eyes, which on the gray roads have had to see much worse things, often also stirred, beaten or whisked with blood? What else can I serve up? Her entrance, which she should have rehearsed earlier so as not to have induced this dreadful laughter in the man, which will appear here from now on at irregular intervals, would have persuaded him if he had wanted to believe his eyes. After one had listened to one's inner voice, one could spread a little of the food on one's own body, with its juices, so that it can be licked off. For no other reason. A woman doesn't dream of anything like that, she's read something like it on some enclosed instruction sheet, and ever since she believes in the ability of her body, modern, confident, financially independent as she is, to stand up to all physical demands (others have to unreel many miles of threads of fate every day for that), no matter what else one sticks in her mouth, sometimes even a clenched fist, ouch.

Then suddenly she wakes up, as, e.g., today, sleepwalker that she has been, blind as she has been, on the stairs. A little blood is coming from her vagina. What has he stuck in there this time, bigger than a slap in the face, smaller than a tractor? Perhaps the neck of the beer bottle? What was it? And her clothes have trickled down the steps right beside her, in the wrong sequence, some are missing altogether. Furthermore the door is now locked from the inside, didn't I say that before? Did I forget it? Well well, who's in the flat now, in the house which both belong to her, the ground floor, too, of course and the cellar with sauna and wine racks and skis and hobby equipment? The woman sees herself kneeling completely naked in her misfortune at her own front door, a torn bit of clothing, which has soaked up something, clutched to her breast, her eye pressed to the keyhole. Is he really inside with someone else or is my eyesight making a mistake, has it got it wrong or is it suffering from strain?, with one as young as that, has he had the nerve to do something like that with her?, and really in my own home? I've got the essentials right in front of me and cannot deny it, but neither can I talk about it. I think, the man doesn't know how far he can go with the woman. Well, not that far anyway! But he gets going nevertheless. He would, however, prefer to take a fast car. Her role will be as front-seat passenger.

The woman thinks: It simply can't be true that right now, at this very moment, he's blowing his trumpet into such a young girl, she's no more than a child, it can't be-this instrument belongs to me alone, only to me. Although I hardly know how to hold it. But with me it's certainly in good hands, in better hands, because I've already heard many famous orchestras or eaten them out of the tin and waved the baton along in person, leaning back comfortably in my easy chair, because I didn't forgo the planned dream course of studies and nevertheless completed the piano course as well and took a special exam at the end, I'd like to see another woman do that. Others again claim to have seen me pretend to play a piano concerto by Beethoven, but Alfred Brendel was lying on the silvery gleaming windshield wiper and was moving diligently and fluently in time. People lie. It cannot be that this man is already rejecting me before he's even had time to depend on me. Perhaps he doesn't know what he's got in me and that these and similar wounds he beats into me can mark someone for life. They don't draw a nice picture of me. I would like to have a nicer one. I imagine that I have kept persistent suitors at a distance, but not him, the one and only! For whom I have waited fifty years. But not him. I would never do that to him. Before he even knew how nice everything could be for both of us, he would already have turned me down? No, it can't be. Perhaps instead I'll be allowed to crawl around on the floor in front of him tomorrow. So that he finally understands that he could also enter my ever open door, from above and from the front and from both sides, they're my good sides because I've only just fallen in love with him, hark, what enters from outside? Now of all times. No one, I hope. No one must see me like this, naked, bleeding and my clothes all mucky. I hope it's not a colleague of his, from the same station, who's come without being called. Screams outside? That's right, it's me who's screaming, what, it's supposed to be me? That doesn't sound good. It sounds like someone who wanted to cut him short and instead, presumably in a rage, but why?, was thrown out onto the stairs, where it's cold. The body that goes along with it will surely keep in this cold. It was boiled down long ago and imprisoned in a special little glass house, a dear little Snow White in a glass coffin, where unfortunately everyone can see it. That and more than that, more than a coffin, that last little house also provides clothing for women. We don't need a man for that at all.

This woman here is, I think, greedy for property, for whom property, however, was always refused, so silly, and who is now on her feet again, making for the hall window, perhaps she can get into the apartment again that way. But first she would have to go outside for a moment, where everyone would stare at her. Let him come. She's not going to come now specially. He'll see. He should take her and not the other, who hasn't even finished her training as an apprentice clerical worker. The woman has that on good authority. In place of all my property, he's not going to let himself be palmed off with something else, cheaper, thinks the woman, and certainly not someone who's hardly more than a child. He'll prefer a real woman. That's her offer, she can let it stand, we could also make a smaller one, which would not stand so well. We could live in an attic room and be beside ourselves with happiness, although there wouldn't be much space: happiness because the room was holding us so tight that we couldn't fall down, I'm so in love, what happiness, that there's you and me at the same time. There's no room here at all. I've got more than one room, I've got a whole house, where we can make ourselves at home. It's bound to go wrong. Someone who is forced to give is poorer than someone who gives of their own free will. Hopefully this night will soon come to an end and I can stop this pointless work of thumping and kicking the door. His hard knees together with the track-suit bottoms-the pattern doesn't match, but the knees match him very well, once the trousers are gone. And then, and then, pointing at my body, no, not showing the door, I've done that all too often, although we haven't known each other long at all, but shyly (which is not highly regarded, everyone should immediately point to what he has, and what his speciality is, and what he has to offer. I imagine it, as demonstrated by Jesus, pointing to his bleeding heart, often with the smart accessory of a crown of thorns plus two, three drops of blood as an additional hint: Things are already going downhill!) pointing to where this stupid door is placed anyway, that is, in my house!, and where it is out of place to simply come breezing in with another woman, particularly one who's so much younger. So, now all limbs are present and correct, a body as hiding place is present, too, no longer brand new, but a bit all right. In the dark there's no problem. Doesn't he see that. I'm so in love. Likewise there's a suggestion in the eyes, but there's no clear or distinct image in the hall mirror. Why does man always only appreciate in women, how the bodies open their mouths wide and scream scream scream. I still have to cure him of that. It'll turn out all right in the end. He can't stand it. He puts his hands over his ears. But he can't strike a single right note, even one, for instance while he's eating. He's not musical. Actually he's bad-mannered and coarse. No one brought him up properly. Evidently he can't hear these screams either. Or pretends that he can't. He only sees screams if people let them drop out of their mouths in front of him, but they don't bother him, their screams. Usually people stand right in front of him and around him, but never behind him, because the country policeman always wants to keep an eye on them. Some are desperate, point at their burnt relatives in small cars and weep a bucketful. The roads are nothing but a bloodbath, a bloody brood, as if people had been born only to be ripped apart on the roads again. In the past admission was charged for that and there were no roads at all. He's tough. Everything that comes from this woman: He will ignore it, simply because he doesn't see her, if he doesn't want to see her. He's got to change a bit there, she thinks. It'll turn out all right in the end. He has seen too much, and if he hadn't seen too much-this woman would in any case have been too much for him. All her doors are wide open all the time, doesn't she notice there's a draft, she really should shut them. Does the country policeman feel something like fear creeping up on him? The man has known for a long time, what in her case is behind them, he doesn't have to break in, although he hasn't known the woman long at all. In fact he knows in his sleep the location of all the household furnishings, which are supposed to serve human beings for their convenience and which instead wind around their limbs like nooses until they've been paid off. I think they will be kept open forever, these doors, in their frame of a scratchy hair shirt that barely covers them, so that they are not right away recognized as doors on opening, the first time the bell is rung. It is as if they had never been shut, doors, yes, there's a lot I could say about that; a man is, if I have to swear on oath, a man first of all (that's not the only thing here, which I haven't said myself. Real live people once said things like that and still say them, if they're allowed to, word of honor), not one of the many there have been in his life so far, has ever expressed the wish to regard this man as a friendly, family being. Here, in this place, no one has had to leave grammar school early, because no one went there. Here, in this place no one has gone without studying to be satisfied in some other way, for which no money and no position is needed. The positions can all be invented, or here, in the magazine, there are some, too, it's always the same ones, only the people have to change. With illustrations and photographs. In any case, here every woman has tried after a while to get rid of the man again as soon as possible, just as one is always relieved, when the relatives go at last and have let one off this time even though they urgently needed a new sweater. One knows them all too well. They are like oneself, only different.