Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

The country policeman knows the word "instrument" from the local brass band, which practices in the fire station. That's why I'm completely justified in using it here, otherwise things wouldn't have worked out so well, otherwise I would have had to make do with something like wood and chopping or with branch and sawing off what you're sitting on. Or I would have had to write down an obscenity, which I would not have liked to do. Baron Prinzhorn of the FPO, I'm telling you: The Personal columns are constantly playing with these words, which mean something different from what they say, why don't they just come out and say it? Why don't you just say what you want, Mr. Prinzhorn? Take possession of the whole country and fuck it?, well, the recipient of these words is a kind of child, fortunately a mature one, who doesn't know how big are the building blocks he has kicked out from the toy quarry, which he got as a present for his birthday. Even someone wrapped up in himself can say it to the deceased or the disappeared, and once again no one will listen to anyone else. I could carry on for days, keeping quiet among these people, thinks the woman, about as long as the period of his faulty development originally lasted, which probably already built up in his childhood, as a teach yourself psychology book I bought for 340 schillings in the bookshop and already consulted in the metro tells me, OK, I'm making an estimate: It'll last perhaps until he's seventy, after that the hormones slowly go somewhere else, or run out or don't run at all anymore. He knows no mercy, not with anyone, this man. He is a disciple of himself so to speak, who only rarely has grounds to break out in justified rejoicing with such exclamations as: I am the undisputed master over your sensitive organs, which at this point I would describe as quite acceptable but nothing special. That goes for both of you, Gerti and Gabi, and I've got lots of opportunities to make comparisons and many other opportunities, too, more than I can make use of. It's all no use, it always ends in the grave. As with my mama. It ends up as an object, more or less as I feel my own body, which can break out under me at any time if I don't open my flies fast enough. That's why it works so well. Because I just manage to control it, it's a worthy opponent, my body, even for myself it is unpredictable. I prefer to look for a solid foundation for it, before anything dreadful happens and my statue topples over, which I have blasted away from myself. So that I cannot be sucked in by the emptiness around me. I always have to run away, but property could just hold me. That's the best thing to stop me falling into this pit full of snakes, which are baled out in buckets, and they're all hanging out over the sides. That is the pitfall, of which I dream so often. No idea who dug it for me. Since I dream about it-was it me perhaps? Perhaps the dead snakes embody a superabundance of property, which has been confiscated. But there's a hole in the bucket, all the muck is running out at the bottom, and only the snakes are left and show me paradise, but I'm supposed to plant the fruit trees that go with it myself, if you please. Or I find a person who already has some: One can never have enough property because we're always striving after what's most difficult, that's man's fate, and best of all we would like to leave the rest of them to their fate, to take from them what they've got as well. So, women, I can play on you like no one else. I lay down everything-when, where and how often. I'm the best you've ever had, and there'll never be another either. I'm very conscious of my qualities, I always say: I am the sorcerer not the apprentice.

Now the country policeman has to go back to Gabi again, who is sometimes bothered by the lack of desires of a child who already has everything. But today it has to be me, thinks the man. What am I to her? Perhaps the rascal with the dimples in his flesh, which she wants to bite into all the time. And she's allowed to move around all by herself under me. I would even like to watch her doing it. So. Now we're over and done with it again. Gabi has to go, her mother's always waiting in the evening with the meal. For sure. That's OK. She's already leaving, Gerti. Look, she's already going out the door and grudges you every glance, but then in a little while, you can have my little guy again, the carefree one, he's already puckering his lips and whistling something for you, although he's really tired, by God. Don't worry, he'll be waiting for you again, but not now, perhaps not even today. Please be patient. I'm not so young anymore. OK, then today. Later. I promise. Possibly much later. Worries and annoyance are things the fellow avoids, whom I have allowed to grow, as you seem to believe, especially for you, so he avoids worries and annoyance like a whole political party, he confided that in me earlier, before getting a good spit at Gabi, the bad boy. Oh yes. So for that you congratulate Gabi. For going. Don't be so mean. And you don't congratulate me? When I've been working most of the time! Is that not worth anything? Have you found your voice again? And that's what you needed it for, for you to scream at me like that? Just you wait! I'm coming right back and then I'm going to give you a good knocking with the carpet beater. I put it next to mine earlier, your voice, you voluntarily turned it over to me, I didn't need mine either. Exactly. I had it, your voice, you gave it to me, there was no need for you to scream for it so much outside. What, I was moaning, too? Why should I have been moaning? I can well believe you, when you say that this is your house, I've now heard it at least five hundred and seventy times. I do know it. The house wouldn't have anything to say if it could speak. It would appeal more to me. And it wouldn't make so much noise if it did.

Well, if you really still want it now, then you want it, there's nothing to be done. Although I explicitly said later, but you don't listen, do you, you don't want to listen, you want to feel: Before I admit that I'm beaten, I'll give you another good scrubbing. The only thing we haven't had a go at yet is your cellar. Your cellar vault, which you proclaimed was your greatest treasure. Exercise never does any harm, that's why I went for a drive after all. I'm going to teach you some patience, because soon I'm going to let you wait again for hours, for days. Just because I happened to meet Gabi on the way, perhaps she was even waiting for me, I can't help that. So. Suddenly she was standing beside my car as if she'd fallen from the sky, once again, I didn't hear her coming, she was standing there, as she does nearly every morning, when she makes a show of going to the bus stop and then disappears with me, and she absolutely wanted me to give her a lift. And I was there. I can't help that. It was the wrong time. It wasn't her turn. What can I do. Oh yes, I know what you like best. Take a look at what I've got between my fingers, it's all wet, apart from some pain, about which I can only be surprised that it's there because I can hardly feel anything. I'm always astonished: What you've got down there, as with a young girl, is still surrounded by a very thick bush. The bush is very cute and exciting, even if not to me, but it has one advantage. That's where I would most like to hide, if I could. I imagine hidden behind it is something intricate, something bigger, tremendous, a building site, a not properly cemented hole, which I'm afraid of falling into. I'm always glad when I come out again, after I've let the hole brush against my lips. If it wasn't for the house, which closes over me like two legs every time, and I'm safe. In the end it wasn't worth getting undressed. I look at you: You were already undressed before. Your risk. Why are you always tearing off your clothes as soon as you see me? And something else, are you trying to belittle me with your pet name? It would be so much simpler if you just kept your clothes on. Nothing to be done. You'll have to keep your paws apart in front of your sex if you want me to drop in for a visit. Perhaps I'll get back to you later. I'm not looking you in the face now, I'm looking a bit further down. I'm telling you half the truth now: It's your house, for which I'm paying this full price, but I wouldn't go any higher. Well, maybe a bit higher. Pair skating with me doesn't work, even with someone who was more frivolous than you. It doesn't work. I'm too fast for you, every day I have to cope in the traffic, which is itself fast. It would also happen without me. I am too often somewhere else. I want to get away from myself before I'm even properly with myself. How I would also like to be away from you, but I don't dare stay away altogether. Your house can't run after me. Only you can do that. Not until I'm dead will my organs not be put to use in you women. Then you'll finally be quiet. Then I'll be quiet too. It frightens me that right away your hands have to start fumbling over me, just when I would like to live cosily inside me and enjoy myself. You are at once rash and idle. Looking alone is no longer enough for you, since you've discovered your bodies. Now you want to confiscate other bodies as well. No idea who put that in your heads. You only are because I am. Aha. As if you were women doctors, doctoring around on me, donating fluids to me, but which always undermine me, and instead draw a kind of basic foodstuff from me, which you use for something or other, which you brew up against me in your pots and pans. I dissolve in your hands as you desire, but no, not really desire, you want to have me quickly to hand again the next time, but, imagine, that's exactly what I want. That's what I want myself! I want to be away. You only want to be carried away. But I really want to be away! I have a certain attachment to this unpleasant situation I always end up in: to be pinched, patted and finally torn in little pieces by your hands and then swept up. As a result, curiously, my appetite grows to its full size and promptly returns to you. As if I immediately wanted to be eradicated. Disappearance, beautiful compulsion to disappear! You're always just screaming: here, here again and again! Present! As a woman! Present purely as woman! This place is occupied! By me! Yours by your sisters! Mine by me! Take a look at your stomach, Gerti, you're not going to get rid of it anymore by running, although running together would be not bad, we could be together, but wouldn't have to be. We would keep a minimum distance from one another. Your figure has problems with its figure. Look at yourself and your hips, they shouldn't be there, they should be closer to you, they could easily come two inches closer together. So Gerti, do you want nothing at all, or do you at least want the finger, which really should be more than enough? You can say it out loud. Tell me loud and clear if that's what you want! Quiet. Now I'm talking. And I'm talking as a woman. I would like to say something, too, for once, given that I've got to write the whole time, because saying the unsayable is part of it, part of all the opening eyes wide and licking lips and throwing back hair, with which we women want to tell men something, always the same thing, and they already know it. Because they're too tired to guess what we want and it would be too expensive for them to pay someone else to find out. We women always want the same thing. And then we want it once again.