Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

Gabi is gone, like a part, almost a whole horn of this mountain. Nature adapts to human beings, or is it the other way round? Just try some time to meet a mountain, after all, the tourist brochure explicitly demands it of you! The mountain won't avoid you, but the human being, in this case you, certainly will. Or the mountain's removed from the playing field, where it was only tolerated on the sidelines, in smart, glittering wrapping, as a cheerleader and everyone jumps for joy at it and at its commands, when the team underground in the display mine wants a boost. Someone squeezes his button accordion and there's an incredibly loud bang. Every girl with a boyfriend among the players is already happy in advance, we simply must win, we must! And we, every one of us friends of the mountains, shake arms and legs, to be harvested as ripe fruit by our charges, when the time comes. The mountain's coming. We can do nothing at all about that, except conduct a conversation with it.

What fashionable shoes Gabi bought herself only last week from the birthday money she got in advance! She would even want to be buried in them, even if the layers of the soles have turned out a bit heavy, even clumsy-looking compared with the remainder that is built up on top of them. The mountain, full of understanding, thinks so too. The layers down below have become too heavy for it, and what does it throw off? It throws off its upper story, which is not to blame in the least. A very independent girl, our Gabi, sensible. The new shoes are gone, they still haven't turned up, perhaps because they're too heavy. She also has a boyfriend, who is now at a loss. Although she's only sixteen, with a discount, because she won't be for another two months, she's already had a steady boyfriend for a long time, he's very nice, I think, perhaps a little boring and pedantic for his age. At least he's not one of the inconsiderate, insolent kind, equipped with fashionable sunglasses and ugly haircuts and hooded sweatshirts. He has drawn up a life plan and is sticking to it, whereas the others only have a goal in life, with nothing in between as to how they want to achieve it: No, I'm being unjust, the goal is the fast car and the beautiful house and several beautiful women. Of all the other treasures one only needs one of each, oh if one only had it already!, apart from money, there can never be enough of that. So I'm slandering young people, because I'm no longer one of them myself, and everybody remarks on it. But I'm generalizing again, people are incredibly different, and life is an altogether far too dirty business, particularly if, like me, one doesn't want to get one's hands dirty. Money, that really interests us, but work, no. You will permit me to look at the carefully devised map of New York, as I write this. I would like to go there and as fast as possible! This lad believes in himself, it's only natural, that's he's got something to offer and looks attractive, both of which are quite true, only he doesn't dress well, nor does he come from far away, where for instance Saint Nicholas is kept in store until his big appearance, but he ranks, even among the youth of the village, among the also rans: not an outsider, but someone, nevertheless, on whom one would not place any money, even if one stood to win a lot. Let's wait and see, it'll look different in a couple of years, then he'll be earning a good wage and be able to afford a bit. After all he's getting a good training, even as shampoo and water are running fraternally down the sides of his car. Gabi will then have to run through questions for his exam. One would virtually have to drive across the border to find another little place where there was a similarly ambitious young man. And she lets him get away, our Gabi, when she doesn't even have to keep the door shut herself, she doesn't have to do anything with her friend, just be there, and yet last night she nevertheless didn't turn up at his house, although yesterday as every day he could have been a good influence on her. He is, I can't repeat it often enough, a quiet, hard-working lad, and has never believed what was said about his girlfriend, all made up by her friends, it's said. It can't be true, there, behind the lipstick, inside there's supposed to have dwelt an insatiable appetite, for what, she had everything, didn't she? Feet are made for walking, and the younger they are, the further they'll go, what's the point of this unequivocal remark, if one's still unable to move? It's as if one's nailed to the spot. If we had been apart for any length of time, then it would have been something else, says the schoolboy with his own car. If I'm sitting next to her, I'm always good to her. The room in Gabi's parents' house, that too, I can only repeat: really pretty, cuddly toys, magazine photos without warmth and pity, that this pretty girl nevertheless was unable to get enough points for the amateur model competition. She sent in the photo quite in vain, our Gabi, a narrow miss is still a miss. But now it really does come in useful, the nice photo, which a photographer, who really knows what he's doing, took of her. Because her mother and her boyfriend don't, not exactly, carve it into the wood, but they stick it to the power poles between the house and the next village, and they go even further. Over here, closer, a little bit closer, yes, in the house, you see the room of an innocent girl. Her father already moved out years ago and is living with another woman, three villages on, towards Mariazell. Now that's a woman!, I'm telling you, she's a home-loving creature, gentle, yet as if from another planet, on which people are put together differently from here, exotic and unforced, because one can't force her to do anything; parts of the hands of the second wife of Gabi's father have developed almost into flippers. The fingers have grown together as far as the penultimate digit, it looks strange, but occurs frequently in this district, in which even the valleys have it off with each other, because there are so few of them and they find nothing else to play with except for their own boulders, their own debris, their own bodies. The mountains play with themselves, and sometimes they play with people, if they can catch some. No, don't look the other way! I'd like to continue with my descriptions, but this time something quite different, not far away. I, a pole-vaulter, but one who doesn't like to increase her pace, have for many years been cautiously courting this district with all too many words, and what does it give me in return? My characters evidently want me to fail myself, yet I always fail because of them. Let's see if this time a whole lot come at once to finish me off! What do I see? This district only gives up pictures of itself, pictures which I've had to have made myself. But I'm going to stop soon.

Far, on the other hand, far away from me, something soft, like food, if you insist, I can have it prepared for you immediately: Whatever's lying there, it's not a boat, but we wouldn't need a boat now either, perhaps a shopping cart. The morning smiles, it hasn't read the newspaper yet. The mother, a cigarette bobbing nervously in the corner of her mouth, talks on the phone to her daughter's boyfriend. Both display growing disquiet: If it were really true, that Gabi has gone away, which is what it looks like? Consider the good mood, which disappeared the moment that these two people almost simultaneously picked up the phone, fortunately not the same one, but they wanted to talk to one another. What good does it do? Talking is like walking up and down on a small island. It's soon over again, because one has noticed that one can't get anywhere by talking. So does technology intervene ever more frequently in life, we didn't teach it to be constantly ringing as the signal for a good conversation, which we value more this time, because it costs something, indeed technology intervenes in the shape of Elise or Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, yes, I've heard them myself. And it spits us out again, pale and shocked, ready for the presentiment of a telephone bill. It's printed here: It must be right, we are dust! Except dust cannot rise up against such an injustice, that we are supposed to pay just for talking. Unless one were to blow into it with one's own breath, which we wanted to use for this talking, until we all turn blue, our consciousness expands and we see things that aren't there. The dust is in our bad books, it's fled: under the furniture, the carpet, our feet. Who has given technology the right to spread news, which is then perhaps not even true? Communications technology has done it, this revolution, somebody had to do it. It won't be anything important. Again it won't be this telephone with Gabi on the other end because she had a breakdown; with whom she had the breakdown, that's secondary for now, the main thing is, she's still alive. Come home, Gabi, all is forgiven, forwards and no forgetting, and how can we forget something that we don't even know yet. Perhaps Gabi spent the night with a girlfriend, which one could it be? She never told much at home, probably there wasn't much worth telling about, not a trace of problems. Let's ask her former schoolmates, one is by chance, no, not by chance, employed by the same company, likewise in the office. Commercial training, that lends a feeling of dignity in the face of a society in which only property counts, then at least one knows who has it and why, and so one also learns exactly why one doesn't have any oneself. The uninformed have it much easier in this respect than the already affluent. The uninformed, whom one can also call the unscrupulous, they don't back the banks, they get on the backs of people and suck them dry. Weil thanks, it wasn't much, but now I need another one, one for the road, I hardly felt the last one, it was just enough, that's all. The sick can even threaten the sick, and people like to say this society is sick. No idea what's wrong with it. Usually not much. Why pay interest? It's possible to get by without it. It's also possible to get by without the nominal wage or whatever it's called, which one has before some people or other deduct such and such an amount from what one never had in the first place. If one had something, it's bound to have been less afterwards, but less is sometimes more! No, not this time. Until suddenly the mountain comes down to hit us, and to check whether it can be true, that it got twelve head of people, as punishment, because it's been completely hollowed out inside. Because of the mine, which did not fertilize (but nevertheless fed many), but rather did the opposite: This mountain, thanks to the mining, which undermined it (see job description!), this mountain is hereby wound up. The mountain is closed. No, you cannot take your animals with you, they stay, yes, the pigs, too. The mountain has to eat something after all. He doesn't forever want to be the loser and is now bringing in his harvest, and taking it down to the valley, where it was never allowed to go before, although the inn is there. You'd be better off getting yourself to safety as quickly as possible, the mountain is heavier than you are! Take only the essentials, your savings bank book, check card, documents, cash and the photos of relatives, so that one knows what they used to look like, since now one has to move in with them, be thrown together with them in a heap, a pack, and get along, which one's never done before. And that for so long, until the relatives, after life's long journey, which we have to squash into three weeks, will have aged prematurely and look almost unrecognizable. The boat is full, no, not this one. There's no one in it. Plants don't need to absorb any complex chemical combinations such as vitamins or amino acids, which are a must for human beings. In human beings the chemistry has to be right, otherwise they can't produce the glue for their bodies, to enrich their bases and to attract sexual partners with interferon, I mean, with pheromones. By and large people simply want to be rich, they don't want anything more than that. Women, on the other hand, want love, for that more than a dozen chemical elements are required, which then don't work, because one has swallowed too much of all of them. Not even a simple cake could succeed like that. Women in general, they often want to live in a monoculture, that is always allow just one person to cultivate their little field, and so it's always only the same thing that grows there, and that's never enough for the chosen one. Or he doesn't want it, he feels cramped, he wants something else from someone else. Oh all right, here you have the other thing, luckily we had it in stock. On the other hand, there's also the woman. Isn't she as pretty as a picture? Yes. Impossible to touch her. One particular person would be enough for her, but she can't find him. She thinks this one good and this one, but he doesn't want to. We women waver still, uncertain, which one we should pick. I'll let out the secret: It absolutely must be Mr. Right. No one else will do. That can't be so hard, in the lottery you have to get six right at once. And not one number less in the weekly last judgement, the draw on Saturday afternoon. With people the choice is infinitely large, there must be someone there for you, surely? Well, just take him, it doesn't matter, does it, if you become unhappy one way or another, your kind isn't dying out, believe you me. The loins of the foreigners from the Balkans not least will make sure of that, says the former Federal Chancellor. Let's hope he's right. It can't be healthy to have thousands of possibilities, and only one of them is suitable. The train has departed, no one tells us that over the loudspeaker, a scarf pressed to their face, otherwise one would recognize it and its voice, which in reality, however, belong to a certain Mrs. Chris Lohner, present a thousand times over, one can hear her in all the railway stations of the land. But who hears us? Other objections? Good, I object: A fresh plot contains everything, all the nutrients, in sufficient amounts, and if there's a house on it, that's a whole lot more. Very desirable. Before it slips into the hole. It's only a question of time and company-family planning, whether a new mine is opened up right next door, a new hole is dug, oh no, too near the surface once again, we're in any case already reproaching ourselves for having exposed the people here to such danger, so that we could almost bite their feet from below. There are also voices now, a little a cappella chorus, which says, the terminal moraine, a peripheral disturbance, has caved in and caused the catastrophe, which was in the making for millions of years, even before a drill came anywhere near the mountain. Yes, miners, time also has its questions, although it already knows all the answers. It knows what it means when something goes simultaneously forwards and backwards, because time is nailed down in space and instead people always have to travel around so much. It knows what it means when, the moraine misbehaving, huge quantities of water and mud flow into the underground workings of a mine and crush the people there like flies in amber, unfortunately without making them less perishable. The process is a different one. Amber is like a tin can. Mud is, well, just dirt, not made for people to stay in, unless voluntarily, nose up, to check if there's a little air present, which has usually clothed one so wonderfully well.