Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

There go a middle-aged woman, who once gave birth to Gabi, a cheerful teenager, that's exactly what she is, like all the others, a young person, who preferred to be with someone else, no matter who it was, rather than alone, and a young lad, who at the moment is still going to a technical secondary school, hopping from electricity pole to electricity pole (when they've gone rotten, they're butchered and new ones are planted, then new men, whom the country still needed, clamber about on them like squirrels, a Mr. Janisch Jr. among them, he too already the father of a schoolboy, young as he is. A final squirt of milk, milked from a jolly evening in the dance hall, and after that: intermission, then close-down and curtains), and both together are sticking up notices that show Gabi's face, a black-and-white photocopy of an original star photo, yes indeed, that's what it was selected for, but was unfortunately returned by the addressee, and now everyone can read it whether he wants to or not. These photos can't be avoided. It's afternoon, the sun is already decently warm. The thumbtacks bore zealously into the tarred wood of the poles, which bear it patiently and with heads held high. At last they are important, not just for light and telephone calls (both essential to a tragedy! In a good light something even worse could happen, and one would see everything quite clearly and certainly immediately pass it on. So we've got everything here, when on TV a man would like to make up with his girlfriend and both of them cry cry cry so loudly that there's almost not enough power for it). Gabi's mother and her boyfriend knew right away: Something's not right. Our Gabi doesn't simply disappear like that, without telling us where she wanted to disappear to. Life is a crime story, it's unbelievable, all the things that can happen to a person, mostly it's little things, but that's just what one has to have an eye for, because at a second glance people are completely uninteresting. Well, not to me, I live off their diversity, which makes for more work, however. I'm not allowed to declare anyone boring, and if I do, then I have to explain at length why. And why do these two, mother and future son-in-law, have such a bad feeling? Already early this morning. They walk along the route which Gabi usually takes, whether by bus or on her bicycle, even stop car drivers and ask them. The pair of them will end up going on foot to the county town, where the building firm, Gabi's master, is spread out under the vault of heaven on the greenfield sites, which border all our towns, even the least among them, yes, those above all! Only there do the customer and employee parking lots cost nothing, because the ground didn't cost anything anyway. Why stand there at all? Dusty road, paper-strewn hard shoulder for dead animals, I don't want to write everything down again and again, that happens here, but I must. From time to time a wreck is towed away. Injured people have to be cleared away, too, they can't simply be left lying there. They leave their blood there, part of it, and the modesty of their possessions, the half-open handbag, keys, well-worn purse, little lucky charm attached, a little teddy bear, at least it's still alive. Yes, when one drives a car, one has to rely on always looking, straight ahead, but also look in the rear-view mirror from time to time, please don't forget!, and one should trust one's eyes, when a truck comes round the bend doing sixty, it means it!, when it comes up from behind, big as ten water buffalo, and takes one on its horns before one has even heard it snorting. The country roads here are blood roads, and the landscape is the circulation. That's why we're always going round in circles and not getting anywhere, because we couldn't read the map.

Now the flowers go on flowering. No one takes them for a walk without killing them first. But dear hands are already waiting and are held open, perhaps there's a new piece of jewelry as a bonus. She never said anything to me about problems, says Gabi's boyfriend to the Country Police, who would rather follow new paths in traffic surveillance than implacably pursue people on their old well-beaten trails right into their most intimate spheres. One has to catch them in good time, before they go missing or have been so squashed on the road that they can't even be recognized anymore. At the moment local traffic sections are being set up step by step in individual districts which were equipped with the necessary equipment-including unmarked cars! Yes, indeed, just you watch out, something that looks just like you and your familiar little boat through life, which you get into punctually early every morning in order to bring it to life with a divine spark and a whiff of gasoline from the atomiser, careful: A rapacious wolf in a BMW can be hiding there! Since 1991 completely new possibilities also arise from the possible use of laser guns to measure speed. There's one already, who flashes and is not God. It can't be, protest immediately! What do you need a light for, you know very well that you were driving too fast. Big Chief Nimble Forefinger also doesn't need much more than this one finger for the camera gun to achieve a convincing (and lasting, there's a photo as a memento!) success, and the target is always you. So why the gun, we can easily make a rough estimate, that one was doing sixty. No no, it's not so simple nowadays. It was doing seventy-five. The gadget made such an effort. We want to know exactly, and the legality of all measures of criminal prosecution, which were admissible until now, also remain effective when the new police security law comes into force, so pull yourself together! A pretty throat, a pretty pharynx are soon squeezed tight or torn open with no other tool but the mysterious eye, which finds the area, which death particularly likes to visit for a picnic for two, even if only for a couple of seconds, but that's enough for him. Yes, this is a good place to live, thinks death, this flesh is still new or as good as new. It wasn't expecting me, well, so I'm coming unannounced, and no one knows anything about it. So I can easily come again, since no one saw me the first time. The next time perhaps I'll even come in broad daylight, which I don't need to be afraid of. I wasn't caught the first time, although police patrols with two officers each were in the area providing minimum cover! Luckily death, which was informed in person, knows where each patrol is poking around: I'm afraid of no one and always do the right thing, he says, or he can do it another way- whatever I do, it's always right, I am my own court of last resort, so there's no right of appeal, there's no higher court. I see how anxiety takes hold of you. You're asking yourself, why does something exist with which there can be no bargaining, you even bargain in the electrical shop and in the builder's yard, even with the country policemen!, and really do get a lot of things cheaper than you'd thought, just think of your new garden grill, the demonstration piece on which the demonstrations left no trace. Me, you'll even get for free, but in return I make everything you bought beforehand completely worthless. So it's better if you don't buy it at all, you're better off buying a candle, a few schillings, it'll be worth it, to someone, just to you! Well, who will do you this good turn, I don't see anyone who would do it.

Please have a bit more fun while you still can, so that you get to know even more people who will take care of something like that for you. But unfortunately people never listen when they're having fun, even if you bawl in their ear, they're having so much fun. A way of speaking that's meanwhile out of date, this passage should in any case be deleted, I think, but then the whole thing will be too short. The cries of passion, this bawling, with which the genitals, our subjects, distend as if they were frogs and were now being pumped up even further, almost as much as their owners already are, well, we still have mastery over our bodies, don't we?, so these cries should be adjusted to contemporary usage, isn't that so? So, e.g., you can easily dispense with the meaningless courtesy of having to address a country policeman as officer. And then when he forces his cock, lovelessly pulled out of the trouser leaves wrapped around him, between your legs, sweeping aside with his hands the troublesome thighs, and drags you, preferably even before you've grasped who this is, into the bushes, hitting you on the back of the head so that you are involuntarily forced to lower it and keep your mouth shut, because you can't yet speak German well, the language of our country, the country policeman's thoughts are already somewhere quite different, with someone who stands as solid as a building and isn't thrashing about all the time like you, then, then it's quite all right to call him by his first name and say Kurt to him, where on earth is he? Where on earth are we? Perhaps you haven't even met him yet? That's just too bad. Then you can also go alone into the booth with him, and not to cast your vote, which I wouldn't do if I were you.