Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

People would be very angry with me if they knew that here I stick them into sausage casings and hang them up, exposed to every glance, but the trousers won't stay up without a body. The house door bangs shut. A young woman has been swallowed up by the earth, which, however, is no earth all. The earth is made of water, which is meanwhile playing somewhat listlessly with the body. There our Gabi is at present entering into a symbiosis of plants and creatures quite in harmony with the water, with each individual species separately. Oh, if only there were more choice! Because protection of this human-water community plays a key role if people want to protect themselves and their species too, of course, but first of all themselves. In order to do that, they must, which is a lot of work, but necessary, so that humanity does not perish, protect all other species as well, because there just is this sensitive community basis in which bogs, swamps, ponds, and river meadows in particular are always very threatened. This young woman on the other hand is already dead, it's a first rate failure, if a life was already brought to an end so early. Who did what wrong? Who is the culprit? You know it, I know it, so why ask. One is only young once, some stay young forever, because there is no later for them. They've saved themselves something there. In life they had a grim opponent, who in this case has won.

So the wanted posters with Gabi's modeling photo are stuck to the poles. The cars drive eagerly past, see the pieces of paper pinned there and brake abruptly and slow down with a screech, because their owners will have been curious, which will frequently have caused a headache for the vehicles behind. The remainder of their heads they can collect later at the hospital or from the emergency road service, where they will be handed over on production of the certificate of registration. A good thing that we let a photographer into the house, now we've still got something left of this pretty girl. It's almost ugly in its pure beauty, her photo at least, and at the bottom a low neckline, the rift, which separates her from us older folk; when one sees that one would like to have been a bit young oneself and then remained exactly that way. The neckline points to something, and not to this building materials firm in the county town, where Gabi was employed as a commercial apprentice. The company is invisibly stamped on it, although the photo rather signals idleness to the beholder, like most photos, don't you think? Perhaps it's because of the clothes, but the message of this photo is fake, the mouth is like one which would like to give a kiss, not one which would like to read lines on a computer printout, the expression on the photo is prettier. How good for this girl, that it was as if made to love and kiss. Gone. Are we in agreement, that the account can now be closed, inclusive of the owner? Not in agreement? Then you have to put her on the table, in newspaper format. In any case we assume your agreement and then automatically deduct everything from your account.

Gabi's mother wanders aimlessly around the house, helplessly, as if a picture had been taken of her as a sheep, it doesn't matter by whom, but had originally been intended as a prouder beast. Doesn't she also have a friend in Germany whom she would like to join? She is already taking off into a new life, the run-up lies right in front of her, shining in the sun, below it a promising frozen lake, in which she, that's for sure!, is going to land. The end of the glacier, its tongue, which oscillates or recedes depending on the weather, glitters before her eyes; it doesn't look as if it's hard, where she's going to land. It looks quite like a glistening holiday paradise but will most probably be, like many lakes, merely an accumulation of meltwater, that is, a vale of tears. But at the moment there's something of the judge about her, the mother, as she weighs up what her daughter might have done, what has she got up to? Where is she? If one only knew where she is. She personally picked out this nice friend for Gabi, with whom she's even allowed to spend the night. What coded data can there be, to be filed and hidden in the computer? To be kept for later? Her mother knows all the data. After all, she entered it all herself. What of the more than 2,000 people to be questioned in months of work by 20 police officers, who will be put onto the case? What can they find out! Why does one have to make a note of thousands of car numbers? Why has Gabi run away, if that's what she's done? Her boyfriend is still there and washing his car again. The automobile is already shining loud and strong. No, her boyfriend doesn't know anything more either. He comes to visit the mother straight after school, sits down at the kitchen table, as if he could just as well stand. Takes a cup of coffee as if he could just as well drink tea out of his Walkman. Talks about his girlfriend who has disappeared, as if she had never been there. Knows nothing, as if he could just as well have known something. She's uncomplicated and honest, are the words he has been taught at the technical college, when it's a matter of an electrical circuit, which admittedly would never open itself voluntarily, unless it's struck by lightning. But what is to be done so that the circuit finally closes? We still have to practice that. At the moment the current is flowing in one direction, as if it could just as well flow in the other. The electrons are happy that they've got time off and no one is forcing them to do something they don't want to do, we can do it differently, but our trainer can't make us do it yet. As part of a team of fellow-students Gabi's boyfriend is just making an electronic door opener, but for the moment the door still remains locked, the circuit has not yet taken charge of the electrons, a circuit which would have the task of offering the electrons as little resistance as possible. That is also what our young people wish: no resistance to their plans! These electrons, the things they get up to with one another. No human being would have been able to think it up, but good use is made of it. They only want to follow their course if at the end of it there is a room less crowded with themselves. Otherwise they'd rather just stay at home. Negatively charged, as they by nature are, they strive, unlike me, for the positive. One can take them as an example at all times (from Muffler/Eberich: Electronics for Children, vol. 276, p. 7, revised ed.). And at this moment an automatic door mechanism also seems to be closing heaven's door, which he thought was already within reach. His room in his parents' house, also the new little flat on which there's already a down payment, is not going to be hoovered for a while, no small snack will be prepared anymore, not a soul will vote him president of his world and cut articles he wants out of the motoring magazine and put them in a binder, nor will he very soon honor his heaven on earth, his punctual destination every Saturday night, with a visit. Which he does not yet suspect. Gabi and another man? Impossible. There was no other man, and if there had been, then he would not be with her, because he wouldn't know her. That's just the gossip of jealous girlfriends. It doesn't count for much, because no one can account for it. There was nothing. Gabi was an open book to her friend, a window with its panes, so a suitable frame for him. That she could have been a first rate deceiver-if that were true, we couldn't imagine it, say mother and boyfriend unanimously. We always knew her every step, and when her boyfriend was washing his car, she sat or stood beside it and when it was summer showed a leg, when it was winter showed nothing, and when asked, said nothing special, but not nothing at all. She didn't know what she felt before she wanted it. Well yes, that she felt a bit cramped, we admit that. She wasn't so keen on the apartment which her mother had just started paying off, but her boyfriend was. The young man didn't know what he felt, until he saw the picture of the new Ferrari and our Schumi in it like a cork. Gabi's features were usually like a marshaling yard, they moved, but it didn't go anywhere, anywhere further away, to the land of smiles. To Austria. Straight there. No. Always only back, no matter where to. Absence, although at home, a vessel placed on the table, which sometimes floats in the light, then again is plunged into darkness, as the tides ebb and flow. Wash me, but don't make me wet, and do it above the all-time high water level. Wait a minute, no water plants grow there anymore, but there is nevertheless the desire that a great deal of water should cover one's foot, and then even more, ever more. Everyone always just wants more, no matter of what. Whoever takes a risk dies in it, particularly when the water level fluctuates according to the season. Quiet lies the lake, who lies in it? Deposits of mud, sand, debris, and a girl, who is swamped by water, they lie in it, i.e., if the girl hasn't come to rest at too great a depth. In other words, in order for the readers in the training room between land and water to understand more easily: If it must be a book, then a good book! Our Gabi was a bit like that: You know where you're at. Well, I don't know. One can pick it up again and again, this book, and it's never boring, no matter where one opens it, but usually respectably in an Ikea double bed, which her boyfriend got as a present from his parents (yes, indeed, everyone has to contribute something, otherwise we would be nothing, otherwise we would be others), at all times with clean sheets for him and his girlfriend. Otherwise there was nothing. They have made a balanced use of their resources for the future, since they've not yet been squandered, because resources are fundamentally indispensable, but also cannot be multiplied however. What I meant to say was: If there's a human being there, then he should also be left there, because when he's gone, no one can replace him. One can take another one, but this one, one exactly the same, will hardly be found again. Because one will find a lot to criticize in all the others who are like him. My God, how are we supposed to fill the pages if we can't even say the simplest thing simply! It's a complex field of activity, protecting and preserving human beings, and one can practice on nature from time to time. Of course that demands constant decision-making in many respects, which can have far-reaching consequences, but usually not, because it takes a hundred thousand years until one person comes to the conclusion that he shouldn't have burned his old shoes in the stove, because they've been poisoning and destroying the environment the whole time. The person concerned should rather have warmed people up with a beautiful body and a dear face and a fast car and a fast-moving TV program. Our Gabi had all that, and what good did it do her? None. As attractive as she was-none! no answer- in particular one can't miss this lovely photograph, hanging there, when one's waiting for the post bus, and many people, who have come too early, can't help but study the photo thoroughly, they've got nothing else to do, and the bus can't drive off in front of them, they're deliberately there too early. Although everyone knows Gabi in the flesh, they now stare at her photo for a quarter of an hour. How easy it is, to miss something, if one looks away for a moment. Although they all know Gabi well, at least to look at, she grew up here after all, on the photo she seems strange to them. There's something irresponsible, immodest about her, which appears forward. A completely different side is displayed here, which when she was alive one hadn't noticed. On the other hand such a look is altogether familiar from the magazines (the nude and her face, which she has too, at the top of my picture, and if not, then you're holding the newspaper the wrong way around or are looking at something that isn't a human being, on page five of the Kronen newspaper, but there should be a picture of a naked woman there, shouldn't there? My God, what's that, into whose face you're looking, is that a face at all?), and that on the photo Gabi is more undressed than dressed also seems normal to them, ever since they've had the TV screen, so for decades, in fact. There people do more than undress. They also completely undress their partners, and then they turn around, so that one can see inside them as well and: that they are really completely hollow and empty inside. One wouldn't have believed them beforehand. The bodies have meanwhile become so immodest as to thrust themselves forward everywhere, in order to be able to undress even more quickly. What fun! At Bauer Clothing every Monday the first five customers who arrive at the tills completely naked get a whole outfit to the value of 5,000 schillings-so you'd better hurry, you could really do with a complete retread! Some are overlooked unfortunately. Although they try to shout just as loud as the others. Such a pretty girl, our Gabi. Were one finally to find her, one would have to give her up again, and nobody would know. It takes a while to get going, after the usual waiting time, a routine search for a missing person, a certain country policeman also hears about it in the line of duty, but knows nothing, everything therefore, wants of himself to be able to take it seriously, hopes at least to feign seriousness, if necessary, but he doesn't quite manage it. He now puts on a somber expression in front of his colleagues. He's asked, yes, like most of them he knew this Gabi at least to look at, his colleagues know that anyway, a pretty girl. Basically they know nothing. They don't know that Gabi is resting at the bottom of the lake, which is not very deep. Yes, thoughts are sometimes deep, but the reasons which cause someone to do something are often not. The country policeman is something like a tour guide, but only if there's enough in it for him. There he is, take a look at how, as if by accident, he rubs himself up against this younger colleague, stands, as if unintentionally, close behind him when they're undressing. His colleague has his shirt halfway over his head and can't see anything and can't resist for a moment, which is over all too quickly, he is caught up in his clothes like a fish in a net, his arms are raised, his narrow hips are, well they're there and feature some red acne, I call something like that flesh, precisely in its imperfection. Such a pleasure to press the somewhat swollen cock as if unintentionally against the left hip of the younger man, so that it can follow the scent and can imagine a well-shaped body at least in outline.