Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

Dark alder thickets to the right, deep down below by the river, where one always finds them, I don't have to change much there. In addition there is now, a real rarity, a canape on this road, on which there's hardly any traffic at night, an approaching car with a roof rack: Skis rest in their coffin-like box, funny, it looks like a cap for the car, and this box contains play, sport, and fun in such a small space that it would be impossible to squeeze in people as well; how are they supposed to amuse themselves, when there's room for their apparatus, but not at all for them? The roof rack is practical in any case, I think, people can straight away be buried in it if they have an accident. The car shoots past and briefly finds itself on the fringes of a hail shower of contempt caused by the country policeman, who in any case feels contempt for everything that doesn't belong to him. No reason to get excited. So, it's gone, the fast car, like a wet poodle, but in truth it has remained master of the house, it was an S-Class Mercedes. Despite everything the road is and remains dry. The eyes go ahead, don't turn aside, here comes the turn-off we're looking for. The crime didn't happen here, but here, as already suggested, paper tissues from earlier unions could still be lying around. If someone thought of examining these as well, then they would have a scent, although a cold, dried up one. But we don't quite know what modern forensic medicine is capable of. Yesterday and the day before yesterday Kurt Janisch already drove along the road at night to all the places where he's been with a certain young woman, who disappeared, sleepwalkers both, almost asleep in what they were doing, sometimes also calling to the other body: You can't do that, no, or can you? You can do it better than that! Did we leave out any part of this body by mistake? Then we'll attend to it the next time, till the first bit has healed again. And if it can, the body then remains quite at liberty, until one's home again, where another will without fail take an interest in it. And where those already present there, who never go for a walk because they always have to patiently wait, want to suck one dry again for the sake of this obliging service, even if one has arrived back already completely empty and exhausted and cannot possibly be used again today, except for washing the car, where one has to do nothing else except to be and be there. The car doesn't ask for anything more than that. Nature provides the water. Past. Not a sound in the modern car, which glides more than it drives along. Now just don't make a mistake with the speed, don't attract the attention of a colleague (very unlikely!), until one reaches the river bank and then at a particular spot has to scramble down a fair bit, something only local people would think of. The others, who don't know the area, would think it's a vertical drop, and we're not going to break our necks just for a fuck and we don't want to drown either. It's much cheaper breaking one's neck on the road without having done any sport beforehand. Yes, there, about another two-and-a-half miles, that's where the entry to the path by the river, hidden beneath branches, must point the way to an extinguished smile, to a circling screaming, as if birds had come to visit and couldn't find the exit anymore.

It can't be, do you see what I see?, in front there, on the road, a large dark mass, a heated mass, swiftly coming nearer, but with no glowing headlamps fixed to it, why on earth not. Nothing that could sprout wings and lift up into the air, and yet, how strange, that's exactly what it does do now, and there follows, fractions of seconds later, the soft impact of a body, which only just now came swinging along like a not quite full sack, which earlier, still in the forest, no one could beat, and which is now quickly and briskly drawn up from the road over the windscreen, the wedge-shaped profile of this modern Japanese car, as if by invisible strings, before immediately disappearing again. For another moment the night is darkened even further by the powerful bag of muscles, which like lightning and yet at the same time also ponderously (as if workers were bracing themselves sideways with ropes, grumbling and groaning, their feet pressed against the car body, in order to heave up, heave ho, their burden), slides up over the front part and the front window of the car as on a snow plow and has disappeared again, hardly has it appeared, so evidently the whole heavy mass was flung, almost dragged upwards, by the forward ploughing car and now already, like an unidentified flying object (but the moment that it happens, the country policeman knows what is happening), has risen above the car and landed on the road behind it. For the hundredth of a second the huge, already almost slack sack of fur and bones and horns hangs still and immobile above the vehicle like a strange, black moon, then it strives a little higher towards heaven, on a parabolic flight path, whose zenith (delta t), since the object, commensurate with the speed at which Kurt Janisch's car was travelling, will land 15 yards behind the Japanese car in the roadway, in exactly the middle of this stretch. While the bag of bones flies, it turns without grace a couple of times on its axis, a cumbersome comet, whose horned head, heavily burdened by the weight, points almost majestically in rapidly changing different directions, depending on the phase of the flight, and then lands on the road, the body, and is, for a moment at least, completely still. Quite unexpectedly Kurt Janisch's car was deprived of the momentum (M) which was necessary within the time (t) to lift the mass of a huge stag (m), a full-grown ten-pointer, for the killing of which the owner of the hunting ground up there had coughed up quite a sum, if the stag hadn't anyway had to cough its last, from ground level to the apex of its flight path (a), which was located behind the car, as well as to propel the stag in the direction of travel. The result was a drastic deceleration of the country policeman's car by several miles an hour. The car struck the stag above the fibula, or whatever it's called in this and similar animals, the bumper, therefore, caught one of the hurrying, swinging hind legs, losing contact with the ground, the hindquarters sagged away, down to the radiator, and off it went, off went the backwards flight, right over the car. At the corresponding moment in time Kurt Janisch was no longer driving very fast, he had already been approaching the turn-off down to the river and begun to look round, to see where he could park in the seclusion of undergrowth.

For a moment the stag had been caught between a number of force vectors, to which it had succumbed. As if gripped by impotent rage, something had lifted it up, shaken it like a fist, then catapulted it away, to immediately put an end to the nauseating aversion of the earth, which at last wants a little company, which stays for a while and doesn't immediately run off again. The earth prepares the whole meal. In return it has to pay with one head of population, it always has to pay. No, just a moment, not this time! The cars and the open trucks loaded with wood are always in such a hurry and leave the earth so quickly. Only the dead remain definitely, even if not quite voluntarily, with us, that's no fun for the road nor for us. The dead: so many! What happened to the rest? In maddened anger, in towering rage, the earth, in alliance with the country policeman, has flung the heavy animal in the air, apparently on a whim, like a crumpled, damp handkerchief, like one of those which the hunter and collector has originally gone to look for, and has simply thrown it away, the whole bundle of bones, without thinking anymore about it. But only the earth itself has been struck, the gray road. The heap of meat has been thrown on its counter, now strip off the hide, divide up and sell the meat. Yet even as the animal, not visibly bleeding, turning somersaults, had plunged onto the roadway, the earth had evidently changed its mind, no we can't have such a good conversation with that one, who's interested in what a stag's interested in, acorns, hay, the backsides of hinds, well, and it now lets go the animal quite casually, the good earth. Let's just wait a bit for a human, there'll be one along shortly, at the moment the discos are still full of human tissue, skin, bones, hair, sinews, muscles, and all in the revealing splender of rave and hiphop clothing, sometimes one, sometimes the other, never too much, as far as the little honeys are concerned, our writing and TV-watching youth (up to the age of 50) will tell us what exactly. Correct would be this answer: Tomorrow three girls aged between sixteen and twenty will supply the earth all the more plentifully with fresh flesh, so we'll let the game go for today, without eating it, while we remain here at the meat counter, the sausage stand of life, and stuff ourselves till the grease is dripping from our chins. The animal is struggling up again, the forelegs are still kneeling, but the rear is already rising up, a hair-raising bleating noise, mixed with a kind of belling and groaning, listen, there it is again, what can that be, sounds like a siren. Fate is in such a bad mood that today it didn't even want to put together a decent carcass. The sound is quite close now. The stag stands unsteadily, still thrust forward by its own rage, to face the fate which it hadn't seen coming, after all it doesn't have any eyes at the back, but whatever has happened to it, it stands ready, its hooves lurching over the asphalt to fight with whomever; fate, sluggish as it is, has not even reacted yet to this attack by the meat mass of this animal weighing hundreds of pounds, and already the animal wants to fight it. So, now, with some delay, fate is at last handed the stag's papers, a little late, as mentioned, there's no hurry, it'll not be shot until next year at the earliest, it is an older, but very beautiful beast, and in a year's time it will be still older, still more majestic, perhaps have fled from a younger rival, no, it's not sick, it is, touch wood, healthy, thanks for asking, and has by and large remained so. Now it's back on its feet, it could be king of any forest, its head lowered, swinging, no, the neck isn't broken either, this is the confirmation: Fate's documents are always correct, it knows everything about us. What's happened to the rest? Our brand new Minister of Social Affairs will ask you that in all seriousness.