Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

Back to the country policeman Kurt Janisch: In the course of these days, as if there were a negative agreement in this respect, no more money is lent to him. Yet the sum of compliments, which women bestow on him, whom he stops, pulls over to the roadside, and leaves standing again, in ever more rapid succession (he hardly takes the time anymore to find out what significance each acquaintanceship could have for him, stares at driver's licences, at gold necklaces, fur collars, rings, watches, which grow towards him like tough, self-confident creepers, which know that not even the machete of someone running amok could destroy them. He hears excuses, which are delivered in a never-changing singsong, but he doesn't listen to these half-truths and excuses, he at last knows his own off by heart and doesn't need those of strangers, he prefers to note where the supposedly, presumably lowered eyes of the women are wandering, from the country policeman's penetratingly blue iris straight down to his fly, direct connection, these greedy, grasping eyes of women, and yet why are they so carelessly screened, with nothing but a protective coating of mascara, which probably only lends these glances weight and is intended to store them in a little fairy-tale forest, which one immediately wants to enter. But there one will probably have to pay admission, instead of taking something away and carrying it home, so we'd better just leave it), these extensive acquaintanceships add up, they mount like the snow up in the Alpine sphere, just as cold and just as pointless. Well, some get pleasure out of plunging in and down, strapped to my undercarriage, downwards, ever downwards, that already makes up half the profit. The country policeman, however, would need the whole profit for himself alone. For the athletes it has to be downhill. Or uphill, depending on the sport. But we can also certainly go up in the ski lift or the chair lift. Conversations develop, the women like the look of the country policeman, but they seem instinctively to scent his increasing desperation, at the moment that's too much for them for a nice date, you know, it's a bit too complicated just now, I've lived my life, it wasn't easy, and if I try again, then it shouldn't be such a strain this time. I have my job. And from time to time I just want to lie quietly in front of the TV and cry and laugh, one's never lonely with the TV anyway. That these women are supposed to invest something in this man is something they evidently suspect, previously they only rarely suspected it, and they recoil, these women of the country road, some humbly, some good-naturedly, few boldly. Yet they are supposed to risk their whole fortune to save the country policeman. It's not a good start, because it doesn't start at all. I'm telling you for the umpteenth time, this man is a somber figure, his uniform has already signalled that to me before a couple of times. Is he trying to get off with me, the women ask themselves, at whom he shoots his bright blue glances with the catapult of his strong, thick blond hair and eyelashes, glances which are supposed to be self-explanatory, but which can only write out fines, glances after which, with gestures which by now already begin irresolutely, he hooks into the warm flesh of breasts, to pull the blouse away a little and look into the cleavage, inside the cuddly soft sleeveless woollen pullover. How much wood does this one have outside her hut and how much gravel on her drive? Where is the old certainty of appraisal gone? The country policeman never used to be wrong before. Mr. Janisch, do you receive me, over and out? Everything has to go ever faster now, one thing virtually follows on the heels of the other, yet at the same time one must not forget the hottest iron in the fire, this one particular lady, not just for special moments, but at all events, that might turn up, and to whom it would be best he came as supplicant, she would like that, it would signal to her that he has been reduced in price and that she can at last afford him. It often happens to those with ambitions. They often appear so small to us in comparison to their desires and goals, which they spread out before us, dressed up as important concerns, so that we pay them due attention. And so we, too, slowly take less and less interest in them, these concerns of strangers. The woman, who loves, knows, and herself performs music, on a leash, always close beside him, the country policeman would like that, he wouldn't have to bother about her anymore, and if the music wants to sniff a little longer at one corner or another (isn't this sonata movement a little faster, and this finale a little slower, so that each note can be heard separately?), she's immediately roughly pulled back by the collar. I can't really grasp it yet, but this woman has perhaps, now of all times, at the wrong moment, discovered something like her dignity, that's what she calls it at least, and this discovery makes her so happy, like everything that's new. It won't last long. Sit! Basket! Music will do that for her, and wherever one tells it to, as long as it's the right person saying it; and it's always well behaved and comes straight back, when the CD player is set at start again, it only comes to her, the music to the woman, who alone understands music and it's all she understands.

So why shouldn't the country policeman keep coming back? Why should he not start to worry when this time she doesn't open the door to him, who so often only wants to put her down? Unlike him, music only wants itself, and so we can imagine it was written for each of us alone, only we can understand it properly. It makes no difference to music, it's easily satisfied, and it likewise wants to be repeated exactly the same each time in our concert halls, so that it always sounds as on the CD, which we have at home, although many people swear each time it's quite different from the time before. So that really everyone, even someone without ears at all, remembers it and, so as to be able to remember it even better, buys the corresponding CDs as model for reality. An eternal cycle, in great as in little things. The country policeman doesn't want to come to himself anymore, he'd rather stay away, and one can say: He doesn't know himself, otherwise he would still want to get to know himself. There's a new young colleague, but he really wants to get to know him better, recently, as if by accident, he blew lightly on the back of his neck, he was close to laying his cheek for a moment on the soft spot above the collarbone, but he didn't dare. He then merely gave the young colleague a jab in the ribs and conducted a mock fight with him, with fists, and laughed, after that for half a day he didn't need to let his head droop. It should really be enough for the country policeman, that he has a little house, a family, a grandson and that the cars whizz past him and he has the power to stop them at any moment, with nothing but a small movement. But he absolutely must have another house as well and another and another, why, he can't live in them all at the same time, this house-moving maniac. To tear the see-through plastic wrapping from women he doesn't know, before too much has been seen of them, to scatter the contents around, and all that work just to move into the packaging, which is still full of the crumbs of another's life. He wants to get hold of the property of women, this man, at which he possesses great skill, which now, however, increasingly seems to be leaving him. Men don't give up what they've got. But recently the women, as already said, seem to suspect something, not what this man intends, they would never guess that; but whatever it is, inconsistent as this sex is according to legend, they for their part no longer want anything at all from the country policeman. They don't know that they don't want anything from him, so that they don't have to give him anything for it. Love's mercy, this whore, which just takes anyone, but wants to give as little as possible for it, turns up, hardly has the church been unlocked, what, no customer here yet to whom she could be of service? God should rather have been hung up by the feet, not only to accelerate his death, but also to still humankind's longing for love more quickly, in the nuclear age, since although war is in principle a thing of the past, everything can still at any time be smashed to pieces. When people see something as horrible as someone crucified upside down, they will realize how good things are for them and have no demands at all anymore, is what I think. They've evidently already got used to the one dying upright, loyally obedient to his father, the credulous of this church, who have always got unsecured credits and are only waiting to be able to jump in themselves as apocalyptic bill credit sharks and drive the whole world, which never gave them a present of anything, to bankruptcy. Whole poultry empires sank into the dust or into the dead leaves of the embezzler hedges of the Freedom Parry's economics spokesman, Rosenstingl, and even our Lord had to bite the dust, without finding a single grain, just like the poultry that nobody wanted, it's a very human religion, Christianity, isn't it? He died for absolutely nothing, nothing at all, God. It's got a lot to do with us, this religion, don't you think? Little bells ring, and women look at one very strangely, when the priest is attractive, yes, even the most good humored. Everything's going down the drain, anyway. Eye for an eye. People have already got used to every imaginable horror. Love is the only thing they want to experience again and again and then once again after that, this time, however, exclusively with the right partner. They want the beloved to look cheerful, otherwise it's no fun for them.