Elfriede Jelinek - Greed

Life can't be buckled on and off like a pair of skis, on which one glides through nature, through this fantastic, sometimes however snow-covered wealth of amino acids and vitamins, which cannot be won by adventure alone. One has to take the amino acids and vitamins as an extra, unlike the plants, which are able to produce these materials themselves. They take the elements which they need, and which have to be available in a form they can use, and off we go. Fresh soil contains all that in sufficient quantities, leached-out soils don't contain it, they are exhausted, because for too many years the same thing was always expected of them, they would urgently need variety. Aha. This soil is now acidic. That's not so good. The acid content must be reduced, absolutely, yet the way it's done is usually wrong. People bend over their soil, which is always too little for them, always too small, yet they've usually erred on the side of generosity already and expected too much of it, above all when the soil is in the water. Every day one gets dirty and cleans oneself, it never goes very deep. The people now gather in the village and talk about a young dead woman. The ceaseless circles in the water which spread out from her seem to have no cause, at least the cause is not known. The young dead woman has already become quite indistinct. The more she's talked about, the more sensation-seeking and meaty the talk, the more she seems to disappear from the little interests in life among which she existed when she was alive. This Snow White lay for a couple of days in the dark, cold water, a long, long time, no, only a relatively short time, and has not decomposed. The corpse remained fresh in the water, but as a corpse nevertheless. No prince could awake her, and if he were to take the girl to his chamber, she would rot, smell, become worm-eaten, post-mortem lividities, greenish discoloration of the abdominal wall would follow. Rigidity for a while, so that one could stand Gabi upright. Blooming churchyard roses on the cheeks, no, not them, because there were no wearisome and impractical death throes. The jeans limp as leaves in their water bag, in the green plastic sack. This Snow White died gently from the throttling of the glomus caroticum, an itself agreeable ganglion. The vagus, the tenth cranial nerve, is immediately paralyzed, and one dies a reflex death on the spot. So no further attempts to kill this girl were necessary. No poisoned comb, no poisoned apple, until no more breath came from the child's mouth. No shock, except to us, when the girl falls to the ground and the slice of apple flies from her mouth in a high arc. There was no object which led to death, it was the arms of a hunter of men, and no forceful blow on the back at the right moment could return life to this body. First there was a small, then a more violent disturbance, a mouth which seemed made to kiss, yet we see no poison component, which could have made the girl very ill, we see only that no more breath descends this living human shaft, down this breathing pit. The breath has gone, the death roses are resplendent or not, it all depends. But unfortunately the investigators will only know and interrogate the official boyfriend, who weeks later will carry the coffin with five school friends and not stumble, so that no piece of apple may jump in a high arc from a mouth and bring the girlfriend to life again. At the moment he is still stunned, the boyfriend, but it could be an act, let's keep on asking him questions, we don't have anyone else at the moment, let's ask this good-looking, ambitious lad, who's not a prince, but has something to offer nevertheless, in which as a precaution he had installed Gabi like a chip, which will hopefully work. Let's ask him why he could cope with the spoken exercise in the first period so dispassionately and calmly. Only now does the boyfriend notice: This component, Gabi, has unfortunately broken down and with it the whole apparatus. When one notices something, it's always already too late. Nothing works anymore. Those whose lives are up to the minute know all about these electronic devices, but if even a tiny thing goes wrong, they have to fiddle around for a very long time, and they then become really uneasy and quickly substitute a couple of other parts in the device as if it were a hen, hoping the device won't notice, and really take offense. Just a moment! Good. Life can go on. Everything is working again, if I may say so. Let us make another attempt and equate Gabi with Snow White, let the waters race upwards against their intentions, let us hurl them upwards so they are new and pure again, exactly, for once in a lifetime back to purity, out of all the lavatory bowls and wash basins and bath tubs: up, up, and away to heaven, so that they can fall to earth again. If one then takes the new module, the one which at present prevents her from functioning, the poisoned piece of apple, out of the girl again, will it function again, the child? No, still not, perhaps one would have to fit a completely new part into the one who does not resemble a dead girl, only a sleeping girl, it would have to be fitted in, so that this positive impression is maintained, only better, more perfectly, most perfectly of all, if life returned. Please, sit down! What's still missing? The calm of harmony between Gabi and her boyfriend, which has been irrevocably shattered. Now and beyond that she walks at best invisibly beside the young man, which at least has the advantage that she can go away unnoticed, when he happens to be washing his car again. Whose duty is it to stay? No one can be forced to do so. Some went away involuntarily, our dear dead, most of them, they didn't want to either, but had to. They certainly wanted to know what it's like on the other side, but they didn't really want to experience it themselves, at most through the media, that would have been more comfortable than having to go there oneself to the dark, the other side, sister of sleep, in which every animal can carry on the infinity, no the finiteness of its existence. But every human being can't do it, he has to stop and retire from the game. No matter what he last did, death is inside him as a sickness, and each sickness immediately reminds him that unfortunately he has to die, but hasn't got to the end yet. Do you really believe that we emerge from death as spirit, if in life we haven't already got to know the spirit? Where should it come from, so suddenly, above all, when death, like that of Gabi, came quite unexpectedly? Above this stretch of water, in the lake in which the dead girl lay for a couple of days, nicely wrapped, as if the water was instead supposed to be kept from her, took up her residence before being conveyed back to the shore by the attractive force of several country policemen and their paddles, there hovers no ghost, no, not that, but I don't see a spirit either, no matter how hard I try. A man of God could not be fetched anymore either. After that only hikers walked round the lake path, three men in knee breeches, climbing boots and anoraks, but they didn't see anything. They probably didn't look into the water, but into the finders and viewfinders of their binoculars and cameras, but they didn't find anything. It doesn't matter that there was no spirit there, since if man had spirit, he would be God and would be immortal, which has meanwhile got a little boring even for God. There would have had to be a meaning in Gabi's life, in which she would have been able to follow and observe the process of her own life. She would have had to have the feeling: all in one, not one for two, no, one just for one alone, because that's often how women think, I believe, when they wish for wedding presents or at least a firm warm body there, where it absolutely doesn't belong, and also where, if it does end up there, it usually doesn't want to stay; this body is different, and it wants to make other, better sexual contacts, as does that one there. He won't find it difficult, he's been alone for a long time. The country policeman. He quite likes the woman and the one over there as well, but the inclination on her side is much greater. Please be my wife, who still wants to hear that nowadays. Well, she wants to hear it and agree immediately. But I don't want to grant her that experience now. A middle class life together in comfortable circumstances, of a kind she once left, after all, because life as an artist appeared so very tempting to her, but then wasn't. It is not foreseen by me that people abandon themselves to one another, it is foreseen by someone else, however, that in death they give themselves back to their species, from which they have only borrowed themselves for a short time. As so often, it's precisely when one is finally supposed to give oneself back that one can't find oneself, one has already had to pay a fine for being overdue, without having even begun to get to know oneself in the book of life. One may not like oneself, but one is very far from wanting to give oneself up because of it; and everything appears dreary and empty to people, a watery, an ice desert, a motorway on which a ghost driver is getting ready to transform the isolation, the little people existence of the living, of this mother with the infant in the baby seat, of this driver of a delivery van full of ladies' clothing, but without a lady companion (ow! not again!), of this student, who has just picked up his clean washing from home, into something merely alive and immediately after that something dead. These people, these damaged but then ultimately still unexpectedly dead people, because I think no one foresees their last moment, at least they're no longer around for it, they'll still manage it, to go back in time, before their birth. Some of them no doubt don't know for quite a while that they are dead, and their colleagues, who meet them, probably don't know it yet either, they're not usually in any newspaper, where one could look up their dear names, and even on the screen only their crushed, sometimes burnt-out wreck is shown, as if that had been the most important thing about them. Do you believe you thereby help nature to become aware of itself as its own spirit? If you don't even show the spirit on TV, so that everyone can buy one or one like it? How should we reach it, if this wet snow avalanche was not announced in advance by the weather man? And God, too, you only show made of gold, silver, or marble, yet he worked so hard and took on so much, precisely to leave matter, the material, behind him and to be able at last to return to himself again, in spiritual form, as spirit, who's in good shape (at any rate he's got no competition in human beings, against whom he could measure himself, he made them, after all!), in order to fly around everywhere, into people, out of people again, just as he pleased. So please, in or out, as far as I'm concerned: I'm not an airport, I'm not even a taxi stand. One step further, no not as far as that either, don't you see, that's where the precipice down to the Hollental begins, the hunting rights have been leased by an industrialist from Germany who has retired from business and who now only wishes to devote himself to his living young wife and his dead animals of every age. The ground belongs to the Federal Forests (actually: the Habsburg Family Fund, but you can forget it, unless Zvonomir Habsburg, no sooner than he can speak three words, demands it back from you in person, then Flobert pistol in hand you will step outside your little house, which you had to save so hard for, and blow him away, the splendid pretender to the throne, yet a trace of his breath will then be able to blow you away, and the cameras will want to be there, too, but arrive too late, yes, that is ALL, that we'll never get: consideration), the shoes in which you're standing you bought at Dusika Sport, you could have got them cheaper at Shopping City Slid, the car drivers belong to the country policeman, who gets money for them as well, and so in this way you'll manage to get nature to kill itself and even to regard that as its only goal. It will cast off its covering of visibility and sensuality, push through like the last caterpillar through the last cocoon or whoever does it, until the construction of the butterfly has been completed. The imago then appears in a glow, beating its wings, the full-blown image of the finished creature, over the lake, but for the young dead woman it's no incentive, she cannot of her own accord slip out of her pupa, the plastic sheet and float around. She will be floating matter in the water if she's not found in time, which has hereby occurred. That is how I decided it. In death this young girl cast off her pupa wrapping, but unlike the Son of Man she did not become God, a pity really. Her death should be seen in a rather more negative light, let's see if me negative has a point, too, yes, I see it, it could be the peak of what a human being can reach as nature, and that is the peak of an iceberg. From this frozen mountain peak he can see God much better, because he will have come considerably closer to him. Believing that won't make you happy either. Her nature, the nature of the young dead woman, will burn itself up, as if it were a ship, she will go out of herself, behind herself, floating if necessary and reappear as spirit, young, pretty, smart, hard working. And here we have it, the finished young moth, pretty as a picture, nice to see you!, we usually only get oldies here, you dear newborn spirit, whose shoes and handbag are missing, choose something in the wardrobe department, we have millions of ownerless bags and shoes in stock, which we have taken away from people. At first I thought, Gabi still has her shoes, but they're gone too, sorry, my mistake. Who knew that shoe soles bear clues, which can be traced right back to the murderer? I should have known. Someone else knew. Who pulled off her shoes, and where are they now? I would incidentally urgently advise you not to take this step into the unknown, which Gabi had to take, oh no, too late, now you know it already, the unknown, are lying amidst fallen rocks down below and can try out everything on yourself. But all in the proper order. You must on no account become spirit first and then die, otherwise people will see you as you transform yourself and then wander around endlessly and without floodlights, illuminated only by the little red lamp in front of the tabernacle, which God moved out of long ago because he found a bigger apartment, flutter over the snow-covered slopes, which won't make you any better or more beautiful either, in the night, when one can't see very clearly anyway, but of course one does see the dead. They have a bright radiance about them, though not a happy one. The dead. Actors and audience in one. They so rarely become spirits, because, as already mentioned, they nowhere find spirit, which they could slip into like ichneumon wasps. Then they would eat up the spirit in order to survive. Death could certainly apologize to us, if it comes too soon, one doesn't do that, the housewife is still busy putting on make-up, doing her hair, and stirring the mayonnaise, nothing will come of it, I can see that at a glance. I've already said it several times, I think: Only with death and the Olympic Games is taking part all that is required, but I'll now add that, thanks to the admission ticket to our own death (for which we waited in a long line at the abortionist's, who in the end sent us away again, because we were already too far advanced and unfortunately had to be born), we have also become part of the self-realization of God, yes, that's his hobby and his job and once again of course it's entirely at our expense. Even God cannot be expected to pay the prices at the Manhattan Fitness Club. Presumably you, who are individually so dependent on others that you have to read books to have at least a clue about the spirit, are anyway no more than fertilizer for the salvation process, which consists in having to dissolve oneself, take one's leave, as you please, done already, how can one so completely distort the necessity of dying? It is my only very personal consolation, please forgive me. This young, dead woman, I have to laugh at her stupidity, to entrust herself to a beast of prey, to put a little hand on its fly, why would an animal, which nearly always goes about unclothed, ever have needed something like that, its heart hardly beats any faster when it brings down its quarry, and when the animal has to work it can't pee at the same time that's taken care of, I think, by the north adrenalin or the south adrenalin, which it then produces. The animal. It would carry out these actions again at any time, to get something moving, says the animal. Someone who works for a Muslim charity organization or the like and also earns money through it is also living dangerously, says another animal, a Fuchs- fox-from Gralla, after his own hands exploded and he went the way of all flesh, following his hands, which pointed the way. The application of force is always unpredictable. That's the way it is. How fortunate, that the fox spoke to us a little beforehand, about his very own truth, which strangely enough doesn't appear more peculiar to me than this whole country in which I find myself at present. It's better if the country is concerned with itself for a bit, in order not to alarm others.