The engine, rapidly cooling in the cold night air, now ticks over quite gently, starting up again at last, listen, no, no sound of anything else here. Life was preserved and returned to the earth, thank you very much, but the address was wrong. Nevertheless the earth does not let go once it has something. It sometimes lends one something, if one complains long enough. An abyss was briefly open and now it's closed again. The blinds are down. The ravens aren't coming, they're almost only to be found in the Tyrol. They don't fly so far. To make up for that they can speak. But at the moment they're offended, because they're constantly confused with crows. Kurt Janisch smiles for no reason, he's on a campaign, and to this end he advances into the field, to the dead river bank, where, beside the rushing river, the paper tissues sleep in their nest, which they've built for themselves, only from themselves, like the eternal Being. The keen eyes of Kurt Janisch inspect the ground, his watchful hands now grip the flashlight switched to function 2 (don't flash, we need a steady light, we're already nervous enough as it is!). His hands are still shaking a little. He bends down and crawls reluctantly into the undergrowth, illuminates the ground inch by inch. There's nothing more to be found there, only half-frozen mud, dirt, but who knows what a couple of rigorously deployed sensitive instruments in the forensic laboratory, in the sure hands of experts, would find? The senses of man should be more acute than the instruments he created, but they are not, otherwise one would not have specially had to invent them. Dark slope, do you surrender now or not, what you've pocketed? With the human herd, who trampled around today in the mountains and glided around on the pistes and cycled around in the forest, one can't collect everything they've left behind, that's impossible. Not even the Country Police will do that, so it doesn't matter. This country policeman at any rate is only still crawling around in order to be able to have a response to the unpleasant reluctance in himself: I'm still looking, I'm looking, I can't help it if I don't find anything, just a moment, was it more this way or more that way? I can't remember anymore. The bush over there is a heap of needles, which prick unpleasantly and aim for the eyes, like the crows, a small malicious army, which, almost wiped out, has closed up in order to offer final determined resistance. No, we would never have crawled under this bush, it would have torn our skins and tattooed it with weals, instead of bringing skin together with skin. Gabi would anyway have refused to crawl under there, her hair, her jeans, her new jacket, bah, bah, double bah. The usual. Blubbering. The ones who get hit also cry out sometimes, there's nothing one can do about it. Apart from that it would have given her the creeps, a pile of shit could have called stop! like the blast from a horn, because tourists like to crouch under such bushes, if they want to save the money for the restaurant but nevertheless want to relieve themselves and not their purses. No. I think it must have been further over there, it gets flatter too, there's a little clearing surrounded by green bushes, oh, look, the buds, so delicate, so green already! The country policeman illuminates the way ahead, but he still doesn't see anything which might count at some point. Here and there a candy wrapper flashes up in the beam of the searchlight as if it wanted to mock the searcher, it still bears the warm trace of hands, this cough drop cellophane. It won't decay for centuries and will still be able to delight our grandchildren with its sparkle, this ancient number from yesteryear, if they happened to come here at night with their flashlights, discharged from the thousand suns, brighter than any disco.
Kurt Janisch, don't let yourself be interrupted, keep on looking. He searches, all the more avidly the more hopeless it appears, as if he now had to save his own thoughts at least, which threaten to escape him. No, we don't think, we'd rather dig with our bare hands in the frozen dirt of the winter which has hardly passed. Quite pointlessly Kurt Janisch tears at the low branches, shakes them like fists, how can something be lying there or even fall down? Do handkerchiefs grow on trees here? This man likes to surround himself with trees in order to enjoy the feeling of plenty, even when one owns nothing. He is always, in the first instance, after houses, and what has he got so far? Well, now I have to mock: Nature, nothing but nature, whose body he now kicks with his heavy climbing shoes, the tree trunks, in an ever more furious fit of rage. He races around in the wood like a wild animal, throws himself against the fir trees with a crash, though he doesn't get far, the branch work is terribly dense, impenetrable, he scrapes around in the half-frozen mud, which, thawing in the body heat, protrudes from his fingernails, because they can't hold anymore. Now he hits out with his fists as well, again and again, blood is running down his wrists. He resounds like a note running after its own echo, because it hasn't heard it and is entitled to it in the mountains, two copies attached!, into the forest by the river, again and again, it looks as if he wanted to passionately embrace the trees, the country policeman, yet, like many people, the trees confuse hate with love and cuddle up to him, the bad man, clasp him, who is plucking out all their little twigs and kicks their trunks for no reason at all, which after all are only lightly clothed in bark and lichens. They are not dressed sturdily enough. Now he is even scraping away the earth at the roots, our Kurt Janisch. Anyone who sees it will think it odd, perhaps there are even traces of blood, then the country policeman would really have achieved the opposite of what he wanted. This forest promises him only annihilation, and it promises that he, Kurt Janisch, will afterwards be cleanly cleared away. It's not like drowning, no, all the many animals come who also want to eat, and they eat simply everything, but go into the water, no they wouldn't do that. It works the other way round as welclass="underline" Do you see this trout? The rear end of a mouse is hanging out of its open jaws. How did that happen? How on earth? I don't know how the jaws are supposed to close again. At any rate I'm not going to pull the mouse out. There, everywhere, is a great shepherd, who has left his sheep in the lurch, but he didn't let them go into the water. He is there for them, even if not always, and he stands by the ring, until finally an abandoned lower jaw, you must be joking!, grins at him out of the undergrowth, the upper part plus teeth has long ago been dragged away by other animals, hey, you, I've bitten the dust, my dentist wouldn't have liked that at all. He's even forbidden me to do it. Must have been a deer, if you like a deer above all else then please look the other way now, because this is exactly what it could have been, no, it wasn't, no matter, it threw away its body long ago, perhaps because you didn't love it as much as you thought. So, this flame would have gone out now, the teeth are gone too, the hooves have galloped off. Today another animal was luckier than this one. So it goes. One always wins, the others only lose. The flame of life, before it is blown out by a mouth puckered for a kiss, which was always easily able to deceive one, is indeed a very sensitive little flame, there's not much gas left, it's all used up, and consumption has already been paid for and debited from our account. What's puffing there as if of stronger, higher flames? A scornful night sky, which according to the position of the moon tells us the time and that Our Time in Pictures Part Three will soon begin in this little box here, and then a completely new age will dawn, and if we finally want to see this new age, then we must make our way to a more inviting location with more fashionable furnishings.