There she is, tiny when seen from our vantage point: the woman, at the end of the path, passing by, like time. Already the sun is very low. Clumsily it is sinking towards the crags. The child's heart is beating elsewhere.
For sport. This Son of Man, this woman's child, is a coward, to tell the truth. Away onto the flat he steers his toboggan and he's out of earshot. Now, at the latest, the woman ought to turn back. Up ahead there is only some character on a cross, magnificently out-suffering all who have ever suffered since. Given this beautiful view it's hard to decide if we should have this moment last forever, and forgo the rest of the time that we're entitled to. Photographs often record this dilemma; but afterwards we're glad we're still alive and can look at the photos. It's not as if we could send in that remainder of time and receive a free gift in return. Still, we always want things to be beginning and never ending. Out into Nature go the people, hoping to return with an impression which their weary feet have made on the earth. Even the children want only to exist. As quickly as possible. On the slope with the ski lift. The moment they've tumbled out of the car. And we take a deep and innocent breath.
This woman's child still can't see further than the end of his nose. His parents have to do that, they even have to clean the nose, and they offer prayers unto heaven that their offspring will beat everyone else's by a nose. Wetly, he sometimes offers his mother his mouth, his face half free of its halter, the horse collar of the violin already off. And as for his father. In the hotel bars of the county town he talks of his wife's body as he might talk of the founding of an association sponsored by his factory, though soon he'll be relegated to a lower division. The words that come from Father's lips have a pungent odour. You wouldn't find them in a book. To leave a living human being dog-eared and tattered like that and not even read her! Centuries will come and centuries will go and still this Man will bounce back. Jesus: you can't keep a good man down.
This morning the woman was in a waking dream, a waiting dream, at the house, aimless, waiting for her husband, waiting on her husband, orange juice or grapefruit juice? So that he would catch her scent. Lick her off. Angrily, on the wing, he points at the jam. For it is written that she shall wait for him till evening when he cometh to bed down in her lap. Every day he uses his appliance as he has done for many a year. And what an impressive score he's run up. Men like scoring, one way or another. They're born with a target in their breast, their fathers send them over the hills and far away, just to shoot at other men's targets.
The ice is thick on the ground. The grit lies scattered carelessly as if someone had emptied his pockets. The municipal authorities grit the roads so that vehicles don't break their tyres. The pavements for people aren't gritted. The idleness of the unemployed is a burden on the budget, but as they idle by they do not burden the mow. Their fate is in the hands of someone who already has his hands full with a wine glass and plateful from the simple buffet of cold cuts. The politicians have to wear their big and bursting hearts on their tongues. The woman gets a firm footing on the verge. Here, the law of the catalytic converter rules: unless money is thrown at it, the environment won't react to us ambitious wanderers. And even the wood would have to die. Open the window and let feeling in! Then Woman will show" that disease afflicts the Man's world.
Flailing helplessly, Gerti stands on the ice. Offering herself. Her dressing-gown flapping about her. She claws at thin air. Crows caw. Her limbs fling forward as if she had sown a whirlwind and couldn't grasp the soughing and blowing on Mother's Day or the slurping of the Man at her trough when he appears below the table to lick the cream from her bowl. Woman is forever earthbound, they compare her with the earth, so she will open up and receive the Man's member. Perhaps lie down in the snow for a while? You wouldn't believe how many pairs of shoes this woman has at home! And who is it that's always egging her on to buy more clothes? For the Direktor, people count simply because they're people and can be used or else can be made into consumers who use things. That is how the unemployed of the area are addressed, who are in line to be eaten up by the factory when all they want is something to eat themselves. For the Direktor, they count doubly if they can sing for their supper. Or play the accordion or fool. Time passes, but we want it to say something to us. Not a moment of peace and quiet. The stereo drones eternaclass="underline" listen, if patience and not the violin is what you play, what you have, oh sainted ones! The room is uplifted, a ray of light falls upon us, the beatitudes of sport and leisure cost the earth, and on the operating tables we re-enter the peaceable kingdom, resurrected, whole again.
5
THE SUPERMARKETS ARE bursting with captivating goods, people are their captives. On Saturday the Man is* supposed to be a partner, helping take in the catch in the nets. The fishermen sing. It is a simple tune and by now the Man has managed to learn it. Without saying a word he stands among the women who are counting their loose change and fighting starvation. How are two human beings supposed to become one if humankind cannot even join hands in a chain for peace? The woman is accompanied, the packages and bags are carried, no fuss, no noise. The Direktor is expensively showy in public, taking up the space that is other people's, checking to see what they're buying, though that is really a matter for his housekeeper. He is a god, scurrying to and fro among his creatures, who are less than children and collapse beneath temptations vaster than the ocean. He looks in other people's baskets and down cleavages, where undesirable colds are revealed and hot desires are concealed by neck-scarves. The houses tend to be cold and damp, so close to the stream. His wife's hand is rummaging among dead cellophane-wrapped creatures in the freezer, and when he looks at her, the paltriness of her meat, her fine clothes, he is beset by terrible impatience to let her partake of his own ample meat, his dong, his wonderful shlong. He wants to see it stir at the feeble touch of her fingers like a creature roused by the sun. He wants to see that little animal of his awake at the touch of her varnished talons and bed down again to sleep inside the woman. She'd better make an effort, in her silk blouse, so that he doesn't always have to do all the troublesome work himself, manhandling her breasts out and placing them on the plate of his hands. Why can't she serve herself up, be a little obliging, so he doesn't have to waste half an hour picking the fruit from the tree first. In vain. He pauses before the check-out to survey the gaping emptiness of his property, before which the goods are sitting up and begging, good boy. A number of supermarket employees are dancing attendance on him, who has taken their children away, some for his factory, others because they are having to move or become alcoholics. He is their lordandmaster and even lords it over time.
The shopping bags have done what was required of them, they rustle and bustle through the hall, helped on their way by a kick from the Direktor. From time to time he tramples on the food in a temper, so that it squirts in the air. Then he tosses the woman in amongst the other goods to complete the picture, and she is allowed to breathe his air and lick his penis and anus. With a practised hand he catches her tits as they fall from her dress, they are already sagging and wilting but he gathers them into bunches like balloons with a firm grip. He seizes the woman by the nape and bends over her as if he meant to pick her up and stuff her in a sack. The furniture is glimpsed fleetingly as if it were on a flying visit. Clothes are scattered. You wouldn't say these two were exactly attached to each other, but in a moment they are well and truly attached to each other; funny, that. This particular patch has been used for grazing for years. The Direktor yanks out his product, which isn't paper, it's altogether harder, these are hard times after all. People like showing what they have hidden about them to each other as a sign that they have nothing to hide, that everything they say to their inexhaustibly flowing partners is true. They send out their members, the only messengers that always return to them. You can't say the same of money, for instance. Though it is loved more dearly than the hooves and horns of the loved one, already gnawed at by dogs. The products are produced, to the accompaniment of shrieking and thrashing, the tiny body factories grind and crunch, and the modest property, burdened down only by the happiness babbling forth from the lonely TV set, pours into a lonely pool of sleep where one can dream of bigger commodities and more expensive products. And humanity flourishes on the bank.