Coffee is administered to Mother by the housekeeper. It's not as if she didn't have an unopened bottle hidden away in the wardrobe, mind. It'd be better if the children's group weren't coming today to blow their trumpets. Oh no, they're not coming till tomorrow. To rehearse their song and dance and claptrap for the firefighters' ball. On holidays, various things gather on the turntable, the daily round, and turn out to be the St Matthew Passion or some other tune that pleaseth our ears. Horrified, the woman stares at her hands, which she does not recognize. Language draws itself up erect before her like her husband's penis, you rattle the chain and whoosh off you go downhill. On her day off she's been overwhelmed by a feeling, a sense of the white radiance of Nature, if that's what it really was, mere Nature. Let's all try to look our best and get to know someone and be there just for him to see and no one else. That young man who crossed her terrain in a brief half hour: is he still thinking of her at all? He stepped in the heap she deposited. It's well worth being special, distinctive. The woman's going to ponder life as someone else's goddess. Perhaps we should go along to the hairdresser's too? Afterwards we could take a look at the mangy workers in the workaday Christmas manger.
In passing, the Direktor gropes deep in the woman's cleavage, where the most important parts of her general appearance are visible. That's right, that's how pictures are supposed to be. This woman won't be going anywhere. She has something to do: take a look at his tail and lick it and insert it into herself. She mustn't be seduced by some character off the street. The countryside is dully aglow, but those who might see it see nothing because their miserable shadows are colliding with those of the jolly sporting crowd, hugging themselves tight to glide, more slippily down the wind. Elsewhere, in places where the unstoppable tourist trade hasn't produced such liveliness and laughter, things are not managed quite so amenably, I fear. In grubby kitchens, cold fire crackles in the eyes of men who have to go to work at five a.m. The leaden sausage lies plumb in their guts, forgotten. Their wives burst loudly into reality, demanding work instead of children. (The children, for their part, can visit the scale-model city at Hadersdorf, Vienna, where the houses are tiny enough to play with and you learn to know your place.) Everyone wants to earn a little extra, so that they too can whoosh away on skis like a fury, come the holidays. After work, that zestful freshness they've achieved by using the right soap is long gone. And, in any case, no one gets anywhere in the paper mill's grey, oppressive halls: all there is up ahead is figures endlessly waiting to be writ down on paper. In the club of the powerful, the Direktor has agreed to give women preferential treatment when it comes to dismissals, i.e. he'll sack them first, to ease the burden on the men when they're at work, at least. And so that the men will have a pretext to give vent to their feelings when the foreman happens to come by.
Undisturbed, the workers watch each other in the canteen. In the light, they sing like songbirds, singing for sheer life and to make the Direktor happy. Where does it all make sense? In their sensuous wives, in whom life has expressed itself completely.
The Direktor needs his own wife. To each his own; isn't that right? The light of day has already put in an appearance and the shops are opening, though many of the people remain closed. The Man regards his wife, who is nervously waging war over a hairdresser's appointment. He watches her from the side where (as he just noticed) her breasts make a sagging impression. In his memory they are alive, as if he had created and formed them like his own child. At all events – heavens, where is my sting – it will be possible to knead the woman once more. And she belongs to him, she belongs to him: behold how bounteous, the earth and all her fruits! After school, the boy will whizz down a divine mountainside faster than you can catch your breath, you'll be bowled over by the boy (who's inherited everything from his father) or at the very least he'll overtake you. The little creature's spoilt, tagged to Mother's apron strings and thinking it will be like that for ever. But the woman wants to buy youth, she wants to find a new store that stocks it, hence too the new hairdo. To be seen, and to pass by. To pass by that man's house. That man who fed the wild animal in her yesterday. Come to think of it, hasn't she seen other young men before, standing around in bars? Standing still or in motion, they're so lovely, before they too fade from this earth. They're busy, they've got a lot to see to before the skiing weekend, when they'll carry on with their girlfriends, girlfriends who take your breath away, four-colour prints on the skin-deep glossy surface of life, and yet make such a deep impression on your mind. If you ask me, postcards treat landscape more sparingly than time treats women. The scenery, taking a day off, lies tranquil and restful in the picture you buy at the tobacconist's and promptly scrawl full. But time simply goes too far! Like a tempest it digs its trenches in the war-torn features of a woman's ravaged face. Oh no, she'll say, putting a horrified hand over her gleaming mirror image: this is going to need some work. Not just the hairdo, which can vary at various times. Such toil, for a mere variation on a theme, a little night music. Her image breaks free of the mirror's confines and goes a-roving, like her thoughts. She knows where he lives. There he awaits her, the skier, with price tags still attached. We're all of us waiting. For our sack to fill up, that wage packet of the senses, where clouds scurry on by. On the whole it's cloudy in those parts. Let's think how to make ourselves look good, let us think upon increase, for which of us by taking thought cannot add just a little something?
The woman is waiting for her husband to set off for the office as per usual. The man is waiting for a chance to get into this wife's crevice again before he puts her on ice for the day. The poor workers have long since been carried off on the avalanche, bags slung over their shoulders. Rest a while! The bus has gone. The child has been transported away; joy-boy will be feeling superior to his fellow-pupils. His life lines have been neatly disentangled, probably by fate, the boy's constant and skilful companion on the slopes, together with whom he's already visited numerous foreign cities. Things have been going well with him ever since he realized his cradle was in a well-to-do house. The other pupils indulge themselves with icecream, which they spin out ad infinitum. Light shines upon this mighty house. It is as if the light were waxing and waning on the waxed parquet floor and polished wainscot. Today the sun's out, just for once: so say I. The woman wants to be off to town, to a boutique, as soon as she can, in order to look nice. Why can the young man not be satisfied with her as his daylong sport? Why must he be off skiing the slopes where they're at their most virgin? Why does he always have to be the one who got there first? Except for last year, when another young fellow with all his male and female friends were having a ball there already. All the woman can think of is what she's going to wear in order to get further ahead, faster, higher. As far as her feelings will carry her. Now let's pack them away again. Her husband cannot assuage her; off he goes now to the factory. To be fair (and, after all, he's one of those who run the fair), he is about 80% responsible for her fortune and happiness. He veritably steeps her in it. Why not call in on us some time when you're in pensive mood after your travels and want to sow a whirlwind in the eyes of a fellow-being? Just come on in and ask us to help ourselves and enjoy you!