A little apart from the woman and her group, beginners are stumbling about, you wonder why they don't just go silently under like ships, but no, they're screaming! And why? Well, they want to get ahead, but they expected something else. Like you, whoever you may be, who think public transport too shabby. They take themselves off into the unknown, taking their pimples and crampons and thermos flasks with them. But they seem to prefer all that to the malice of the world they normally inhabit. All smiles, they issue invitations, they still have the wind to do that. These youngsters usurp the world and use up its products; they dwell in them and are in turn used by them. First it's the lungs' turn. Busily they live and learn and lounge about. Without so much as a single misfortune to cover them, these fledglings sleep, and on waking they look down at themselves, hello hello, there's one, no, two parties already engaged upon them! They've not had to hunt long for suitable partners, quite the contrary, they're the ones who are sought-after via airport public address systems and in TV commercials. They perk you up. Take any sight you can think of and face facts: these people are far more worth seeing. They are like the toxin slumbering in the poppy: a single millimetre beyond the law they really begin to blossom. There's always someone waiting, smiling, who abruptly leaves if we get too close, always a car door's being slammed, and always people are driving up to petrol stations where the poetry of gaskets is understood. Their life is swollen with the time spent changing scheduled flights (just for once to hang loose and let go, as we ourselves would like to do as well!). The very idea of it. But they're right. Youth. A whole heap of Youth! Unfortunately I am no longer one of that particular crowd. And one more thing: whatever business they're about, they're always smiling, even in the shady depths of the woods when they step aside to do their business. As empty as song they rest in the air, not even arrested by branches. So they can fall straight to the ground, and shed light on that sad place where others of more laborious build have blasted the way for a road through the forest, simply so as to ramble and romp a little. They laugh. Often it seems the best thing to do. Carefree they channel the sounds from their Walkmans into themselves and become distinctly restless because they cannot escape the music running into them. Fine by me, if it's what they like! And this woman has to get attached to an asshole like Michael, of all people, who has long since lost himself from view, though not his goals in life, needless to say. Never, perhaps out of idleness, has a woman matched his wishful image. No, what he wants is a more human place to live, say a loft, where he can stand himself up on the floor at last and still his desire for classy furniture and girls. Here, of course, tangled in the spruce roots, something of an eddy swirls about Gerti, an unedifying whirl beside the beck, where blue-collar and white-collar workers and freelance trippers regroup in the snow after they've been chased and if need be have had nails driven into their thigh bones. Why else would they subsequently claim they felt new-born after a day of sport and several of hard work?
Yes, we all take great strides forward, or else we drive off home, given the chance. But to think that this woman's eye has lit upon Michael, of all people, and that she imagines she will blossom forth beneath him, and that she would like at least to go out with him a time or two! Though she would also fancy staying in with him. Her husband devotes all his attention to his business. Aforesaid husband could easily pocket Michael, his friends, and half the gross regional product complete with the roast he's lunching on today, if his pocket weren't already full. The skiers' desires will soon be satisfied, just be patient a little, and then the skiers will be off to the pub.
Cheering and howling, the bunch of young sportsmen hurl themselves upon the drunken Gerti, hooray! They too have now taken a good pull at their own reserve tank. The mountainside conceals them, hiding them from their fellow-beings' point of view. This massive spruce is in the way as well. No expense has been spared. To prove the point they show off their solo asparagus sticks which they have pulled out of their skiing clothes, not bad if you compare the pallid growths of others who sit around trapping and doing the earth no good. They laugh throatily. They twirl their ski sticks. There are so many of them that they are a factor in the sports gear trade, in the nation's economy. They are experiencing the ultimate: they want to have a good time as they pass by and time passes by. As they fly by from the top station to the bottom. Loaded, they lean on each other, their faces turned to each other, and each has got a big tail too and stands there breathing over it. If all of us were to stick together like them, bar staff and doormen at discos could never part us! They know how to hide happiness protectively from our clutches, in a crowd. This is where our wealth has got us. Thus far we appear in Nature, which comes to us from outside. But we, not born of any spirit, are sorted according to what fine specimens we are, and have to stay outside. And the ground gnaws at our undead feet, forever having to go on.
13
They are the personification of fleetfoot life. The girls too. Not for nothing are they friends. Friends who will slander each other after they've written their doctorates and are competing for the top jobs. While all about them wretched Life, feeble children with ruined teeth and vertebrate and vertebrae animals they nurture for the slaughter, blink at the downhill racers and can only dream of Olympic golds themselves. Austria, you export factor, you'd be better off exporting yourself, entire! Send the whole package to the world of sport! We read the paper, when we poor creatures can take a chance for once too. Don't moan, do something! This village isn't spread out before you in the meadows just so that you can step in the dung heap.
Michael laughs loudest of all. After all, he's taken on the most of all. He may take on this woman on the downhill slope of her life a second time, or there again he may not. Yelping with curiosity like a child, he hauls out his droopy rod. Just slipped out, didn't it? The girls, who look so superficial in magazines that make them into pictures, screen off the couple that blew in from the cold, they laugh and drink and tangle together into a tight knot. In the snow there's a two-litre wine bottle and a flask of cognac. No matter what they get up to, they're attached to the mountains, and will stand there together, rooted to the spot, till an avalanche hits them. Their hopes won't be dashed. Their sex is not yet in ferment. You can drink them warm, straight from the cow. No matter. Amid the squawk of their inner voices, Gerti and Michael slip into a plantation of spruces. They are a kind of island in the grove. And there we have it. Michael demonstrates, that his member is not yet properly erect, and Gerti's vagina is clearly visible in the silk, as if she were hoping she could still make it somewhere in a boat with that big a hole. Lord, what a noise the people over there on the slope are making, as if they were all one single loud yell. We can't hear any of the stupid foolery of Gerti's clitoris, which she'd like to have rubbed. All this pack of pricks have probably just been unpeeled from their plastic skins by Mother Nature! The universally valid organ is displayed to Gerti, her hands are wrenched away from her face and sex. Both are filled to bursting with angry songs, I see. The lads hold her living hands together above her head. In that position, nobody could wave to her family via the TV screen. The woman stretches out to Michael. Her face gradually crumples, as those standing about her notice. And yet it speaks of love. There are songs that say love is the noblest of our celebrations and pledges. The silk dress is shoved up to the waist and the panties, which she was perfectly satisfied with, are shoved down. And now well tickle the darkness till it collapses upon us with a crash. Friends have been sent round to our place to help. To make sure the labia the woman has about her person are forced apart first. To rummage in the depths, stirring things up in the ant-hill. It's as busy as a station toilet at night when the winos are shooting the breeze, stashing and slashing because they're tanked up to the eyeballs again. So now these footcloths, these doormats, all four of them ours, are parted. Making Gerti howl. So they generously fold her shut again like a brochure. Negligently. But let's just poke a finger in and then snuffle at it before the wayfarer disappears down the drain. We didn't realize how far the shadows extend into this living creature.