The Philharmonic only play reactionary stuff like Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven, spits Anna. When they heard Webern last Sunday they applauded like idiots, but the fact is they despise music like that. The audience the Philharmonic gets is too well-bred to boo a Webern, they know how highly-rated a composer he is, replies Sophie. But of course they don't like him. Webern's work is a joke from start to finish.
Hans enthusiastically points out a squirrel, a red one. Red all over, really. What a dear creature. It races up and down the tree trunk, its eyes are bright. The sun struggles across the sky. Little midday clouds put in their appearances. Let's hope they won't gather into dark cloud-banks. Here at last is a stream of some size that may be suitable for the drowning of cats, no, definitely is suitable.
Okay then, Sophie. Get in the mud so you can get close to the water, or at any rate close enough. I think I'd rather not do it, says Sophie, I like animals. I always curry my horse myself. You've got to, or else you'll be expelled before you've even joined. I think you're absolutely childish, playing at Indians. The poor pussycat can't help it. You've got to do it anyway. Get a move on, we have to catch the bus. All right, I'll do it. Thank goodness I brought some Elastoplast with me. When I do it I'm sure to have to think of my favourite mare, Tertschi. She's an animal too. We'll have no use for weakness in future, Sophie, as you well know.
Sophie hauls out the scratching foaming bawling cat, which instantly slashes her hand and sets it bleeding. Ow, couldn't you have got a less painful creature? The only thing we could lay our hands on was a cat, get on with it.
In her good dress, Sophie kneels down in the dirt, covered in mud, and holds the loyal pet, which is used to people, down in the water. This takes considerable effort and strength. Snapping, snorting, thrashing and gurgling in the water.
She practically has to lie on the wretched creature, I'm getting drenched, I'll catch pneumonia.
Before the animal's death can occur, Hans, who was so comical with that squirrel back there, hauls Sophie off the cat, the soaked animal struggles out and races away, spitting. Doubtless a fox will get it, which will not be a very pleasant death either.
Hans gives Sophie a clout so the blood trickles down from the corner of her mouth. Ouch. The gang stands round as if they were the Holy Family and the roof of the stable had been blown off and it was raining in.
Sophie is flabbergasted. Something is stirring within her but she doesn't know what. I hope nothing is stirring within Sophie, thinks Rainer, aghast.
Hans, who has seen all the right exciting films and not the wrong ones, which are plain boring, pulls Sophie towards him and kisses her, so that the blood is smeared across his mouth. It tastes sweet. Sophie is sweet. Like something washed in a special soap powder, no, like something that doesn't need washing at all because it never gets dirty. Angora.
You just have to take a young lass's sweet mouth without asking, says the folk song. And then keep a startled silence because it has come true.
This little scene leaves two people satisfied and two unsatisfied. It is always like that in life. Fifty-fifty. Which makes things fair.
YOU HAVE TO shrink back from me as you would from a demon. Fear is seen in the eyes, hunger in the physique, ill-treatment on the skin, often it's more than skin-deep. It extends into the very soul. That is expressed in a look too. A woman recoiling from the man who's about to rape her. The man she knows is her master in this situation. There must be submission in her gaze. Static. Putting on one expression after another is pointless, this isn't a movie camera, it only takes still photographs. Concentration, Gretl, please. A tenant comes in, imagine this situation: contrary to expectation he finds his landlady, who is still young (which you of course aren't), about her toilet, all alone, he gives her a look that tells her immediately that her hour has come and that no power on earth can help her now. He won't hesitate for a moment to use force. What on earth are you doing with that duster, Gretl, now of all times, get rid of it and show your stuff. You have to ease the lingerie down slowly, try to keep your hand over it, but like everything else of this woman's her hand is in the wrong place, you can see everything.
Herr Witkowski talks like a waterfall yet again, which unfortunately is only silver, Frau Witkowski preserves her silence, which is golden. Herr Witkowski has been familiar with the saying since childhood, he is also familiar with it from the prisoners' quarters at Auschwitz, likewise the statement that honesty is the best policy. Ever since History forgave him he has been honest, it has been his policy for quite a while. After 1945 History decided to begin again from scratch and Innocence, after much hesitation, forced itself to take the same decision. Witkowski started over, at the very bottom, where normally only young people with everything still ahead of them start; the climb is a more arduous one if you have only one leg, indeed everything is tougher with only one leg; walking for starters. And even more gold is silent (for ever): the gold from teeth, spectacle frames, chains and bracelets that were saved up for, coins, rings, watches, the gold remains silent because it comes from silence and to silence it has returned. All that comes of silence is silence.
Don't leave me standing around stark naked so long, it's cold because of saving on the heating, says Margarethe Witkowski. First I've got to think about how to shoot it, there has to be some violence in it. Double up in pain, imagine you've been hit. That's fine, even you get the message, little by little. If only I knew what angle to choose so as to get everything in. The panties have to be at your feet. And now step out of them. Slowly! That's the discarded skin of an animal you're leaving behind, say a snake, and up you rise, as snakelike as possible, to your reluctant but compelling desire.
Frau Witkowski does this as she imagines a snake would do it, and up she rises, but not to her desire, a stench is filling her nostrils and she has to race to the kitchen, where the rice pudding has burnt. Thus she destroys her husband's delicate artistic mood. The genius was inspired and his prosaic spouse has destroyed it all, totally. I have to see to the cooking, it's high time, too late, in fact. Meanwhile her husband abandons himself to his own thoughts, which are somewhere far down, in the Polish lowland plains, Russian plains too, where Communism is constantly coming from these days. Back there he was still somebody. Who is he now? Nobody. A porter. Herr Witkowski is pleased that the putsch was foiled back in 1950. He too was one of the little wheels (though not a very handy one, given that he lacked one foot) in the ranks of those who did the foiling. Because he tirelessly drew attention to places infected with the bacillus of Communism. You couldn't be too careful. This is how it was: Communist raiding parties received 200 schillings per man per raid from the Russians, it said so in the paper. The Western occupying powers intervened and prevented the putsch. Restrictions had to be imposed on the circulation of newspapers (not the same newspapers that reported the 200-schilling payments) on the grounds that they had spread unfounded rumours. No one troubled to call in the public prosecutor. In this way, a socialist home secretary by the name of Helmer circumvented the freedom of the press, quite effortlessly. This was good, since no one grows heated over things they know nothing about, and staying cool was the order of the day, to avoid clashes. Once a paper starts peddling untruths it has to be disposed of. The Socialists aren't exactly number one party in the Witkowski book, after all, he's not a worker, but this time they kept in line, there's no denying that. Perhaps they will learn something from history at last. Perhaps they will lend their support to the right powers from the word go, that is to say: the powers of high finance, they are the only powers that count anyway because money rules the world (thinks the invalid, who has none himself and so, consistently enough, rules nothing), money can rule all by itself, everyone knows that. In consequence, those who have nothing are left with their nothing, more is given to them that have, and a modern monopoly system is set to begin. Capital reaches out its helping hands from foreign countries in the West, swamping our Heimat with foreign money and influences and linking hands with our people to form a chain as strong as the caterpillar track on a tank. Herr Witkowski espouses the cause of Capital, which he does not possess, and this enables him to gaze with confidence from the Past into the Future. With confidence, because in days gone by he gave Capital his personal protection, and now it is again in full control, personally showing its gratitude to him. By allowing him not only his full invalidity pension but also a job as a night porter in a hotel, where he gets to see important representatives of the middle class, travelling in the course of their work as industrial sales representatives. So it goes, with the one representing the other, even if he doesn't know who exactly it is he's representing. It goes without saying that Herr Witkowski still represents the National Socialist Party, as he always did, he knows exactly who's in it and what the people in question stand for. After all, it was that very party that made him so big that he surpassed himself. No one else would have enlarged him in that way. Nowadays he enlarges his nice photos. He looks not only to the well-being of the individual but also of the group he oversees. Since he always bears in mind that he represents a whole group and not merely himself in his spare time, he always behaves accordingly. He sets an example. To teach the youngsters. Just as others also represent their companies with dignity in their spare time.