Lust

by Elfriede Jelinek

  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!

  To have a well-padded vantage point, a box of her own from which to command a royal view of time (it's only the poorest of the poor who can't afford a carpet under their feet), the woman leaves the house, having first painted herself and her fingernails. How wonderfully vast Nature is. All the poor see of it is the speed limit signs, which they disregard before being recycled in our fodder along with their unruly cars. This woman's vagina has been pumped full of her husband's fermenting product. Her thighs under the panty-hose are sticky with the Direktor's daily slime. He likes to show that he could duplicate himself if he wanted, even if there's not much ink in his machine any more. He'd have no problem at all toasting some other, much younger crumpet under in awe at the face revealed thereon. What a difference between a hundred and a thousand note! A whole world of difference, enough to bridge the abyss between. The woman takes the highway's serpentine bends in her car. She wants to hear that young man say yes today, having heard him yesterday. As soon as possible. She will appear amongst us, at the foot of the inaccessible stairs. Rifts yawn wide in the mountains, but we remain below, too clumsy to handle the wildness in us. The young man will stare a wide open unlocked stare when he sees the new hairdo. It is much the same for people in these parts, caught between the creatures they care for (hundreds of dead trout in the stream because the sluices were opened too suddenly) and the work they do but don't care for. Their work is the careless gift of a factory manager. That is how we describe the progeny of the mind.

  They romp and ruckus on the slopes. The lifts haul their watertight load, sealed in a plastic container, with Nature's invitation dangling, up across the frozen-stiff landscape boarded up with skis. The land seems terrible under the skis, whereas at one time it was manifold or simply folded. Snow machines retch out in front of raucous day trippers from Vienna. Every one of them thinks he's an ace on skis. Perhaps we'll stay here a while longer. Already we've been on this earth for aeons, to change it, and now it is coming to an end beneath us. Skiers only
toy with the landscape, don't worry, they're not too wary: they wander upon the face of the earth, with their enormous private parts, and stamp out every fire. City folk go up to the top for sheer love of speed, and sheer speed sends them down to the bottom again. Oh, if only they could get out of themselves again! They would fly about under the sun, honest masters, showing what they have made of themselves and of others. They have commingled with others and brought forth further sporty types. Their children will take skiing lessons with their parents' piggy sutures still before their eyes. Sport, that painful nothingness – why should you of all people go without it, if you don't have much else to lose? There's no furniture here, but the jump-suits, goodies and splendour plus the absurd and ill-matched headgear will bear all before them, and, if not, just jump over the wee mountain! Behind it there's sure to be another one that will swallow up everything that fits into us. The Alps have long since started feeling the ravages of modishness, murder and mores: in the evenings we all roll about laughing at some clown with a concertina going through his capers for us. All about, the villagers are asleep. For them the mountains do not part when they drive to work in the morning. On their bikes, or belted tight in their tiny cars, they jolt over every bump till at last they open the gate to the employees' enclosure. Some of them make it to the top, true, if they have well-steeled footwear and nerves. Quiet, please. When all's said and done, people are at work here with their animals, each in a separate cage.

  And not one stretches out a hand for one of these skiing creatures making craters in the ground to stop them. Not one is exempt from the laws of the earth, which decree that heavy things must go down, they can test it for themselves. Some of them are wearing sunglasses. They look at each other. They think of gobbling each other up. Sex is planned for the evening a la nouvelle cuisine: not much, but choice. Redly the weather steams in its basin, our forks clink, the golden heads bow down, the mountains are motionless. Thousands of offensive persons come flinging down the slopes. And a few hundred superfluous persons are busy making paper, a commodity that is devalued even faster than people are worn out by sport. Still want to read on? And breed on? No? See.

  The woman ventures into town, where her husband used to park his car and inhale hot water at the sauna.

  Never mind. She hangs upon his balls and cliffs, aslant his genital stairway, his very own wife, beside whom he is found by Sleep when Sleep goes looking for him. This woman is now his luxury, he pours into her till she overfloweth. The man is there to have a small matter about his person put right, and the women, in order to renovate him, have dressed in the most risque of ways! Red lights burn at the windows of the establishment, but it is no longer as much frequented as it used to be. To snatch a breathing space, the men tend more frequently to catch the figgy snatches of their wives in their fists and squeeze them out. First they tie their pets' feet so that they'll find them again under a new dress. Now they're on intimate terms with their wives, without considering them their equals. The sun shines on the path. The trees stand there. They too are done for now.

  The disease, gentlemen, is paving your way to the familiar sex, from which you always used to want to flee. Now trusting your partner is a matter of life or death. The only alternative is a visit to the specialist. To think that back then every route seemed open, and you, dear traveller, would take any one of them, happy in your immortality, and play all the tunes on your mouth organ. To think how glum you tended to be if your instrument was blunt! Now, watching, we twirl each other round on the spine and, steaming with greed, serve ourselves up in our own juice. That terrible regular visitant of sex eats at home now. He likes home cooking best. At last the man and the thing that dangles and dongs before him are one. In the old days he used to keep his wife well clipped as if she were a hedge, now he's the one who's overgrown. A bagatelle. Sooner or later, every man has to learn the knack of ramming his female partner's asshole in peace and tranquillity, for there is no other partner, this woman is quite enough. The men have plumped out now, refleshing and refreshing their senses, which are close to hand. In the old days, every woman used to be served up as the man wished. Now he empties himself into his own, no problem, she'll wash up after him. The terrible visitant revels in her bed-warm cheeks. He himself is concentrating on keeping up the erection out at the end of his pelvis, where it bubbles and froths. He's forever afraid of being off form and finding some amiable stranger taking his place. Ah, lust! How one would like to make it the cornerstone of self! But I wouldn't go ahead and build on it if I were you.

  Like beasts of prey they slink along their blossoming lanes, casting down ramblers and rocks. With their mighty packs of genitals these men are out searching for a bosom where they can lay their heads for good. The herd is still docile as yet. Their meat's still sealed in cellophane, clearly visible, but soon, when the sun touches and turns it, it'll bloat and grow and juice will come from the tiny slit. And then the sun will be beating down, the moist deposit will burst, the acrid smell of sex will whiff across the parking lots, and eyes will be yoked together two by two till the cart lands in the ditch and wishes go wandering off without their master, looking for another animal to pull along. Men shall not have lived in vain. If they wish it, women will piss in their faces. They lie still under the tree of sex, the planting of which they superintended themselves, and now they in turn are watered by the tree. If it'll get her a new brooch, Gerti will do that at home too, if a fist is thumped into her manured bed till her earth opens up and she relaxes her sphincter. Pleasures such as this are available to each and every one of us. We don't need to hide away in our closets of wretchedness, hemmed in by furniture and nothing but. People looking higher and higher so that they won't have to lower their standard of living.

  Time wears away lust, the desire to penetrate each other and emit penetrating cries. What counts is to deposit a still ampler body alongside our own dump one of these mornings. But the weary ones, they gobble each other up, down to the fingernails. They have a better time of it, not having to be slim or to bleach their hair, they're pale enough from the machine to which they must return and which they must keep clean. And if they look about them they see waste fluid from the water supply building site polluting the stream. And everything they've done, all they have created, has to be shut down and dried out and held to their breast. And all the Direktor of this state-padded and foreign-exploited plant wants is to squirt off into his personal plague, his wife. In the interval from evening to morning she becomes a threat to him. How can he enter by the rear when he's been shown the door? Will Hubert the huntsman (or Hermann the cuntsman) ever be able to fall asleep in the acrid fox-hole where he's been caught at it? Who, if not he, would kneel before his wife, senses pricked, laying aside her folds one by one? Above, she puts a good face on things, while below he buries a bad face in things, hissing promises with his forked tongue. There is air all around the field, and women are about us constantly. We eat of them, we eat with them. No fear that this trafficking intercourse might disturb the neighbour: he's busy regulating his own stop-go flow.

  The Direktor keeps a tight hold of his car and pisses. The headlamps beam upon his person. He can pump his meat extract into the woman just as often as she bends down from her lofty peak. This couple can park anywhere in his spacious house to take their lawful pleasure of each other. The woman is off to have her hair done. Beyond the mountains the sky is brightening, the pastures are being clad in day, which shows everything up better. Only this woman is lying her way into cracks in the wall, which time has forced there for her. We are one and all of us vain, ladies. Let your dresses blow in the wind and your teeth in your mouth, and fall upon your partner as if he had done you no harm for hours! Mind your language!

  It is a never-ending dream for the couples. They go to work and raise their eyes from the path they know in order to look at another person they know too. And there they stand, next to each other, and one of them just has to buy that reduced tracksuit, to devalue it entirely. The path f
ades and withers below their feet. Their wives are all gaping wounds where they have been touched, but nowadays none of them will take sick leave lightly. Otherwise the company where we have a place of work for life and a partner for love will frown. How does the picture get there once we've punched the button? No idea, but you'd best switch off if there's a storm and retrieve your own image from the terrible slot where no one would insert even a single schilling to look at it. And yet you are alive. And oftener than you really deserve you live off the affection of a woman who has to gum and glue you together. Purely because she's hoping for a little love.

  Gathered beneath the clouds, they go in at the gateway and disappear. Just made it; and in the factory they'll meet the maker. Now go home to your wife and rest, while the rubber smokes at the breakers' yards and soldering irons sweat. The metal groans, and steel entrails spill out of the cars that once enjoyed greater love than the wives whose jobs on the side paid for them. Just one more thing: don't be guided by your own taste, because you need only blink and there'll be a new model on the market, waiting for you, nobody but you! Just imagine! You'd already own one, having inveigled it with words and savings accounts long since. And that'd be it. Nothing doing. Off home with you. Got it?