Wonderful Wonderful Times

by Elfriede Jelinek

  I want to lay my whole body down on Sophie and get inside her, thinks Hans. He will do it just the way he does it with Anna, only much better because love will be involved as well.

  Sophie scrutinises Hans closely. Rainer wants Sophie to scrutinise him rather than Hans and knocks an ice cream sundae that he is just being served onto the floor. Before he can trample on the colourful scoops of ice cream (because he doesn't like the flavour, and money is unimportant when you're beside yourself), Sophie says: Have you gone crazy.'' If you want, Sophie, I'll tell Hans to spoon it up again. You're behaving absolutely childishly again today (Sophie). I'll show you who's going to spoon what up (Hans).

  The waitress in black and white scuttles about amid the tables and is addressed as an equal by the adolescent higher classes, black and white fade to grey in the process, which is subtler, you need an eye for the differences. Some address her as an equal though they live in twenty-room villas in Hietzing. They come to her with their unimportant problems, school worries in the main, which she then tries to solve or dispel. Every job has its satisfactions if you do it with care, and this one is particularly satisfying because you have contact with people. And you get a good class of people here.

  Just bear in mind, Hans, that what matters is the how and not the what.

  Rainer says: Murder and assault are not lunacy, they are the logical conclusion if you live a life without an assured financial foundation.

  Hans says it's insane, you can't hurt your fellow human beings on purpose.

  Sophie answers that if she has understood correctly you should only do it for the sake of violence itself.

  Well, the money is of secondary importance, of course. Murder is merely matter that's got in a bit of a mess (Rainer).

  Sophie makes some response, and Hans seconds it. He shares her opinion. He says: I agree with Sophie.

  Rainer says he should shut his trap because he is unfamiliar with the polarities of Thought involved, neither its perfect autonomy nor its strict dependence. To provoke Rainer, Sophie tells him he should go and do his homework, and then he can think about the lovely things he'll buy with the money they grab. Rainer yells that he doesn't give a damn about the money any more than Sophie gives a damn about money, he is just like Sophie and feels just the same. Sophie goes on: Perhaps a bicycle, some educational books, a building kit… and now it's high time he vanished, she's seeing Hans today, not him, he shouldn't go snooping after her.

  Hans says he agrees with Sophie.

  Rainer establishes a definition: The person who is in charge is never snooping, after all, he is the one who holds the reins. Also, he has written a new poem, specially for Sophie, in which he disposes of Christian thought, which no longer counts any more, once and for all.

  Sophie says that Rainer will still be writing poems when he's a respectable civil servant. Hans says that's what he thinks too, Sophie! Sophie can sense Rainer coming very clearly, it is like masturbating before the orgasm. Hans says he shares her opinion. He subscribes to that absolutely.

  You illiterate ignoramus, roars Rainer, seeing red. What he also sees (alas) is Hans and Sophie still wrapped in a species of mutual understanding that operates at a deep level that is not his own.

  It is shallow. He and Sophie, on the other hand, have depth. Depth does not go down below, it goes within. He says he doesn't give a toss about either God or his parents, whom he hates, right, he hates God too, and because of that I'm freer than you two! He has decided that nothing is of any importance. But they have yet to find out what that Nothingness is that is nothing.

  I really do agree entirely with Sophie, says Hans, and now at last I'm going to smash your gob in, Rainer. But Sophie restrains him. Rainer notes that Hans is a strange, disruptive factor in Sophie's life. Not to be confused with a stranger who acquires subjective significance. Because in point of fact Hans is no more than an object as far as Sophie is concerned.

  Shit, now I've forgotten my purse, observes Sophie. Hey, will you lend me the money till tomorrow, I offered to pay for Hans. Rainer knows he must not be petty if he is not to appear petty, so he pays up on the spot, not without plainly letting Hans know that he is the one who is paying for him.

  Sophie gazes out of the window and down a peaceful avenue of villas.

  I agree with Sophie, entirely, says Hans.

  NOWADAYS THE NIGHT-TIME cries of ow can be heardmore frequently than ever by the sensitive distinctly pricked-up ears of the adolescent son and adolescent daughter. And in addition they often hear of Papa's intention to shoot Mother because she has transgressed her marriage vows. But Rainer can see that the only transgression involved is that of a meaningless life. Hers. She has never transgressed. Who would she have transgressed with anyway, the shape she's in these days? Mother's life is one long chain of meaningless years, just as the lower classes are chains of people, none of whom ever stands out as an individual. Generally they remain stuck where they are and never reach the next level. Rarely, but only rarely, one of them makes it up to where there is more room to manoeuvre and develop his abilities. But in the jazz clubs these second class citizens with poor prospects are always the only ones who listen when Rainer delivers a lengthy lecture, on God, say, or on contemporary jazz of the cool school and its structure. Schoolmates invariably skedaddle when they clock Rainer because they know: Here comes another boring speech and I won't get a word in edgeways. The guy's deadly. Beat it. True, you yourself know more than he does, but he never lets you show your knowledge off.

  Whenever Mummy utters her low cries of ow into the night, Rainer next morning gives his father the kind of look that prompts the latter to say to witnesses: Just see the way he looks at me! What he wouldn't do to his own father!

  At breakfast Anna accuses her mother of having ruined her life, and Rainer prophesies to his father that he (Rainer) will personally ruin his (his father's) life yet.

  Rainer has natural leadership qualities, he is a fuhrer by nature as anyone can tell right away, but no one takes the trouble to look at him that closely. So the fact that he will be the leader if an assault is made is not questioned. Everyone looks to him, waiting for his suggestions about how to do it, Sophie looks to him the most and burgeoning affection becomes Love. The next step is for Love no longer to be doubted: it is simply there.

  Rainer's personal familiarity with horror is one of his strengths. Horror often visits him in a dream, in which he is walking the streets at night, the leaves are falling from the trees, smothering him entirely. Whenever he writes poems he is prompted either by books or by the weather.

  Today is what's known as Headmaster's Day, a day without school. On this unaccustomed day off, different people do frantically different things. Rainer leaves the house early and goes to a locksmith's, vaguely wanting to have a second key to Father's pistol case cut from an amateurish wax impression he's taken of it. He does not yet know why he is doing this, but probably it is in order to hide the pistol so that Mummy will not be shot by Daddy, which she has often been told will happen, though the consequences to date have not been worth mentioning. But you never know, you never know… One thing's certain: No pistol, no pistol shot. Later on, Rainer will find that the key does not fit and does not lock, because nothing Rainer does ever works, except for mental activity. Because Rainer is Brain become Man just as God is God become Man (Jesus) and Hans is Action become Man, a man who needs a leader though. He only ever thinks when it's too late. Mostly what he does is nonsense. But Rainer shoves his oar in and issues contradictory orders that no one understands and which everyone therefore carries out in a different way from what was intended.

  Anna the half-mute goes off to play chamber music, to create a bright cathedral of notes beneath her fingers, sounds that so rarely issue from her mouth in such quantity. In her head, the darkness of absolutely evil deeds. These days, though, her tongue isn't exactly obeying instructions. Anni goes on getting thinner and thinner. Her eyes smoulder darkly in her bewitched face (Hans once read this in
a most instructive novel), but sometimes you're terribly afraid when you glimpse the hopelessness of her generation in those Annaeyes, there is no wall behind them so the hideousness outside has free access to the brain and can cause pitiless devastation. Anna plays a Haydn trio with friends of similar inclinations. She is playing the piano part, the clarity of Haydn (in contrast to the unclarity of Brahms or Mahler) soars to the ceiling. Anna's confused state remains down below and makes itself at home in the girl. After her confusion come (in order of appearance) the wish to cause injury, to kill, to take everything away. And an unpleasant pull in the lower abdomen that says Hans and means Hans too. But he's out more and more often, hopefully not with Sophie, but perhaps that's where he is. Sophie never screws, and brother Rainer also views the sexual act as a degradation of the woman and the man. If Sophie did do it, contrary to expectation, he would suddenly no longer view it as degradation but as exaltation to sublime heights. At any rate he still has prospects of promotion, and things still ahead of him which in a different set of circumstances he would unfortunately already have behind him. It's always better to have good things ahead of you than behind you.

  Anna trickles off the pearls of the fast movement as though they were Japanese cultured pearls. The violin is playing lousily, Anna's musical ear is whimpering in distress and calling for the violin to practise more. Today they are playing for fun. It is not work. Mother Witkowski is very much with Anna, at a distance.

  Anna is finally making the dreams of art and culture she had in her youth come true. She didn't manage it herself because she married this lout of an officer whose handiwork was killing and whose brainwork was the pleasure he took in killing. She had piano lessons for only four years, which is nothing for so large an instrument, practically the Queen of Instruments if it weren't for the organ, which is even bigger. Four years are nothing at all if it's something enjoyable. Otherwise they can be an eternity.

  Rainer is at the locksmith's. Then he swots for his exams at a schoolfriend's. Anna busy with her chamber music. Rainer only has mates, no friends. Rainer is at one of his mates'.

  As always, their parents hurriedly get on with taking photographs in order to make proper use of the children's absence, carpe diem, it may be your last! Herr W.: Today you're the bad maid who gets a thrashing for the errors of her ways at work and in private. Frau W.: Ow. (She is bruised.) That's what I am anyway as far as you're all concerned, a maid, that's all. I think the suspender belt doesn't fit any more, I've put on weight. The last few times we always played at the girl gymnast taking a shower.

  Herr W.: Don't call a serious activity playing. In my case the field of operations is limited on account of oneleggedness but if a person does what he does well you always have to take it seriously.

  Frau W.: Do you want me to use any kind of prop, Otti?

  Herr W.: Now you've put me off my stride, I have an identity, I'm an amateur photographer. And the embarrassment is all wrong too the way you do it, though you of all people ought to be able to do it. And I can't decide about a prop so quickly because an artist has to wait for inspiration. Which has evaporated now. You hurt my pride as a photographer with your talk about playing just then.

  Frau W.: I didn't mean to hurt your pride, Otti.

  Herr W.: But you did hurt it, here, I'm going to give you my crutch special.

  Which promptly follows. But it only hits the wall, making one of many dents, the spouse having leapt aside in time, in obedience to reflexes which have been sharpened by many similar situations and for once are correct. The dent finds itself in the company of many more of its kind dating from similar attacks at earlier dates, dents which even further disfigure a wall that already has deep rifts.

  Strange to say, the day has a second instalment, since the first was so good, and this is known as the afternoon. It takes place after lunch, during the course of which Rainer wordily prophesies to his father that he will yet destroy his (Daddy's) life.

  Now the parents, clad in festive garb – Father dressed to the nines as always (he buys a new tie every week and his shirts are murder weapons ironed sharp as knifeblades, after all he's a ladies' man with a reputation to keep) and Mum looking as if she'd been fished out of the garbage, her assorted articles of clothing don't go together at all and didn't even match up in their early days – the parents go to call on a distant aunt, who has always felt Rainer's gaze to be sinister, it is both penetrating and sly, the aunt in question considers him capable of anything. Which would delight Rainer if he knew.

  The parents are safely out of the house at last and the children are in it. Today Anna's taking a turn at photography for a change. Last week, in Sophie's room, Rainer saw a photo of her brother at Oxford, dressed in a fencing outfit and with an epee. Today, Rainer draws a boy scout's knife (which was originally a Hitler Youth dagger and is now in retirement) and poses like the photo of Sophie's brother as well as he's able. Ready to thrust, or whatever they call it, this stance, the dagger in one hand, the other cocked at an elegant, graceful angle aloft in the air. The result is pathetic. Hang on, Anni, I know how we can make it look less pathetic, Father's souvenir bayonet, which he in turn had from his Dad, you wouldn't believe this monster had parents who begat it and gave birth to it once upon a time, but he did, the bayonet is the proof, it dates back to the First World War. Do you know which of our five hundred detergent packs that alarming bayonet is in, asks Anna sceptically (today her glottis is in working order). She looks around and winds on the film. I know, the cardboard suitcase in the third row from the top, the fourth object from the left, we'll be totally overgrown with stuff if this goes on. The rescue parties will dig us out completely smothered. There's enough junk here for five lifetimes.

  The case is opened up amid tottering stacks of cartons and the bayonet is extracted from its bed of rubbish. Now the entire performance over again. With a killing edge this long (the blade measures 25 cm) things go twice as smoothly. And so they did. Anna has her pictures home and dry. Rainer's murderous expression fits nicely, because he's thinking of violence. The expression on his face is not meant to be merely brutal. It is meant to suggest the expression of someone who has read Camus and has to kill because of the sheer agony the world causes him. Camus is an existential nihilist but he believes in God, which Rainer also did at one time, erroneously. It still causes him problems, but as it also caused a Camus such problems one is in good company. Camus is a supernihilist, nothing is nothing and thus meaningless. To cling on to Nothingness is just as cowardly as clinging on to God. In my opinion, absurdity in Camus's sense could be equated with Nothingness. Camus views pain as the fundamental principle of worldly existence. Pain and boredom. One is familiar with both from one's own experience. Cf. The Possessed. Best of all, read it together with Sophie. Read it with the woman one loves, who differs from other women in that she has become unphysical once and for all. Anna and Mum are forbidden on pain of death to leave bloodied wads of cotton wool or sanitary towels lying around where the general public might see them. Materials of this kind have to be destroyed or removed, leaving no trace behind. Anna would do this anyway of her own accord. She has to eliminate all traces of her physical presence as it is. Though to herself she doesn't deny that she likes having Hans in her. At times she stops speaking, at times she stops eating again, not even soup crosses her lips, and if she does eat she sticks her finger down her throat afterwards and throws up the soup, which after all has done her no harm, in a high arc. The wretched remains in the toilet bowl are immediately removed, like the bloodied cotton wool. Which befits a process that is on the unpleasant side. Away with it. And then it might just as well never have existed, and it's forgiven.

  Rainer practises a curious straddle position, which no one could possibly begin to understand, a few more times and brandishes the bayonet wildly. Anna says: Hey, keep still, I'll blur the picture, it's dark in here as it is. Rainer presents a pathetic picture, and the picture that results looks even more pathetic than the original. The eye of
the camera has no mercy on dilettantes, and neither does Rainer.

  Presently Rainer and Anna will be going to Sophie's, Anna in order to happen upon Hans, perhaps, and Rainer in order to explain to Sophie why one has to be merciless, to oneself and to others. But especially to others.

  Under his leadership and direction a crime is due to take place and hopefully another, and that is only the beginning of his career in crime.

  The costly camera is placed just as it was in its box before, so that Papa will not notice that they have been working on the side in their spare time. The twins go out into the public light side by side, where a maple tree (one of many of its kind) is maliciously fluttering its leaves and where there are other trees, and flowers will soon be out, making the city more beautiful.

  Anna spurns ways of making her person more beautiful. She shoots off towards Hans, who is doubtless expecting her already. With him she doesn't need any improvements to her exterior because what lies beneath the outer layer is of greater importance to Hans. Wearing a freshly washed pullover, Rainer is planning similar things with Sophie. They add savour to the distance by conducting a conversation on cultural topics. This makes the distance shorter and shorter.

  THEY DAREN'T GO into the bar because they are covered by the Youth Protection Act, which divides humanity into two classes, those who may and those who may not. You can tell what kind of bar it is from the cars outside. They freely give enquirers information concerning the financial status of their owners. You have to be careful, whatever you're up to, or else some professional will come along and chase you off. Anna has a go at the part of the Eternal Temptress because Sophie looks too innocent for it. This isn't a place for kiddies but nonetheless kiddies occasionally walk the beat if they are in need of pocket money for new records. A suit steps up to the seductive promise of Anna's get-up. The suit is not particularly well cut but it's interested in the action in the Big City, which is neither big nor much of a city. He reveals the portal by raising a velvet curtain and sets off for his hotel room, which is supposed to be in the upper middle range and which he pretends is the lower end of the top class. From the cut of the suit you can tell that he is an oaf from the provinces, he thinks you can tell something quite different from it, viz that he is a man of the world with experience in luxurious living.