Greed Read online

  There is a kind of woman who, evidently out of spite, can take quite a lot of punishment and is even less merciful in handing it out. One cannot turn one's back on her, otherwise she hardens herself and knocks one down along with herself. And if that doesn't work, she summons up her arguments to help her. But this woman is and remains soft and yielding. She melts away. Or is she hard in order to offend someone? Her water is populated by lower organisms, and she tolerates even those, the little trichomonads, which she has also already got from the country policeman. Otherwise presents from him come only very rarely. Her doctor has prescribed something for them, but you have to treat your partner at the same time. He refuses.

  He doesn't want any prescription, it's his job to prescribe the rules. He has no symptoms. Mr. Janisch, you have to take something like this seriously. Otherwise your whole gang of women would always catch the same thing from you and you would catch it again from them, if you didn't have it already, haha. The country policeman doesn't feel anything. He must be sort of primitive or something? Does he feel anything at all? Does he have to be scattered around with his motor cycle first? Does his lower jaw have to be torn off? The woman points out that it could also cause him harm later on, if he's already infected now and will inevitably pass it back to her, no sooner has she been cured by the drugs, but he hasn't. Rubbish, there's nothing that harms me. I'm an animal. Take the soft bits out of women, and then one has to take the rest away from them as well. This woman here doesn't just have her gate wide open, she's even put up a sign where there's really none needed, especially if she looks at one as if she had the eternal bliss, which God alone promises, and he had to let himself be nailed good and proper for it; so the woman has learned this bliss in this man when he had hardly come in off the street. Because she's fallen for someone even before the door slammed shut. The country policeman is sometimes so angry he could kill this woman. There she takes her proud claim on him out for walkies through the whole village. At the time when he had just met her, it had gone like this: She stood in front of him, as if fallen from the sky, in the road, embarrassed, sweating a little because she was in such a rush, even though the car had done all the work, by the driver's door of her car, ready, from now on, to make a happy face at the sight of him, the country policeman, not to take her eyes off him even under the greatest strain, and at the same time draw out his cock, its outlines ever more evident down there, before her inner eye, so that it should jump into her hand with the one sentence, I love you. Meanwhile all this time it was only with a considerable effort that the country policeman could stop himself hitting her in the face. The text with which he had wooed her stood written in raised letters on the country policeman's trousers (there was no price tag. Price list on request from the shop). Now he's supposed to give it to her again every day, preferably several times. With the organ that this dear red, somewhat sweaty face has, and which she likes so much that she doesn't want to let go of it anymore. For the man she has ripened into a whole co-operative house building society, this woman, who's got housing available for life. But ownership would be better. She's still deaf in that ear, but she's already turning her head in his direction. There would then follow conversion of the property, and for that everything else will be laid down right away without asking, do you want furniture, please, go ahead. Do you want me to be laid down as well, with pleasure. That's the best opportunity to lie back there's ever been. You'll only get this house if you take the carpet as a present, and all the fittings as well. The other way around you lose everything, and things will turn very quiet around you, because you'll have to spend the night in the open. Only when the other wild beasts come will you hear anything, but it will be too late. Quite without foundation the man fears something like that, every day, and the bank reminds him of it as well, Dies Irae. The simplicity of his behavior and its single-mindedness is probably indebted to his bank debts. Why does she have to run into one everywhere, this woman, when she gets hot. Why does one immediately have to show up for her, for this demanding lady, who then ends up taking what she can get, no matter what, however often she denies it and says she wants more. Much more can be expected from her. But once she's been turned on, it's impossible to turn her off in time, she's already boiling over with love and desire for this wonderful man, a nice gesture, don't you think?

  Then I can just stay at home and let mommy cook me a goulash, what's all the fuss about. At home I can have whatever I want made, but you women, who want to be implacable and not forgive anything, one has to read your desires in your eyes, before one doesn't fulfil them and nails you once again, until one's buried under the planks of one's coffin. In a very similar situation, as already mentioned, Jesus was exhibited on the cross in Gallery Golgotha, do you know where that is? Yet I've known you women inside out for a long time, almost like God. Always the same thing. I'd rather masturbate, and I've been doing it since Wednesday. Since that day I've discovered a completely new method for it in my daily hours of sleeplessness. I confess, sometimes I can't shove my organ into you at any price, I can't do it. I'm afraid of this operation every time, I admit it, but sometimes the fear gets too big. Thanks to my job I have access to terrible pictures of crushed, or, alternatively burnt people, who originally were also highly thought of by someone, I assume, but have now involuntarily had to give up their shape. I think I'm not the only one who secretly likes such pictures, and every morning I can't help taking in their dear, delicate scent. Perhaps something will turn up. That's a good day for me then. I would like to tenderly stroke the tattered skin, the mashed bodies. I'm telling you, at the end my mother was so ill (said the country policeman to the woman, who was framed by her car door, a few weeks earlier, to a woman, who already after three minutes ardently wished to be married to him. One can take language courses, however she wouldn't put this man behind her for a long time yet, she knows. He's only a village policeman after all, he'll naturally feel flattered by her interest, and so on, everything designated, labeled, and put aside), my mama was so ill, you've never seen anything like it. A couple of weeks later the woman is already equating him with God and is herself sick with love, because he can't protect her from herself. She clings to herself, as a drowned person does with water. It's no use. He can make use of her as he wants. Everything you've ever read about organs is combined in these traffic accident victims, though unfortunately it's the wrong ones, that is, the organs would be right, but the places they have taken up are the wrong ones. Have they been flung onto the asphalt road surface just for me to give them the hard shoulder? I'm only asking because I like them so much. Bloody mush. People are muck. For that the man has become an idol to this woman, not man in general, but this one alone, whom she loves. It's a form of glorification, as in the church, of subjection in every area, which she certainly enjoys like a good old red wine, but which is becoming increasingly dangerous. Where do the glass splinters in the mouth and in the hand suddenly come from? Something like that only turns out well if a relationship has to stand up to the tides for at least twenty years, so that one can picture the human ocean, which God has in principle forbidden. His picture alone shall be lawful. He alone shall pass judgement. But one day, someone else will inevitably come along, and there are plenty of other women. If the relationship doesn't last, then the one who gives up totally is finished and ceases to exist. Or a new relationship comes along, which lasts until one gives up the ghost. Listen to your doctor or pharmacist or read the leaflet once again, but properly this time, before you order something unsuitable!

  The country policeman, however, knows yet other bodies. He can imagine them at any time, if he wants. They readily pass his lips. He talks as if he had already forgiven himself for everything, but for what? Women don't know how dangerous he really is, and if they did know, they would only steer all the more impetuously towards his powerful, somewhat thickset body cliffs, throw themselves forward, until their little boat breaks against a resistance they haven't seen, because it was buried down below under the wom
en's foam. They would want to introduce him to their women friends, this man, even to their mothers, even if the latter had moved to Majorca or Bali or if they didn't have any at all anymore. But the country policeman obstructs her and him undertaking anything with others, and in particular he obstructs it with this woman and with Gabi. With these two. They are his problem children. He's very secretive. You nevertheless always leave feeling satisfied, the country policeman consoles his female clients, after they, often also on Sunday afternoon, when he's supposedly at the alcoholics' practice meeting of the volunteer fire brigade, have come freshly washed and appetizingly tender, warm, with a floury dusting from their underwear, onto the table without a stitch, their hands in front of their breasts (how curious, that they always make this gesture, they only do it with the country policeman, involuntarily, as if he could catch sight of something. When after all he knows their innermost selves. At some point something does seem to have made them suspicious), and then climbed down from the kitchen table or the settee again. And I'm the one who always has to stand, no, I'm not the meal, says the country policeman Jesus to his ardent admirers Mary and Martha and to his penitents Mary Magdalene etc. and to his people in general, enclosed as he is in his little box, the halo flowing round him (no, his name is not suddenly: our Jorg, as one says in this country, only because he's so adored). I am always the one who eats, and here you're welcome to my body, take and eat, you too, no idea why you're so crazy for it. I don't see anything special about it. I say insolently to this woman, who can be glad that I've come at all and say something, even if it were only to utterly trustingly confide in her, she won't do it for less: Gabi, for example, have you ever taken a closer look at her? Sixteen, T-shirt and jeans and a jacket with a shawl collar and black ankle boots, she doesn't need more than that to look seductive. Why do you always daub so much red on your lips, Gerti? Do you think it's nice? I for one don't like it. These rags in which you drape yourself so that one doesn't look so closely at what's underneath, really, they don't bother me at all. But they don't do you any good either. They come off anyway, they're the first thing to come off with you lot, and fast too, because you know in what order you put them on. The only time you're faster is when you're shopping for new clothes and shoes. I'm absolutely sure that Gabi loves me, don't you think, Gerti? She's so juicy one would like to eat her right out of the wrapper. Meanwhile you're waiting out on the stairs, Gerti, I'm not saying that because I'm annoyed, it's just more convenient: It's best if you wait on the stairs down to the cellar. It will cool you off a bit. It'll do you good. I know, I know, the stairs belong to you. But no one will disturb you there, you like to be left undisturbed, don't you.

  Love doesn't pull down barriers, as is often said, it builds them up, so that behind them people learn to wait and are not always pointlessly kicking the iron banisters. Of course you're my main course, Gerti, always, always, don't worry, it's with you and only with you, that table silver and table underwear are lying around and getting bored, so all alone. We don't like to invite guests. And your house encloses only the two of us, and also, if desired, your whole property with a friendly little gesture, come on in!, a house without a guardian and fortunately also without an inheritor. I herewith apply for the job, for which this house has invited applications. One can knock at the door, who's coming in? The bodies wander around in crowds, sometimes I'd like to open them up and for once have a good look at what's inside. But the Lord above always helps me at the last moment, and restrains me or maybe not, depending on whether he's at home or not (and whom on the occasion of my last moment I nevertheless would rather not want to have at my side, after I've had to see so many last moments on the roads. Well, in that state, half burnt up in a Honda Civic, I would not like to be seen by someone, even God himself!), and smashes, e.g., this VW Golf full slap-bang against this truck there, on the left in the picture. It would be interesting to look at the open flesh under a microscope, all the cute little bacteria, how they all swarm around there after only a very short time. At some point the flesh is so broken up that it won't go any smaller. One cuts it into slices and places these under the microscope. One travels far away with the bodies they have, a long way from anywhere, even from me, an accident with the car or the plane and have to eat people, if they have nothing else. That's my favorite fantasy. No, Gerti, you're no obstacle to that, no way. I won't have to cut my fingers on your underpants, your panties have always mysteriously disappeared beforehand. I would rather die than be without house and shelter. I want to be the guardian of everything, that's my duty, that's why I chose the job of policeman. So I rub my hands smooth, spit diligently into them, and again and again, as if it were the first time, force my way into you, best of all through the back door, then I don't have to cover your face with a towel. I prefer this entrance, which is really an exit, even if making headway there is more of an effort. I'm meanwhile thinking about something quite different. You can't have noticed that at all. Why then are you already screeching like that, when the skewer hasn't even got there yet, to roar his commands? It doesn't matter. At least I can't get lost inside you, because your house, my most urgent need, is always all around us, playing, presumably out of boredom, with its dear twisting stairway, which you've polished so nicely with beeswax, yes, the banister, too, standing around looking dumb is the hobby of this house. After all, apart from you, there's no one to whom it belongs. You already cleared away the marks of the previous owner years ago, in the belief no one else would be coming along this way. The house was once old, now it's new. A gem of a house. All around only people who don't know the area. Well. I'm there now and write out a notification of an offense and place myself right next to it. Behind my fly I calmly trace out, because it's what you want, my cock, do you see it? It's like a statue, but not of the Mother of God, is it? I would rather show it to someone else. You look lovely, I lie, despite your age. I think you are arrogant. Well, not now anymore. Don't shout in my ear like that, you don't have to put on an act for me, I'll ram you anyway, until I'm finished, no matter what and in what pitch you shout, and at the last moment I pull it out again, no idea why, the cuckoo pops out of the clock, too, and doesn't know the time, which it shouts out for hours, I mean every hour. You can also twist around under me, to look me in the face as best you can, although you're lying on your stomach, and you can go on shouting if you like, as much as you want. No, no one's coming whom you could have called. At most someone passing the house, who knows you, will be surprised. He hasn't been invited to this engagement party, and your friends and relatives, I hope there aren't any now, haven't been asked to come for that reason. I imagine I'm the only one to come and wolf myself down in a kind of mincer. I alone should exist, and I, too, would like to disappear, but always only in me, not in you, you can believe me. I now know you inside out. I wouldn't like to stay there any longer than necessary. You look out from your elevated financial situation. I would like to keep that situation by the way. I've already checked the basic conditions in the land register, whether it might be possible, yes, everything belongs to you, no mortgages, and so, for obvious reasons, I shall go on leafing through you for a bit. It's interesting. I only enjoy what I can see, because I don't feel anything. For example, your new wallpaper. I like it and it can stay, it's quiet and it keeps quiet at least. Luckily I don't have to feel it, just see it.

  The man naturally never talks out loud about such things, he talks, as has been said, very little, but I believe that's what he thinks, quietly, that's the best way of thinking, only TV hasn't understood that yet and gives us sound as well, so that forever sweet toothed we can pile a glob of whipped cream and another and another on top of reality, before at last we get really stuck in. We're going to regret it at some point, when we're feeling sick. Well well, so he wants to get lost inside himself, Kurt Janisch, not in someone else, because something like that would make him afraid? But I don't see much of that yet. Perhaps in the end he even wants to digest himself? Perhaps that's how he likes to imagine it.
Then he would have to part with the least of all, is perhaps what he thinks. Why then is he always falling on others for no fault of theirs? That's how cannibals always start. First they want to eat themselves, and then it's always others after all, whom they get a taste for. And when taste has got going, e.g., on an excursion into the TV or a video, then if need be they get to work on the bodies themselves and that as large as life. And already, often of necessity, shit and natural bubbly are flowing out of these bodies, sometimes out of fear that one day one might have to pay for it instead of being currency. I've got the exact figures here. The man says very long-windedly and nothing is said in reply: Think of me as the unhappiest and at the same time as the happiest person if you have to detain me here. And how else should I (yes, me!) express it, than with these few diffident sentences, out of which I might almost have built a conversation between us, but only almost. I would have made a little crib, if I hadn't run out of nails. The bank isn't giving me any credit at all anymore, quite the reverse, the bank wants me to pay back the old loans, and all of them at once as well. Later, like his thoughts, which can never sit still long enough for them to be properly thought through to the end, perhaps by chance, perhaps through planning, this man will avoid prison, because he won't be recognized for what he is. He's meanwhile, but sometimes by the quickest route, heading straight for personal bankruptcy. Or not. I alone know everything, because I have executed it specially in water-colors, is that not unbearably watered down?, so help me. Or is that exactly how it happened? So I'll help you, too, even though I don't know you at all, with my word, which like a go-cart I slide under your uncertainty, into which, after all, I've steered you, and already this man, through the music of his words, can make contact with me, with us, and you can complain all you like about boredom while you're reading this, but please not to me. With this problem I'm definitely not standing right behind you. Not behind myself either. I'm not standing anywhere. I, too, would prefer to be doing something else apart from always reading.