Nothing is ever lost. The state is at work with what we don't see. Where does our money go, once we have finally got rid of it? We burn to be done with it, the notes are hot in our hands, the coins melt in our fists. Yes, we must part. Time shall stand still on payday so that we can stop and take a good look at our stinking and steaming heap of money, still warm from our labours, before we transfer it to our accounts. One day we'll be in clover. What we'd like best of all would be to lie back and rest amid our hot golden nuggets of dung. But love, ever restless, is already looking around to see where there's something better than what we've already got. The people who live where skiing originated, people who once grew here like grass (the world's most famous skiing museum is at Murzzuschlag, Styria!) are familiar with it only by sight. They are stooped so far forward over the cold ground that they cannot find the trail. Continually others are passing them, to do their business in the woods.
Like a horse the woman tugs at her reins. Embarrassed, In their Sunday best, the strangers brought together by an ad in the personal column used to sit on her sofa, mostly two by two. Dejected, the woman giggled, toying with the glasses on the coasters, and the men, the members of the club, were out coasting, their members wanting new toys. Unbuttoned, unbraced. Wanting to change to a new feed bag once every so often. Standing poised at the living room table, slinging the women's legs to left and right about their shoulders. When you're on your travels it's nice to leave your old familiar ways behind; and then, when you return home, how com-forting it is to go back to those old ways. At home the bed is a four-square thing on solid ground. The women, who go to the hairdresser every week, are properly put through their paces, because that's what they thrive on. Well-upholstered bodies, well-upholstered suites, an orgy of fleshy padding, as if we'd won an unlimited suplly of experience in a lottery. Intimate lingerie is sold, so that experience – the kind of experience we women hopefully and vainly long for – will look different when it comes to call and we are asleep and turn over and store it up.
My the pricking of his flesh, and the liberties taken by the press, the Direktor is unceasingly goaded onward. He takes liberties himself, e.g. he pees on his wife as dogs do. Having first made a little mountain of her person and clothes so that it's downhill all the way. The scale of desire is open-ended, what Richter would presume to judge? The Man uses and dirties the woman as if she were the paper he manufactures. He is responsible for the well-being or otherwise of this household, greedily he yanks his tail out of the bag before he has even shut the door and stuffs it, still warm from the butcher's, into the woman's mouth, setting her teeth on edge. Even if they have company for dinner, bearing their light into his darkest recesses, he still manages to whisper sweet nothings about her genitals in his wife's ear. Uncouthly his mitt gropes her under the table, burrowing into her furrow, taking her fear, which strains at the lead, for a walk in front of his business associates. The woman has to be kept on a short leash so that she knows what's what. She has to be ever mindful of the pungent solution he could steep her in. Man and wife must cleave together, so he laughs and reaches into her cleavage before their guests. Which one among you has no need of paper? A satisfied customer is king. And which of you has no sense of humour?
The woman goes on. For a while a big strange dog joins her, hoping to be able to bite her foot, since she isn't wearing proper shoes. The Alpine Association has issued its warning: there's death in the mountains. The woman kicks the dog. She doesn't want anyone or anything expecting anything of her. The lights will soon be switched on in the houses, and every hearth will then be a place of truth and warmth, and the hammering and chiselling will be starting up inside the women.
The valley is peopled with the wishes of part-time farmers. The children of God. Not of the personnel manager. The valley shoves up closer, like an excavator digging up the woman's footsteps. She walks by the immortal souls of the unemployed, whose number increaseth year by year as the Pope commanded. Youngsters flee their fathers and are chased by curses sharp as axes through the empty sheds and barns. The factory kisses the good earth from which it has taken the all too acquisitive people. We have to find ways of rationalizing our approach to the federal forests and federal funds. Paper is always needed. Now look: without a map, we would be headed straight for the abyss. Somewhat embarrassed, the woman thrusts her hands in the pockets of her dressing-gown. Her husband does take an interest in the unemployed, believe me: even if they are not kept busy, the thought of them keeps him busy, he never stops, never a moment's rest.
In the mountain stream there are no chemicals learning to swim at this upper reach, just the occasional human faeces. The stream tosses restlessly in its bed beside the woman. The slopes are steeper now. Over there, round the bend, the sundered landscape is growing back together again. The wind is growing colder. The woman doubles over. Her husband has already kick-started her t wice today. Then at last his battery seemed to be flat. So off he drove to the factory, taking the hurdles on the way in massive voracious leaps, leaving them under his tyres. The ground crunches underfoot, a grinding sound, but It's not the grinding of teeth, they're hidden underneath. At this height there's little but rocks and mud off the scree. The woman has long since lost all feeling in her feet. This path can't be leading anywhere but a small sawmill at best, the grinding of teeth has ceased there too, it's silent most of the time, how can you say anything anyway without your teeth in. We are on our own. The occasional crofts and cottages by the wayside are equal, they have similarities. Old smoke rises from the rooftops. The occupants are drying out their floods of tears by the stove. Garbage is heaped by the outside toilets. Battered enamel buckets that have served for fifty weary years or more. Stacks of wood. Old crates. Rabbit hutches from which run rivers of blood. If Man can kill, so too can the wolf and the fox, his great role models. Slyly they slink by the chicken runs. Nighttime visitors. Domestic pets get rabies from them and pass it on to Man, their lordandmaster. Eat and be eaten. Take a good hard look. Like what you see?