Up top, Rainer has pushed the dress aside yet again and bites Sophie's right tit, which is tiny and pale pink like a child's, there is a little yell like one of the countless birdcalls you hear around here. But the yell promptly lapses into silence again. Ouch, it went.
You're nuts. I think I'd best cool you off a bit. I'll go fetch your ice cream in a moment, I'll fetch it right away.
The lawn rises to meet Rainer, this comes of his nausea, the nausea comes of his aggression, the aggression comes of his desire for Sophie, the desire for Sophie is caused by the fact that she is such a pretty girl. Reality slops across Rainer as if the swimming pool were being emptied on him. Underneath, he is in absolutely black wetness, which can penetrate at every opening, even though you desperately try to plug them. When he finds himself being licked he looks up but licking him is only Sophie's pointer Selma, named after the writer Selma Lagerlof, one of Sophie's early literary experiences, but one who has no merit since at that time she didn't yet know Rainer. Rainer hugs the unfeeling animal, which snuggles up to him. At times animals are better than human beings and you can learn from them. You can learn tenderness and how to show affection, for example. Sophie lacks both qualities. Rainer takes his ice cream from the servant's hand and trots off, long since deserted by Sophie and more recently by Selma too, who races wildly off across the lawns, taking high-spirited leaps with her well-groomed legs (she is not on duty at present), chasing an imaginary quarry. And Rainer plunges into the darkness in pursuit of an opponent that is very real, probably it is Rainer himself because after puberty the young male is his own worst enemy, or so he is informed. This comes from his seething hormones. He opens the gate of the grounds and enters a part that becomes poorer the further he goes. His figure becomes smaller, not because it is growing more distant but because it can't help being scaled down by its surroundings. Just now in the grounds he was still somebody, now he is a nobody on a tram. To experience this is dreadful because it implies the danger of vanishing altogether. The darkness swallows up the railings of the estate as if they had never existed. The estate is gone, Rainer is still there, but elsewhere.
Behind him, all the light disappears, it is called Sophie and never stays for long. Rainer, however, always has to stay where he happens to be, because he cannot change the way he is. In this respect, for once, he resembles other people, who cannot change the way they are either.
NOW THAT I have seen larger rooms, small rooms likethis one seem even smaller to me. And they really are small, says a petulant Hans, and angrily he kicks at the council flat which can't help its size and is humane nonetheless since it has everything that is essential in life. Which isn't much. Because mankind can get by with very little if need be. And so the flat does not have much to offer.
There is a wind blowing here as well, but it is a city wind laden with dirt and dust from building sites where the last of the ruins are being cleared in order to make Vienna even more beautiful. Gentle light passes through, from which you can tell that the gentleness of springtime has arrived early. The light is typical of this old quarter of Vienna, it leaves nothing unregarded, though neither does it reveal anything especially worthy of regard. The air is dry, splinters of glass, insects and 'flu bugs are to be found in it for brief spells. Girls with bobbing stiffened skirts and pony-tails sail by, their basic characteristic is youth, which they will shortly lose. They enjoy dancing and music, one floor higher dwells the pleasure they take in their future job prospects. They will be able to choose a profession because the economic boom is on, though it needn't necessarily shift you a floor higher. It might just as well fall on top of you.
Hans has a memory of the years of his youth. It goes like this. For five schillings you can sit in the first or second row of the stalls at the Albert cinema and see for yourself what the economic boom looks like, the boom you're on the brink of joining, though for the time being it's just for other people and you only look at it from the outside. It wears fetching tailored suits over corsets, or dirndl dresses with plunging necklines, and kisses Rudolf Prack or Adrian Hoven or Karlheinz Bohm. Everything is better now, or if it isn't better yet it soon will be. 1937: Managers 100, Workers 100. 1949: Managers 115, Workers 85. If it's a man, he kisses Marianne Hold or dear jolly Conny, who is to a younger person's taste. Sometimes he sings while he's about it. He often does so, in fact! What he sings is a little hit tune and his name is Peter Kraus. Often there are comical mix ups and you roar with laughter and it turns out that Christian Wolff is in fact the son of a company chairman, though he doesn't look it, his audience look like nothing at all and that's exactly what they are. Conny is saucy and promptly falls in love with him, when he still looks like nothing. This says something for her heart and character. Which are what counts. The slicked curls of the viewers bob in time like cocks' tails and are already looking forward to the moment when they will prove, under the caresses of girls' hands (those of trainee hairdressers or secretaries of the future), to be precisely what they in fact are: the slicked curls of apprentices and young employees. You shouldn't wish to appear to be more than you are, that is the message. At times the movie heroes even try to seem less than they are, on purpose. It is totally incomprehensible. Sometimes the girls' hands reach one storey lower to the pale tool that never gets to see the light of day, bathing trunks at most, but often it's tired from sitting around and simply won't be persuaded to stir. Sometimes it stands to attention instantly, but it pays no attention to the feelings of the person handling the tool. All it wants is to squirt off, then it's happy, and not into your hand, right.
And sometimes bumper-bosomed Edith Elmay turns out to be what she is: a factory owner's daughter, which you couldn't have told by looking at her. But the cinemagoer knows all along and enjoys the delicious mix-up situations where someone pulls someone else's leg, in the grip of a great love which is misunderstood at first but which will conquer all. We would never jeopardise a burgeoning love with misunderstandings, who knows when the next will come along, you're lucky if you find someone.
Many of the young cinemagoers (who see themselves as the hub of the action because the girl next door is the movie's heroine) are already dreaming of their own car or Vespa, their parents have barely had their war-damaged lives restored to them in good order, have barely had time to get somewhere in their dull, confined, timorous ways. Do those lives still work or have they gone rusty? They can't have gone rusty because the parents keep on working and working, they have to rebuild the Fatherland. Egoistic wishes have to be stifled, the only wishes that can venture out into the open are those for new vacuum cleaners, fridges or radiograms, thus keeping trade and exchange going. Trade certainly keeps going, but nothing changes. Not so very long ago, a Socialist Party paper in Graz called for the liquidation of strike leaders, and thus choked off one particular change, soon the only sign of life there'll be will be advertising, at least it changes the street scene into one of brightness and colour.