Sophie alias Vera Tschechowa alias Karin Baal are so cool and classy, they commit trivial and serious crimes, walking the wet streets, for the sake of a man, which is the wrong way. When Hans says: Stop, choose another way, not the path of dishonesty, they consent and on the next day they are already off with him to do something better with their lives than committing crimes. Hans has made them do this because he loves them. A valiant social worker lends his assistance, which in this case Hans will not even need because he has enough willpower for several people. From time to time someone will be shot and will lie dead on the cobbles. You have to avoid things reaching the point where a gun is drawn, you have to see about changing course before it's reached. Crime is not essential to happiness and a career. In fact it rules them out, totally. To forge a career, you have to inspire trust. Hans has taken this first step, because Sophie trusts him. He will take the second shortly. At times Rainer boasts about a pistol that supposedly belongs to his father but which he can borrow whenever he wants, which is bragging too, they all know Rainer's talk. But then, his father does occasionally let him drive the car though he doesn't have a licence, that much is true, Hans has seen it for himself. This may come to a bad end, to be exact: the death or injury or imprisonment of Rainer.
Karin Baal dashes out into the headlights of a car. Hans dashes after Sophie, catches up with her, flings her to the ground, and makes it clear that honesty is the best policy. She believes this right away. Vera Tschechowa's raincoat is snazzy, the material is shiny, a man could wear that too.
Mother asks Hans to fetch her the soup she's been warming up on the stove. She has put one foot up because it is hurting. She is scattering paper all around her: On Tuesday 26. 9. 1950 strikes began at almost 200 firms in Vienna. 8,000 demonstrators advance as far as the Ballhausplatz, which has been sealed off by the police, and hold a rally outside the federal chancellery.
Wednesday 27. 9: In Vienna, Linz, Steyr and other industrial towns, but particularly in Wiener Neustadt and St Polten, there are vast rallies and protest marches. It is the climax of the strike.
Hans fetches the soup and, unnoticed, spits a thick gobbet of phlegm into it, stirs it in, and hands the soup to his mother as if he hadn't spat in it at all.
On Saturday 30. 9. 50 the all-Austria congress of factory committees convenes in the assembly shop of the Floridsdorf locomotive works. 2,417 delegates take part, at least 90% of them members of factory committees. The congress makes the following demands: 1. The price increases to be cancelled. 2. No devaluation of the schilling. In response, the government calls for the defence of Liberty, which is being endangered by the worker's rash and ill-considered actions, they mustn't be intimidated by violent criminals, in other words: Communists. They also call upon the workers to dismantle the street barricades and expel any high-handed outsiders who may have infiltrated their factories, because this strike is allegedly out to destroy the basis of the workers' Future: all-round prosperity, which (as is well known) the workers get the lion's share of, though all in all they haven't deserved it. Mother goes on reciting yet more of this text.
But Hans gets up and goes out. As he goes, pretending to do it accidentally, he sweeps a high stack of newspapers and books off this educated working class household's kitchen table onto the floor. Without picking up the mess he has made, he goes out in a hurry.
THOUGH RAINER DOESN'T have a driving licence yet, his father occasionally lets him use his car, which they have trouble paying for. Father only has capital principles, no principal capital, and he has already been convicted once of faking bankruptcy. He has difficulty accepting his unstoppable decline. The tiniest speck of flyshit will give him new hope. But everything will be fine if his son, a minor without a licence, drives. The car's the main thing. Which is Rainer's view of the matter too. But mostly he is only allowed to drive when he's taking his father somewhere, very seldom on his own. The cripple squeezes in and out of the car as if he were doing bar exercises, a complex and wearing process that gets a man quite out of breath. Today is one of those days when he suddenly decides to drive out to Zwettl in the woods. It's nice out there. Hardly has he taken the decision but he's whipping his wife Gretl in the bedroom, where man and wife can be intimate. The whip is one of his numerous souvenirs of the old days. One of the others is a bayonet. All the son and daughter hear of Mother is a low moan, but that is enough to tell them that she is being beaten again for her marital sins, particularly infidelity. You whore, you whore, the moment my back's turned you're in bed with another man. And this other man is the businessman downstairs that I've been keeping an eye on. I won't put up with these goings-on for long, though. But Otti, you're wrong, I don't go to bed with any man but you, that's enough for me. You only live for those moments you can be with that impotent good-for-nothing! No, I don't live for those moments, I live for my children and their education, that's all. See, you admit it. What did I admit, Otti? At any rate, I'm going to give you a thrashing to remember now, so you never do it again, and if you didn't do it I'm going to thrash you so that you don't think of doing it. But I didn't do it, not at all, please don't hit me, Otti, ow! That was the ow the siblings overheard.
Rainer says: Anni, we've got to do something about that old bastard. But Anna says no what can we do anyway, let the old folk alone, let's worry about ourselves. But he's going to kill her. Let him, it'll be one less, and the other will be gone too, in gaol, where he'll die like a dog, all alone. We'd be free at last. But he's got the pistol. So what. He's far too much of a coward.
So Mother, having enjoyed no protection from her children, hurries bruised and worm-ridden into the kitchen to prepare the lavish Sunday breakfast. Anni wants to put in a lot of piano practice today and then go for a walk with Hans, Rainer on the other hand is to drive Father to Zwettl because Father wants to go there and work things out of his system physically. He'll try to be unfaithful to his wife but won't succeed, still, no harm in investing a clean shirt in the enterprise, just in case. He's always dressed up to the nines, is Papa. He will try to pick up women who are even younger than Mama, who is much younger than he is. He's adopted an elegant German accent for the purpose, to arouse interest. Come on, come on, let's be off, if we don't get started now we'll never get anywhere and I want to be off into the woods. You can be the chauffeur, son, because you're my boy, all I have apart from you is a daughter. Also you can play chess with Papa in the evenings, which Anna can't because she doesn't think logically. Unfortunately philosophic books by Kant, Hegel and Sartre have to be left behind when Papa wants to go out to the woods, no power on earth can do anything about this. If I come back and find you in bed with that businessman again, I'll murder you. I'm not yelling the way I usually do when I make the threat, Gretl, you've disregarded me often enough already, no, today I'm telling you coolly but incisively that I shall kill you with my Steyr-Kipplauf pistol, I am one hundred percent in the right. But Otti, no, for Christ's sake no, the businessman's happily married and the only contact I've had with him has been out shopping, but I always hurry and don't pause for any private talk. But you do pause to change your panties first, I've caught you there, haven't I? Only to be clean, and smell clean, when I go out, Otti. I don't have anyone but you and the children, I'm seeing to it that they get a good education at school because I come from a well-thought-of teacher's family.