Death's good for nothing anyway, it costs nothing, nothing but your life, giggles Hans wittily.
He is uninterested in strangers on principle, because he is only interested in himself and Sophie.
Go on, eat me, there may be worse times ahead, admonishes the spurned slice of bread and margarine. But Hans believes in a better future and does not eat it.
IT WAS NOT so very long ago that Rainer strayed and quit his predestined path as one of God's children. In the past the Catholic faith served him for many things which he now hopes to recover by violent means. Recently his sister Anna has been tending with ever greater frequency to be a mute in the midst of this jettisoned detritus. Still, at times it all bursts forth out of her and washes away almost everything that gets in her way. Today they are both lying on Anna's bed, holding each other tightly in their arms; they have diverted the wind of Reality to the dining-kitchen (done up in a farmhouse style) and in here they let the wind of the Past blow. Rainer is possibly going to break a taboo in here, the taboo on incest, to see if anything comes of it. But in the event he doesn't break it after all. So other dams have to break. The adolescent knocks them down himself because this degenerate home's door will stay shut if ever freer morals come knocking. Say the worthy progenitors.
Along with other misdeeds, Rainer used to be an altar boy at church. Nowadays this is a source of abhorrence that memory cannot cope with. Papa used to say: Off you go to mass. And off he went. Father's blows hurt worse than the cold tiles under his raw knees. That icy winter cold at 6 a.m. and the priest's slaps, though at least he didn't use aids such as coat-hangers or crutches, whack, yet another clip round the ear because Rainer got his Latin muddled and answered back cheekily a time or two, though no one had asked him anything, he'd been given an order. And then wearing these white lace-trimmed vestments with black collars that drag and make you look like a girl. And then the pictures, mostly of God and the Virgin Mary, in sundry styles and materials. The majority are rounded in shape because they were made in the Baroque era. And the giggling groups of youngsters, the Flock of Catholic Youth, bleating, shoving into the Catholic Youth hostel to play table tennis, serious songs issuing from the student throats of the older ones, and that pride when a child becomes a member of the Flock of Catholic Youth. Of late they have been able to watch TV, and do so, all the time. The Church always has the latest gadgets, and uses them against its members, too. Golden banners and flags with portraits of the Blessed Virgin, girls in navy blue pleated skirts: it all happens in the unloved Piarist Church. At choir they often say that God summons young folk, and lo, there they are, the moment they're summoned. Because young folk are proud of their Christianity. Which takes courage in a world grown thoughtless and heathen. Rainer is also a constituent part of Youth. Unfortunately he is the poorest component, and shows his wear and tear particularly clearly. He goes forth unto God, but he does so reluctantly, albeit he of all people has been summoned the most, because God knows his weakness and his reluctance, that is why he summons him especially loudly: Rainer! Rainer! He'll be throwing up on the tiles any moment. If he went to the high-class Piarist Grammar School, God would doubtless be well pleased with him, but his parents can't afford the fees. His rich fellow altar boys are never clipped round the ear. Naturally this fact struck the enlightened Rainer immediately. He always notices things like that rather than immersing himself all the more profoundly in prayer and ignoring the outside world. The Church takes whatever it can get and keeps hold of it. The Church never passes it on to where it's needed. Rainer needs love, not blows. God supposedly loves him, but the fact has never struck him, he's only been struck by the priest.
Nonetheless, Father kicks him into the sacristy every Sunday, with his one remaining foot, to get dressed up and show off his talents to his auntie and grandma in the choir of bright and cheery youngsters. God especially loves the choir because it sounds so hale and fresh. Rainer's auntie and grandma are diligent churchgoers, and in May and in Lent they do extra shifts and now and then fork out funds in recognition of his pious duties at the altar, so that he can buy himself a pair of those fashionable shoes with the sharp points or a pullover some time. These funds, alas, are the whole point of the exercise as far as this superficial lad is concerned, but he will learn to search within himself. Right inside. And then the scratching and scraping of feet in outsize interiors that are just about suitable to the greatness of the Lord God, you can't see Him, true, but then He needs an awful lot of room. Boys on the left, the young servants of the Lord. On the right the girls, the young handmaids of the Lord. The dean's words go smack down the middle, to the effect that Our Lord has suffered the little children to come unto Him, even though they probably had something better planned at the time. The altar boys sit resting during the sermon, most of them thinking of some kind of mischief, filth, or school affairs of no consequence, which does not bother God since He is even acquainted with the concerns of infants and His ear is ever open to hear them. But Rainer thinks of God, in person, in order to confide his worries to Him. For a short while, God is even his last hope because nothing whatsoever is working out any more and Jesus (of course) will fix it, but before that can happen you not only have to pray, you also have to make sacrifices, and Rainer prefers not to invest. It's too uncertain. Anyway, why does the fellow have to be up there and not down here, down where your prick is, which, if Jesus is to be believed, you mustn't rub or squeeze, not your own and (of course) not anybody else's either.
Only one image involving a certain harmony has remained in Rainer's memory, where it has stuck for a long time. One big Catholic Youth girl had looked out a certain passage in the prayer book for a smaller girl, and, having done so, stroked the little girl's head, over and over, which made Rainer quite calm inside. For years and years he would think of the scene in the bathtub (an improvised tub in the kitchen) while Mummy, even when he was a big boy, soaped his body to make him clean all over, one of God's Children within and plainly identifiable without, too, as a Child of God. Nonetheless he was always embarrassed, although a Child of God is pure in every respect. I'm your mother, I brought you into this world, and you don't need to hide from your Papa, he's got the same as you, in the same place too. Which prompts a muffled howl deep in Rainer's throat, the way a wolf howls.
Mistakenly he longs for harmony and peaceableness, indeed for beauty, which he often unlawfully tells his schoolmates about. So that they will understand him, he describes that harmony in terms of expensive cars, air travel, parents who kiss and crystal that glitters, all of which can be viewed in his home. Though things like that cannot be purchased. They are either within a human being or they aren't. But his schoolmates don't believe what he says.
Come on, love, you have to be quite clean, Anni doesn't kick up a fuss if her own mother does it, it's just as if you did it yourself. But go right ahead and be embarrassed if you insist. Being embarrassed is healthy enough, at any rate.
We are all the same, that is to say: human beings made of flesh and blood. But not you, Mama, you're incorporeal like the Lord God and only Papa degrades you physically, and that's why I say that that body does not exist, that's why I cut away everything below the chin before I pin up photos of pretty girls on my wardrobe. Because flesh rapidly starts to stink once the meat's been killed and left in the fresh air. This boy! Now dry yourself off properly, you can do that yourself, can't you.
The organ thunders, and Rainer dries himself off, you're not supposed to look down at yourself while you do so, your gaze should be straight ahead, everything you do is done in honour of a Higher Being. When you're bigger a lot of things will be different, some things will finally take it easy and lie down.