Gorges of shelving recede to the distant horizon. The bunch of people disperse. Already the last of their wishes, like the straps of sweaty vests, are slipping from their weary morning shoulders. Sisters, mothers, daughters. And the holy Direktorial couple, in perpetual repetition, are on their way back to the penal colony of sex, where they can whine for redemption to their heart's content. All that they receive in their cell, through the flaps and holes, is gruesome gruel, lukewarm, poured over their outstretched hands. Sex, like Nature, has its following. Who enjoy its products. And wear frilly lace for the purpose and the products of the cosmetics industry. Yes, and perhaps sex is the nature of humanity. I mean, it is in humanity's nature to chase after sex, until taken whole the one and the other are of equal importance. An analogy may convince you: you are what you eat. Till work pulps the human creature into a grubby heap. A melted snowman. Till, marked with the weals of his origins, he no longer even has a hole to retreat into. How long it takes, till humanity has finally been questioned and learns the truth about itself… While we're waiting, why not listen to me. These unworthy creatures are important and hospitable for just a single day, the day they marry. Only one year later they are made liable for the furniture and car. The whole family is liable for the crimes of one member if he can't keep up the payments. They even buy beds on the never-never, the beds they frolic in! Smile into the faces of strangers who lead them to their mangers. So that a stalk or so of hay wisps in the breath of sleep.
Before they move on. But we, we have to get up at an ungodly hour every day. Alone and in a far-off place, we merely gaze down our narrow road, where the sweethearts we couple with are now the objects of other desires, to be used by others. They say a fire burns within women. But it's only dying embers. The shadow of afternoon falls on them in the morning when they creep from the gullet of attic bedrooms, where they have to look after a bawling child, into the maw of the mill. Go home, if you're tired! No one envies you. No one finds your beauty disarming any more. He hasn't for a long time. Rather, he strides out briskly, leaving you, and starts his car, where the dew lies fresh and glinting in the first bright highlights of sunshine. Quite unlike your matt and dull hair from which the glinting highlights have gone forever.
The factory. My, how it deals with the unskilled folk who are pumped into it from inexhaustible sources. And how loud it is, inexhaustibly drowning the din of the stereos! A whole houseful of humanity. A factory built on the Direktor's lot. His plot. Who did it? they wonder, fetching a refreshing Coke from the dispenser. A tent of light and living creatures, where paper is manufactured. Rival firms are putting the competitive screws on, and if anyone ends up getting screwed it'll be the employees at the mill. The company that owns the factory in the adjoining federal province has far more clout and is right on a major traffic artery, the bleeders. Wood is pulped and the pulp is processed at the mill by people who've been pulped, at least that's what I've been told, and I'm glad that I, being free, can go into the silent woods in the heat of the day and spew my echo out. The armies of the irresponsible, people like me, who read their papers on the toilet, see to it that the trees disappear from the woods so that they can take the trees' places and unwrap their food from paper wrappings. Then at night people drink and worry. And when there's a dispute, the bloated and blinded multitude plunges into the depths of night.
The factory has gone to the wood. But it has long since been pining for somewhere else, somewhere that production costs are lower. The divine hoardings that line the arterial roads set the hordes dreaming and steaming off on their toy train sets. But the points all point to nowhere. And even the Herr Direktor is in the hands of the powers that be. Gobbling public money. Opaque are the policies of the owners, whom no one knows. At five in the morning people fall asleep at traffic lights on their hundred-kilometre drive to the factory At the very last crossroads, at the very last holy red light that toys with them, they fail and are killed, failing to slam on the brakes, failing to break off their dreams of the last grand slam Saturday night. Those TV caresses, which for years have nourished their pawing and panting, they'll never see again.
And so they all cause their women to sound forth once more, that they might not hear the last trumpet at least till next pay day. The trumpet call of rumour never falls silent in this place. Those who have been dropped by the banks sit chirruping in the furrows, eating their last crumbs of bread. Behind them a wife wanting her housekeeping money and new books and exercise books for the children. All of them are dependent on the Direktor. That big kid with the mildest of tempers. Though his temper can snap round with a crash, like a sail, and then we're all in the same boat. And promptly fall out on the vast, wild side. The side we flung ourselves across to at the very last moment. Because we don't know how to strike up our thousand-voiced siren song to better effect. Even in our anger we are forgotten. But our running sore is hurting. And we run wild.
6
THE WOMAN GROPES HER way along a fence by an old volunteer fire brigade station, failing in her confused state to find the emergency exit from her memories. There she goes, not even on a lead. The dirty washing-up waiting to be done is clean gone from her mind. Already she has ceased to hear the familiar jingling of the bells on her bridle. Speechless, she licks up like a flame, like sparks. She's left them both behind, her practical-minded husband who is a great sport and is still growing, regardless of the flames shooting from his genitals, and her child, all gut and screech like his violin playing. Let them drone and howl together. Ahead of her is only the cold tempestuous wind off the mountain. The terrain is threaded by a few paths leading into the woods. Dusk. In their cells, the housewives bleed from the brain, from the sex they all belong to. What they have bred they must now tend and rear and keep alive and cradle, in arms already laden down with hopes.
The woman moves towards the icy channel in the cleft of the valley. Awkwardly she wanders across the frozen clods. Now and then animals are revealed through an open stable door, then there is nothing. The rear quarters of the animals, pulsing craters of mud, are turned to face her. The farmer isn't exactly in a hurry to clean the shit off their hind parts. In the large livestock sheds in wealthy regions, the animals are given an electric shock through the yoke about the head if they crap at the wrong time: cattle training. Beside the cottages, wood is stacked, wretchedly snuggling up to the wall. The least you might say of Man and Beast, their common denominator as it were, is that both are tucked fast in their beggarly beds by the snow. Sparse plant life, tough leafage, is still straining for the light. Iced-over twigs play with the water. To be stranded here of all places, on this ice-tight bank where even echoes founder! Nature presupposes sheer scale: anything of a smaller size could never excite us or entice us, tempt us to buy a dirndl dress or a hunting outfit. Just like cars approaching a distant country, so we too, like stars, are nearing this unceasing landscape. We simply can't stay at home. Someone's put a country inn there, just for us, to put an end to our rambling. And Nature is put where it belongs, with a preserve for domesticated deer or a path through the woods with every tree labelled for our instruction. In no time, we know all there is to know about it. There are no mountainsides to cast us wrathfully down; quite the contrary, we gaze at the bank strewn with empty milk cartons and tin cans and we recognize the limits Nature has placed upon our consumption. In springtime all will be revealed. The sun, a pale patch in the sky, and only a handful of species remaining on earth. The air is very dry. The woman's breath freezes as it leaves her lips, and she holds a corner of her pink nylon dressing-gown to her mouth. In principle, life has ample opportunities for everyone.