The woman thinks – and in this she is as mightily astray as we are in the scraggy woods – that she cast a glorious net over the young man the day before. She clapped her frightful image upon him, and now he keeps the picture in a breast pocket, a dart of cloth, and is forever taking it out to look at it. Now it's time he came out from wherever he's hiding from her. Quietly thinking of him isn't enough for her. There's an incessant dull thud of lust in her. And the slope promptly returns an echo of the yodel, having no use for it. It has its own sound equipment. On all quarters, people are squealing like stuck pigs, as if their sharp, narrow blades are cutting right into the very storm. No longer kept alone by the night, when you can see nothing, the woman wants to be dazzling bright in Michael's eyes. To make an appearance here in one's genuine shape takes extreme courage, you have to be strapped and buckled into your gear by the sharp looks and skis of those on the slopes. The heels on the woman's impractical shoes drill into the snow. Heavens, isn't she aware of how, buoyed by feeling, she's practically clambering and crawling up this hill? Unski'd, I mean unskill'd, as she is, I can't help wondering which way and how far her efforts in her unsuitable footwear will take her. She's wet through already. The heels of her shoes are tearing holes that it will be hard to close up. We ladies have to sow ourselves ruthlessly on the fields, on the parquet dance floors, where we have to prove ourselves among the vultures. But we want a little more of a return than just laughter, even in sport! Wherever you go, we first have to be valid for the journey (slot your ticket in the machine, that's right), and for every occasion we have to be got up in appropriate style so that, once open, we can be slammed shut again. Creative endeavour is ever at a rapid end, and inevitably we discover what discover we must: to wit, whether we fit the furrow we've been strewn in.

This woman, enamoured of herself, inebriated, tumbles into pits in the snow of her own digging, and there is no hand to drag her out by her new-waved locks. Dear lady, we are sorrowing for our departed friends, who have had to leave for home already! But we are still there, and the season tickets that will take us over the hills and mountains are at our warm breasts. We don't wish to give offence, but you've set up your safe home in the unsafest of places, so that you might just as well have none at all. The sun screws these youngsters by setting too early, but in the dark they will pair off promptly once again, too. It is our right to scale the mountains, and no rules govern our conduct there but the law of gravity. In amazement we swerve and give way to each other, but at times we take the wrong direction: never gob or slash that way or you'll get your own self straight back.

And what of the others? Just you take the average employee out of his locker! On the ski slopes he comes into his own, the lackey, the creature of obedience, a being insensate yet still with a vote, who imagines he has the right to look right through this woman, laughing. With nothing but the voice of youth he can make fun of her any time he likes. In the office, the young gentlemen have to behave and beware of the boss, but here all their pining is at an end as they fly past the pines, past Nature, as if they were so generous that they'd give themselves away! Immortality! Gold medals will set you free. And anyone who takes a tumble in the slalom as he might take a tumble in the tempests of Life will soon find that no one will shed a single tear for him!

Beneath the ice on the stream there are whole clusters of trout, but in winter they're difficult to make out. Michael's friends are sitting about together, welcoming each other and looking up over their sunglasses. Michael swings down the piste in a spray. Everything's going to be fine, because some very good-looking girls have turned up now, they'll turn in and turn over and then return. They stand there indifferent to us, we who do not blossom like the untouchable snow over there against the rock face. They are still too close to the origins from which they came. All of us take pleasure in new things, but only they look good in them. They are as they are. Remote from the pastures where we fat cattle graze, ashamed of our own thighs. We have lost sight of our own beginnings, they are mantled in a mysterious radiance, hidden far beyond memory, not to be repeated. It's not just in our social positions that we're stuck fast.

But let's return to our human analysis, anatomy, anomaly: the woman rushes from her Christian Social environment and flings herself upon the student. At this precise moment his ski poles are still dangling from his wrists like an afterbirth. See: what was richly rewarded last night with an ejaculation now supposes it can venture into the light of day, looking almost human. We're not used to having the wind blow about us like this, we live in a two-and-a-half room apartment! By these toilsome tracks we'll never make it to the top where the streams come tumbling down and the skiing is top quality. You and I, we'll be seeing each other again at the snack bar, queueing among the multitudes. No home for us at dusk. A time when many are to be avoided but few to be sought out. So that, as rivals, we can lay ourselves like burdens upon each other's shoulders, heavy as weather.

Clumsily the Direktor's wife in her cloak of mink and alcohol casts herself upon her current lordandmaster's breast. She wants to quit this world with him, spit out the pips and start up her own Sunday supplement. She wants to start anew, with Michael breezing lightly about her. But let's see things as they are: this Michael can't take this woman as she is because the problem is the way she is, her years, how she looks. Particularly here, in the bright light, with the tackle of all these sporting folk grinding and creaking in the cold. But the light of love – which goes by our side from the very start, though even our cigarette lighters burn brighter – has fallen upon her. And has cast her on the ground like a sack of garbage that's burst open as it falls. And the locals laugh. Far away the trucks go thundering by. Can you hear them? Mind you step aside a little!

These people barely feel the need of rules. After all, their feelings regulate their lives. The woman doesn't improve from constant use, but if she herself wants to avail herself of a young man, make herself available to a fellow who lives nearby: no, it won't do! The sons of Fate skilfully cover themselves with their hands. The woman blushes scarlet, her face glows, she isn't there. She just doesn't show in this young man's viewfinder. In the eyes of this beholder she isn't beautiful. Youth, like the day, grows and disports itself and does it with each other and then, buckled to its skis, falls into and upon the village enclosure. No matter what, all things present are fine by Youth. Youth is its own performance. Everything belongs to it. And nothing belongs to us, not even the place where we sit in motorway restaurants and the waiter, not deigning to attend to us, carefully fails to register our presence. Gerti clings to Michael but slides off his harassed plastic clothing. As anyone of his age would have been, he was carried away a little by the woman. He's easy-going. He likes it here. People like him are given away in recognition of loyal custom by the local tourist office, who put him in their brochures. Whichever pub he may be in, the air-conditioning breathes silently above him. But we, us extras, we are so difficult to move, we hang leaden upon our catheters, through which our warm waste waters trickle wretchedly away. Even the roads are unfriendly. We mountain hikers, naturally nurtured on the bottle and bottled into Nature's nurture, wolfing down the ham and cheese. Yes, Nature wants a little fun as well when the day comes for us to poison ourselves. Otherwise one dies all the sooner on her steep roads, of her cold products.