Michael has already moved a little way off, quickly. The light shines upon the quick and the dead, but it seems to be particularly fond of him. Our godlike Olympic skiers have already bagged two gold medals which hang about their necks while we contemplate the obverse sides: the glitter of fame like a chandelier hanging from the TV ceiling but never reaching us. Superficial though Michael is, untouched and untouching, he's still having an honest good time yawping with these lads and lasses. The woman reels in the deep snow by the barrier and sits down. The sturdy cable with bales of straw attached to it serves to cordon off the woman and all the rest who do not want to be let out of their byres for some fun and games from the sporty types who live on the boards that are really their coffins, types who taunt the skiers in heroic first place with mock acclaim: Karli Schranz! Karli Schranz, der gehort uns ganz. The woman's body arches into the architecture of longing, to cut the distance between herself and vanished youth. Maybe we can at least go tobogganing with our friends! But no, Michael's group has already been decided. They are constantly in each other's eyes and sometimes they even like staying at home to live in the relevant periodicals and cheer each other on in the pictures. These young men, in whose sheltering embrace the woman would so much like to spend her sleeping hours, aren't playing a game; they're hoping to be washed up to the executive levels soon. Jolly as hunters they go a-wandering in the woods.

The woman gets to her feet, staggers around, and sits down again. No good expecting her to buy the fare, she's brought along a pub of her own in a little bottle. She takes a drink. Michael calls to her, laughing, and another little demi-god who has often scarred his enemies by his mere presence reaches out an arm from his goblet (a can of beer) and tugs at Gerti, laughing, to haul her out of the deep snow. He pulls at her sleeves. Soon he finds it's taking too long. So he just nudges her from the deep end into the shallows where he himself wouldn't care to be and where the kids can be left to their own devices, they'll be back an hour later, out of the sun, roasted. When it's cloudy, animals fall silent. A bad sign. The clouds always draw in when it's time for the slaughter, so that the blood can spray out. Practically without thinking, the woman, she of the freshly gilded head, stares into the light. Now she falls over again and is dragged onward. People paw under her coat. There are children who go on and on tugging at their sex tilfit produces something, oh joy. The woman's new-fangled hair spreads out in the snow. The mink coat flops over Gerti. Outside the simple homes in these parts, children with heavy pails take a fall. The people built their houses by the water because the land was damp and cheap. (Like our dreams of the opposite sex!) Every day they carry up the weight of the cross on the summit in their rucksacks, so that God knows why he took all this upon him.

A little apart from the woman and her group, beginners are stumbling about, you wonder why they don't just go silently under like ships, but no, they're screaming! And why? Well, they want to get ahead, but they expected something else. Like you, whoever you may be, who think public transport too shabby. They take themselves off into the unknown, taking their pimples and crampons and thermos flasks with them. But they seem to prefer all that to the malice of the world they normally inhabit. All smiles, they issue invitations, they still have the wind to do that. These youngsters usurp the world and use up its products; they dwell in them and are in turn used by them. First it's the lungs' turn. Busily they live and learn and lounge about. Without so much as a single misfortune to cover them, these fledglings sleep, and on waking they look down at themselves, hello hello, there's one, no, two parties already engaged upon them! They've not had to hunt long for suitable partners, quite the contrary, they're the ones who are sought-after via airport public address systems and in TV commercials. They perk you up. Take any sight you can think of and face facts: these people are far more worth seeing. They are like the toxin slumbering in the poppy: a single millimetre beyond the law they really begin to blossom. There's always someone waiting, smiling, who abruptly leaves if we get too close, always a car door's being slammed, and always people are driving up to petrol stations where the poetry of gaskets is understood. Their life is swollen with the time spent changing scheduled flights (just for once to hang loose and let go, as we ourselves would like to do as well!). The very idea of it. But they're right. Youth. A whole heap of Youth! Unfortunately I am no longer one of that particular crowd. And one more thing: whatever business they're about, they're always smiling, even in the shady depths of the woods when they step aside to do their business. As empty as song they rest in the air, not even arrested by branches. So they can fall straight to the ground, and shed light on that sad place where others of more laborious build have blasted the way for a road through the forest, simply so as to ramble and romp a little. They laugh. Often it seems the best thing to do. Carefree they channel the sounds from their Walkmans into themselves and become distinctly restless because they cannot escape the music running into them. Fine by me, if it's what they like! And this woman has to get attached to an asshole like Michael, of all people, who has long since lost himself from view, though not his goals in life, needless to say. Never, perhaps out of idleness, has a woman matched his wishful image. No, what he wants is a more human place to live, say a loft, where he can stand himself up on the floor at last and still his desire for classy furniture and girls. Here, of course, tangled in the spruce roots, something of an eddy swirls about Gerti, an unedifying whirl beside the beck, where blue-collar and white-collar workers and freelance trippers regroup in the snow after they've been chased and if need be have had nails driven into their thigh bones. Why else would they subsequently claim they felt new-born after a day of sport and several of hard work?

Yes, we all take great strides forward, or else we drive off home, given the chance. But to think that this woman's eye has lit upon Michael, of all people, and that she imagines she will blossom forth beneath him, and that she would like at least to go out with him a time or two! Though she would also fancy staying in with him. Her husband devotes all his attention to his business. Aforesaid husband could easily pocket Michael, his friends, and half the gross regional product complete with the roast he's lunching on today, if his pocket weren't already full. The skiers' desires will soon be satisfied, just be patient a little, and then the skiers will be off to the pub.

Cheering and howling, the bunch of young sportsmen hurl themselves upon the drunken Gerti, hooray! They too have now taken a good pull at their own reserve tank. The mountainside conceals them, hiding them from their fellow-beings' point of view. This massive spruce is in the way as well. No expense has been spared. To prove the point they show off their solo asparagus sticks which they have pulled out of their skiing clothes, not bad if you compare the pallid growths of others who sit around trapping and doing the earth no good. They laugh throatily. They twirl their ski sticks. There are so many of them that they are a factor in the sports gear trade, in the nation's economy. They are experiencing the ultimate: they want to have a good time as they pass by and time passes by. As they fly by from the top station to the bottom. Loaded, they lean on each other, their faces turned to each other, and each has got a big tail too and stands there breathing over it. If all of us were to stick together like them, bar staff and doormen at discos could never part us! They know how to hide happiness protectively from our clutches, in a crowd. This is where our wealth has got us. Thus far we appear in Nature, which comes to us from outside. But we, not born of any spirit, are sorted according to what fine specimens we are, and have to stay outside. And the ground gnaws at our undead feet, forever having to go on.