Kurt Janisch (I always find it embarrassing to name names, don't you think so too? It sounds so silly, but how else should one speak to people?), the country policeman, always already feels the juicy colors all around him when he wakes up in the morning, but they don't mean a thing to him. But it immediately drives him out into the front garden, where the flowers bloom and promise something more, that is, a woman whom one can pick up with flowers. The country policeman likes to wander amidst the greenery of the rural hills and mountains, where even people are allowed to live, although there's not much room for them there. The people are enclosed by the mountains, like a child by his cot. Without fail they settle in the valleys, right up to the hills, where vacation homes have to take leave of the world, when the landslide comes, and everyone throws themselves at everyone else, because the holiday makers want to play away. The sleep of the country policeman is like the paths through the mountains. There are many of them.
Why does it occur to me now: Yesterday Kurt Janisch dreamed of a pair of bears who were once young, a yellowed photo shows them in their young days, they had been intended for a nature reserve in the area, quite near, but then installed in a bear-pit instead and nevertheless delighted the tourists for years, even behind bars. Now the two bears have died at a great age following a long serious illness, one right after the other. That's how one knows that time is passing, when the photos curl at the edges and turn yellow. Death pushes itself imperceptibly over life, the photos of the happy young bears are overlaid by the old tired animals with mangy fur. Oh, the soft hair of human beings, why does it move me so? Their trees grow heavenwards, but the country policeman, the squad commander, comes and cuts them down if they threaten to harm his superiors. Yes, sir, we also conduct security operations, and our dogs recently received yellow blankets for their assignments, so that they're seen immediately and they don't cover any strange dog with impunity, the brutes, the good dogs, along with their good noses. The Dobermans are sick too often. The Belgian shepherd dogs can take a bit more. It's only the poor bears which are dead now.
TWO
There lies the gravel pit, a stagnant stretch of water which, like every other, spreads before us forever flat beneath the surface pressure exerted by God, dark and yet open, an opaque quantity. Oh, if only the ecological balance of the water in it had not been upset! Hence, sadly, the lake is not a dark jewel encircled by mountains, which sometimes throw off their nerves, the water varicose veins in the rock and cast them down their own besotted slopes, man and his misdeeds are to blame, yes, yes, the landslides-everything slips down the slopes over their hips, the mountain shorts, the earthen covering, this sodden, doused greenery, which can no longer hold on there. Unfortunately it rained so much this spring. Tracks were buried on which cars were parked oh dear. People can no longer leave their vacation destinations and are left sitting in the locals' trap, the latter have to scale the heights of their best manners in order to bear the visitors for so long. In the winter they had already practiced killing by avalanche, the locals and their native snow, that triune son of water. (Meanwhile the water has assumed another form again.) This living play of nature finishes off everything in a trice. And right away here comes a whole concrete wall of snow, this popular, but inconspicuous (once arrived, it simply lies around everywhere) piece of sports equipment that falls down to earth around the clock and no one, apart from the athletes, really pays attention, unless they haven't got winter tires fitted yet. And this snow is suddenly like stone, like concrete, which has a stomach ache and thus must empty itself over everything. We, too, have to watch it on TV, even though we're more interested in the little football. The lake then. One essential detail's missing, that is, there's no life in it. The trout go strolling in the River Miirz, they avoid the storage lake, they already die before that, hooked by an angler or from the power station sludge if the sluice is opened too quickly, I've already mentioned it somewhere else. I still don't entirely understand the mechanism, but whatever it is, the fish die in the hundreds. It happens in a flash. In every kind of rock and in every kind of terrain there are suitable basins or cavities into which water fits, but then again its composition doesn't suit the fishes. They would have said something about problems beforehand, if they could have spoken.
Why is it that just this stretch of water has swallowed so much and what that caused it so to lose its balance? The water really has to be fed a great deal of unhealthy food to get so fat. If we start with a nutrient supply of 10 mg per annum, but then increase the amount by two percent per annum, then the lake has a nervous breakdown because it believes it will have to cope with even more, and has long since lost its appetite. But at the moment I can't see what nutrition it got at all, yes, in fact what is it subsisting on? Who set the cycle in motion, until something sat up, had a good stretch and then got up and left without making its bed? Nowhere do I see food for the lake, this is not at all an area of extensive agriculture, it is an area of extensive leisure use. If anything, then leisure should lose its balance, not this lake.
The afternoon shadows fall very early across the water, crouching in its tub. It has not been formed by tectonics, volcanic action, erosion or accumulation, rather, someone simply blew a very big hole in the ground, so that he could throw the rubble from road-building into it, and then someone else had another idea and preferred to fill the tub with water. You see, other bodies of water are even produced by the wind, this nothing in the air, ice, too, can melt and thereby make water. This water, however, was poured out, but without a food chain, no, that was not added (that is, the consumers and producers within this biocenosis don't come and go, they simply remain, but see for yourself) there are two, three rowing boats lying there, you can pay at the inn on the other side of the highway, where you will also be handed the paddles that go with them. And then look into the water just once, no one will stop you, but the species garnishing underwater doesn't lie next to juicy fish bodies, snails, microorganisms, this sidedish, rather, is never anything but weeds, weeds, weeds, simply green stuff, you can see that with the naked eye, macrophytes, vegetable organisms; your voice will sound as if muffled by a park of living plant creatures, should you take the plunge, the tongues of foliage will caress you like the branches of trees, but if I were you I would think twice before going in there. If you can't swim, have a last photo of yourself taken beforehand! Well, this water does not look like water at all. Just the way it clutches at your throat, if you want to do some water sports nevertheless! This water is simply not as close to nature as you. Even if you avoid it and lean over the side of the boat, the impression you get is of jelly, gelatin, ton upon ton of water plants, nodes, rhizomes, I ask myself, how can they even aspire to photosynthesis if light cannot penetrate the water at all? Look at the snapped off twig floating over there. It is already half submerged, as if it were petrified and too heavy for the water, which treats it severely and swiftly draws it down. These plants, they shouldn't really be here at all, and in healthier water they wouldn't be, at least not in such gigantic quantities. Did the nasty climate do it? Did something rise up which climbed to the surface, odd given the youth of this stretch of water, whose chemical properties suggest something much older? Upper layer not very permeable, eh? Of special significance to the dynamics of the depth ground water due to extended stay below the surface? What, no depth ground water at all? The tasteless juice simply poured in from above and then the hose thrown away?