The horizon gently rocks the eyeballs of the woman who has stopped to look across the city, which once, in part, at least, was hers, to sleep. Yet she convulsively opens her eyes wide, she wants to see everything, everything. And her gaze should also be garnished with church spires, domes, roofs, gasometers, Second World War tower bunkers. The dear places of culture, to which the woman once strode as to work in the fields, are not to be seen. Wrong part of town. The head hair of the city flows somewhere else, one would have to follow the Wiental further, but the Wiental doesn't follow one either. On the left there, the Steinhof, with the lunatic asylum and the famous, unfortunately dilapidated church built by Otto Wagner, which every child knows, and not many children will still get to know (apart from those who in the Nazi period were injected to death, after starvation, cold, sick (no, they weren't sick, but they were given drugs which made them vomit unceasingly, unstoppably) and beating cures, which no one had to invent, because they already existed, a relatively large number of these children are still represented by their brains in jars), because it will soon collapse, the church, one would have to go over that way in order to see St. Stephen's Cathedral, but there the view is vigorously limited and checked by a small hill together with an old quarry, by a hill which presses forward, perhaps because it thinks that people could not bear so much beauty. And then we have to call emergency again. The mixed canine/human group has meanwhile disappeared around the bend, it'll be about ten minutes before it re-emerges, although individual animal heralds, who have run ahead, again and again impatiently appear on the horizon with little sticks and the doggy rearguard, which has remained behind, is bending over something that it wants to eat, but will not agree with it. The woman is completely alone. She is not in Paris or London, she's in Vienna. She would have quite liked to travel to Paris and London again. Well, it probably won't happen now. In the country there's always something good and useful to do, is what she thought, until someone else took it from her, who is extremely interested in everything she has. Where it was necessary he took it in hand, also her, that is what one does in the country. To take something in hand and carry out tasks which are so complicated that the woman never saw through them and from now on doesn't want to see through them. She often cried out, when he, with his wealth of movements, climbed over her and, not to be softened by anything, tossed her little burden around, depending on which side he wanted to penetrate her, while she pleaded for him to give her love, but nothing comes of nothing. Through him she found her soul, she tells herself. It's no use, she doesn't know what to do with her soul. In her he found a building that he could slip into. So one dwells in the other in order to live at last. Only there are some who need more of that than others, who only need a partner in order to be filled with light and the capacity for love. Like this empty vessel, which she is without him, the woman, this dull cup, which is filled with nothing but itself and cannot even see to the bottom, why she does something like that. She doesn't see to the bottom of things anymore. She has poured herself out, but no one wiped her up. Perhaps it's all a form of madness, well, at best a little form, into which children press their sand in order to push it into their neighbor's eye. Town and country, what more did I want to say that has nothing to do with psychological self-analysis, which I have hereby brilliantly mastered? The land is its activities, because it has to be constantly created, wrested from the soil, also from the animals. The city is the activities of others. It is already there. Even if there's always new building going on, the city is what was always already there. Reflecting things flash in the sunlight, panes of glass, roof ridges, tin roofs, cars. Another reflects on houses, let him have them. He's no mere employee, that he would have to earn them. He's a civil servant. He has called something forth and thrown away the bones, no need to bone up himself, up to every trick, imposing no moderation on himself. A shared happiness will not be created, savings will not be put down anywhere. That's too bad, the bank can't always be giving, it has to take as well, of course always more than it gives, otherwise it wouldn't be a bank, but a Church charity organization, but not it either: We've got administration costs to bear and the rest is borne by others. Where do you expect it to come from? The city is more and more coming to life, the clock is moving forward, laughter, cries, the calls of the dog army are approaching again. Has she really been standing here for ten minutes already, the woman? It's not enough, it's never enough, but at least she will have gone for a short walk here. Crows rise comfortably and expertly through the air. They settle on one of the trees and talk to one another by copying us and breathing in a bit of air at the same time and, how amusing, eating a shriveled apple that they've found somewhere. If the bird on the top of the magnificent blue spruce (a sly cultivated species from some country or other, which didn't want to have it there and so expelled it, a plant, which could surely suddenly begin to speak and go away, so that I don't have to see it anymore, but I'll have to go sooner than it will!, it has got a permanent foothold here, the stinging, disgusting thing) now opens its beak in order to caw, the apple will fall to the ground. The woman laughs involuntarily when this is exactly what happens. A black dog hurries up, the crow unfortunately has to shout at it and so loses its precious piece of fruit. That's how fast it happens sometimes, although we don't advocate that animals should be dispossessed. And yet most of them even have to give up their lives, for one reason or another. As we do, only more humbly and painfully, we owe them a debt of gratitude, that they sacrifice themselves for us. And even if they do it involuntarily, it's still nice of them, isn't it? Whom are we supposed to eat? We can't even take what we sit on or what we've set our heart on with us, but some don't know that and measure people by their possessions. And then they prefer to take the possessions and just leave the people. So now a person stands there, looks stupid and out across a central European city, calmly examines it and doesn't believe that her eyes are really right in what they see. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything, if in a city one looks at the other inhabitants. It doesn't mean anything, if in the country one looks at the other inhabitants, it only counts more, because there are fewer people. That's why the woman moved away back then. In order, perhaps, to be more important somewhere else, where there's less competition than here. That's OK. It worked, she can still play the piano as well, which is rarer in the country than a shot fired from a rifle. Desires were told to her, and that she would be important for their fulfillment, but not essential. Now we'll make another impression and go to the hairdresser we always used to go to. It's likewise in this suburb, only on the other side, a small new building with shops on the ground floor. We're now proceeding there, please follow us at last. The dogs are coming, we're going now. We're going to look nice. We'll have our hair and our eyelashes and our nails done, and then we'll go away again, to serve them up in peace and quiet, somewhere else, to someone else. After the full treatment this hair will have become so healthy and strong that one could hang oneself with it. For one bird just one hair would be enough for this purpose.

We're coming slowly, we're coming alone, we'd rather come as a twosome, which has the small advantage, four eyes see better than two. What happens if one doesn't want to see anything at all? I wish you all something big and important, but very few of you will get it. At her old hairdresser the woman can be fitted in between two customers who aren't in a hurry. The salon has just opened in order to lend youthful elasticity to locks, which it has to create in the first place. Wash, cut, and set. You're really due another perm, no, it won't come out yet. Instead we'll give it a nice reddish tint. If you think about your property, it'll certainly be a plus, everything would be a plus. The one whom you would do it for didn't notice it in the holy disorder in which he lives, and of which he is not a part. But we rub the dye on our head nevertheless, it's no big deal. It can't do any harm, but it won't do any good either. The water pours maternally out from the hand shower (as cool as possible, please, it's better for the hair!) and takes the backward-leaning head in its arms with gentle murmuring, envelops it, gently strokes it. For the moment it can't concern itself with the expression on the face, the water, it has the task of rinsing out the surplus dye and leaving some of it over, a remnant, which is, however, the essential part of this procedure. The concerned express themselves in newspaper columns, but not for this woman, who would at last like to express herself through her body, but remains an onlooker, who at the sight of Claudia Schiffer turns pale to the roots of her hair. It's not easy to read while one's hair is being washed, nor when it's being cut either, but then under the drier, we can look through a couple of magazines so that we know what we'll have missed when we no longer need the new spring wardrobe. Aah, nice and warm, the towel, that's always a good moment, the drying, and the cutting is quite interesting, too. Now the nails at last get their due. Still biting your nails? You're quite a big girl now, madam! Not every heart is heartfelt, but this one suspects that it won't have much more time to be friendly to the right person. Out of her imprisonment in herself, into which unfortunately she let another, the wrong one, at the wrong time, the woman forces a few nice words out of herself, as if she were a person like every other. The words hop out of her mouth into inhospitable reality, it sounds as if someone had let them depart without eagerness, without anger. No, it sounds more as if an insect were dropping its shell, but the creature is too small for that to cause even the softest scratching on the ground. So. Finished. Please take a look at the back as well, all right? The hairdresser holds up the round mirror behind the woman's head, the apprentice brushes over the pullover because of the tip, everything takes its course, but which one, where does it end. Time will tell, no, it doesn't tell anything. Very smart, thank you. Out of good manners a good tip is distributed. The woman feels as if someone with a sharp knife had scraped the last meat from her bones, and now the last bone is to be boiled down as well. Well, there are enough round here who are hard boiled, in fact, they're the majority. Let's give the dog the bone. Perhaps it at least will enjoy eating us. We just end up in the soup. There's something comical about wishing for something. One won't know yet that one's probably not going to get it. Over long distances, across which the wind whistles and the wild beasts hunt, this human being here is called a nice, polite woman. Once she allowed the country policeman to take a nude photo of her, in which drawer will that be found? At any rate, right at the bottom. No fear, it's been thrown away long ago. It was snapped for a special reason, but for which? Perhaps the man took it, to spur himself on again and again, to be able to look at her when he is weary of the sight of her. He surely won't have taken it if he didn't have to? Or to laugh at her with others, at the inn, in the station, while changing beside the lockers? In the shower?? That would be nice!