I want to lay my whole body down on Sophie and get inside her, thinks Hans. He will do it just the way he does it with Anna, only much better because love will be involved as well.
Sophie scrutinises Hans closely. Rainer wants Sophie to scrutinise him rather than Hans and knocks an ice cream sundae that he is just being served onto the floor. Before he can trample on the colourful scoops of ice cream (because he doesn't like the flavour, and money is unimportant when you're beside yourself), Sophie says: Have you gone crazy.'' If you want, Sophie, I'll tell Hans to spoon it up again. You're behaving absolutely childishly again today (Sophie). I'll show you who's going to spoon what up (Hans).
The waitress in black and white scuttles about amid the tables and is addressed as an equal by the adolescent higher classes, black and white fade to grey in the process, which is subtler, you need an eye for the differences. Some address her as an equal though they live in twenty-room villas in Hietzing. They come to her with their unimportant problems, school worries in the main, which she then tries to solve or dispel. Every job has its satisfactions if you do it with care, and this one is particularly satisfying because you have contact with people. And you get a good class of people here.
Just bear in mind, Hans, that what matters is the how and not the what.
Rainer says: Murder and assault are not lunacy, they are the logical conclusion if you live a life without an assured financial foundation.
Hans says it's insane, you can't hurt your fellow human beings on purpose.
Sophie answers that if she has understood correctly you should only do it for the sake of violence itself.
Well, the money is of secondary importance, of course. Murder is merely matter that's got in a bit of a mess (Rainer).
Sophie makes some response, and Hans seconds it. He shares her opinion. He says: I agree with Sophie.
Rainer says he should shut his trap because he is unfamiliar with the polarities of Thought involved, neither its perfect autonomy nor its strict dependence. To provoke Rainer, Sophie tells him he should go and do his homework, and then he can think about the lovely things he'll buy with the money they grab. Rainer yells that he doesn't give a damn about the money any more than Sophie gives a damn about money, he is just like Sophie and feels just the same. Sophie goes on: Perhaps a bicycle, some educational books, a building kit… and now it's high time he vanished, she's seeing Hans today, not him, he shouldn't go snooping after her.
Hans says he agrees with Sophie.
Rainer establishes a definition: The person who is in charge is never snooping, after all, he is the one who holds the reins. Also, he has written a new poem, specially for Sophie, in which he disposes of Christian thought, which no longer counts any more, once and for all.
Sophie says that Rainer will still be writing poems when he's a respectable civil servant. Hans says that's what he thinks too, Sophie! Sophie can sense Rainer coming very clearly, it is like masturbating before the orgasm. Hans says he shares her opinion. He subscribes to that absolutely.
You illiterate ignoramus, roars Rainer, seeing red. What he also sees (alas) is Hans and Sophie still wrapped in a species of mutual understanding that operates at a deep level that is not his own.
It is shallow. He and Sophie, on the other hand, have depth. Depth does not go down below, it goes within. He says he doesn't give a toss about either God or his parents, whom he hates, right, he hates God too, and because of that I'm freer than you two! He has decided that nothing is of any importance. But they have yet to find out what that Nothingness is that is nothing.
I really do agree entirely with Sophie, says Hans, and now at last I'm going to smash your gob in, Rainer. But Sophie restrains him. Rainer notes that Hans is a strange, disruptive factor in Sophie's life. Not to be confused with a stranger who acquires subjective significance. Because in point of fact Hans is no more than an object as far as Sophie is concerned.
Shit, now I've forgotten my purse, observes Sophie. Hey, will you lend me the money till tomorrow, I offered to pay for Hans. Rainer knows he must not be petty if he is not to appear petty, so he pays up on the spot, not without plainly letting Hans know that he is the one who is paying for him.
Sophie gazes out of the window and down a peaceful avenue of villas.
I agree with Sophie, entirely, says Hans.
NOWADAYS THE NIGHT-TIME cries of ow can be heardmore frequently than ever by the sensitive distinctly pricked-up ears of the adolescent son and adolescent daughter. And in addition they often hear of Papa's intention to shoot Mother because she has transgressed her marriage vows. But Rainer can see that the only transgression involved is that of a meaningless life. Hers. She has never transgressed. Who would she have transgressed with anyway, the shape she's in these days? Mother's life is one long chain of meaningless years, just as the lower classes are chains of people, none of whom ever stands out as an individual. Generally they remain stuck where they are and never reach the next level. Rarely, but only rarely, one of them makes it up to where there is more room to manoeuvre and develop his abilities. But in the jazz clubs these second class citizens with poor prospects are always the only ones who listen when Rainer delivers a lengthy lecture, on God, say, or on contemporary jazz of the cool school and its structure. Schoolmates invariably skedaddle when they clock Rainer because they know: Here comes another boring speech and I won't get a word in edgeways. The guy's deadly. Beat it. True, you yourself know more than he does, but he never lets you show your knowledge off.
Whenever Mummy utters her low cries of ow into the night, Rainer next morning gives his father the kind of look that prompts the latter to say to witnesses: Just see the way he looks at me! What he wouldn't do to his own father!
At breakfast Anna accuses her mother of having ruined her life, and Rainer prophesies to his father that he (Rainer) will personally ruin his (his father's) life yet.
Rainer has natural leadership qualities, he is a fuhrer by nature as anyone can tell right away, but no one takes the trouble to look at him that closely. So the fact that he will be the leader if an assault is made is not questioned. Everyone looks to him, waiting for his suggestions about how to do it, Sophie looks to him the most and burgeoning affection becomes Love. The next step is for Love no longer to be doubted: it is simply there.
Rainer's personal familiarity with horror is one of his strengths. Horror often visits him in a dream, in which he is walking the streets at night, the leaves are falling from the trees, smothering him entirely. Whenever he writes poems he is prompted either by books or by the weather.
Today is what's known as Headmaster's Day, a day without school. On this unaccustomed day off, different people do frantically different things. Rainer leaves the house early and goes to a locksmith's, vaguely wanting to have a second key to Father's pistol case cut from an amateurish wax impression he's taken of it. He does not yet know why he is doing this, but probably it is in order to hide the pistol so that Mummy will not be shot by Daddy, which she has often been told will happen, though the consequences to date have not been worth mentioning. But you never know, you never know… One thing's certain: No pistol, no pistol shot. Later on, Rainer will find that the key does not fit and does not lock, because nothing Rainer does ever works, except for mental activity. Because Rainer is Brain become Man just as God is God become Man (Jesus) and Hans is Action become Man, a man who needs a leader though. He only ever thinks when it's too late. Mostly what he does is nonsense. But Rainer shoves his oar in and issues contradictory orders that no one understands and which everyone therefore carries out in a different way from what was intended.