Tentatively he moves a biceps into the picture, so that the raw strength that resides in the muscle will be seen and acknowledged by Sophie. Hans is an animal and he wants to waken the animal that no doubt dwells in Sophie.
They are hardly in the room but Rainer's inner tape-deck is humming, spewing out the feelings he experienced during yesterday's assault, doubtless he will conclude with his feelings for Sophie and between now and then there will be at least two hours of deadly boredom. I am your leader and I hope you enjoyed yesterday's operation, still, there's a thing or two we have to improve, and that's what we're going to talk about now. Above all, the timing. I'll tell you why, in detail. Sophie yawns, and Hans says he agrees with Sophie.
…(Anna).
And just think how much money we bagged, what are we going to do with all that money now, what lovely things you can buy with it, and possess, hisses Rainer incautiously and overhastily.
Sophie responds to Rainer's pesky drivel with her patented ear-closing technique. Today she is seeing Hans with newly awakened eyes. Because he has a hard, strong grip Sophie's eyes look for the muscles under his wretched cheap sports shirt, it is cut in an emphatically sporty style with a lot of pockets everywhere and that is why it is forever crying out in torment, it is so impossible, her eyes seek and sure enough they find. What tensed up within Sophie yesterday tenses again today, it is different from the way a muscle tenses because it is more of an idea, in the head. This time the intellectual was fighting a losing battle, even though it was his idea. But he doesn't have a hard, strong grip. Rainer says that an intellectual wearing a black roll-neck jumper doesn't have to deal out such heavy blows because he has other things to offer, things of higher quality.
Anna says nothing, and considers Sophie with the eyes of a rival.
A long procession of tiny beetles is wandering up Sophie's legs and crawling under her tennis skirt, where they go to work in a way of their own, rooting around. The beetles say the others should go and just Hans should stay, and Sophie promptly says it too. She's the master in her own house and she can decide who goes and who stays. She says this right out in the open.
A mixed response, though not a good one, except from Hans. Anna feels it hurting her but at present she cannot express it, she can only write it down, is there a piece of paper handy, grammar school kids always have paper within reach. She is going through a bad patch and is in urgent need of protection and support. The staff have already petitioned the schools inspector for special permission for her to give written replies in her oral exams too, because she is so intelligent and nobody wants to stand in the way of her academic future on account of dry rules and regulations. Inside Anna, something of crucial importance is knotted up, something it may never again be possible to loosen, yet kids in puberty and late puberty ought to be open, not closed off. Honesty plus soap and water suit Youth better than dishonesty and dirt.
But then, Rainer is all the better at it, compulsively opening the sluices of his mouth. What pours out upon his fellows essentially amounts to saying that Sophie can only truly love him, Rainer. Even if he goes now, her thoughts will nevertheless remain with him and go with him, and, that being so, he might just as well stay anyway. Hans had better not start imagining things that aren't the case.
Right, fine, but now beat it (Sophie). I totally agree with Sophie there (Hans).
Help! (Anna.) (What they hear is: croak, croak.)
Take some chocolate with you, chimes Sophie, with certain undertones and overtones. No, we won't take any chocolate, Sophie, because that's sadism, says Rainer, on the safe ground of his own field. Passion, dryness and grim determination. Dryness because you get sadism when desire has become free and unclouded, as Jean-Paul Sartre says.
Hans, on the other hand, explains that he is really an animal, not a human being, and that is why his manner is distinctly animal. He once read this in a thriller. Hans has read things, but they were the wrong things, simply the kind of stuff you find lying around in a workers' home that has had the pleasure of a workerseducationmovement. But he has read enough to know where the way to the top and the way to the bottom are. The world of books was the only way out. And in a workerseducationhome there are always books. But there is no other world. Only your own. His parents were workers with awareness. Which got them nowhere, seeing that one is dead and the other practically dead.
Rainer bickers. He is more unscrupulous than Hans because he has more to lose than Hans (who does not play the game), that is to say: a future career in the academic and literary world. Hans only stands to gain, and Sophie is even giving him her support! Hans is an unconscious ball tossed about by the elements and by Sophie. Rainer is not a ball in anybody's game. He acts of his own accord.
But still he is obliged to leave and take Anna with him. Please go, both of you. The siblings, pickled in hatred, shuffle out onto the English-style lawn, where they deliberately trample several costly blossoms and grasses and leaves underfoot, beneath soles paper-thin, because the shape of fashionable winklepickers would be spoilt by re-soling. Then they walk to the bus stop, with Rainer holding forth on why he left of his own free will and is therefore stronger than Hans, who stayed behind against his will. Thank heaven that at least his sister doesn't make any stupid objections or interjections.
Anna is silent, appalled at having to leave her Hans behind in an enemy house. Rainer's and Anna's love has been meanly spurned today, which has torn a rift in them both, which will be difficult to patch up or glue together again.
The pain does its job and swells to full proportions as the tram, reeking of unloved average people, takes the two of them back into its body again, it is a womb that the infant always wants to quit as fast as possible. One really ought to have a Porsche. But one hasn't got one, even if one says at school that some non-existent relative or other owns a luxury automobile of that kind.
In Sophie's room a record has been put on, and Sophie demands that Hans sit in that armchair over there and get undressed, yes, completely, and masturbate in front of her eyes, she wants to watch, just the way he always does it at home on his bed-sofa. Hans says he can't do it with her watching. Sophie says she wants him to do it with her watching. Hans flushes red as a tomato, he becomes agitated and stresses the reasons why he can't. He'd better, says Sophie, or else he can go right away and never come back.
Clumsily, Hans undresses. More clumsily than at the WAT when he goes to play basketball. But in the end he does manage to unbutton his shirt. He swears he almost certainly won't manage it, it's too embarrassing, he simply can't do it. It's supposed to be, says Sophie. As embarrassing as possible. That's why I want you to do it.
Hans says he'll do anything she wants and she knows it, but she shouldn't abuse that, it's unfair.
But I like abusing it. You have to take your socks off too, of course, what does it look like if you're naked but still have your socks on, it ruins the overall impression. Hans takes off his socks, revealing his dirty feet.
Sophie perches in a corner, scrutinises the rims of muck between the toes, and says she wants his freedom to submit qua freedom. She knows she is causing him pain, but she is coercing that freedom by torturing him, as it were, into identifying of his own free will with the flesh that suffers the pain, that is freedom, d'you understand? She rolls up into a sort of ball and chews off one fingernail after another.