Greed

Elfriede Jelinek

Greed

Translated by Martin Chalmers

The translator wishes to thank Peter " Bar " Gattinger, Esther Kinsky, and Alex Schmidt for making this a better translation than it would otherwise have been.

– M.C.

ONE

Today country policeman Kurt Janisch is once again looking at the photo on which his father, Police-Colonel Janisch, saluted the King, thirty years earlier. Look, his father is still standing there, evidently forced to draw back just an inch from his own enthusiastic motion of standing to attention, but why is there nothing to check him?-there's something soft, indecisive about his shoulders, which then seems to push him forward again. Perhaps it was no more than an involuntary bow before the monarch, more or less as an encore to the frequendy rehearsed salute. There's nothing at all subordinate about the son anymore, standing there in front of the cabinet in his striped track-suit harnessing his body by slowly warming it up before going ru

The country policeman is meanwhile completely dominated by a kind of greed, which came u

Incidentally they're both dead now, the king and his guide and guard, the father of the country policeman, who that day proudly escorted the prancing black coaches from Graz main station (the state visit came from Vie

Am I mistaken, or was something found here years ago that was never cleared up? What am I forced to look at, when I open this old newspaper? A pale face glimmers there beneath the lowest fir twigs, like a little moon, the face has something to tell, but can no longer tell anyone, because a heavy hand was laid on the throat, clothes were pulled down, the features of the face convulsed; tracks which might good-naturedly have given the green light, if only they'd been asked, arched up, broke, as the roots of the body, the legs, were tugged and shaken, until enough was enough, until the crumbly earth was loosened. So, now where's the bag with the humor, which we still had with us when we gave information to the police earlier? Where is the humus for the potting? Jeans into which absolutely nothing seems to fit anymore, come apart at the seams, a skirt flies up, falls down to earth again from heaven, reluctantly, because not cut out for it, becomes a sack, into which goes the woman's face. Well, and now where will we put the stamp, so that this one, originally with such varied interests, will in future only long for sleep, because she has got to know and learned to reject fundamentally, down to the last root fibers of being, the opposite of sleep, extreme activity?

It sometimes makes the country policeman nervous that the villagers don't really know him at all, although the camouflage he originally strove for was kindness and friendliness after all, and then he goes on drinking far too long, alone if need be. The ground beneath and between his feet has already been caressed by women until it got too hot for him, women on whose grounds he has cast an eye. Such a forceful, big man, who is capable of unleashing almost any kind of event. A chosen woman, who previously had been lying a little too long in the shop window, until too many had seen her and not taken her away, meanwhile knows only the square yard in front of the telephone, and it, too, has by now been burnt right through from all the ru

It's not good to hate, but only if you tell me who, can I really say, if it's good or bad. It gives some people the energy they need, like a Mars bar, which comes straight from the god of war and plunges into a human figure, until the latter has melted away. The pilot can no longer save himself even with his ejector seat. But with hating one can grow nice and old. It passes the time, which in any case runs off as soon as it sees us. Of course, everyone thinks they must be among friends, if they happen to run across someone outwardly tranquil, who holds public office and takes it out of women, they're always really finished afterwards. So why hate, except in a war, which is being of once again at present, which makes everything inside us, and that's a great deal, depending on the anger of the other side, shoot out and could only be dammed up once more by the utmost love of life and a home-sewn iron curtain. But we don't have anything like that in stock in our store, we've only got two very soft down duvets there, in case someone happens to drop by. Instead we have reciprocal campaigns on offer, until the field between us is trampled down. Now it's been softened up as well by the rain and our desires for our neighbor's property. It's no longer good even as a field of slaughter. But the neighbor has to give way anyway, we've threatened to get the police onto him, if he doesn't take down the wall with the ugly fence on top, because it's spoiling our view. Frankness, diligence, and cheerfulness, which the country policeman likes to feign for others, is intended to give rise to the love of others towards him, but there is little of this commodity in stock. The flames are already shooting up in the Game Boy, in which our own life is simulated, but what frightful face is looking back at us from it? No face looks back from us at the country policeman, who is fast asleep with sweet dreams of power and greatness, because, wrongly, this man doesn't interest us yet. That could soon change once he has got hold of the building plan of our circuits and our little house and the apartments we own. I hope I'll manage it so that you too experience one of his happy moments! But I doubt it, I already don't like him. It's a frequent reproach, that I stand around looking stupid and drop my characters before I even have them, because to be honest I pretty quickly find them dull. Perhaps at this very moment, as the servant of the state is bending over someone else's building plan, which he has stolen, perhaps now he is happier than we are? And we're supposed to be interested in that?