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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 i
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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.
A
A long procession of tiny beetles is wandering up Sophie's legs and crawling under her te
A mixed response, though not a good one, except from Hans. A
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! (A
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 ma
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 A
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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.