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You never say anything that someone else didn't say before you, breathes Sophie.
Because I already know everything that can be said, see. If Life has expired, Evening is like a melancholy ceasefire, as Camus assures us.
Hans hammers his fist at his skull as hard as he can, making a hollow sound. Nothing witty comes out, just the usual stuff, the foreman's words, to the effect that he has done some wiring wrong and is about to get a kick up the backside.
The disabled father clambers across on his crutches and tells Sophie that she plainly must be his son's little girlfriend, that's lovely, she's a trim little filly, the kind he used to have quite a lot of in the old days and only has occasionally now because with a job you don't have much time. He could show his son Rainer a thing or two in that line, too.
A
A
Hans swallows. His Adam's apple bobs. So much saliva and he hasn't even had a beer.
Sophie shakes everything off and absolutely and irrevocably departs.
Sophie leaves two voids behind, one in Hans and one in Rainer, but she does not feel them.
Often a girl in a summer holiday resort will say when her boyfriend has gone back to town: You're leaving, but a great deal remains. A great deal that he has left. But in this case not a great deal remains to profit from. In fact there is nothing left.
Frau Witkowski uses two hands, which is all she has, to cover the nakedness of the velvet bow and the pi
A
HANS COMES OUT of the works gate and A
Through thick and thin Hans walks A
No, says Hans promptly, because he can't stand A
Various worries leave A
In the Witkowski flat, di
Father asks Rainer if he'll play chess with him afterwards. Rainer says yes, and will in fact play. For supper there's bread and wurst.Plus potatoes in some dreadful sauce. Then the chess match is played. The disabled man utters misleading warnings and advice concerning Rainer's mental state or Rainer himself. Rainer seems not to be concentrating and loses. Father is insanely pleased, seeing that recently he's been beating his lordship the stuck-up grammar school boy with his airs and graces only rarely. Nevertheless he tells Rainer he'll give him a good wallop if he doesn't make more of an effort when he plays chess with his father. Rainer says that wi
There is something soft in A
Mother escapes from her failure as a mother into the role of martyr and beseeches Father not to use a prop tonight, it hurts. Father says wittily that he'll think about it (but in the event he hits her more, if anything, not less). Then they go to bed.
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Rainer also eats an apple before he goes to sleep, reading Camus on absurdity and obsession.
Lights out. They sleep.
At half past six Rainer wakes suddenly. Unusually, both his hands are damp with sweat. He doesn't weigh up any of the pros and cons. He can hear Mother in the bathroom. He gets up, goes into the hall and fetches the key of the pistol case from Father's bunch of keys, which is dangling from the front door. The case is 8 cm deep, 30 cm long and 15 cm wide, and made of iron. The wallet is lying on it and has to be moved first. The flat is silent, apart from the disagreeable bathroom noises made by Mother, who is always the first to get up. Rainer opens the pistol case to take out the 6.35 mm calibre Steyr-Kipplauf pistol. There are photographs under the pistol, showing his mother's genitals. These genitals make no perceptible impression on him, though it was through them that he first entered the world.
Taking the pistol, Rainer goes over to his sister, who has been sleeping right beside him all night beyond the thin partition wall and is still doing so, trustingly. He shoots A