Free Greed by Elfriede Jelinek Page A

country policeman, among others whom I do not know, really does hate it. One just doesn't notice at first, because he sometimes jokes and laughs and sings songs to the accordion.
    Since it never comes, one will always think love is somewhere else, chase after it oneself and soon turn from hunter to hunted. Well, go on, you too can bring a murderer into your own home, or you can at least correspond with him beforehand, so that the anticipation is all the greater, e.g. this knife-killer, who likes to wear ladies' tights so much, you'll have plenty of them in your wardrobe! No, not him, he's already dead! Later on the thirteen-year-old son would only have masturbated onto the tights anyway, thinks the country policeman who has followed the case in the newspapers and on TV; he himself has certainly heard of such sensational cases, but he has hardly ever experienced any himself. He fills a post, which fits him very well. Not bad, the cap, and the revolver in its holster. Great. Looks really smart. The culprit would hardly be out again, thinks the country policeman gloatingly, before he would smack this woman in the face again, who's standing there whimpering in front of his typewriter because of some petty pub brawler, who put her in hospital for three weeks, and is begging for a permit to visit him. But her tormenter will never let her write the novel of his life! Well yes, at any rate not on my typewriter. No way! There will soon be PCs purchased, which can store even more in their memory, about which women can then be reminded if need be, when they stand in front of one again with a smashed face.
    Yet there was no right of return. The perpetrator will write the novel of his life, in which he would rely more on reality than on dreams himself. In order to become famous. Women are worse, without having been really bad, they age early and like to neglect themselves, unless they get attention. Then they blossom and smile dreamily. For that (to get attention!) they would do anything, they would even kneel in front of the American president and take his penis with all its secret characteristics, which haven't even been shown on television, in their mouths. We won't need a bed for that, although we will unfortunately need a judge, and the judge is the whole nation. That would be something, everyone looking at me! I would be able to put up with that, no problem! Something that every murderer is, really every one: ambitious and attention-seeking. If they were allowed to go home, they would immediately sit down at a piano, even if they couldn't play at all, just so that people would listen to them.
    One really would have to arrest men and lock them up in order to be able to protect them from women, thinks the country policeman, who knows it all or at least has heard of it recently or seen it somewhere. He will draw his conclusions from that. We catch them, the women, act as if we worshipped them, thinks the country policeman. Why not the other way round? Why should they not adore us, in this particular case me? It can't be so hard. What does that mean? I could manage it, couldn't I? So, now life is for once really being challenged, it's no game anymore, and one declares oneself the victor. One would have to intercept the eligible women before they get murdered, thinks the country policeman. First of all we'll send tact off on a long journey, basically women don't like anything like that, they want to be taken hard and anyway we've got enough juice to score in the big road battles between pedestrian precinct, sports center and shopping center or get us to the industrial suburbs where the formerly flourishing nationalized industries are on their knees and trying to crawl away but are stopped by a ball and chain held tight by the trade unions from undertaking a flight of capital abroad. The unemployed will then just have to see how they can market themselves day after day. Lack of tact but not lack of talent is all that a murderer needs. And