Free Greed by Elfriede Jelinek Page B

we've certainly got that, if we look at ourselves in the right light in the mirror! The curious may stand around at the scene of the accident, the country policeman climbs over the ribbon and is at last free free free. The lake is still. There's already a woman who's involved in the accident, she owns her home, and she is likewise free, even if not in sexual matters. A freedom, however, which she doesn't appreciate, she would much rather be in the custody of a man and not be responsible for it. And that one over there, she even has a whole detached house to herself, although she's only a single person. She's screaming, screaming, screaming at present, as only such citizens scream who haven't had an interlocutor for a long time now. Aha. She has the nerve just to roar away like that. In the past she's always behaved with restraint, but now she's straining to let it out. Now she's letting go. This heart demands precision, is it really just her that's meant, her alone, the woman, the only one, or are there rivals? Anyone who wants to get to the country policeman must knock first, but is often sent away again by his colleagues. We are none of us poor, and we don't like to be shown the door.
    One has to know the secret of how to get a good grip on women. One doesn't absolutely have to be a doctor in order to slit people open, but it would be better if one were, if one wants to find the serpent in the stomach, which once led us astray, the evil one, where else should it be: as a man one would like to be doctor, psychiatrist, surgeon and anaesthetist all at once. Even if one had nothing else to do it with but this fairly long, powerful organ, the scalpel, which doesn't have to take time twisting and scraping when it wants to get in, it's not a spiral drill after all. The drill imposes itself without even glancing once or twice up an empty dead end in case anyone is coming down it at the wrong moment. Courage grows with appetite. The screaming woman beside her car which has got a dent in its tin roof suddenly falls silent and stares at the man in a uniform, as if she were looking at a live man for the first time. The mascara is running down her more than fifty-year-old face, it doesn't really matter. The face shouldn't stand for so much food, because it looks a little puffy, but that doesn't matter either. Down below, on the valley side of the lake shore, beside the woman and the country policeman, the landscape spreads out alongside the highway. The landslide has finally been cleared away, also the hair, which strangely enough they found in it, these thick tufts of hair, no one could work out what they were doing there. Ultimately it makes no difference, who or what one embraces, the important thing is that one can grab hold of it when the time comes.
    There are lights on in some houses where widows and other single persons are living. Their faces are like unentered rooms, which are waiting for someone to switch on the light so that they don't have to do it themselves anymore. Their organs roar. If need be, they would even commit a murder themselves, if only someone would at last come to them. Some unfortunately are shaken by the tree of life before their time. To ensure that their passionate feelings don't perish unused, they get into their cars and drive off in order to get to know someone. To be finally brought in as harvest, by the traffic or its guardians. Don't get killed and don't drive too fast. Just don't make a mistake now! Fifty years with a clean record are soon used up! Someone simply has to make this country policeman rich, otherwise the needle will stick. No sooner does one lay one's hand on a woman's neck or throat as gently as a hypnotist than they throw back their heads like horses, bare their teeth and get so wet that foam squirts from every hole. No one sees them fantasizing about vanished love. Everyone sees them longing for a new one, and here it comes. What a good thing that I got into my car. Oh you