Free Lust by Elfriede Jelinek Page A

an impressive score he's run up. Men like scoring, one way or another. They're born with a target in their breast, their fathers send them over the hills and far away, just to shoot at other men's targets.
    The ice is thick on the ground. The grit lies scattered carelessly as if someone had emptied his pockets. The municipal authorities grit the roads so that vehicles don't break their tyres. The pavements for people aren't gritted. The idleness of the unemployed is a burden on the budget, but as they idle by they do not burden the mow. Their fate is in the hands of someone who already has his hands full with a wine glass and plateful from the simple buffet of cold cuts. The politicians have to wear their big and bursting hearts on their tongues. The woman gets a firm footing on the verge. Here, the law of the catalytic converter rules: unless money is thrown at it, the environment won't react to us ambitious wanderers. And even the wood would have to die. Open the window and let feeling in! Then Woman will show" that disease afflicts the Man's world.
    Flailing helplessly, Gerti stands on the ice. Offering herself. Her dressing-gown flapping about her. She claws at thin air. Crows caw. Her limbs fling forward as if she had sown a whirlwind and couldn't grasp the soughing and blowing on Mother's Day or the slurping of the Man at her trough when he appears below the table to lick the cream from her bowl. Woman is forever earthbound, they compare her with the earth, so she will open up and receive the Man's member. Perhaps lie
    down in the snow for a while? You wouldn't believe how many pairs of shoes this woman has at home! And who is it that's always egging her on to buy more clothes? For the Direktor, people count simply because they're people and can be used or else can be made into consumers who use things. That is how the unemployed of the area are addressed, who are in line to be eaten up by the factory when all they want is something to eat themselves. For the Direktor, they count doubly if they can sing for their supper. Or play the accordion or fool. Time passes, but we want it to say something to us. Not a moment of peace and quiet. The stereo drones eternal: listen, if patience and not the violin is what you play, what you have, oh sainted ones! The room is uplifted, a ray of light falls upon us, the beatitudes of sport and leisure cost the earth, and on the operating tables we re-enter the peaceable kingdom, resurrected, whole again.
    5
    THE SUPERMARKETS ARE bursting with captivating goods, people are their captives. On Saturday the Man is* supposed to be a partner, helping take in the catch in the nets. The fishermen sing. It is a simple tune and by now the Man has managed to learn it. Without saying a word he stands among the women who are counting their loose change and fighting starvation. How are two human beings supposed to become one if humankind cannot even join hands in a chain for peace? The woman is accompanied, the packages and bags are carried, no fuss, no noise. The Direktor is expensively showy in public, taking up the space that is other people's, checking to see what they're buying, though that is really a matter for his housekeeper. He is a god, scurrying to and fro among his creatures, who are less than children and collapse beneath temptations vaster than the ocean. He looks in other people's baskets and down cleavages, where undesirable colds are revealed and hot desires are concealed by neck-scarves. The houses tend to be cold and damp, so close to the stream. His wife's hand is rummaging among dead cellophane-wrapped creatures in the freezer, and when he looks at her, the paltriness of her meat, her fine clothes, he is beset by terrible impatience to let her partake of his own ample meat, his dong, his wonderful shlong. He wants to see it stir at the feeble touch of her fingers like a creature roused by the sun. He wants to see that little animal of his awake at the touch of her varnished