Next year we’re going to go to school! And at some stage we’re also going to pass the entrance exam to the tremolo group that was once set up just for us. With dear aunt Elfi, who, cannot seriously want to forbid us everything upon which the group was founded. Our mothers are applauding in the background, as you can see, applauding somewhat jealously it has to be said. We go up to the piano and bow clumsily, our collective approach to this recital could not be better. Our inclination to kill started in our delinquent deviation from the norm already. Our social services building rises up tentatively from its dog’s blanket upon which many of us have already had to leave our hair, it’s growing, yes, it’s growing with ever greater rapidity! Like a plaited plant that didn’t make itself but was knitted and came from one person, from one only, yes, exactly, our dear mama. With plants you can’t do anything to stop them flourishing. Just rip them out, there’s no other way. Or, and there is no simpler method, let it wither. Like our author herself. Well, she doesn’t actually look that bad.
Horror is gaining a foothold, horror grabs a hold of what and whom it wants. On my command, each of us grab the hand of their creator, a woman, who has completely extra-judicial ideas about the norm and has passed these onto her son, onto her one and only son, who’s branded with his mama’s fat or silicone, her eyes still weeping from cutting onions. Although these norms are no longer of any value nowadays, they’re still called values anyway for the sake of old habits. Oh yes, for example there were still some tickets about last year that were suitable. Apply now to ensure you get one! They’re cheaper than an instant lotto! Yes, I can see you nodding, women and mothers against the war. Only available from me and then tonight you can go on the rampage. And so let’s dash off, struggling and stumbling, tied firmly to your hands, bright blue woollen hats pulled over ears so that we don’t get earache. The dogs were there as witness and stayed sitting next to their dead masters in the ditches, fortunately the dogs can’t speak. Later on the women who created us will have to weep and wail when they talk about the ways and means of the fatherland, and the orphans of the fatherland. By then we’ll be dead, however, and no longer have to listen to it.
Basically our fathers have nothing to report. They might perhaps report ‘mission accomplished’ in terms of our crimes, but we were taught by mummy, as daddy as always never had any time. Right now he is to be found in his self-discovery office. This dark man with his patented deterrent effect, which he reported to the patent office only to learn that there were already millions of similar pieces being produced. Yes, he had to learn that this patent had been assigned long since. He can step down again straightaway, that man. Mama – stay there!
So now you can release the lever, whose short arm you are sitting on, all by yourself, mother. You can hurl us into the air. As if we were still children. I’ve never seen a woman achieve that before, bravo! She’s squashing us with her bare hands. Father should just steer himself to distract mother’s opponent. It doesn’t work. Father is running and thinking, mother is now doing the steering. She got her driving license long ago.
OTHER:
Look, there! Over there our future victim is asking me, asking me without a by your leave, as he if had the right to some symbiotic offer that we’ve not even conceded to our members since we were allowed to put away the Lego villages into the drawers of our childhood bedrooms – so my victim asks me what time it is, and if it wasn’t his, the victim’s time, that had come. Well I can say that for you the time is over before you could even begin. That’s right, this time is now here and you can’t give it back, unless it’s been demonstrably spoiled.
OTHER:
Now this time is starting for me! I made it a better offer. Time is now starting for my team. I borrowed the tape on which you can see what time can do and how you can turn it on and off. Just wait til next weekend! I don’t know any more just at the moment. Thank you for listening to me as I let out my victor’s shout. Perhaps I’ll never have an opportunity to do so again.
OTHER:
Well, I didn’t hear that man asking about anything earlier, what do you think? After all, as members of a group you have learnt to replace a father and mother, the latter was painful as we’d much prefer to be men! That means practising absolute honesty, at least amongst ourselves. And now it’s being maintained that our victim offered himself up when he asked us, who does this ownerless time belong to and why has it suddenly got so big that, all at once, even sportsmen can become important. All these years we’ve not celebrated time’s birthdays, and now it’s taking its revenge. Our contemporaries, in the meantime, have learnt to stretch themselves obediently, appropriately, before they set off. Just because of the one victim, yes, the one in the ditch with the dog, we cannot allow ourselves to abort that which we particularly trained for earlier! Or is the photo a fake? No, could be real! This muscle is beautifully large, we’re not going to let it tear now, simply warm it up a bit and stretch it till it fits. We’ve finally found the time to do it, time that fitted us straightaway. It’s the only thing amongst all those wimp-bags that fills itself up again and again, even if it was ripped long ago, after it had cracked loudly a couple of times.
OTHER:
I sling my breath firmly round my face so that I don’t cool down and have to miss out on training. Bravely I kick out with my head and legs. I can’t quite imagine how that’s going to work. The victim saw us beforehand and immediately his personal needs situation switched to flight mode, a behaviour similar to those group dropouts who’ve recently dared to undertake the detachment process, but for that reason have not even half won. Maybe the victim thought by creating personal contact to us he’d escape annihilation, what do you think? Get rid of him like dandruff. Open the bottle! Give him one!
What, our victim might even have been a women? We didn’t even notice. We noticed too late. This dead peasant woman in her floral apron should have been my victim? Impossible. This victim was not even worth being mine. So why am I still kicking this woman in the head in my fighter-type boots? Oh, that really wasn’t necessary. She’s already dead. A frightful figure dripping in blood, I can’t execute anything more on her, that’s for sure. What she was doing in a duel I really can’t imagine. I have to push my not quite genuine Ray Bans briefly away from my brow in order to see where I’m kicking. She might be cunning, that woman, and bite me on my bad foot after death. She’d eat the hand that beat her.
OTHER:
We are, after all, an exercise culture, in that we’re weighted down with the heaviness of our lives, no no, no, not all at once, and then fall forward, in order to weigh down someone else all over again. In order to be forged together in one pan with the melting cheese that’s rising out of these thousands, in fact millions, of ownerless socks. The opprobrium brought on us from the outside quite naturally intensifies the inner contact between us. On the other hand, we try to bring movement to a halt in others. Lovers show their figures, we show others who’s master. Where’s the difference? Although I can already envisage an objection in the future: wherever destruction and inhumanity become routine, then there might not even be room for us neighbours any more. Excuse me for trying to be good just now. I’ve just come from an antique shop, where I stocked up on antique values – I couldn’t find any new ones anywhere, they sell out straightaway – and right next door is a jewellery shop, where I stocked up on jewellery, and next to that is an umbrella shop, where I stocked up with an umbrella. And right there is a handicraft shop, where I covered myself with a blanket. No, you have to go to the other side to get to the Wehrmacht exhibition, I armed myself against it in despair, sadly without having any power to keep it closed once and for all.
OTHER:
There are actually people who want to have their dead loved ones back. And that woman is crying the whole time that no one has any values any more. Please follow me. The pit is over there, I’ll make sure you fall in. I’d happily meet up with the Furies if I knew where the value tokens have got to. I want to sti
ck one to you, and they’re not there. Or maybe the young woman that I just weighted down with a concrete ring and threw into the river already made herself out to have a value? I don’t think so. Or maybe the golden necklace with diamonds in a heart shape that I tried to smuggle already had a value apportioned to it? Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. Just follow me. What? There are still a few women left behind who wish to rest on the corpse-pale kisses of their dead men. It’s incomprehensible. Where are we to get them from, the dead? Should we dig them up again? No question of that. Others should procure them. We prefer to make music that hits our stiffened ears with shrapnel-like stones from the Zillertal or Oberkrain. That music props us up. That music could bring the dead back to life. But we don’t want that either, otherwise they’ll be demanding their own show again. And the other thing we’re not so keen on: the outsider who’s not discovered yet in what clothes he’ll be buried and with what he can shelter and protect himself. And with what music he can let himself be wrapped up.
OTHER:
But yes, but yes, but yes! It’s precisely the outsider that we like so much. We approach him, he’s naturally still a bit shy. There’s a notice hanging in our TV room – absolute silence, please! Okay then, we remain silent. He doesn’t, and so we don’t have to either. And no smoking, even if you’ve been burning for some time. Okay then, we don’t smoke either. It’s this outsider who continues to smoke. Fine, then we’re allowed to too!
OTHER:
All by himself, this beast managed to smash up sixteen cars in one night, and now the insurance won’t pay. It’s in our very own new car that we find our place, the newly-gained place for the outsider who’s allowed to do everything. From there you can get out of the brand-new plane, already on fire or swimming in the river, quicker, or out of a smouldering nylon nightie. There might even be interesting things to say about us. Do you know what? We could all become outsiders, if needs must. But then where is our inside?
If a movement comes and wants to get us moving, we’ll be able to do that without any sense of shyness. Because we like to be on the move. We just can’t wait. Our bodies are waiting for it too. And at any time could set something much bigger in motion, today for example it could be this generous platter of antipasti with ham, cheese, sausage, fresh from the kitchen. Have you ever seen anything quite so ample outside your own body?
OTHER:
Our whole group now consists only of lateral thinkers and outsiders. We used not to be allowed to be that, which is why we are it now, but in-depth. We chose precisely this model from the catalogue because, when we look through it, we want to be able to perceive reality that’s as restricted as we want. This model isn’t at all expensive. You could even make it yourself. Hold a chopping block or a piece of cardboard in front of your face, in an emergency you could even use the latter, but then you mustn’t spit too much when you’re talking. If you want to properly devalue your victim, then you have to stick his phone card into this slit. You could also use your dick, if you didn’t have anything else of value at hand and the ticket inspector is standing so close to your door that the only thing between you and him is a breath of pneuma.
OTHER:
Do you still need some orientation? Here, I managed to rouse this hiking map at the kiosk over there, it was easy-peasy. It can only be said of Jesus Christ that he rose again. But just now even I found myself able to buy something without cash.
OTHER:
I think that the next step of our crime will play out as follows: the violation of the norm will no longer consist of killing and destroying humans, we’ve nearly killed everyone anyway, just in case we by chance are citizens of partial Yugoslav states or some other terrible country. Under certain circumstances people, once they’ve been unchained, can go very far. They can even go round Africa. Where are we now, anyway? Have we perhaps gone too far? Oh well, at least we’re outside, regardless of where we were beforehand. And what did someone place on our doorstep early this morning, sort of wrapped in newspaper. It’s still moving! It’s dripping! Did a conscience just stir, which the newspaper that we’d carefully smoothed out in order to read our debit account, has already transferred to our Post Office savings account without us ever having commissioned a transfer? Nevertheless, it’s a good feeling to have gathered together so much conscience after such a long search.
OTHER:
No, I’m reading that the new model for conscience is not even available yet. Perhaps we’d have been better off buying the old, before this pathetic indefinite article is out of print. Of course! That’s why it can’t be delivered to us. We’d be better off buying this book by Madam Author, is what the mind-order business is saying. Well, when I look at the conscience in the shape of this woman, then I have to admit quite honestly – I’d prefer to have none at all. We have the courage to do something, we don’t want to be self-conscious, nor shy. We do our best, just like this company that always mixes sugar into its children’s teas, although they lost the legal proceedings long ago.
OTHER:
In earlier times one got such a lovely view from the church tower, and yet the church tower was the first thing we bombed with our new aesthetic methods. And the houses alongside too. And now we feel sort of alone. And so we withdraw back into our group, we haven’t come across any other group, because we cleansed the area thoroughly of manky and marauding groups. It’s hard for me to bear the fact that my opponents too have this chic Gulf War haircut and wear the same boots as lordly city kids, yes, lace-up shoes with steel toe-caps. No, I can see now that our opponents are wearing sneakers made by their preferred brand, Nike. So. Initially it was apolitical collective offences.
Bottles, tins, hats, gloves, hands flew, bodies fell. Warmth wrapped itself around our hearts. Christmas carols rang out, even though it wasn’t Christmas. Who on earth has personally killed or strangled six people by hand? No one. That’s what I’d have said a few years ago. Today I know that it’s many of us, in fact mostly desk-jockey perpetrators, who prefer to fall asleep than report for duty at their desks and dial a specific telephone number, garner a signature or pen a protest poem. It’s possible that already by tonight no one’ll be able to prove that we did absolutely nothing. We’d have needed another year and then we could equally not have done absolutely everything without any conviction and sense of value, with ease. No, we could not’ve done anything. But unfortunately the test assembly for doing nothing was interrupted by allowing in light and air and the absorption of foreign canned goods, that were finally allowed to start rolling because we no longer placed anything in their way. Today it looks as if we only lost because the others were stronger than us. There’s nothing to be done. I’ll just have to leave things as they stand, because the desk and all the papers on it are too heavy for me to lift. And yet I’d really like to keep my words piled up on it, for later, when peace returns. But maybe then they won’t interest anyone anymore.
OTHER:
Yes, we were removed from the playing field before tiresome exercise could turn into the bliss of control. Sadly. Well, not for me. I just can’t control myself.
WOMAN:
Nowadays no one’s got any idea when one sees them, the young people, hanging around in the gardens of the bars and in the bars, that the perpetrators from long ago, actually those from tomorrow, were also young, will be young, will have been young. My eyes are always insulted by the baggy pants that haven’t been seen in this form in New York for more than five years. Nevertheless. Now more than ever. Forever young. That’s easy to forget. First they practise killing, and then the moment when it swings into skill. Skateboards. Inline-skaters. Snowboards. Snowbizz.
Whoever has control of that can take a shower right away, even though he didn’t break a sweat. Or he kneels the whole day in his room on the floor and looks for his contact lenses, because otherwise he’ll always have to remain without contact. Oh dear. What have I said now. It’s not all the same, when one is young. And so these young men have finally shot me down, even th
ough I, somehow, still considered myself to be young, and over there they rendezvous again, the young, who I believed to have procured honestly for myself by means of hair dye, lipstick and a stinking wrinkle-corrector on the never-never. Yet I’m still far from being an Amazon queen! I fell into the hands of these young men through the luck of the strong, yet I, a woman who belongs to the past, will be released from them without further ado. Some of them reappear several times to laugh at me, but they don’t retain me, not even in memory, which they’d be allowed to do according to the rules of engagement. I wait. The ultimate humiliation is that they’re always ripped away from me, a sharp-toothed old warrior nonetheless, yes, ripping each other away from me ever more energetically.
Nothing binds them to me, nothing holds them up, yet I’m a defence that smashes ships. A defence that defends itself. They come closer. No one sees me, not even once when it’s already too late and the ship has already passed through my bars. Yes, how quickly it all happened.
This young man here is looking for eyesight material because the victims today are too small, so they’re barely worth the effort of producing them. Or they have to be laid under the lens of a magnifying glass so they appear bigger before we incinerate them on us. You don’t get anything more for them. Every moment of driving, of racing, of sliding has to be enjoyed before it tips over into the routine of a machinist. First of all, ladders still leaning against each other, then a light tremor, upswing and then upthrust against oneself – and suddenly you can do it! Super! Young young young! And high as a whole field staff. Perhaps that’s the reason they shouldn’t have done it, even though they did do it? Their names don’t tell us much, these young and increasingly obese men are the same all over the world. Perhaps that’s the reason why the same thing is done everywhere. They haven’t put on aprons like us, nor cooked, nor washed like us. They’re not dried, they’re forever wet behind the ears. And what they most certainly did not do: debase themselves. Nor was it necessary, they were already tall and overweight, sadly, as they marched against me, and of course, won.