OTHER:
But you can’t give a man a lack! Think of celibacy in the Catholic Church. Who’s going to take that? Only the queers’ll take that. By not doing anything, these poor people, who are nevertheless bosses in their own community, make a gift of this nothing to their God. And they’re admired for it, albeit not by their God, whose ego-performance has shrunk considerably in the interim, just look a little closer at his representatives in their secondhand Hondas and Mitsubishis. Why on earth should a representative lay claim to anything? He should be bringing us something. How can one properly represent someone who was nailed to his own fitness-machine?
That’s not easy. I’d argue as follows: there are nevertheless people who have nothing apart from their religion, but this nothing is still better than something that exists but has no significance. Look, sport, music and religion are precisely the opposite. They mean something. We might well mean that too, but what? Never mind. We are completely of this opinion and then of the other. We watch the match and then we watch the men’s 100 metres and then we watch the 200 metres – also the men’s, because I don’t think that women run this distance, or do they? I see, sorry, thank you for the information, of course what men can do women can too. I’m just saying, Devers, Ottey, Torrence. They could even carry off the dear Lord himself, I think, if he wasn’t so firmly nailed down.
OTHER:
Unfortunately at the moment we only have seconds to fight with, and not the liking of a partner who didn’t vote for us. Do you ride storms? Preferably not? But you’re constantly riding the back of something, madam author, what is it? Leave it alone. Leave it to me. We don’t usually fight face to face in sport. Even if we do compete ourselves, there are always others who can do it better. So we just let others fight for us on screen. Sport is nothing, that’s my candid opinion. Yet by existing it does make men mad because it damns most of them to inactivity in front of the television, an inactivity that at some stage they quite naturally want to end violently. There’s no other choice. Going into houses, stepping out of houses. The appearance of nothing amongst us is quieter than reason, which at least still has plenty to say, exactly like me, but doesn’t say anything anymore before it’s slaughtered. It bows and shows what it would have been like if it had been given a solo performance. So it came down the home stretch in a bunch, and only the finishing line photo reveals whose breasts were ahead.
ELFI ELEKTRA: (Crawls forward briefly and disappears again straightaway.)
Not mine, I’ve mislaid mine, no idea where. Not seen them for some time now. Just can’t find them. Many can no longer feel, how they fall. We could have reacted more serenely though. Right?
FIRST: (Taking no notice of her, to the other.)
You believe they’re offering nothing, namely, themselves, as a human sacrifice? And that’s meant to be their ultimate performance? Well, I don’t know...we’ve got nothing more to give. We are giving away a real person, after all. We bring him as a victim, we’re well able to do that. Groans all round. We’re on the spot. Whatever! I hope that the manufacture of men will be funnier than this one here. The Lord Colonel Judge takes anyone that we’ve manufactured anyway. He has no selection criteria. But we could lodge an appeal or create a new being. I only fear that he would also suffer terribly from injured self-love. What shall we install in him against it?
OTHER:
Ambition is man’s strongest drive. We melt in our mouths before we even express ourselves. It annoys us when no one listens. We don’t flee from one another, as the diversity of creatures, who try to appraise each other, belong to flight. Who is stronger and faster. We are all one and the same. One for all. We’re not even tied to human bodies. We carry them with us when we charge forward on our skateboards or our mountain bikes, uphill or downhill. Which is why we uncouple people from us beforehand. Before we plunge into the white deep. In the meantime, buses traverse our street like sharks, spitting out bloody remains.
FIRST:
It doesn’t signify anything when the wheels of our dangerous undercarriages scamper around for once all alone, like over-cocky dogs who slide, jump or twist in the air and create a new situation which, if mountain rescue has to be called, will then have to be taken as a given – if one should want to take anything anymore, least of all a walk. Sometimes we just lose the will. Equally, God let his equipment speak for him, he might not even be recognised without his equipment. He could be any arbitrary longhaired young man, who’s not yet pulled his hair back in a ponytail.
OTHER:
It’s astonishing how the victim defended himself against dying, did you notice that too? Us with crow’s wings over him, the shadow that knows how to shriek. And what good did that do him? He couldn’t take us with him.
OTHER: (Stabbing the bundle with a knife. The bundle finally lies quite still.)
Please don’t take this personally.
FIRST:
That really wasn’t necessary. It was clear to him from the beginning when he saw us, that he hadn’t wandered into a group of friends.
FIRST:
Like Jesus, I stopped counting at 33. I’ll stop being young at 75, stop growing, stop dreaming, and the dream full of fear of what I’m capable, will also come to an end. I attach no little value to my threats, because I know: anyone can be a victim at one stage, sometimes more frequently. Which is why I’m keeping quiet now, so that I’ll not be noticed. Today I notice a plant on the path, an animal in the bush, a buzzing on the window, yet hopefully tomorrow I myself will be ignored. Today I’m still insignificant, yet often significance can grow out of the most insignificant thing, favourite example: caterpillar and butterfly. Or a large political party out of freedom, which is, on the whole, small.
The AUTHOR enters, limping and desolate. She can also be represented by ELFI ELEKTRA.
I myself took part, whilst my papa was killed. I wanted to reiterate that, now that we’re sitting comfortably together. Please let me finish what I have to say!
Look, there’s his shoe without a foot. There’s his pocket without God, his water into which no one dives. Where on earth is the foot? Ah, here it is, its job is to come back and step up to me. Into me. How on earth can this foot take root without the old man to whom it once belonged? The one I hit and thereby mean myself. I am still here. My tongue is dissolving in my mouth but I am still speaking! Papi! Where is the word I found just now but lost again? You sometimes spoke like a Jew. Not afraid of you, which means, my fear of you is not absolute, but that you that you that you did not speak. Sometimes for weeks at a time. So it’s fear of that what is not, not the fear of that what is. Be quiet and say not a word! So many have shown the way, you’ll manage. Well, you hit me around a bit too, but even now I return, and you’re not there. The house isn’t even there. The villages burn behind you. Papi. You should turn up right now and accuse me of something. But you can’t present yourself as a grudge against me! You were you and I didn’t see you. Where I am now is where you are not. You see, here is your last set of sheets from the asylum, I took care to have them washed afterwards so there’s nothing left to testify to this murder: ah, yeah, the records! Any trace of you as a human being has disappeared, only the trace of your annihilation remains, yeah, look, how sweet. There is a trace of you as a word that does nothing. Just lazes about. But you still can’t lean back because the earth is packed too tight, like too many cushions. I can’t help it. But I can help this sheet be the cleanest thing in the house. Papa, you weren’t slain during an argument, why did you stand there as if you’d grown roots? Why didn’t you run away? Well, you did run, but not away. You ran straight to me in the conned city where I’d stayed behind. Since then my words have become what your blows once were.
It’s as if I was pouring myself into a glass and offering it around at will, ergo I’m being avoided. Because it hurts to be near me, because being near me is and remains being near you, papa, there’s no need to thank me for it. I symbolise the guilty remaining alive, near me nothing happe
ns to them. Although I’m the only one near me. Do you have any idea how embarrassed for me people are around here? They think I believe I’m Jesus because I don’t shut up even though I’ve been dead a long time. That’s the whole joke about Jesus, he’s dead, but when you least expect it he turns up and puts people like you in a sack. He drowns you like little kittens. I should’ve been put in an asylum like yours long ago, they believe. I’m so ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. Most people put me down before they’ve opened me right next to my short nightie. They see how I always hand myself out with the one hand only to re-pocket myself with the other. They don’t give a fig but sometimes they come to watch. They laugh! They laugh! Just so you know. Not even the system breaks because of it. Papa splat! you were forever complaining and complaining in your suit, the one with the blue jacket and the grey trousers, not even a suit really. To drink blood you must get dressed up in boots and jodhpurs and have a mean German mastiff.
One neighbour hears it from another that I killed you papa, and the only thing he says is: well, now he’s resting in peace, more at peace than if we’d laid him to rest by making him jump up and down, hup hup hupping around in a dance that we’d made for him. If only we’d known he was here. He’s probably delighted he no longer has to be around you, your papa – right? Ha ha. What has happened to my rights that you remain alive? These here are not mine! These here say that if you’re not quite fifty then you’re not allowed to rest. He didn’t listen to our requirements for rest. At least you were nearly seventy at the end. Papa.
Have you seen my rights? What ran down and out of your trouser leg was not you and was not me. Blood is in the shoe. This shoe does not have an owner, I call your foot, please come over here, over and out! I want for it not to have happened. For me not to have bagged my papa. I want him to come out of there, even though he’s not actually there. I make the prettiest of faces, close my eyes and moan as if I’m kissing – although no one’s touched me in ages – because people only learn by moaning. And you have to listen to all this. Sorry. It’s not fear making me confess, although I am very fearful, but who on earth is going to punish me today? Others kill dozens, quite close by, and they are never punished. I see. You wanted to applaud some time ago but you’re held back by my shrill calls. My roar drowns out the crowds. They have wanted to silence me for some time now, but what I still want is for everyone to listen. Papa, you were a god and you didn’t fight for me. A god doesn’t need to make such an effort. I’m saying that here so that you know. If someone is dead, they don’t come back. Enough talk now. For a moment consider the words, but that’s already after it’s over, and hush hush, no sound now.
1 Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea, Scene 15, in Heinrich von Kleist, Five Plays, translated from the German and with an introduction by Martin Greenberg, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988, p.228.
Elfriede Jelinek, Sports Play
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