Sports Play

  Concerted effort, above all in dangerous situations? Blind mutual trust? A strongly pronounced idealism, perhaps? Before you kill me off for good, may I offer you the maxim that you can only exist and act as a team? Just like the entire police force, who in roughly sixty or seventy years, in women’s clothes, with community service weapons, and with three black plain clothes stripes on their shoes, will come after you. Or those firemen, who still believe in what they’re doing even when they only have to tame some fleeting hardening of their hosepipe. The hosepipe: something that becomes hard purely because of water. It doesn’t function quite properly with my blood, that makes the arteries impenetrable. The knife would not saw beforehand but immediately enter. Did you fulfil a childhood dream by entering this group, a dream that even today has not lost its fascination? Ach, if only I could also belong to someone who’d reach into me like a trained engineer and unscrew death, and if possible, completely remove it. Put it down far away! But in a way that you still find it when you need it. I would love to be in your place now, believe me!

  The scales are very elegantly inclining in your direction, not in mine. There’s nothing to be done. History will judge with abusive words spoken in a dream, carefully-aimed, like the lashes of a whip, shivering before your coldness that will still prevail. Just like today. It will assume the right of naming what you’re doing to me, your kicks and blows, as ‘domination’: a lovely grand word, why are you holding onto it so tightly, give it back to me! The word is like a far-away sea stroking my ear, but then rushing over and past me. This word was never meant for me, as I’ve not been back home since then. I can say the following about you: you are manifestly unable to instrumentalise your body for sporting purposes, so you go for the second best option that occurs to you, namely to cut through the original locally fate-woven threads of hope of my body, which is already half-squashed by your kicks. Yet the latest goods were already awaiting me impatiently in the national costume shop. Of course you took no notice of my brand name, sewn into a hidden place, when you sent me off to no-man’s land. It doesn’t matter. No one is going to expel you for it. But you did forget to make a note of the sender. Well, maybe a couple of artists rushing past specifically did not want to be in your midst. You, dear murderers, represent the breach through which nothing should flood in, and now this singing group is coming along, whilst you are still swimming with your drowned eyes through the newspapers, the group with their thought-out moves and bell pulls comes along and tames your appetite. Now it’s striking thirteen! Don’t think anything of it, there’s nothing to stop you joining any other team.

  And I don’t believe that you’ll have anything to regret. The day before yesterday someone had a fatal accident whilst skiing, and by the afternoon his companions were back up on the lift. They wanted to take full advantage of their holiday, the way they’d practised on other people. For them no one was missing. Of course these people are as interested as you are whether the pair, what shall we call them, hillocks, helmets, little tarts in skin-tight T-shirts or the cola bottle in his jeans were real or real synthetics. And in order to find that out, we can use a standard question that to date has been extraordinarily maintained. Because afterwards everything becomes clear. And this is how it usually starts. When it comes to sport we are dealing with a mass phenomenon. Under its influence people behave differently to normal. Under the influence of sport people suddenly feel significant, that’s their delusion, is it mitigating or aggravating? What’s your opinion? Call us or write to us now. Although we’d prefer it if you didn’t. Basically we’re not interested in your opinion. And what’s more: I will personally no longer take your pathetic calls, ladies and gentlemen. However the editor-in-charge will for at least two hours after the programme has finished. The receiver’ll slide down her arm like silk and fall out of her hand. My body experiences the efforts of your sport to kill me as oppression and annihilation. Whereas the other way round, if it worked and you yourself were allowed to be an athlete, your body could feel this oppression firsthand and finally consider itself content.

  To me you’re a bit of a historical milestone, sadly I noticed you too late and was going too fast. Please tell us about your experiences and then read about mine! Sadly I noticed too late that you’re emotionally deficient and feel insufficient, which, instead of making you weak, seems to spur you on in a place where you’re not supposed to be, namely under my skull and in my kidneys, in my abdomen and behind my ribcage, so that I’d buckled up over the meal. If only you were honest enough to concede that rising to the top of your group was your true motivational basis. But in this way, oh dear! You pull yourself across me like a burning carpet, lethargically, darkness over darkness, dragging behind you the umbilical cord that binds us. It billows out so elegantly, my nightdress in which my blood freezes. Sadly, you only know your pleasure and your work. And in reference to myself, your victim, that means the work of killing. I am confirmation that you’ve done your work well. You appear to find comfort and support only in the depths of my body, you burrow into me rather than withdrawing into yourself. Oh, I see, clearly you’re losing the contact between yourself and other members of your group. Perhaps your colleagues are distancing themselves because they see that the exclusivity of your contact with my body will be positively identified criminologically later on.

  Your pregnant wife, your girlfriend in the dirndl, whatever, skips around here and bedecks her stone-age cave with Chinese lanterns and press clippings, so that you’re inspired to oppress me all the more. It’s all very pretty, really! Do you have any other ideas? I’m still pondering why I didn’t get it beforehand, when you were looking at me with an expression on your face that still reflected a reciprocal relationship between distance and sympathy. I simply reacted too late and too slowly. Could not conceive what might be possible. That you’re concentrating into a proper mass, into a woman who kills her husband, a man who shoots his wife, a woman who locks her child in a box and throws the holes in the lid away, until the child slowly suffocates on its own shit. Yet only God is entitled to slowness and peace and quiet.

  You’d hardly come near me than the contact between us disappeared at a rate of knots. At the same time your disgust towards me, the outsider, rapidly increased. The fire brigade, when not being compared to a living organism, is an establishment like the police or ambulance service that cannot be circumvented. However: you could’ve circumvented me easily, don’t you see? One small step and you’d have passed me by, I’d not even have been present for you, an experience that’s in store for all of us throughout our lives. That something lies behind you, a pure coming-up-too-short, a pure running-too-slowly. It wouldn’t have taken much and you could’ve asked me: can you tell me what time it is? But times have changed. You wanted a completely new time to the one you had. Just like you absolutely had to buy another kitchen to the one you already had. You only have to choose! There is nothing harmless about wild animals living in your bench-vices like bees. That one second hovering between here and there, between now and never, that was it! Pity! Too late, yes, another second and already the veil across this near reckless relationship between us would’ve been lifted for a tenth of a second. One step between too little and too much.

  A couple of beats doled out by your heart to itself before it turned to me in order to adjust to the right time, as if guided by an imaginary transmitter, before obdurately carrying on. You kept a straight face. There probably wasn’t enough time, as your distorted watch – the one that was a christening present – showed you. After all, you’re still virtually a child. Inside, you and your group increasingly closed ranks and on the outside, you distanced yourself as far as possible from me. Your tools: a broken beer bottle, a club, a baseball bat that you managed to smuggle, no idea how, past the stewards. Ah that’s it, right, you want to represent the stewardship yourself now. That’s why you acquired this outfit and haircut, to slash my face to shreds so that my next of kin would only recognise me from my clothes. That’s not wha
t they’re there for!

  The fillings in my teeth were removed just in time, they were broken out of my jaw bone to be turned into gold bullion. Your outfit was acquired due to your own endeavours. The most expensive part were the boots with the funny steel caps. Your T-shirt has messages across it, large ones that capture the reader, whilst people in certain situations become smaller rather than free. I’m sorry that you spent it all just on me! If it had been someone else I’d have understood it, but me? Who am I anyway? I’m not selected, rather rejected, even before you put me under pressure. I understand you very well, I’m not totally without ambition myself.

  INTERIM REPORT

  An illuminated holy shrine opens up. Inside there is a kind of pieta. An OLD WOMAN in old-fashioned underwear (combinations, sensible shoes etc) sitting on a chair with the corpse of her son Jesus across her lap. Jesus is always called ANDI here and is wearing body-building trunks. He could also be dressed as a suckling babe, or can be played by a woman, because he should appear somehow sexless. In the background, well lit, is a photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger, maybe there are also short film sequences of him, shown again and again. In front of them are beribboned wreaths that are half-decayed. ANDI’s monologue, which follows this, is constantly interrupted by the OLD WOMAN with the words: “hello, who’s speaking?”. You could also interweave the two long monologues however you fancy.

  THE OLD WOMAN, about 60, in old-fashioned underwear:

  Hello who’s speaking is there any news?

  As you’re speaking to me so confidentially, I dress my voice in ice skates and slide straight into you. You’re already so worn out. No, your eyes do not deceive you: all this that is around me, yes, precisely that which is dragging itself around half-drugged, always hanging back so that you believe it’s no longer coming – that’s death. It appears to me in the shape of wealth; glorified work, with others it appears in the shape of inactivity. Hm, didn’t I manage that well? I work non-stop. Just like electricity, it appears alien to us and yet its effect on household gadgets is familiar. When I’m not actually killing, I’m either thinking about killing or I’m practising on primitive objects. I kill, that is the service I produce. Others work so that their bodies remain smooth, and are shaped by means of sport or food, never the two together. An alteration that could never be made by clothes alone. Yes the vital spirits are all still here, it’s just the spirit itself that will soon not be. Death: I couldn’t stand anything else around me, nothing but this omnivore that irons out the surfaces in a way that the best housewife would not be able to. I can hardly hang my Alois on the washing line and then watch to see if he can pull himself back into shape on his own. He doesn’t have any interests any more. As a woman I give more than I take, in general, when not specifically specified – life. I balance out what others have in abundance: nature. Nature strives for exceptions, but in the end everything has to go the same way. Most women give life out like a tip, they just throw it down, like counters on a card table. Or like chicken-feed on a battleground. But I play much better! Albeit not in casinos, where I’ve been a regular for years. There I lose by giving everything away. How clumsy! Here however is where I win, by taking. Most women believe that they have something to waste. They squander it in the spin cycle, albeit backwards. And then their washing is flying about their ears. At least it’s nearly dry. These stupid women are only interested in life. It’s just a waste of time and a dissipation of the self. At some stage each person’s body becomes obstructive. And that’s where I come in. I gain land by taking life. They cry for their mama and are already on their way to see her, my dear old boys. They run with outstretched arms towards me, of all people, can’t get to me fast enough. Jump into my arms, bejewel the river of death like splendid steamships, but I alone am captain of the ship. Yes, and only I am on the right steamer. I command. A desirable profession, but seen for once from another point of view, the female lookout. Perhaps they love their suffering, my boysie woysies. When it comes from the child, movement always delights the mother. When it comes from those dependent on care, movement means work, work and work again. And who does it? How they long for my embrace, these splendid fellows. But I’m just not like that.

  On the contrary, now I see, I’m exactly like that. Because I reveal within myself a strength that others don’t suspect. Ideally I’d like to be my own wife, that’d be the only situation in which I’d not be enraged by the imposition of another body, particularly one that has been crushed by a demolition ball. I’d work only for myself, make the days cheerful, prepare food. Yes, I specialise professionally in weakness, illness and frailness. In order to eliminate them. And to do that I have to be as close as possible to the scene of the action, to the bodies that I wish to affect. No one is allowed to come too close to me. The only thing I allow near me is the imposing picture that I present, but that I too want to keep to myself. However, as a woman I should align myself with foreign images, yes, I should allow myself to be constantly described and keep still at the same time. That’s not my way. I have to be vaccinated with images with which I never conform. I give up. I prefer to take. My ill-woman cannot break out! Because I won’t let her. In my all-consuming rage – I’m not an identity without shortcomings, actually without a body – I have to destroy all other bodies, above all the weak and derelict, but certainly those with a little cottage whom I can liberate from age and suffering once they’ve entrusted themselves to me. I am a woman and at the same time the opposite, because I will only approve of my own view. I reject any foreign views that usually miss me, but are not securely placed. Today I’ll place an advert in order to remove the last flaw from my identity: to not be alone in the world with just the mirror. To reflect myself, to show my own face, so that I can look at myself or not, however I want. That’s what I want for my birthday. Every day I kill someone, I feel reborn. I can, as I know myself well, only get closer to myself when I get rid of others, who believe they can come close to me. I will not allow that! Men appreciate me, but they should not appraise me. Every day I go walking in the casino’s spa park and look out in case someone throws something at me – in the shape of a small bullet straight to my heart. Chance. I usually disable it. Nothing is allowed to affect me, knaves and trees out! Money is only there to be squandered. Women are only there to have squandered themselves. So. There’s no other entity left that I can be tested against!

  Because women are measured against men first, then against women, I have to eradicate everything around me so that I’ll no longer be measured, but will become the measurement myself. And then I will take on even more measure. Which means: I will only fit myself! Someone who is without anything – we call that a widow – has to get out relentlessly, has to forage for new glances, as for mushrooms in a forest. Yes. Me. The professional widow. I am in fact the virgin as widow. My husband is already, was in fact the first, to have died at my hands. I locked another, mortally ill one, in a room with the window open all night and then put him in the bathtub. I refuse always to be something different to what I can be, which is why I’m done with the desires of others. What do I have to say about the death of Pichler? I just had to get rid of that man, all humans! I had to tidy them away. My fingers are itching. I’ve put an advert in the box. Single. Presentable. Loves gardening. Has a car, likes being a housewife. Something different for a change and yet as we’d all like to be, right? My fingertips stroke my gleaming jacket made of pure man-made fibres, my teeth, my specs, and finally my perm, which is perhaps more malleable than I am. Yes. I’m also a widow to myself, because I can’t stand anything near me apart from me: a woman who takes the leaf out of her mouth that has made her vulnerable for so long, so that everyone can see the wound that was beaten into her. In the middle of her face. Now I don’t worry about anything and anyone apart from myself, because no one else is going to do it. But I will still get to know myself. There’s someone who says he’d do everything for me.

  Well, then, let him get on with it. You tell me how I should be: an
illusion. A dream. Something that can’t be real. At least money must not remain unused. And there are elected nephews, although I have already announced my candidacy for this election. They have a nerve! They come right up to me and insult me and my notary! They accuse me! People let me fall by the wayside, but my memory does not fail! And there’s a nun who was due to inherit – you have to really think about that one! A nun! But she doesn’t need anything anymore! All ablaze like a newly-lit pile of wood, and so I settle down next to my Alois, who will die on 21 November because of me and my little helpers, the medication Anafranil and Eugoclon. I infect myself, spray up into the air. The paper in which I have wrapped the men is burning with a hissing sound, whilst my white circular saw, no, my labour-ward eyes wander over my victim towards the next single person. To accelerate new fires. With the fire bucket right behind. And I am the water in the bucket, colloquially known as petrol. A multi-purpose material which can easily be denied – the poor stuff – when it, in contrast to its lively nature that drives our vehicles forward, has screamingly, ragingly, but sadly and mistakenly and moreover unintentionally, landed in the wrong house.