Wonderful, Wonderful Times

WONDERFUL WONDERFUL

TIMES

ELFRIEDE JELINEK

Translated by Michael Hulse

Originally published in German in 1980 as Die
Ausgesperrten
by Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg, Germany

First published in English in 1990 by Serpent's Tail

ONE
NIGHT
AT
the
end
of
the
fifties
an
assault
is
committed
in the Vienna municipal park. The following persons all grab hold of one solitary man out walking: Rainer Maria Witkowski and his twin sister Anna Wit-kowski, Sophie Pachhofen (formerly von Pachhofen), and Hans Sepp. Rainer Maria Witkowski was named after Rainer Maria Rilke. All of them are about eighteen, Hans Sepp is a year or so older than the others, though he too is without a trace of maturity. Of the two girls, Anna is the more ferocious, which can be seen in the fact that she pays most attention to the face of the subject. Particular courage is required if you are to scratch a man's face while he is looking full in your own (though he cannot see much since it is dark) or indeed try to scratch his eyes out. For the eyes are the mirror of the soul and ought to remain unscathed if at all possible. Otherwise people will suppose the soul is done for.

Anna (of all people) really ought to leave this fellow alone, because his character is better than hers. Because he is a victim. Anna is one of those who perpetrate wrongs. The victim is always better because he is innocent. At this time, of course, there are still a good many innocent perpetrators. With their wartime memories, their souvenirs, they stand gazing into the audience from windows bright with flowers, all friendliness, waving, or else they are in high office. With geraniums. Forgive and forget the whole lot, is what they say, so a completely new start can be made.

Later (when everyone always knows better) it turns out that the victim was an attorney working for a medium-sized company. The victim was a man who felt totally at home in a household that was kept neat and orderly down to the very last detail, which is something Anna reserves a particular contempt

for. Cleanliness goes against her grain. By nature she is extremely unclean both within and without.

The youngsters appropriate the man's wallet. This notwithstanding, he is badly beaten up.

Anna bashes away regardless, thinking: How good to find somewhere to get rid of this powerful hatred of mine at last without having to turn it upon myself, which would be quite the wrong place for it. The money is useful too. I hope there's a lot in the wallet (it turned out to be on the average side). Hans also punches away with those fists of his, fists accustomed to manual work. As a man, he keeps to male ways of playing the game of violence: punches and treacherous, pile-driving headbutts. He leaves the universally notorious kick in the shins to Sophie, who avails herself of it time and again. Like two pistons of a complicated machine, thrusting alternately. It looked as if you just didn't want to get your fingers dirty and were leaving it to your feet, Rainer tells her later, taking her tenderly in his arms. Only to recoil promptly with a smothered, poisonous cry when she kicks him in the kneecap. She won't have that kind of thing.

Rainer, who sees himself as Sophie's one and only boyfriend (which was why he took her in his arms, after all), claws at the victim's clothing in quest of the wallet and cannot find it at first (but eventually does). Then he drives his knee into the belly of the man, who is hardly putting up any defence any more, and there is a gurgle and some slobber dribbles from the mouth. There was no blood to be seen because it was too dark.

That's brutal violence against a defenceless person, and quite unnecessary, declares Sophie, and she pulls with an audible tearing sound at the hair of the man lying in an untidy heap on the ground.

What's unnecessary is best of all, says Rainer, who wants to go on fighting. We agreed on that. What's unnecessary—that rather than anything else—is the principle at stake. But I think what's necessary is even

better, says Hans, who (oddly enough) loves money, and he eyes the wallet. Money is unimportant, snaps Rainer, spraying the wallet with spittle, what do you think, are those notes hundreds or thousands?

Money isn't our guiding principle, says Sophie in her shimmering fashion. Her parents have a great deal of it, and prosperity has made her wayward.

Hans, the sweat flying from him, is still pounding away at the victim like some mindless machine that destroys the spirit in others. That is how the brother and sister see him: as a machine. Anna has been feeling all along that it's a beautiful machine, and Sophie will soon be thinking so too. There may be a seed of discord in this. Hans's fists thump down like hammers and only draw for further blows. Ouch, groans the victim softly, but hardly has the strength to say even that. And then: Police! But no one's listening. Anna takes this as a reason to kick him in the balls, since she is against the police on principle, as anarchists always are. The man maintains a frightened silence, curls up, and rocks about a little till at last he lies motionless and stays that way. Anyway, they've already got the money.

Anna prises Hans (who is thrashing about wildly) off the attorney and drags him away. It is time to make their getaway. People out for a walk can be heard approaching. What are they doing here at this late hour? The very same thing will happen to them one day.

The mouths of the grammar school kids and the worker are producing whistling sounds as they turn at a trot into Johannesgasse and hurry past the Vienna conservatoire, where a flurry of wind and string can be heard (and where Anna takes piano lessons). Orchestra rehearsals, which are always scheduled late so that people who work can take part are in progress. The Kartnerstrasse will be best now, with its busy multitudes, pants Sophie, so we can hide amidst the crowd of nighttime people that one finds there. There isn't a crowd on earth that we can hide in (Anna), because we

stand out from the masses wherever we may be. The point isn't to hide but to do it openly, because that way we assert our principles of random violence to all comers (Rainer). Jerk (Hans).

Anna does not say anything else. Instead she thoughtfully licks salt from the victim's sweat and blood from the scratches scored by the victim in her right hand, the hand that was doing the hitting, and Rainer gives her an approving look, Sophie is mildly revolted, and Hans is impelled to slap her fingers. Scumbag.

There is so much pent-up rage in Anna (probably resulting from problems caused by the generation gap) that what she would like best of all would be to smash the bright windows along Vienna's shopping boulevard. She would absolutely adore having the things in those shop windows but her pocket money won't run to it. Which is why you have to earn a little extra in this way. She is invariably consumed with envy if one of the other girls at school turns up wearing a new two-piece outfit with a white blouse, or new heels. All she says, however, is: It makes me want to throw up when I see those bints tarted up like that. Look at them in their half-wit togs, superficial, not two thoughts to rub together. She herself only wears dirty jeans and outsize men's pullovers, to make a statement about her attitude. The psychiatrist she has to see on account of a recurring inability to speak (an inability which afflicts her out of the blue and then vanishes without trace) is forever asking: Tell me, my dear girl, why don't you get something nice to wear and have your hair in curls, basically you're a pretty lass and you ought to be taking dancing classes. Just look at you, you give a young lad the creeps.

As for Anna, everything gives her the creeps.

No matter. These four depraved young characters contrast sharply with the cheerful people out on the town, looking for a fun night out and

generally not finding it because this isn't the city for it. Of course fresh vitality is normally the hallmark of youth. But not of these four. And if youngsters deliberately reject freshness there is nothing to be done about it. These four are not looking for fun any more because they have already had theirs. Presently, so as not to be conspicuous, they stop running and change to an ostentatiously innocuous saunter. Rainer takes Sophie's arm. Sophie is trying to tidy her hair-do, using the dark window panes to their left and right. She gives the impression of being the most unmoved of the four, which is in fact the case, and indeed she always looks as though she were wearing white gloves. A man finds this provocative and tempting, but it never affords him any satisfaction. That is why you have to think up assaults like this. Because you don't get any satisfaction from Sophie. But there are a lot of other reasons as well. For instance: Rainer inclines to be the brain of the gang, Hans the hands, Sophie tends to be a kind of voyeuse, and Anna is angry at the whole of mankind, which is bad, since it clouds the vision and makes it difficult to get at anything. True, Anna finds it hard to get at the beautiful things you see around anyway, because you need money to buy them. Anna does not know that you cannot buy inner worth. The unfortunate drawback with inner worth is that it is hidden away where no one can see it. Anna wants things that are visible on the outside too, but she won't admit as much. People should not be beaten up for reasons of hatred but for no reason at all, it should be an end in itself, admonishes her brother Rainer. All that counts is beating them up, whether I hate them or not (Anna). You haven't understood a single thing, Rainer tells her in a superior tone.

Shit (Hans). What he means by this vulgar expression is that he has torn his shirt. There'll be hell to pay with the old woman again. We'll find some dark hallway and divvy up in a minute, says Anna, then you can buy a new one tomorrow.

Rainer hates his parents but is afraid of them too. They were his progenitors and now they provide his keep, while he keeps himself occupied with poetry. Fear is a component of hatred (thus Anna, who could write a doctoral thesis on the subject of hate), if one feared nothing there would be no point in hatred, and all that would remain would be empty indifference. It'd be better to be dead. Philistines are unacquainted with hatred of this kind. If we had no powerful feelings we'd be mere objects, or we'd be dead, which we will be soon enough in any case. I love most forms of art.

I hate nothing, says Sophie, because there is nothing in my life that's worth hating. But the one and only feeling you do have is your love of me, says Rainer. If both of us jab our fingers into a victim's eyes, the bond between us is firmer than marriage could ever be. We're against marriage.

I've got to go now, says Sophie, who always has to be going somewhere or other.

You can't leave me alone now because I need someone now to explain everything to, says Rainer. You've got two others anyway, says Sophie, unmoved by this outburst, you can explain it all to them. I have to go home now. What about your share? You can give it to me in school tomorrow. Hans is already reaching his claws out towards the money, a thread of saliva at the corner of his mouth discreetly suggesting greed. To which Rainer responds: Take it easy.

You look real good when you're beating someone up, Anna tells the young worker ingratiatingly, and strokes the muscles of his upper arms. His mother would never stroke his upper arms like that. It wouldn't occur to her to stroke his arms at all. There is a certain suggestiveness about Anna's stroking which makes the gesture mean more than it seems to.

I think you're great (Anna to Hans). Bye (Hans to Rainer and Anna). See you tomorrow.

With the tension ebbing away, the twins walk home to the eighth district, where many
petits bourgeois
live, mostly white-collar workers and pensioners. These two are themselves as much a part of the lower middle class as the core is a part of an apple, and they feel at home in it. This
is
their home, and they climb the stairs of the gloomy tenement building, without touching anything (to avoid being contaminated by the squalor). Soon they have reached the summit: that is to say, the fourth floor. They have arrived. And as their unfriendly home appears before them, so too does weariness, and reluctantly it opens the door to the tension, because that tension still has a thing or two planned for today, things it can't use the brother and sister for. The two re-enter their everyday life and lock the door behind them.

THERE IT IS. The apartment. And there are the parents too. A uniform tranquillity prevails before and after the assaults. Imperceptibly the children have slipped out of the child's role into the role of an adult with responsibilities. Neither of them fulfils those responsibilities.

All around the shabby old apartment tower the innumerable substandard dwellings of the old imperial city tower. Ugly and unprepossessing people, many of them old as well, slink about in these blocks, carrying chamber pots and pitchers to the toilets and water pipes in the corridors and back again. This produces a constant to-and-fro without any productive side to it.