Masters embrace them from behind, from in front, from anywhere and everywhere, fingers are inserted and withdrawn, mouths suck between thighs. They break their favourite toys. Aha. Now they're resting after their labours of love, the loved ones and the thunderous horsepower that lay with them. The labours of sundry hairdressers have been ruined. There is garbage for charwomen to clear away once again. And then they all go on, and off, in their cars, in the loving arms of their wives. And who, in truth, will be embarrassed before his own car seats? They don't eat chocolate, mind you. The stains, which are all that remains of what we thought the highest of pleasures, tend not to wash out.
The Man can never simply disappear, all of a sudden. He is so settled in his beautiful house. In the evenings, the house is cloaked in the darkness of the forests and mantled in the gloom of the local people: handsomely
turned out! Sympathy would be wasted on the woman. The pores of her child are still so small. The woman reels beneath the heavy burden of her happiness. She is under house arrest, but her sentence may be commuted for good behaviour. Round and round she goes in the same old rut; she mustn't deny her circuit judge his rest and recreation, though. His same old rutting. Barely home and his whistle's wet again. Company outings generally end in wetting the whistle, then out it comes, wanting to be blown, wanting to sound off in the open. Life mostly consists of things not wanting to stay where they are. So be it! All change! It all makes for restlessness, unceasing social intercourse, people go calling on each other but have to carry themselves with them wherever they go. Well-ordered servants, there they stand with the sausages of their sex, banging their cutlery on the table, wanting a hole to be served up fast, a hole to hide away in, only to re-emerge greedier than ever, to offer their hospitable services once again to those who have no need of them. Not even secretaries care to admit that the groping that goes on in their blouses is like a denunciation. They laugh. There are so many of them around here, too many for them all to get enough of their improper nourishment.
The Man appears at daybreak. And stands revealed. The naked truth. He knocks the woman over, slaps her on the backside, he who has travelled from afar. The tubes are already rattling on the bathroom shelf, the slip-on cover is trembling on the toilet, the porcelain is gleaming. You can hear the silence that has prevailed in the Man's rod all night. Then he speaks. Nothing can turn him away. On the level floor stands the woman, weary from her long and toilsome journey through the night, and now her socket's due to receive his plug. She has long since seemed as intimate as a rolling mill: even to his business associates he brags of her, and in short and powerful bursts the Direktor's dirty sallies talk their way to the
top. And his subordinates maintain an embarrassed silence. The Man forces himself, well be hearing from each other. The Direktor reaches into the pocket of this body, which belongs to him. The loved objects are all there. Nothing missing. The Man is fond of easy talk and the woman is always easy. How could he possibly be expected to contain himself any longer, this silent can opener? Like a plant helplessly seeking the light the moment it's switched off. The child plays very nicely to order. How much better will he perform on his fiddle when one day, like his daddy, he's learnt to work the fiddles of manhood and fatherhood and perform the parts! The long and tedious breast-feeding lies in the child's forgotten past, but he still expects his every wish to be as automatically satisfied. For so long the woman gave of herself to the boy — and what has the trying creature learnt? That you have to try try try again, because heaven is a hill you have to climb, and the climbing has its price.
No, the woman is not mistaken. The boy will long since have