Wonderful, Wonderful Times (18 page)

boy. Whatever else, he has to stand up straight, otherwise none of it's any use, like this fellow here, isn't he a splendid specimen? A red mushroom cap spies inquisitively out, perhaps it'll all hit the windscreen with a splash and have to be wiped off.

Rainer keeps his own puke down, it doesn't taste as good as before when the
schnitzel
was still intact and undigested. This wretch does all of this with my mother, he thinks. And she has to put up with it as a marital obligation. And I still want to do it with Sophie, though with her it'll all be completely different.

Father picks up speed and breathes deeply. At fairly regular intervals a beery belch or even one of those farts Rainer particularly dreads fills the old banger. Rainer steers the vehicle down minor roads towards the reservoir, Nature is coming menacingly close, opening wide a yawning chasm to drag him down. The green's growing dazzling and dangerous. So much green. Like a vast hollow made of spinach. Father's wrist is working away ambitiously, he undid the top button back at the pub and now undoes others. You have to have room to manoeuvre. Father is approaching his climax at top speed and his son the reservoir likewise. The reservoir lies deserted in the feeble afternoon warmth, it is still far too cold to go swimming, you can't do that till summer. Father gives his son a man-to-man look. The son does not return his gaze but stares straight ahead. Light is mirrored on a ruffled surface. The water murmurs in amazement: What, it's this cold and you want to come in? A pair of wild ducks lift off, flapping and spraying.
Sauve qui peut,
it's familiar enough and no one wants to die too if some jerk takes his own life. The trees rustle as one man.

Now we're both going to die together, horrible, thinks Rainer, putting his foot down, and instantly the engine, which is relatively feeble but still powerful enough, starts to roar. Have you gone crazy, boy? The water's

surface beckons, keen to embrace them. At last something's happening for a change at this dreary time of year. It's very deep here because the water has been dammed up artificially. Nature cannot always come up with dangers of this kind on its own. The gravel on the shore squeals in agony. With a scream the springtime landscape swings round and waves a stop sign. Stop! No going past this point. Danger. Millions of tiny creatures are run over, their faint warnings fall silent. Somewhere or other a watchdog barks, it has no freedom and has never known what freedom is because it has always been on a chain. It doesn't pine for the unknown. A peasant with chickenfeed in her apron gawps at them. The juices are beginning to rise in the grass because it senses the approach of summer. The water's edge surges towards them to welcome them, well well, today of all days, and we were thinking nothing was going to happen. Air-borne creatures drone on, flying low, but cannot be heard above the noise of the car engine.

At the very last moment the patricide plus suicide is aborted. One is too much of a coward to put a premature end to one's own life, there is too much still ahead of one. Which is invariably a mistake, but you believe it anyway and that is what counts. Rainer sits on the shoreline, white as a ghost and trembling. He gets a clip round the ear and says: I only wanted to give you a fright, I knew exactly when to brake, I'm a good driver, Papa. Did I alarm you? And what if the brakes had failed, huh? Another blow, one to the right and one to the left. Dad practically wet himself, luckily he managed to hold back. But he's got to relieve himself, urgently, thanks to the beer. Rainer, still weak from his intent to kill, has to drag his beer-bloated Papa to the edge of the forest, where the latter wants to have a piss. By way of punishment and revenge he insists that the lad support him the whole time while he's about it and admire his prick. How big it is. And back there Rainer saw how big it was then. There, that's that.

They turn slowly and carefully (the cri-sis having been overcome for today) and drive back to the city. The woods protest, they'd have liked to see more of these two, they very nearly got to keep them altogether. But as it is Papa keeps Rainer and Rainer keeps Papa.

THE JORGER BATHS provide a strong contrast. In the first place a contrast to the woods, where Rainer was recently and where Man has not yet won the struggle against Nature- 'the dark green, mighty forest and tough grey granite have shaped the destiny of these parts, and the deep gorges and vast plateaux have a sparse, stern beauty all their own. The impressions of these dark, silent forests have borne fruit in many who have succeeded in penetrating the defences of that formidable beauty.' The parental flat, which the Jorger Baths also provide a contrast with, is totally different. There is no liberty there, no clear open spaces like in the woods. Instead, the walls are gradually becoming smothered in complete gloom. There is no blue sky to be seen, nor any mysterious dark lakes embedded anywhere. The gloom is located in countless washpowder packs, old suit-cases, crates and boxes, stacked up to the ceiling, which have absorbed the horror of an unimportant bourgeois household (far too small for four people) over the years and are now generously pouring the aforesaid horror back out over the adolescents. All you have to do is lift any lid, at random, and out wells the fug and does its fuggy job. Nothing is thrown away, everything has to be kept to mark its own filth and that of the owners. Yellowed articles of clothing, broken crockery, children's toys, sporting equipment, souvenirs of the remoter parts of the country, papers, heirlooms, sundry apparatus for various activities, and in among the lot the yellowed, broken lives of four people, two adults and two adolescents. Rainer wants to raise himself up to the light, no matter where, in a wide-open landscape or a brighter flat with no clutter, if possible, except for tubular steel and glass; but to reach the light he has to leave the house, because inside there isn't any. You can't even breathe in

and out freely because even the air is in short supply. And young people need air especially in order to grow to their intended physical proportions. But you can create your own light if none is available. To this end, Rainer often tells the others at school that his father drives an E-type Jaguar and has often taken planes abroad, which is all lies. His father, for his part, claimed in front of witnesses that the well-known pop singer Freddy Quinn was his illegitimate son and that he had had to pay maintenance on his account for a long time. This is also untrue. No matter how often Rainer parrots the story, it still isn't the truth.

What is down at the bottom on those endless white tiles across which the light glides in shimmering streaks? Not the ultimate and universal Truth which the adolescent seeks in his spare time when he has nothing better to do. What is down there at the cool bottom is water. As is water's way, it makes a blue and transparent overall impression, which is only occasionally blurred when there are too many waves, which is sometimes the case with Truth, too. Everything conduces to smoothness. No trace of roughness can be felt. Sophie too conduces to smoothness, among people. The smoothness is deep at one end and far shallower at the other, which is intended for non-swimmers. The pool attendant's whistle is shrill. The springboard springs with a creak. Muted cries call out, you can't tell where they come from or where they're directed, in this vast, echoing hollow vessel you cannot pinpoint sound. High above is the glass cupola. Up there, that is where Rainer wants to be, looking down on the youngsters splashing each other, but where is he in fact? Down below. And alas, he is a poor swimmer.

But you have to conceal the fact that you're a poor swimmer, are afraid of water that's too deep, and therefore tend to stay in the shallow end. This doesn't suit the image of someone such as himself who is always going deep down into things. Here, he can't get deep

down. He is out of his element, though most elements are his. Anna and Rainer go through a lot of motions intended to show that they are good swimmers. But they're not. Splashing and spraying a good deal, they fling themselves into the one metre-deep water where you can stand, and try to make it look dangerous. The green over there, the sheer mystery of four vertical metres of water, fills them with a horror that could not be any greater if they were able to look right inside themselves. The cleanliness is enjoyable, heightened by the intense stench of chlorine, which declares: I kill off every single one of the bacilli and germs in here. Unfortunately I have to leave stray sperm and urine to the filter. Nor can I penetrate under the skin to kill off the hatred and nausea felt by these young people. The water slops about within the ceramic bounds intended for it and cannot quit its confines. Just as you cannot quit your own skin. Lots of people are giggling, laughing, shouting, squealing and doing sporty things. Some of them take weirdly contorted dives onto innocent swimmers, others dolphin about elegantly and skilfully. Anna and Rainer are not of the latter party. For them, being expected to perform something they can't do better than everyone else is awful. So they pretend. But all too frequently they have to make way, either down below when someone slips through, eel-like, or up above when someone threatens to leap onto their heads. Make way for the ones that can do it properly, is the plucky swimmers' motto, and they swim pluckily, so that the twins necessarily get left behind, because their territory is the world of the book, which is not in demand here and has neither a seat nor a vote, only trained athletes are wanted: to be precise—expert swimmers. Which is unfair, because these values are in fact worth least of all. Physique also has a value here. Above and below. More up above in the case of women and down below in the case of men. Both are developed as you might expect, given the ages of these youngsters,

that is to say: the twins are on the under-developed side. We are referring, of course, to Rainer's and Anna's primary and secondary sexual features, which are more in evidence here than beneath their everyday clothing. In both his case and hers they are on the stunted side.

As if in a hurricane they cling to each other, brother and sister, and spit venom at a muscular show-off who has no idea who Sartre and Camus are or where they live (France).

At the opposite end, the deep end, Sophie, much to Rainer's displeasure, does the crawl in an immaculate white bikini which conceals a good deal but, alas, still displays a fair amount which belongs to Rainer alone. Sophie swims with style, her hair is concealed by a bathing cap, and she practises without over-zealousness because if you're that good you don't need to be over-zealous. She is here on a purely private basis. Clearly she has completely forgotten Rainer's presence, in spite of the fact that that presence ought to be both a constant threat and a challenge, not to give of her sporting best but to work on their private relationship and improve it. Taut as a bow, her body slides out of and back into the cold green water, which is known as the watery element. If something tenses, people say it tenses like a bow, but Sophie tenses her body as only Sophie can and not any two-bit bow and arrow. A gleaming opened safety pin sticking into a plastic skin. Without leaving the slightest trace of a prick. Sophie merely pricks Rainer's heart and Anna's mind, because she is weightless, only her horse knows her true weight because it often has to bear it. But no one has ever heard Tertschi, the horse, groan beneath it either.

The cupola reverberates with the bellowing of a school class turning up for a swimming lesson. Rainer and Anna observe them secretly in order to learn something and then try it out when Sophie happens to be looking. But they are too cowardly and don't like getting their heads underwater because you are helpless there, it's

difficult to breathe, and you may easily lose out to a better swimmer. They'd rather look on from above. A youth, a fitter or lathe operator to judge by his build, dives between Anna's legs, and she squawks loudly and vanishes altogether with a splash. Cautiously her brother reaches down into the water to rescue her. Sophie trouts up with a hiss to help, but Anna has already recovered. Rainer trembles lest Sophie now notice that he is not a good swimmer, but Sophie doesn't need to notice anything of the kind, she is simply enjoying the feeling a body affords you when it is getting on with the private business of being a body and nothing else. Then she bounces under the shower because she is in a hurry. Rainer and Anna follow, cheesy white. Sophie is svelte and lithe beneath the jet of water. Rainer deposits himself at her side in order to expound his love. He says among other things that the abstract notion of happiness should be equated with the abstract notion of love, and he emphasises it once again, particularly strongly, because he has already asserted it repeatedly. Love is happiness, happiness without love is just inconceivable. The tremor of real happiness will (supposedly) only pass through your agitated heart if you become aware of it, if you realise that somebody belongs entirely to you, that he loves you with every fibre of his heart, that he'll be true to you, come what may, and then, that's right, then you can say: I'm happy. To claim as much if you get a good grade for a piece of school work would be decidedly ridiculous. I don't understand a word you're saying, replies Sophie to these words from the heart, letting the water patter down everywhere to wash off the smell of chlorine. She twists like a serpent, twirling into the jet like a drill in a bikini. Only he who loves and is loved for his own sake can be happy, and what produces that happiness is not so much the sense of sexual communion as of two people being together, right, as he (Rainer) once had the honour of explaining to you (Sophie), the sexual act viewed as

a whole probably affords less happiness than a totally ordinary kiss or often indeed one simple word from the one you love. Witkowski Jr. keeps the thought of the sexual act at a considerable distance but he would quite like an ordinary kiss, only he doesn't dare ask for one. The thought of the sexual act has never occurred to Sophie. Beneath the jet of water, her face is as remote as if there were a motorway between them. With heavy weekend traffic on it. All one wants is one tiny kiss and one doesn't even get that. Not long ago, Rainer cut some pin-up photos of girls out of magazines, but he removed the breasts and bodies with scissors and only accorded what was left, the faces, a place of honour on the door of his wardrobe.