Shadow. Eurydice Says

Elfriede Jelinek Translated by Gitta Honegger

don’t know what’s gliding down my leg, no, it actually seems to come from below, working itself upward, has it reached the heel yet, the knee? Something Igliding softly, thin, trickle-like, actually flattering, sort of. Yes, now! Some- thing’s penetrating, it hurts, something opened up in me, what is it?, I am completely open with you: I don’t know. It slid inside me, I am getting hot, hold it, I have the feeling I have to throw off some ballast, clothes? Something’s flowing, maybe I will no longer be able to work at the stove or on the manuscript I just started, which came out of me so smoothly before. Yes. Maybe everything was working too smoothly. My writing flows as well, that’s how it feels to me, you know, whereas my husband sings. He runs on a soundtrack all his own. That made him famous. Before he started to sing, silence was something grand, sacred, now silence no longer exists; he pierced the silence with his singing and destroyed it. I remained rather silent. I write, should anyone be interested. It works like this, you see: liquid flows from my pen, it flows onto a white sheet of paper, I am leaking. My walking, it came to a stop, my secured existence is coming loose, I feel as if I were just flapping about—no, away from myself, as if I had no more joints, as if my consciousness were out of joint too, no more hinges that would allow it to move: I can’t have what I want and I want what I can’t do: write. My walking shakes the earth, or is it the stomping of Mother Earth from down below I feel. Is she trying to throw me off? I have nothing to counter it with. Something clicks as I look at this landscape, something’s coming to my mind, but nothing will come out of my pen, my pipeline to life anymore. Yes, his pipe still functions somehow, it’s working. His pipe works. His myth has been created already, it can’t be destroyed anymore, he can destroy himself, but it can’t be destroyed, his balls are ringing all over the world; that singer, he’ll sing something in a moment, he’ll sing something with his group, but also alone, no young man such as he would ever be without a band. I stomp on the earth, it is like a sanctioned sexual act, wedlock unlocked. What do you think you are doing?, no one says that anymore. Anything goes, but at the same time it seems there might be sanctions or something against the stomping we are doing together. Increases the thrill. Nothing is verboten. My pipe is leaky, but so is his. Otherwise nothing would

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 come out of him. But I think he wants it that way. It hurts, I think some kind of poison is running, I have to relieve myself, I am wearing too much, I have too much to bear. Now the question is: Do I get to be a shadow, or do I stay as I am and cast off the shadow? No, the shadow casts me, I become a piece of shadow, and pass myself to the shadows. My head is spinning and I throw something off, dead weight. So there. I thought I cast off something and suddenly the waste is me, who must stay behind. A crackling something whose clock has stopped, who doesn’t know what to do with herself. Emissaries are coming, yes, now I recognize them, to discuss with me the future set-up of my life. Is this where you want us to put the sofa, and the table over there? This is where I will have to settle, shadow among shadows, no more trees, no bushes. We shadows have to live off ourselves and stay by ourselves. We should make more of ourselves, but we don’t do it. I am already behind my potential, and now I even stay behind myself. I am no longer where I’ve been. Something’s moving across the grass, it leaves no trace, not one blade stirring, the wind’s starting up, but it does not hit me, could it be that it is me? My fate and way of life will change, there will be no trace of me, the juice flowing from my quill will be for the birds, I’ll think I am shedding my skin and suddenly I will be my own cast-off skin. Shadow. Something penetrated me and propelled me out of myself like a sea of air filling the feeling one with substance, but what sort? Now he can’t breathe anymore, he would have badly needed the air, yes, but now what!, the feeling one suffocates, there, at the forest’s edge and becomes a soulless apparition. Even though a moment ago he felt it so beautifully and so much to boot, there was so much for him to feel. I basi- cally was only attached to these clothes, forever interested in fashion, in being someone else through clothes. I never could really make it work. In the morning I contemplated—as always much too long—what I should wear. As soon as I woke up those thoughts entered my mind. As if I didn’t count at all. As if this landscape wanted to leave me, to withdraw from me, so I could be seen in my new outfit. As if I were my mother, the way I care about my outward appearance, with tender stirrings towards me, who else would do it? The singer? He and his fans? I hear the screaming, it’s horrible. It follows me, the screaming. Are those screams coming after me? Or don’t those fans pursue any purpose—or me, for that matter? If there is anything to fear, it is the roar of those little girl fans; it can be truly terrifying, such a pack of little girls. Their perfectly unmovable little faces, fazed by nothing, they know nothing, their fear of being alone?, hardly! For they appear in packs, packed tightly together, absolutely terrifying, those awful swarms, those dreadful swoons, unmovable faces, look, not moving at all, those little girlie faces and that awful screaming, always screaming everywhere, hanging over everything, the products of the mountains, the harvests of the flatlands, deathly swarms in the air, like vermin, flies, droning, a swarm, a ghastly swarm! All girls! Hurrah, girls! Hurry, girls, here, to me! Blood curdling, those

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 girls, draining the blood from the most secure existence! A stream of spiky pebbles out of their mouths, you can’t see any water, can’t see the ground, all you can see is the throbbing swarm of girls, yes, my husband is a girlie’s hard, ahem, heart throb! Screaming, shouting, but faces not moving, those little girls, horror pure, shrill, frightful shrieks out of their stupid, gaping, snapping, toothpaste smelly fish mouths. Those children!, not yet far removed from childhood and its horrors when they fell, now they are felling the singer, trampling him down, mouths open wide, yes, now they are the horror, they are some distance—far enough—removed from their childhood and they scream as they never screamed as infants, perhaps making up for it, horrible little girls, they are scary, yes, my singer is scared too, I know that for sure, he once suffered a horrible panic attack from them. Shook the shit of shit ass fear out of him, everything rattles and shakes, hot little rascals, forked little bodies, legs spread already, ready to receive someone, they don’t know whom, but they want the One thing that must be coming, tell us, girls, how you are messing around and with whom! But what comes out of their mouths is like a raving torrent, shriek! Shriek!, this stream of tales will soon be diverted by a rock and must look for another bed and then again another and then: a new one. That’s what drives them, it drives them on. They don’t know it. They don’t ever beat around the bush that blocks their view, but they can only see as far as the sound in their ear buds can reach, the water they can’t hold anymore breaks against the retaining wall of the monitor, in which they stick their teeny tits. Just what an audience glimmering in semi- darkness on the other side had been waiting for. Disgust. Those little girls have nothing to show for themselves, they make a show of themselves, they show it all, they go all out and show it all, they show more than goes to show, they get going and then they are the howling, screaming instruments. Shriek, shriek, shriek, little shreks! What are you doing? Stolid-faced, shrieking and running, running and shrieking.Those danger zones must be avoided, lest the singer gets overwhelmed by fear, which renders him voiceless.

My clothes hide me and show me off. Same as shrieking. Those little squat pissers, broad pissers opening up below, opening up above, they can’t wait to open up. Would love to have more orifices, so they can be wide open and ready. Already they’re popping out of their childish living-for-the moment, screaming, howling, thrusting themselves into every room, the young, finding new openings every day, they are gaping wide, when the singer, fueled by other throats, other teasers, strides onto the stage, throwing down a few riffs. He says, he’s so afraid of the girls. They tear, ahem, scare the shit out of him. So they tear themselves open much wider. The stuff coming out of there!! What’s there to come out of such small bodies? Who’d want to see that? Who would want to see them underlining their desires with themselves, their bodies wantonly open for everything

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  75

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 they don’t even know what it is? They are just dirt under the fingernails! But the singer fears nothing more than them. The howling. The tearing down of people! Stomping on those lying on the ground, stepping on everything. Whimpering, shrieking. Thank you for your invaluable participation, thank you for wanting to tear apart the singer, rip him to pieces, devour him, a little piece of singer for everyone. Swallow and letting it out. Everything must come, out and in, the bodily windows are thrown open, get in here too, and there as well, please!, here we’ve got another hole, and there’s still some room! After all, even childhood has no want of sexual stirrings, until you get crushed by them. All this develops during childhood, develop now, get damaged later! Abnormal reaction to sexual impressions embodied in the singer—in this world the singer, in the beyond it’s someone else. And later those experiences, remembered, will be of primal importance, that is the singer’s curse, I said it already and I will say it again, one can only curse the singer for that. And now the singer curses the shriekers once again. Tearing open their small twats with hooks and those memory tracks—like much used bus tracks where big things happen, if rather clumsily—, will only be able to express themselves as memories, and that is unsatisfying. Those still unsatisfied may also come forward now. And of course, they’re coming right away. All of them. Everyone may come forward, everyone should come forward. Could it be that hysterical symptoms are present in those shrieks, which keep a memory open, that is to say—shrieking: the memory, not the other way around, can it be, that the shrieking comes about only with the participation of memories, or is it the shrieking that creates memories? One not without the other, gentlemen! Mister singer, it is you who makes the shrieking girls sick! Now that their bodies have been unlatched, unlocked, they are open to everyone, open even to mortal fear, which they don’t even know yet, always open to everything, more open when it comes to putting aside all contingencies, nothing but sur- render, opened ever wider, those are veritable barn doors, with nothing useful inside to milk or kill. Everything, even what they don’t have, they’d squirt out of themselves, giving everything, even before they have it, those girl monsters! Trampling, tearing down everything. I don’t get it. That’s also supposed to be lust? Their whizzing, whistling, howling breath zooming through vocal folds as if all the world’s ghosts were caught in them and had to get out now at all cost. Though nothing is inside them. Those girls embody the Nothing, because they have nothing but their small bodies. They create nothing, they adore the creature, ahem, the creator—nothings themselves, they adore the Nothing that wants to come out nonetheless, who’d understand? Not I. Anyone without ears should also listen, it’s all he can do. Shriek, shriek, shriek! red, involuntarily distorted, sweat-and tear-soaked faces with nothing behind them, it squirts out of noses, mouths and eyes, shriek shriek shriek! Flashflood warnings! Yes, completely neutral, stolid faces and yet distorted, twisted, with nothing behind them, and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 shriek shriek shriek! Bodies in extreme distress! Until the bed gets wet, the Jewel box they wet themselves, love makes you wet, they play with their own fire and extinguish themselves as they keep screaming, screaming, screaming.

As for me, personally, if you ask me, that’s not something I know. As a poet I should know. I should know, but I don’t. My singer is good at it, yes, that’s right, he is so good at it, it makes me think that at his birth the separation from his mother—that muse of I-don’t-know-what—could not have been painful enough for him to leave him voiceless, well, I am just a nymphette, a Nothing by com- parison, okay, so I also try to write a bit, but, what can I say, it doesn’t work, so then, separated from his mother, the muse, as a child, the mother herself still a child creature, well, he could not have experienced the separation from mother as something terrifying, no way. He wouldn’t be able to sing the way he does, he could melt stones. He knows no fear, except of the girls, he knows no fear, singing at the top of his lungs as he does. It’s only the shriekettes he fears like hell. There’s only an either/or. There’s only fear or no fear. There is no third. And the way it’s running out of me makes me scared too. A feeling I didn’t know before, which I denied myself. And yet, up to now it always came back again; fear keeps coming back to me again and again, no matter what. I can feel it already, whatever I say, it’s coming, and I hardly know anything else. For a long time I made the mistake relating it to certain organs, this fear, and now it turned out to be justified somehow, now something bit me, a snake I think, I can see the wound, it’s not where it usually is, a new wound has opened. But just as I would also be afraid in a gentle valley, even though I was strolling about there, I would be afraid everywhere. Fear controls me. Always did. What more can I say about it than: I can feel it as if it weren’t me, but some piece of crap, no, look here: my closet. No one can call that crap, but it also contains dustcoats, trench- coats, swing coats, something to pull over so the trembling can’t be seen, which I wear stomping the earth. Not a thought of coitus during such stomping. Any- thing but!, not that again!, everything I tried to hang over that extreme sensation of un-lust is right here in that closet. I don’t know. Now I myself am some kind of clothing with something running out of it. I am that which lived only for a short time, leaving even less imprint on the ground than the snake which attacked me, what good is my garment skin now, my garment brood, my never successful refuge? Armed—armed that is with a woman’s weapons I get out and instantly slip on myself, on that shed skin, not used to walk on such a thing, could it belong to me? Or the snake? I don’t know. This skin belongs to one of us. They didn’t do me any good, my fabulous clothes, I shed them and all of a sudden I am the one that’s been shed. I would love to stand again at the forest’s edge where it happened. My girl friends are gone. They are themselves emergency calls, crying, digging for their cell phones, they want rescue, which does not exist. Now

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 the howling again, all around, everywhere. And I am so sensitive to noise—oh, now it’s okay, I can hardly hear it anymore. Must already be in Notown, no, not Motown, what are you thinking? There’s nothing here anymore. No, wrong, my dress is still here. I am the dress! Is that the punishment? What for? That I’ve always been interested only in clothes? Shopping like a maniac, driven from one boutique to the next, where there might just be something more beautiful: that one too!, no thoughts wasted on rescue, those wraps would have been my rescue, from whom? I don’t know. What have I got to thank fear for? Quite frankly, I don’t know, I don’t know fearless conditions. Others: response to danger. Me: always. Even without danger. I can always raise this condition, but I don’t have to, it’s always there anyway. Always at my disposal. In the past it might have been for a reason, now it’s no longer necessary, fear without rhyme or reason. That snake in the grass, I didn’t see it, and I did respond to later conditions with appropriate measures against them; but, whenever I am in the process of apply- ing them, I notice that they are of no use, there is and always will only be: fear. I preempt myself in my fear, I don’t need anything anymore, fear’s got me. I don’t have fear; fear has me. Case clothed. Took my time selecting each garment, as I can only be safe under my clothes, without anyone seeing me, and thus calm, calming down until the next fear, and it is always there already. It waits for me to run into my destiny. Fear is a dress, always ready and open and I walk right into it, can’t say I pull it over myself, then it would be a foreign body, it is my dress, always another one, always the same fear, I can count on it, it will always be there for me, for sure. But what good does it do me now? I am losing myself, I can feel it. I am already gone. I am already mourning my own loss, absolutely certain, that the singer will catch up later much more thoroughly, he will take his time for it, all the time it takes for mourning, that much time is a must for one to properly mourn. The singer will thoroughly check out reality, he will notice that I am not there anymore, he will check once more and end up under the influence of this reality check, completely under the influence of grief, yes, he will, and that grief will categorically demand from him to separate himself from me, his object, because the I that is me, this object, does not even exist anymore. He will then have to do this work, this retreat from me—the object, his object, yes, that’s important, don’t laugh!,—from me, who became valuable, precisely because I am his object and he will have to perform this retreat from me, the object, on all levels and in all phases of his life, and do so properly, in all situations, in which the object, I, the object that is, was a highly charged item, I came at a price, the price was high, I was First Prize, the trophy, no doubt, that was me. Maybe the charge was too high. Maybe he charged too fast, reached too high, could be, tried to hit the high note and missed, just one single note, in all that noise no one could hear it anyway, the wrong tone, only one, it hit the wrong way, could be, but he will have to accept the painful character of this separation,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 he will have to resign himself, yes, he will just have to resign himself that his highly charged, unrealizable reification of his desire, me, will be gone forever, gone underground, perdu, and that he will have to accept this forever and ever, because I, that obscure object of desire will be gone, yes, off and away, and he simply will have to, I am afraid, resign himself to this painful impact, which the retreat of his object will have, I mean of course my retreat as a person—everything clear so far?, so then he will have to resign himself to the painful nature of this separation, he will, who, he?, what’s going to happen?, well then, the painful nature of our separation will crop up again and again, even if he had resigned himself, the singer, again and again and all over again, and even after he’ll have resigned himself for good, and when there will be no sign of me anywhere and forever, he’ll have to accept it, he’s got no choice and after he’ll have finally got it (knowing him, probably never! He’s like an infant, holding on to what he has, sucking it and spitting it out again and then he can happily sing again, because he found out that one can keep everything one has, because one is entitled to, it’s a given to be given a lot, I can see that), so after he’ll have caught on, he’ll recognize his charging me, his object, with desire in every situation, in all similar reproducible situations, as a binding to me, while he should learn to finally break away from it for good. There’s no way around it. He will have to break away from me—I for my part, which however isn’t mine anymore, I’ve long been gone, not too bad, really, being frivolous all of a sudden and irresponsible, leaving one’s husks and getting out, out of oneself, just walking away. Letting go of me, letting me finally be, leaving me alone, which I am anyway, he just didn’t accept it. Let- ting me loose in this landscape, which I suddenly find to be fun, bright, friendly, because I finally can go. He won’t make it, letting go of me. He did not make me, but he won’t let me be. He’ll want to stuff me back into my being, I can see it coming. Since he is bound only to himself, he will have to, again and again, in every conceivable new situation, he will have to experience the separation from me, his beloved object and he’ll want to put an end to it by coming to get me again. Maybe it already dawned on him that he won’t be able to get over this situation, that this separation will have to happen again and again, it can’t be pleasant, makes me almost feel sorry for him, but wherever he should finally unbind this binding to me, his beloved object, he will always want to make this binding all the stronger, moreover, he will have to compulsively establish this binding again and again. No way can I go away!, he’ll say. He won’t let me. He won’t let go of me. He’ll see me everywhere, at the forest’s edge, in treetops, or whatever the language of Nature is telling us, I don’t speak it, it bores me, read it somewhere else, look at her elsewhere, at the movies, on TV, wherever, go look at Nature even in natura, for all I care, but me, she bores me, even though I am also subject to nature, which I have to painfully acknowledge as I speak. Okay, so I’ll be a good girl and look at her, as long as she’s still here, go stare at her,

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  79

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 for hours, if you like, it’ll hardly change anything, nature will also vanish, after me she will vanish, yes, that’s for sure, vanish she will, go ahead, look her up, read up on what she has to offer, what she still has to offer, all the whatnots she offers, open her up on Google Earth, I won’t do it though, she isn’t really my cup of whatever, I’ve never noticed so clearly as right now, as she is leaving me, my nature, toodle-oo, and watch where you’re going!, whatever, I know her, but because I know her, I am not eager to deepen our acquaintance, so you’ll just have to imagine a description of nature, take it wherever you can get it. And wherever he’ll be captivated by this description and pick up his instrument, my singer, he will—I said it already, but it’s so important, I’ll say it again, and again: he then will have to establish this binding to his beloved object, that’s me, instead of unbinding it. Always coupling, though the train isn’t there anymore! Always attaching, hooking it all up, although there is absolutely nothing there! Well, yes, I am not objective in this matter, I am only an object, that’s much less, because it cannot decide for itself, let alone for life, but I see it so clearly in front of me, as if I could live it again: The intensive—and on account of his insatiabil- ity constantly growing, binding desire for me, the missed, lost object, will create the same economic conditions as a wounded part of the body, so imagine, he will hurt as much as I hurt from the snakebite or whatever it was that just killed me, ouch! So that will be what the poor sucker will have to feel over and over again, and this constant binding with pain on account of his missing me, his object, will make it possible to disregard the peripheral conditionality of the bodily pain. Well, he can disregard my pain, which he cannot and does not want to imagine anyway, he brackets such pain, blanks it out under the blinding sun that no longer sees me, his father, the sun, Apollo in pure form, no, not poor form, that’s an entirely different chapter, his father always blanked me out, my little poems were not his cup of tea, the shining one in his chariot, in his sky- mobile, maybe that’s why his son, the singer, is so boring, so lazy, the girls do the shrieking for him, he does nothing, he never does anything, since it was always an up and down with his father, and the son doesn’t want to repeat that, always watching his father, the sun, up and down, it’s almost as bad as in and out, everything coming from men is somehow monotonous, it can take quite some time before they master the second tone. Okay, I admit, we would not be without the sun, we need it, but what we are isn’t much, how easily does one of us get lost, and I don’t even exist anymore, but that’s not a lot of not existing: I can honestly say: not that bad. Does the Sun God want to check on me?, if I am really gone, if I am a shadow, which, sadly, doesn’t exist without him either. But he isn’t proud of that, the way he keeps popping up, how he—we hear a roaring neigh, then a whizzing dying down—rearing up, puts on the brakes, jumps out, looks around if all the shadows are there and if the color he designed for the light works accordingly, and he tests it in exactly the same light which he, after

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 all, produced himself, the way he pops up and drops again, all in longwinded stereotypy—yes, exactly like my work—thanks for telling me, but you really needn’t have bothered! I know that myself, I know my work is monotonous, but his way is just like it: monotonous, there is only the Heavens’ route, feel free to imagine it as a desolate by-pass road somewhere in the sticks, and there he rides, and there it goes up and down again, he blocked me out, like so many others, like all of them sooner or later; he doesn’t see me any more, I am already gone, so—as he pops up, the Apoll, the popper, ahem, the poppa-in-law!, he already knows that he’ll have to drop again, drop out of sight, if only for a couple of hours, but still, he’s got no business then on earth. He’s got to go just like me, if not forever. He’ll come again. He comes again and again. As opposed to me he never disappears forever, the Sun God, he falls, but he always gets up again and continues his ride, and not even his son, the singer can see me anymore, that really eats him up, oh yes, he’s been all wasted since he could recognize me only in relation to himself, sure, many can do that, no big deal, but, but, but, what did I want to say, the transition from this physical pain, which he’ll feel every time he has to acknowledge the lack of his object, in this case, the lack of me, corresponds to the conversion, whatever, the transition from I-know to I-don’t-know normally corresponds—that is in the case of normal people, who are not singers—to nothing, no correspondence, no hits or I don’t know any of those normal folks. Exactly! There are some working their asses off up on stage, and those little girls with their mouth[-to-]organ lips who can barely play three notes, one high, one low, one in the middle, and none of them pleasant for human consumption, they shriek themselves away from the strict, punishing looks of their mothers, who themselves once rushed with their tents into the mud, where the porta potties overflowed from all those stirring e-motions. How glorious a memory and now this one too. It’s quite different with our stars, of course, but what’s our singer to do with all that pulling out their sexes, flipping them open, and the female sex is everywhere right from the earliest phase, wherever you look, they are everywhere, those girls with their slippery slits, they are like sand piles, sandbars, holes in the quicksand, taking in everyone, returning no one, ready for somebody who isn’t anybody or for somebody, who isn’t nobody, whoever he may be, preferably a group, many all at once—meaning all those all of them are cheering on, shriek, shriek, shriek! Ideally, high capacity disco hoopla, so we’ve got a transition, what did I want to say, which, for a normal person, does not correspond to nothing, as I once mistakenly assumed, but corresponds exactly to the transformation from the narcissistic to the sexual object cathexis, right?, so then the transition corresponds to something, but for that one would have to, for starters, see something else, someone other than oneself, at least one single one. Well, they can see one, I’ve no idea, yes, I do have an idea, whom, but I have no idea if it’s really true, whatever the singer sings. I think at the

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  81

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 moment he is quiet anyway. The phantom pain of a loss causes the normal human being to look for another object that can cause him pain right away again. A totally different pain. But pain all the same. People repress it because they think they want to have fun, but what they really want is pain. The more they want it, the more they want something that’s missing. So they can have something new again. Do you still remember that it will be his missing me—the absence of the beloved object that must lead to the compulsively changing object cathexis? My death? My absence? But not with him. Not with him. Somehow this functions differently with him, I can already foresee it somehow. I know him. He won’t accept it. He’ll want to find me, he’ll want to find out where I am. He pitched me, his object too high, a singer’s typical fault, that was a mistake right from the start, a singer’s typical mistake, wrong note. It will somehow set the wrong tone for his grief. I can hear it already. I listen into the future, it is definitely wrong, and all his tones are also wrong, he’ll hit all the wrong notes, he’ll sing out of key, I can hear it already, before he even starts, no one else can hear it, they hear nothing, those shriekers, they hear only him, but what they can hear is also nothing; I, however, am hearing it, as his object he pitched me much too high, no wonder, he was the investment strategist of his priced asset, me, and he priced me much too high, note that I said he did the ranking, and it was he who had to first work out the metrics, I didn’t do it, but he pitched me too high and this highly charged object role which he expressly created for me (believe me, I didn’t ask for it), plays more or less the part of an injured part of the body under the makeshift cover of an added stimulus. The dead always become more appealing than they ever where for those who stayed at home. Now he sees me as a part of his body, he isn’t even able to see me any other way. And the uncontrollability of this cathectic investment process—which corresponds to the continuity and uncontainability of his pain which he must experience as a genuine, horrendous physical pain—generate a state, get him into a state, which, how shall I put it, oh, yeah, someone already said that for me, thank you, well then, the continuity and incontinentality, ahem, the incontainability, no, that’s not it either, so then, the uncontrollability get him into a state of total helplessness. Or rather, they extend that state, since I never experienced him as anything but helpless. I can see it already, while I am still lying in the grass, rapidly fading into a shadow and getting scrapped, lightning strikes from above, it no longer illuminates me, a storm blows from the mountain, it no longer moves me, what do I want here, I am not someone higher up with rights. What do I want here? No longer covered by skin? Shadow? No more presence. Inessential.

So then. Please. Let’s look at it for a moment from his view point, but I can’t get up there! Such a view is from the top, you have to first climb up there. I am hurting all over already. Besides, this ladder is anything but steady. Earlier

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 I strolled across a flower-covered meadow, and the ground under me was nice and quiet and now I am supposed to climb to such a height. There must be better trails, I just can’t find them. Helplessness causes unpleasure. Well, not for me, helplessness is my standard position, my place, fear and helplessness, I am used to it. That’s completely unknown to him. Where do we look those up now? How do we lock them in? Are we closing this chapter now? Well then, to put it briefly—reaction to my disappearance: un-pleasure in any event. Primarily in me, but the singer acts as if he were the one more bereft!, while I am only missing my whole life, but he is the bereft one!, in one case pain, in another mode of reaction fear, depending on the degree of the binding to me, I would say very intense, he was glued to me, seeing only my shadow scares him, because he can see another shadow right next to it, himself, he recoils and he continues and he startles, after I have fed him at my table, cooked for him, senseless, all of it, world without sense, my life without a chance; after he got up and quickly looked around, he saw two shadows, one: me, the other: the truth, who reports nothing but fatigue, as soon as she opens her mouth and says: It’s all the same. But that’s not possible. He has his shadow, I have mine, I AM shadow now, but we can’t be the same now, there is this man standing on the earth thinking he sees two shadows, his and mine, who is a shadow, no, not a shadow of herself, just shadow, shadow plain and simple, one shadow plain, please and he recoils and looks up quickly, who is this second shadow, how come two?, where does the second one come from, could there be some creature beside[s] me, having cast the shadow, but where is it, where has it cast it, that shadow, there must be someone that throws around shadows, but I can only see that one shadow, that one and then mine, of course mine, this one is mine, it belongs to me like my skin, how come, why, who wiped out this being, which cast the shadow next to me?,—here, take a look—and in our binding relationship between me and shadows, whoever it is, unfortunately I must get back to this one more time: In our too strongly binding relationship, whomever that shadow belonged to, that person is gone now, but he left his shadow, whoever it is, what did I want to say, our relationship is based on too strong a binding process, not to whoever cast the shadow, whoever it was or is, but to me, to me, to me. I don’t understand: Am I glued to myself? Am I shadow on shadow, both mine, the way playing cards get thrown on the table? And someone left a shadow in this too strong a relationship, too strong for me, just left it right there and that one aligns itself with me, no, just a moment, now it’s going away, it finally leaves, but the binding relationship was very strong, too strong for it, for whom?, for me?, and within it, in this relationship processes occur which range from unpleasant to deadly and inevitably, they lead to,—but I am not trying to avoid anything!,—to deepest un-pleasure and, yes, despair. And then they lead to nothing at all. Yes, that’s what he is thinking, no doubt, when he sees a second shadow, you wanna bet? Well, I am

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  83

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 taking myself with me. Since no one else takes me with him, I take myself, the shadow, I pull it over me and now I am going. The singer won’t accept this, I can foresee it already. He always wants to have it all. I know him. He wants to keep me, he doesn’t want to hand me over, even as a shadow he wants me for himself, without me he can’t properly assess the morning and evening mood, without me he can’t sufficiently value himself anymore. That man demands everything, ok, he also demands it from himself, as a singer he gives everything he’s got, but in return he wants to have me back again. He wants me for everything. For gold he wants tin. Someone’s screaming? No? You didn’t hear anything? Who do I think I am? What for do I go after me? So I’ll just go. What else is there to do? What am I doing here at all?

My Being has altered itself into that which encloses it, into its wrapping and that is flat, without me it is flat. Oh my beautiful dresses, I collected so many, an addiction? Shopping frenzy? Consumption junky? Yes, an addiction. All mine. I’d have loved nothing better than to reverse myself, turn myself inside out, so that only my outside could be seen rather than I. I wanted to disappear under the wrap of fabric, a different kind of fabric, of different fabrics, and now I am disappearing as a whole, that is, all of me. Who would have thought so? That my passion for enwrapping myself in order not to be seen underneath, in order to be forgiven, but what?, would turn me into a wrap. So that I exist without having anything to put on me, without the permission to put on anyone, no, I am emphatically not speaking about my accountant. Ok, that problem has been solved. What do I know, what?! So that one can see those beautiful wraps, not fashion-crazy me, I’ve got to have that one and this one too! No, not this one— that’s too expensive for me to wear it just three times and then put it away like a shadow, recently my own, when I don’t need it because it’s dark. No, that’s not too expensive! Why too expensive? It’s not too expensive for what it is! And it won’t get out of fashion, that’s also something to think about. Let’s move on, but we’ll come back, we’ll come back and get this jacket too, it goes so well with the skirt, the slacks and also with the other slacks, the jacket goes with both the loose and the narrow fit pants, with the cigarette trousers, the Skinny Jeans as well as the Marlene pants, we’ll think about it, but we’ll know right away that there’s nothing to think about and then we’ll buy them. There are infinite venues for shopping, now also on the internet, for a long time already on the internet, images, images, images and all of them with captions. I buy something so that I can finally disappear. That is my truth. Disappearance is my truth and underneath the disappearance I can make my story come to light, which is a story of being driven, something drives me to shop, I admit it, shopping makes the cheer- ful person dance in front of the mirror, in front of the shop window, the car windows which distort her into a ghost, but she doesn’t dance for long, she wilts

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 in front of her image, because she knows: something has hardly been new before it is already old again. You’ve hardly made use of something in all its importance and already Nature in her self-importance—I know why I hate her so much!—gets it to wilt, wither, age and die. A metaphor for the spectral long-distance effect, no, not for that, for Apollo’s spectral sounds?, no, no, sorry, that’s my husband singing, he’s got nothing to do with Apollo, he just borrows his genes and his carriage now and then, someone already died in that vehicle once, that stupid Phaeton, the carriage was then repaired again, only in a different shape, it wasn’t a good thing at all for Phaeton. That accident had really bad consequences, my husband never even noticed mine, witnessed only by the sun at one purple noon and the snake as perp, but the vehicle catastrophe of a real big shot gets the attention of the whole world, which then goes up in flames, no pushing, sun: stay up there, don’t fall down!, please, wait!, for the highest peaks are the first to tumble, then the cracks burst open and won’t close again and then all wetness dries up, all gone, all sucked up by no one, but gone nonetheless. The meadows I walked until I died are burning to white ashes, but what for do I need meadows, what for do I, as a shadow need a meadow, what for do I need even the shadow of a meadow, just to show myself off? I don’t need meadowlands. I need a cave, I need Hades, which I can find without a signpost, since Earth cast me away. For the cast-away there’s only one way and that is no way and that only means: Away! The trees get scorched along with their leaves and even the ripe grain goes up in flames. Consequence: There is no more to eat and big cities perish together with their walls and peoples turn to ashes and finished. Yes, I would like that too, that much attention because of one car accident! But I am dying quietly. My shadow attests to it: no one’s asking. The singer doesn’t ask either. He already knows. He knows it. The shadow says, change your way of life! Change your fate, I think I can request this now that you are a shadow yourself. And the shadow doesn’t know anything superfluous. We’ll cut off everything superfluous. Every- thing totally straight. It’s just, says the shadow, that I can’t stay too long in one place anymore, otherwise it will be noticed that I don’t have a shadow, that I am the shadow, which naturally is much less. Just relax, says the shadow, say I, you will soon get rid of that oppressive fear, since you won’t be able to leave the place you are going to anyway. Anything superfluous will be cut away, a shadow doesn’t need it. A shadow needs contour. My excesses, which I generated all on my own fit into one closet. Besides me, only Nature knows such excessiveness, though not in me, no more excessive loveliness here; my closet doesn’t know it, it keeps its modest Ikea dimensions, no matter how much I buy, it sticks to its design. No more room for this and this and that yellow one. I wanted to be pure and preserve myself inside my colorful rags and turned into a rag myself. Did you know that women who aren’t loved by their mothers are especially crazy about clothes? Blindly they want to gain respect for themselves, and they’ve got to be

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  85

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 blind judging by the stuff they bought. I often noticed how a pile of clothes could disguise or soften—sometimes even cover up the rigid majesty of mothers. The memory gaps get closed, the gap in my body gets covered, my symptoms get put off for later. Each time you turn into someone else, whom someone might love, even though the mother is a nympho, ahem, a nymph, at least that’s what I am also supposed to be. I for one haven’t noticed it. I am just putting this idea on the table. Love too much and you won’t be believed, get too much loved and you’ll no longer notice it. If you don’t love at all, you don’t have to make yourself available either. A very pleasant condition, frees you to say without hesitation that you believe you are nobody and no longer want to become somebody. This is met by vehement resistance, since many want to insist on your happiness and step in for you on carefree hikes and save the beloved. She feels nothing. I always wanted clothes to substitute for me, clothes in my stead, all those nice things I bought for myself, what joy it has been every time!, I could always rely on my vanity, I spent a fortune on them. The singer was always very generous too. Until he too was carried away by this torrent of texts, ahem textiles, yes, excess par excellence, and all of it for me! And where am I now? I shouldn’t have cast a shadow. Because it’s bound to happen sooner or later: you drop the ball and then it’s gone. For good. No, not good. Oh God! My shadow is gone, or am I now the shadow and everything else is gone? Could very well be. It just comes to me now because earlier someone called after me that I’d lost my shadow. Couldn’t he see that I am the shadow now and that the other one—the one I was—stepped into it in my stead. All of me gone, really all of it, clouds, mounts of clothes, mountains of shoes, heaps of material, loam, uhm, leather, fur, even vinyl—never rots!, you can bet your life on it, that’s why it is so popular with shadows, they too are, if no longer graspable, I mean, if one can’t just grasp them, indestructible: Phenomenal repositories, resting places of what was more than myself, of course, you’ll say now: Everyone’s more than you, anything alive is worth more than any woman, yeah, sure, even several of them, if you like!, no woman measures up to anything, the ladies measure their wastelines, they measure each other, and then they measure themselves, they are always better than the rest, better than every one of them, better than anyone?, well, I’ll still try on that shoe too, I already have several of those, can’t have enough of them, no, now I have no more use for any, and that is why they’ll be added to the heap; there are shoes in that pile I’ve never even worn!, how frivolous, how irresponsible of me to buy so many. It’s because there is no need for them, after all, I am somebody myself! Anything else superfluous. It’s just like the shadow: people think I miss it! While I am the one who is missing! I am the shadow. But nobody believes it. I am not beautiful enough for the one looking at me; but maybe this lambskin coat is?, isn’t it fabulous, you can wear it with or without a belt, but if with belt, there’ll be bulges above and below, like, you were rotting underneath, so is it fabulous

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 enough for you, that gorgeous coat? Now look, you won’t even notice me underneath, you won’t even smell me anymore once you’ve got used to it, that is the purpose, look here!, it’s not to frame me, to show me off, but rather to make me disappear underneath it. To make the shadow disappear is no big deal. One just has to be consistent in staying in the dark. But being a shadow without others noticing: well, I don’t know how that’s done. By lying in the sun? Or could it be I want to shape myself, give myself form, as if a woman could actually create herself at least?, hahaha!, no, could I solidify my existence with this chic and still warm coat? It’s so chic, it wouldn’t even have to be warm! No, please don’t look at me, look at this casual-elegant coat, shop-language would express it quite differently nowadays, if I made the effort to shop for it too. Isn’t that coat cool? And you could get a quite similar one in vintage clothing, if you took the trouble to spend three weeks searching for one, but what does time mean, anyway?, it means nothing, if something won’t go out of fashion. Someone else wore it before me already, but now it has the honor to make the acquaintance of divine me, that chic coat and vice versa, I owe this divinity to it. It is a mutual give and take. The coat makes something of myself. As a shadow, unfortunately, I can’t wear it anymore, it keeps gliding down the nothing I have become. I become unearthly, I become supernatural because of the clothes, which open up like the fate I’m running into, yes, the clothes I bought for years to get attention! It didn’t do any good. And yet! Like an animal I shot towards my clothes: I’ve got to have this and that and that one too! It was nice. Parting from my clothes was almost worse than parting from the singer. My clothes keep pulling on me. I pulled them off long ago, in return they are pulling on me now. Yet again I can hear the little girls cheering in the distance. Shrieking, shriek, shriek, shriek; smartphone-photo orgies!, stadium sold out as usual! The singer between obligatory costume change breaks, in this regard he is no different from any woman, he is no different from every other woman. The girls, red hot, are rolling on the floor, they gyrate, they howl, faces unmoved, a horrific swarm, flashing their devices, limbs blinking out of denim and gauze, children limbs with eyes a-twinkle, child-paragliders, taking off, getting higher and higher and soon grown up, we’ll soon wake up, but we are already a terror. We tear everyone apart! Just you wait! Shriek! Roar! Clothes! They don’t need those. They tear themselves off their bodies when he sings, when they hear him in his balls-tight singer pants. Will the power of my clothes, the highest power I ever acknowledged help me escape death? No, because I am dead nonetheless. I know it now. Nothing could have kept me from becoming a shadow in the realm of shadows, shadow among shadows, through the toils of twilight: shadow—shadow at dawn and before dusk, that is, nothing that could still be seen. All over. Finished. Never thought it would be that fast. In my light jogging gear with all its symbols, meaningless hieroglyphs, crests of nothing, badges with nothing, brands that don’t exist,

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  87

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 copies of copies, so then, just the way I was, about to sprint, yes, okay: shrink, I was bagged, just tying some cords dangling from me, no idea what they’re good for, they are rather a nuisance, I prefer simple clothes, without all that glitter stuff or whatnot, okay, then, let’s tie those, tidy shadow you are! Nothing keeps tight. It’s quite exhausting. Nothing staying on me. But it’s supposed to be my cover-up!, and now I am the locked-in coverlet that doesn’t cover up anything anymore. Doesn’t have to. Nothing in there. I was totally hollow, now I am flat to boot. What remains? My shadow flat as a torpedo—ray that is—in the grass? And what happens next? Why couldn’t they contain me? Retain me? Because I had too little content? All of them will outlive me, my precious clothes, they will last longer than I. From now on, as of right now, everything and everyone will exist longer than I, even the dead white old men, because I have no more exchange value. My beautiful clothes. They mean everything to me. Sudden busyness all around me. What’s going on? Do they, in their insidious, slimy, bustling busyness want to take my clothes away from me and put me into jeans, which would highlight every misconstruction of my figure? Just basic jeans, worn by everybody, but not on my body? Me in jeans? Never! That would mean my thighs would be outlined much too distinctly, and the model they outline wasn’t optimal to begin with.

What do you want from me anyway? Do you want to buy what I am wearing too? I can understand that. I’d tell you where I got it, but it was one of a kind and that was meant for me. What do you want? It’s not me you’d want, so what is it? An always well-filled lover’s wallet, wherefrom my singer generously distributes my life to me any time, as if there were an unlimited supply of it, so that I can always shop in my favorite boutique?, someone like you would certainly give everything for that. I find giving important! Go ahead, give everything, but beware of a rude awakening, a rude wake-up call: time to grow up! I for one am giving myself, even freely, but I always keep myself for myself in the act. Feel free to remove me like an annoying spot, as long as you leave me my clothes. As long as I can take my clothes with me. They are everything I am. They cover everything I could be. No, you say I may not? Now nothing’s left to cover anyway. No trace of smugness in me saying: If you give me the chance to purchase more pieces of clothing, you can have me, I would die for those clothes, but I don’t have to, I am already gone. No one notices, I don’t count anyway. Only the threads count. Photos everywhere. Those are almost like fashion photos. Not much is missing. One can see I don’t miss anything. It just needs a tiny bit more. Of what? It’s quite evident that I need nothing. I am flat, but not yet even a picture. I accept a stranger’s well-meant advice and step under the trees where I disappear, where even the shadow disappears. I shop, I go from one store to the next and buy, even if it’s just a lipstick or an eyeliner, they practically cost nothing. I need nothing,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 but I take what I can get, and this here too and that there as well. It’s to die for. And so I die, but I don’t mind, I am dead already anyway. I don’t need humans. I don’t want humans, I want clothes. Quiet being. Being quiet, finally. Being an image. I don’t even want to be a human being per se, that’s totally unimportant, I want clothes, the adornment of clothes, highlighting the figure, emphasizing the figure, cross-hatching certain parts. And who is crossing me out again now? I don’t get it. And they won’t get me. Who takes a shadow for a trophy? Who needs it? Everyone has one. Even now I’d rather buy myself something beautiful, for the shadow I am, maybe give it a different shape for a change, I just mean, no, not the love of humans, I don’t want that, and I don’t want to get it. I am told that phase passes quickly. I wouldn’t get it anyway, even if I tried. That’s the way it is: nobody loves me. I take it as a sign that I shouldn’t come back. If everyone did that, no one would be around by now. Okay, maybe I once toyed with that notion, the thought of being loved, of being there, being urgently needed to be used like something you can buy and then not want it anymore because it isn’t anything you needed, you only thought you did, something one could use, there is always something one can use, all the used car dealers, second hand traders are ecstatic, everything just keeps dropping into their laps, and that customer will return for sure and exchange the used product for something even more used, which he suddenly thinks he needs much more urgently, because he can only love what is wanted by many. But something did remain, if not much: a thought, no more. I beg your pardon. I empower you to take me and in exchange you play into my hands the means which make it possible for me to buy those clothes I am totally obsessed by, as you are obsessed by something else, which I couldn’t care less about. Sadly, everything is still determined by some form of math—, since I could never buy everything, I had to choose, which was difficult, very difficult, I went for specials, for the so-called bargains, then the snake snapped at me and that was it! Forever planning, I set myself up to always look like more. No self-interest ignored, because everything was for me, to save me from death? Nono, what do you think, death was supposed to finally rescue my clothes from me. And finitude too should save me from myself. Finally! It’ll do so right away. You’ll see.

Finally. What’s going on with me here? What’s happening to me, who will soon just be her own wrap? Not so bad, I’ll go now and fulfill my destiny. No more dress here which I could fill. My devastation is already spreading by word of mouth and spreads still further. I feel schadenfreude. Because of this blue satin dress in which I imagined myself a princess? Why would they hold such a thing against me? That’s quite interesting. There’s someone kneeling in front of me. That wouldn’t have been necessary! On the other hand: Don’t those wide pants— those quiet, stylish bell-bottom pants, inside which I, as their tongue, must be

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  89

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 eternally silent—bring you to your knees! Yes, because he does kneel down, who is it anyway? I think it isn’t the singer, but I can’t say for sure. Someone’s kneeling here and he is doing something with admirable skill, I must say, it’s done very skillfully, I just don’t yet see where this is going or should be going, what? I am supposed to get going? I don’t understand, he kneels in front of me and I see how he eases me off the grass, quietly, inch by inch, from the top of my pant-suit down to the pants’ hems, teasing me out, easing me out of myself, right where I stand, how does he do that?, I can’t see it, I only see him ease me out, at long last I am released! Is my relief already here? What, that’s also me? Me, every time? Okay, so I can finally be released of myself, but without having to stay myself. I can leave myself be without being me. What a relief! Well, it was about time! Bringing time to an end at the same time. Finally, finally released of myself. Kneeling in front of me he releases me from myself, how come I am so soft? I am my new pantsuit, no doubt, but that is me! I am on my own now, no, I am my own suit, I must be, because now he takes me, the suit, all by itself, since there is no more self for me, he takes me, lifts me, rolls me up, folds me, and finally,—that’s all I needed—, puts me in his pocket. What is he up to? What is he planning to do with me? What will he do with my abandoned being, which isn’t even worth getting abandoned by being, it’s already alone, my being, which isn’t even worth its own self, what is he planning to do with that suit that got its life only by my being, a life, relieved, that it could finally disappear, so that it didn’t have to see me anymore, finally aware of its finitude, but still: something original, primordial, that had to leap into being, into being there (so brush up your Heidegger), now tell me already, will you please!, what is he planning to do with me, with my suit? He is moving along trees, undergrowth, I can hear him panting, he is wearing me down, while it was me who originally was to wear the suit! And now he is wearing me out carrying me away from myself. I’m worried a bit that without me this suit that is actually me without me, that is, that I cannot exist as this suit. Not in the eyes of the cold-hearted who are seizing me up, who present me for further scrutiny, no, that one doesn’t cut it, no matter what she wears, just doesn’t cut it, she is one of us alright, she is like us but thinks she is cut from a better cloth. Even if she bought a hundred suits like that one, she does not belong to us, although in that suit she does look like all of us, but in this photo the suit looks entirely different, so then she can’t be like us, who also don’t look like they do in the photos, but she no longer belongs to us, not anymore, even though she looks as we do in this suit and not as she does in the photos and that’s because nothing’s in that suit anymore, or rather, the suit would still have it in it, also with the help of accessories, jewelry, scarfs, but she isn’t in it anymore. Yes, there is something to this suit, but not in it, not her in any case. Whoever thinks he’s in there—well, let him suit himself, but it isn’t she who is in there. Hello! Nobody home? Don’t you feel like home in this

90  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 garment? No? That’s exactly why you bought it so you wouldn’t be at home in this suit? That’s how they talk about me. I can hear them loud and clear: You are the suit, the suit is practically identical with you, it looks as if it had grown on you, grown together with you, that’s how perfectly it fits you, not as perfect as in the photo, but very well, still very well! Many will be carried away by you when you are wearing this suit. You’ll see! Nevertheless, you are nothing at all, you are not only not more than us, you are not anything anymore. Yes, that’s what they’ll say to me as soon as I am dead. They’ll say: That thing with you and that suit, nothing will come of it now. And that’s exactly how it came to be. I am carried away from myself. Am I the one who’s crying? About myself? Neat people carry their shadow with them when they go out into the sun. In the dark they can go alone, but they can’t stroll in the sun without being noticed. But I never was neat. I send myself as a shadow into the sun, what do you see? What’s missing? Am I missing? What could I learn from it? I didn’t become shadow for money but because I had to. It wasn’t voluntary at all. Now I can’t pay for anything. All I can pay with is myself. This moment let its possibilities pass unrealized inasmuch as I might have been able to still experience something and then possibly some more with someone else. But all I ever did was buying.

I always kept buying just so I would be forgotten. Just like that. And it turned out like that. Now you can really forget it when it comes to me. Finally. And it does feel liberating of sorts. Standing straight up and dropping to the ground and no one noticing. It remains quiet, where there once was fashion and com- motion, pushing and shoving, girls screaming, singer surrounded by shrieking personified desires insisting on underlining themselves with themselves incessantly, encirclement and events suddenly spinning around and the singer collapsing in the onrush of howls, roars, shouts. Invisibility has its advantages, no doubt, if only for celebrities. There’s screaming at the scene of a murder, there’s more screaming at the scene of my singer. But not this time. I am alone. No one would scream because of me either. A snake can hardly be called a murderer. There is fashionable stillness and fashionable standstill. Only me and the singer, we keep holding on, each to his own tune, which he sings his very own way, which is child’s play to him, we hold on to our losses, we can’t let go of our losses: the pantsuit in my case, me in his. As long as I am wearing it, this suit, it can’t get lost. And yet, sooner or later, rather sooner, I will have to rise as a dark something and abandon—unwillingly—this cover he coveted so much. My shadow won’t do, it isn’t enough for the singer, for me it isn’t either, but I can’t change it. He wants what’s underneath that’s also in fashion. A fashionable underneath that can’t be seen. He wants it all, in every element, on the ground, in the water and in the air. He also wants the underneath. Does he also want the above? Yes, he wants that too. Am I now the above? And everything below is

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  91

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 gone? Something is gone, that much is evident, no, it is not, it has disappeared, but is it the same for him as it is for me? Hardly, I lost my self, but only his loss counts. The singer lost me. He let me sink out of his arms into death. He came too late. Bottom line: I know what I lost. He doesn’t. He doesn’t think. The singer. I sank. But he can’t yet realize what has been lost; it was on purpose I didn’t say what he has lost in me: because he didn’t know me, not really, we can assume that the singer doesn’t even know what he lost. And yet he is in love with the loss, more in love than with me when I still existed. That is the singer’s curse. Most probably those little chickies are shrieking so loud again to the red hot piano and soppy ballads he couldn’t get a good look from his stock of looks some of which he acquired while singing, others through training. The leap into the audience, with complete trust in the mob. And what if one day no one were to stand there. Then he will consider being more cautious in the future, but it’ll still cause pain. Now no one throws herself into his arms, for I am gone. So he thrusts himself down, he entrusts himself to the audience. I can already hear countless jaws grinding, countless shells, shields, claws breaking. No matter. I don’t watch him, many want to hear him, but I am not one of the chosen ones. Thus he can’t consciously grasp what he lost, but he wants it back, that much at least he knows for sure.

It’s gnawing at him, I can see that. Grief worked its way deeply inside him, it’s the work of mourning, the way I see it now. Wow, and how it works!, sweats like crazy! I can hear the stomping all the way to here, I can hear it rattle and shake. The singer wants to go on singing, but suddenly he must be quiet, absorbed by this work: his depression, the only state that indicates to me his singing as a natural form of expression, meaning: unconscious loss, unconsciously—ultimate lust! Grief however makes one conscious. One knows what’s been lost. Melan- choly has its secrets, one can’t see why this person is so depressive. And he can’t tell either. It came at him in one giant leap, and now he creates his art, the softy creates his art: more often than not the opposite of what is experienced as pleasant. Sometimes also quite beautiful. Grief is different. The depressed is completely overtaken by something, but no one can see it. Why does this person act so strangely? Won’t engage? Won’t empathize? Won’t share? The mourner knows why he can do nothing; even the work of mourning, which would be his duty, remains undone. It’s not possible. He can’t do this difficult work. His art is already difficult enough for him, but for his art he first must have explored the abyss. There is no way around it. How strange that now I must go down there in his place, as a shadow. While he craves for it, thrashing reality so it would thrust him to where he wants to be: dead. The mourner faces an empty world: depleted, deboned, deseeded, devoid of meaning, whereas depression—and I actually preferred the singer in that state, rather than his hectic hanging with groupies

92  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 for two or three days and nights—makes everything sick somehow, it metasta- sizes, mourning itself becomes sick rather than healing inside us over time, the sick man keeps beating his breast, could it be that he himself caused the loss of the beloved, did he perhaps want it?, yes, depression is grief having gone to school and actually having learned something. Depression has more grandeur, maybe it is back again, maybe it is paying him another visit right now?, no idea, sometimes one can’t tell right away what phase he is in. Whether something’s missing or had just arrived. It’s always an up and down with him, something’s pulling on him and that is when he expresses his thoughts at the top of his lungs. I was nothing for him, even though the news says something different, how can he feel the loss of nothing? Or does he feel nothing but loss? Will he ever want to know what was behind the shadow I am now? That’s what’s so great about melancholy that, unlike mourning, it is a state in which the world turned desolate and empty, the depressive person’s very own and highest ego, no, his lowest one, the id itself empties out completely. Emptied. How much would he have liked that state more frequently! I too would have liked that: him getting finally emptied on account of having lost me, so he would at long last quiet down and leave me alone. But even the loss of me seems to—how shall I put it—strengthen his ego. He would never empty himself and see himself as degraded, or disgraceful and disgraced, punishable and punished, that’s what’s so nice about depression, you ask for punishment, because you are unworthy and there it comes. The depressive person is the greatest ever wish-fulfillment machinery. He does create his wishes all by himself and cries incessantly if they aren’t fulfilled. No one can understand it. Disgrace—sure, coming right away!, done!, as you wished. Self- criticism? No problem. We can do that. Just criticism, no more self? Why not. Micromania, sleeplessness, lack of appetite. Impotence? Instant delivery, you just have to sign the order! You are not able to anymore? Doesn’t matter. We deliver nonetheless. What else? You don’t even have to say the word and already you are impotent! But what do I produce, what does my loss produce? Nothing but dull, stale mourning. Anyone can do that. That kills me! It’s so uninteresting. The singer can’t do without histrionics, he can’t help it. I am happy to confirm his story has no value at all. But he wants to be worthless without me, at all costs he wants to be worthless without me —without me!, who was worthless even before. It must be a joke. The worthlessness of worthlessness! Now the man is talking. The singer sings. The saw saws. The tree tops all, I mean, the tree topples and falls. The question is, why did he have to first become sick before he finally made himself accessible to the truth, well, the truth isn’t on the make, but she is accessible at times. By telling the truth, the depressed does injustice to himself and he likes it. He enjoys it. Really. That’s how he sees it. He is the only one to enjoy it. What on earth is to become of him? How that thought pleases him! Even I as a shadow retreat instinctively from her and merge with something I

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  93

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 can’t really see. But it doesn’t hurt. Well, I never had a solid existence, I always depended on him, the singer, in everything, also financially, of course, or with regard to the envy of others, but this now is too much again, I mean, that nothing within reach of my shadow is worth anything. Nothing around me, and I: nothing in the Nothing. Without a question, crossing a threshold I didn’t see. Whatever. The singer’s deep melancholy wipes out all differences, and everyone is equally worthless to him. To him and everyone else. And when others disagree, when they question the extent of such self-humiliation, they get angry, our dear depressives. What does he want? Having me back? I really think he wants me back again. As if I were any randomly desired object, no, no, of course I mean: his one and only obscured object of desire. The most obvious object of everyone’s desire is he in any case. I can’t even make myself clink, let alone bang two cym- bals together, or just rattle a bell tree. There is nothing I can do with music, let alone music without anything. Can’t even sink properly onto a lair. For now I myself am lair for everyone, and no one notices when he lies down on me moan- ing and groaning. The singer sees this shadow (of course he just sees some shadow, not me) and thinks it is looking for his master, mistress in my case, his mistress, but this shadow is finally its own master. It is and remains by itself. Except when others join it, but it doesn’t feel those, a shadow is a shadow, one single one or many, the shadow doesn’t care. So there. Now the singer is angry and comes to get me, he is coming to get his own shadow, he only wants that one, that’s very stubborn on his part, and I will of course immediately slip through his fingers. That’s completely natural, a shadow having no body. He will wreck the beautiful way I am folded together, the singer, I as shadow will have to flee from him should he come and he will come, no doubt about that. What he forgets: It is dark in the underworld, the shadows merge into one single one, a forest of shadows, in the shadow the shadow loses its form. How would the singer recognize me there? Does he think that like a pet I would come running when he calls? Calm. Finally silence. We shadows—beings who finally slipped inside themselves, not by force, but by necessity, to disappear, to vanish inside themselves, becoming one with themselves. However, they would have always vanished without any need for it. And there he is coming already, the singer, running, shooting down to us in a mighty jump, falling among the shadows, standing out, and as he is falling, he hangs on to the strings of his instrument as if he were some wild animal who only cares about feeding, boozing, singing and fucking, nothing else. But I know he only cares about me, the only one, whom he can’t grab, the only one who rests on his chest as a light weight only, who already rests somewhere else, who doesn’t rest at all, the only one he has no success with. The only one he is unable to grasp. I calmly remain at rest, wrapped up in myself. I don’t care whether he sings or doesn’t sing. I don’t even hear it anymore. As long as he doesn’t bring the wet-pantied shrieker chicks with him. They splash themselves

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 all over so wildly, anyone with a body can hardly jump back fast enough. No, they didn’t come along this time, they are still shoving themselves back and forth in their tight tank tops as if they could adjust themselves inside themselves for the one, for him, should he request them, never for some nobody, always for the one somebody. Well, why not.

Okay. He is here. Singing for the shadows; he must find that quite peculiar. Any- way, here he is, just sitting there, singing away. That way he’ll fix it. He thinks. He won’t fix it all on me, I hope. I don’t need any fix. I want to have my peace and quiet to be clear for once. Just the thought of the above is horrifying. Here we shadows are lying peacefully next to each other, we play a shadow game together, a moment later we are running next to each other peacefully, we can no longer differentiate between each other, no longer tear ourselves away. All of us are shadows after all, one for all, one all. And we don’t have to look for darkness, we found it alright. We can also hear the singer only by his singing, it’s the only way we can locate him. We would never know where he is without his tearing at the strings and screaming to it so loudly. Ripping into his vocal cords until they get all tangled and tousled and that is the moment when those little whack-off waifs, who still get whacked themselves, are getting their little climax, each her own, one for everyone. Each for herself, all for his. Now even I don’t get it. Stop listening. We pull ourselves over our heads, we are shadow hoodies, we wrap ourselves in ourselves, blissfully, everything dark and quiet. At some point the singer will stop. He always stops some time, after a few encores, which we shadows, enfolded in one another, don’t know how to appreciate either. But it’s not us he sings for anyway. He says he wants to have me back with all my assets—that is, including small change with which he can jingle and chip in for me and my clothes, if I just came with him, if I just rolled along, upwards, immediately, but hurry! Where is up anyway? Like fog we are rolling over each other, entwined in each other, wrapped in darkness, shadow in shadow, smoke in smoke, from one hill to the next, we are rolling along, no peace, and we can’t be seen either. We hear singing. The song sinks in. But not into me. They’ve got to catch me first. Who can grab a shadow? No one can grasp a shadow, alone or intertwined in others. Can’t get a handle on it.

We are the unconscious, as shadows we are conscious neither of ourselves nor of each other. And we are happy to have lost not only our shape but also our consciousness, which was always the most troubling before. It would have to be called unconsciousness-ness, our consciousness. Everybody-consciousness, since everybody has one, except us, we don’t know ourselves or the other shadows, we don’t see ourselves or the other shadows, nothing can touch us, we don’t mind anything, we were made of shadow even while we still lived, we just didn’t notice

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  95

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 but now one can also see it. It can’t be overlooked any longer. We, smoke in smoke, air in air, water in water. We show ourselves as shadows among ourselves, but we don’t look at each other. Move along, nothing to see here. We’ve shed ourselves, we no longer shed any tears either. Among the living there is resistance against giving oneself up. They must be afraid that something might come up. We, however, no longer rise. We have already hit the ceiling, now we no longer aspire to break through it, to join our consciousness with the unconscious, to uncover more about ourselves or others. And we don’t care whether the living want to know more about us or not, we don’t tell them. We don’t give each other a break, there is no reason to. The dead don’t care. We are no longer consciousness unknown to its carrier, we don’t carry anything, we are worn out, we don’t even wear our clothes any more, well, some kind of rags—what’s been left of the day, what’s left of life—some their favorite suit, some their favorite dress, I am one of those, of course, but who cares what, it doesn’t conceal anything, because there’s nothing underneath anymore. There is nothing in the shadow. Nothing gets into the shadow. Nothing beats the shadow. We are it. The end. Nothing comes after, there is no more, nothing above, nothing below. If the unconscious is the most important aspect of the conscious, we might finally be rid of the latter, we might be the unconscious then; since we are not conscious of who or what we are, I can’t really tell. Quiet, please. Singer, shut up, will you, finally! You are in the wrong place here!, blithely, unashamed! Crybaby! You rub us the wrong way. No, you don’t rub us at all, nothing can disturb us, but you better go back now, and it is not me you should go back to, just as I don’t want to go back. You are here too much. Your presence throws the strongest light into the dark, and we don’t need that, we’ve already seen the light, but we don’t need it. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt us any which way. It’s all the same, whether you beat your bishop or pop a pimple, you see, that’s the way it is for a by-stander, the madman doesn’t get it, for him the minimal similarity between an ejaculation, your singing holler, and a blocked oil-gland is no longer a given, just as there is no more difference between my skin and my twat. How does the thinker put it before he ejaculates his thinking: a hole is a hole. Accordingly, there also is no difference between the living and the dead, because for us there are no more differences. A hole is a hole. A shadow a shadow. Nothing to it. No one in it. No one gets it. So you can play until hell freezes over and turns you to ice—but not black like us—you won’t get to be a shadow, and whatever you are playing, it’s nothing for us and doesn’t count with us. The way you act, music only plays a supporting role next to you, everyone plays only a supporting part besides you, serving only as a soundtrack for the longing of the seducible with their usual weakness for the most basic stimuli: crotch grabbing, shrieking, strutting, howling to the max. That’s all there is to it. For you it’s everything. Got it. But you don’t rouse us as much as you arouse the living so that they holler much louder than

96  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 you, shriek, shriek, howl! Oh well, as ever. The singer knows it and because he does, he keeps doing it over and over again and always the same. He knows and can’t help it. Constant repetition is the singer’s fate, it’s just like fucking, and the shrieking clit-picking chickies google the meaning of the singer’s zingers in English. It means everything to them. Shriek’n’shout.

We, the dead, however, no longer have to know each other or anyone else, we are free, we are free shadows in a free shadow world. We know nothing about ourselves anymore, thus the consciousness we don’t even have of ourselves could be an unknown consciousness, we wouldn’t even notice, since we aren’t notice- able and also not noteworthy, we are the realm of shadows. No shadow leader, we don’t have one here. Yes, and there is this old couple, half decomposed, so that the vulture erroneously picks at them occasionally, whenever the way to its actual destination is too long, and there also is that other one, whoever it is, whom I’ve never seen either. One can’t see a thing here, and there is no need to see anything anyway. Nothing’s going on here. And that is all that happens: nothing going on, but everything flowing, floating along. Shadows don’t need any guide when they appear alone. But even together they don’t need any. They stretch languorously, for they always had to follow their body and their body- awareness—there are exercises for that; now they don’t follow anymore. Whether folded together or casually tossed into the dark like a dirty towel, they couldn’t care less in their eternal carefreedom-fest. We don’t have any more psychical processes and we are no longer interested in any kind of external processes. If our psychical processes have been unknown to ourselves before, because we could not conform them to our lives, so that they would add up to something, we now add up to nothing, there are no more processes that could conform in any way. We now form one huge shadow comforter. And when we are on top of, intersect with, cover each other, there is no more unconscious to uncover, because we haven’t got one anymore. We can’t feel, we can’t feel anything anymore when we cover each other up with each other or when we are thrown onto one other, not even when hundreds of us are lying on top of each other, pressing against one another, shadows on shadows in shadows, so many, we are so many and yet we are not too many or many of many, we are all of us and all alone, because we are so many, because we are so many who are all gone already, we feel nothing, we don’t feel, whatever it may be, it has no place in our consciousness, let alone self-consciousness, don’t have it, don’t do it, what is self-consciousness?, which we listened to too much, listening for it to tell us what else we could do to become a self, so we could take us out into the public, take on the public, the id shall not become the I, how fortunate not to have an I anymore, that’s what’s best about it, otherwise there’s nothing to it, but that is the best part, not to have an I and not to be, that’s been checked long ago, without us getting a coat check

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  97

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 ticket for it. Don’t need it, we checked ourselves in, we no longer show off with arguments and states of consciousness, an I no longer sells, the I I-es no more. We don’t need I’s, we no longer look at things, it’s dark, after all, we no longer consume, and if we consort with shadows, we can’t feel it when we touch each other and we are not touched in any way. Tons of bodies are working at finally feeling each other. Not we. We aren’t working and we no longer are. We won’t discover unknown depths in us anymore, because we no longer have depth, we are flat, finally flat, soft and flat, folded up, crumpled up, thrown away, stretched out, rolled up, all the same. Our sensory organs no longer explain anything to us, everything is inexplicable and no one wants to explain it, for here our senses, even if we had any, could not tell us anything. Sensual experiences simply do not exist for shadows. Whether someone steps on it, lies on it or it lies down it’s not a series of states of consciousness, it is nothing, that is what it is, nothing.

So, now he’s actually still standing there, singing! Can you believe it! A rug under his feet is what we are to him. He doesn’t even notice that he has been on top of me all this time. He did not imagine me that close, he could never imagine a beloved being so close and he doesn’t notice! He wrapped himself in all his shimmering charms and shiniest colors, he’s the only one around here who can do it, but does it do him any good? Here, colors pale to gray. I try to wiggle a bit under his feet, readjusting myself, he can’t feel it, has no clue. And that stupid dog, who never gets fed, no idea what keeps him going, probably bribe money from those who don’t want to become shadows which, however, doesn’t do them any good, because he already took the coins off their eyes, to buy himself a can of liverwurst, so that stupid dog stands there, jaws open, I can’t see him, but I can imagine: doesn’t even want to booze, and of course he did not even frisk the singer for his smart phone, which would have been his job. We don’t have a body scanner, since no one’s coming anyway, who could be exrayed. A shadow has no depth, right? Those of us—just a handful of people, and don’t ask me how they can make a go of it here, anyway—those who still show signs of activity, that is, they aren’t really dead, those are the undead, the condemned, the conned, yes, and anyone on any list because they weren’t cun- ning enough, or they wouldn’t be here. They keep an eye on the dead, but they aren’t dead themselves, though they are practically frozen in their inactivity, but even when active, upon request, they are the same. So they might as well be shadows themselves, the condemned, damned from here to eternity, condemned to activities, that bloodless flock! Oceans recede, rocks roll, the surf—I don’t know what that does, but it does, I am sure, yes, something’s doing around the surf and that’s always, and even the stones are raging, running through a forest compared to us, the calm, the silent, the silenced. Maybe the stones will also start to shriek any moment now. Compared to the howling above they’d still be

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 harmless. Wouldn’t surprise me if the stones were to howl like the Furies, who on principle never kept mum about their fury. They can go to hell, those stones and those girls, but hell won’t take them. They are part of the inventory. They stay with us. Here it says about me that I came with the new shadows, lagging somewhat behind due to my wound. Let me emphasize that this is not true. I do not impede anything and am not impaired by anything. That’s just how the undead imagine it, who have to work, instead of being properly dead. And they long for nothing more than being dead, the undead. The ghosts. They envy us. The living might envy the dead, the undead envy us even more, because they know better how beautiful death is, how nice it will be afterwards, unattainable to them forever, the fate not to be loved the most beautiful of all. But the greatest of all is not to be loved and not to love.

If they were genuine shadows like us, that enterprise Sisyphus & Co, they’d have less work to do. They would not have to speak their body’s language, which in their case is the language of insanity, well, their half-lives would drive anyone crazy; they are masters in the language of hypochondria, but not masters over their stones, their floods, their dead, their language tells them that one organ stands for the whole body, just as a stone stands for the world for Sisyphus, a wheel for Ixion, the flood for Tantalus, and urns for the Danaids; they all went mad long ago, since they were the only ones who still had bodies which they had to move pretty steadily, while we can’t be moved by anything, no, not another body, please; I don’t mean a second one, only the first, but that one they still have and have had long ago and for a long time to go; the undead have had their bodies forever, yeah, sure, everyone among us shadows also goes mad sooner or later, but those few still got bodies as well. Nothing in the head, but flesh when they are looking down on themselves. And those three half-alive bodies, what are they saying, what do they have to say to us? There are hardly more then three, I can’t really see it from here, what do they say? They say the singer must change his position: face up, that is, he must show face, he’ll have to face the music anyway, but he must change his act, he must act as if faced down by someone else, rather than him facing up, but this one turned up, he turned himself in without a summons, he’s here, what do we do now? It is as if he had been framed. Life turned him in to us and it will take him back out again once it can see how it is down here with us. He doesn’t belong here with the shadows and he doesn’t belong to the shadow creatures, who have to work. What say the three crazies I can see just now?, yes, the dog too, why not, what do the crazies have to say to one who suddenly lives and is here? Finally one like them! Finally one of their kind! Before, he was WOW!, now he is WHOA–, the singer, that’s what they say, those who went to his concerts. He will remake our shadows in his image, grosser than gross, he will—if we let him stay here—make everyone

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  99

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 lewd, loud and louder, shadows singing at the top of their non-existing lungs!, that cannot be, we don’t want it, he has to go, that roaring boar, he acts as if he were better than we, the dead! Ha! Sooner or later the shadows, the dead will get to be like him, they’ll imitate him, we can see it coming, because the shadows, we, the shadows, and yes, the ghosts as well, if we keep listening to him any longer will want to be exactly like him and then appear in a talent show (rein- forced by deafening shrieks coming in from outside), he has pretended all the time and doing it so coarsely, uncouthly, ungodly, so loudly one can hear him everywhere, absolutely everywhere!, his screaming pierces everything and then, if we keep listening any longer, we will be—even if we were whispering—just as loud as he, mind you, those singers are contagious in their lewd vulgarity, and this singer fakes what he calls singing, whatever comes out of him, and he fucks up the light which our shadow existence might then take away from us. No, that won’t work. And who’d want it? Is there anyone who’d want that? Well, not me! We stay shadows no matter what he might squirt and spit out of his throat. We’d be rolling our eyes if we could do that. But in any case, in all cases, we have no conscious thought seeing and hearing all of this (which is nothing by the way, because we can’t hear or see, we might possibly be able to see, that is, we imagine seeing the singer sawing, but we don’t hear it, others seem to hear it, but we don’t hear it, we can’t hear it but we know what we would hear if we could), and if we had any thought, we wouldn’t be able to express it, to squeeze it out of us. No thought! And he’s still singing. If I hadn’t seen or imagined seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it. When there’s no more psychical something, there is no lack of it either, and it has nothing to do with the nature of the unconscious, for whoever has no consciousness, can’t have a psychical life either. He’s got nothing at all, but nevertheless he feels good in his skin, which he no longer has. We don’t have to shorten our way to death, which everyone must take, we’re already doing it now and we don’t have to prolong it anymore, no matter how, we don’t have to anything.

The singer is on top of us. There’s no one left down here who’d want to be on top of him, that’s how it goes, but he keeps going on our shadow carpet as if it were a rug of fir needles in the forest and he feels nothing, not even something moss-like, lichen-like, fuzzy, moist, dry. Nothing. He sings. He thinks that’ll get him somewhere. Even if he could get me out of here with his singing, which I can’t imagine and which I wouldn’t want for the life of me if it were in my hand anytime to become my dear shadow, my own and one and only me, not his, yes, he’d love to have his private shadow, I know him, he’d love me as his shadow, only this time shadow without base, shadow without weight, shadow without body, shadow who isn’t with it, with itself, but also not with others, except with other shadows, I, I, I! At long last! That’s the way he imagines it. One shadow

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 is better than a thousand suns, which poor little monkeys with glued on lids so they can’t close their eyes have to stare into until their little eyeballs melt away, charred like the deep tanned backs of those poor bastards who had to behold those thousand suns back then when one would have been enough. No. That’s not for me. No light for me!, please, no light at all, ever! I want to remain in the shadow, be shadow and stay shadow. The singer thinks I can hardly wait to peel myself out of my shadow and catch up with myself, catch on to myself again, get caught in myself again. As a shadow caught again. No, I do not want to come into myself again. Rather the potter’s field and getting ploughed under. I am not the inn I want to get into. He thinks my shadow wants nothing but getting its body back in. Body?, just got some fresh ones in today, but they are already sold out, come back tomorrow, we’ll certainly have fresh ones coming in again! You might like them. He thinks that’s what I want, nothing else, he can’t imagine anything else. Even though this would be quite appealing: To be me and not to be! That would be best of all, if I could have a wish, but that’s not possible, believe you me!

And he sings, the singer sings, he did not pull a magic hood over his head, he is the only one visible, not a shadow, and yet he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t see how I look now, he couldn’t anyway, because there is no more look, that’s good, I wouldn’t even want a body anymore, but he does not accept it. Would not content with it. That’s his way, never content. He is discontent personified, while a shadow must be content with itself, and not even contentment is an option. For it is a shadow of nothing, a shadow without a body to cast it, step on it. That’s not its thing. It can’t have a thing, the shadow. It is no thing. Darkness, which it grew into, shadow without a name, name without words, shadow without body, body with nothing, in Nothingness. And the singer sings. Yes, he sings. If possible, louder and louder, he thinks, he’d find me faster that way, completely senseless. An act under fantastic conditions, as always for him. Or else he wouldn’t start. He shows his flesh and throws his hips for the hollering little pissies outside, they are lying in ambush somewhere for sure, they are hiding, but they are lying in wait, I know them, they don’t give up, never!, they are waiting for him to jiggle his cock right in front of their little faces, to jack up his cock for them, ready for insertion anytime, and now he acts as if he wanted to screw them any which way, yes, the singer understands the sorrow of the unfucked, the little pussies, even though he doesn’t stay unfucked for a single day, shriek, shriek, shriek, they are good at that, they are getting a presentation of communication on eye level, a holy communion with his sex until the police arrive and lock it up again, so there you have his hips and his cock, his almost naked butt, help yourself!, he always acts as if every one of them could grab the biggest helping. Cheering, shrieking, more shrieking converging into a howl, the whole heap of honey pussies, yes,

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  101

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 this gives hope—in a teen’s room, but not in the beyond—hope for more, no one is perfect, some are a one-man band, but together we can, all together can do it all. Shriek, shriek, shriek, unmoved faces, tear-stained cheeks, clenched little fists, shriek, shriek, shriek, we receive the applause in our pussies too, goes in on top, comes out below, or vice versa?, could be, it has to come out somewhere, oh well, we split the singer among ourselves, won’t work any other way, else we won’t let up, everyone gets a little piece, no, not this one!, I want that one there! Holler! Howl! We en masse, let the little children come to me, yes, and here we are! Into our coochies goes the applause, oohhhhh yessssss, is that good, romping around, spinning inside us into a slap dance, we can feel it, it tickles, it’s coming, howl!, never felt anything like it, outta this world!, one more time, please, howl!, no, we don’t need our faces for it, we are unmoved, but mouths are wide open as if spread apart, our honey-pussy-mouths, and he even does another costume change, the singer, shrill!, still less is always possible, but more would work as well; if he were a woman it would be less, but with him more is always more, he stomps onto the stage, not a captive, but still totally captivated by himself, and he rages through his mouth and the hips, no, he shoots from the hips, he riffs and raffs, no, he’s rafting across the boards, with him one thing is always raging against another and everyone thinks it is a fight, something is fighting inside him so it would turn into music. Fabulous music, no question. Super! Howl! And the singer is always optimally equipped and everything else is also optimally equipped. Could he see me, me in my shadow world, he would inevitably take my hand and jelly me and pitch into me. But the music only plays a supporting role for those little pussyticklers, self-strummers, who still get whacked off and on by mom herself!, I knew it!, you bet!, because they stayed out too long after the concert, shriek! Such are the longings of the seducible who must be wet-nursed, so they always stay wet. Those little girls and their weakness for the simplest thrills, those pussy-dolls, they see the thrashing of innocent instruments and want nothing more than getting thrashed themselves, dying for fingers floating over them, then tearing into them, tearing them apart like a slaughtered chicken, well, that would mean a lot of work for the singer, strum, strum, howl! Such dolls, those girls, waiting for someone, a singer would be best, this one or that one, it’s all the same to them, one of them will do it, pulling his pecker out at long last, anyone will do, everyone else would do it too, but they insist it must be the singer’s, they won’t go for less. It must be the singer. They wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other, but it has to be that one, the one of the singer and no one else’s. Girls, please! This time it’s a no go. I am told the singer is looking for me, not for you, snivel, snivel. He is looking for his audience and that happens to be primarily me. His most important audience. He keeps saying. Open your eyes, will you! And no one will glue them to your forehead, the lids, so that you’ll see the light! You’ve got to keep those open yourselves. Why is he still

102  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 looking for me, I ask myself. Me of all people! He’s got plenty around him, the jolly exhibitionist. Why would he need a thing with an opening? Why would he need eyes and drops that get shaken off, sacs that get put away, hips that were flexed for those pussies only to finally get the full picture of the full Monty they don’t get but would, if they—for decency’s sake—abstained from their power cravings for swallowing the singer, straight up, hook, line and sinker, yes, those little girls can scare the shit out of one, the singer shits himself from fear, there’s no one he fears like them, and why do they need that lust for power anyway? Duh!, because they are not I. Because they are not shadows. Because they can’t even imagine shadows, except in a hot school yard at lunch break when they rip open their sealed vacuum-packs with something that was already done before they could do anything with it. That’s what they stuff down themselves. What do they want to do with the singer anyway once they got their claws on him, clamped between the forceps of their skinny thighs, against their baby bellies? Will they even find his tear strip?

My singer who can get anyone and anything, and when I say anything I mean anything, what does he do?, he listens only to the sound of my retreating steps and even those he cannot hear, because a shadow does not stride, it does not walk, it glides, no, that’s not it either, it’s on a downslide, well, I don’t know what a shadow does even though I am one, I don’t get it. The singer listens to the fading sound I once was, but he himself is so loud, he wouldn’t even hear another guitar exploding behind him. What does he need? He has everything! Why would he need me, why would he need himself? I am too far away and that’s where I am staying, in the distance, accompanied by these inner steps, which do not lead to success as his do, which lead nowhere, can’t he feel that? He finally humbles himself, getting as low as he already is! His ego no longer examines anything. He just wants me back. He doesn’t think. But he wouldn’t hear his thoughts anyway, not even if they were shooting at him, that’s how loud he is. He’d not even see me, the way he stands there, so strong, so grand—like a god, so high, a higher human, so much like the rabble, so much like the rest of us. He wants me back, I guess, no, that seems pretty obvious, why else or how would he have gotten in here?, doors simply don’t exist for him, neither does a No, he wants to fetch me, I guess, if need be as a shadow, he does not tolerate anything being taken from him. If he were lying in a grave, he would resurrect himself for sure. He won’t resign himself. We ask ourselves if he mourns because he lost me, as he explains. But he always loved to complain. In truth he mourns, because he lost himself, because he had to give something up in the form of something whatever it may be, humility is not his forte. No way that something gets taken away from him. No way does he ever lose something. Never. He’s on his way, but anything getting away from him?, no way! I am a shadow now. Nothing to

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  103

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 be done about that, I am what has been cast, the gaping chasm, which he wants to close again, he wants to chase death away with his yelps, even the dog at the gate stopped yapping, the mountains yell, it is hard to bear—I haven’t heard him for a while—and my future steps out of the shadow and lo and behold, it is also a shadow, among other shadows, nothing but shadows, no passage to passing away and no passing alone. No path to cross, no cold dark underpath, nothing, nada, no one can ride roughshod with what I am anymore. But the singer has horse powers parked somewhere, he thinks those will help him pull me out of here and get out, because it’s every man for himself, every woman for himself but I am no longer his property, his prop. He won’t believe it. And if he searched for his mistress, me, who I was, what I was, he’d find me even as shadow, in form of a shadow. No one else could take it. No one can take another’s shadow, he wants me, he might even take me for his own shadow, that’s how conceited he is, he is not smallfolk, he’s immaterial, though, alas, he doesn’t get it. And it’s only here he doesn’t matter. He is not shadow, for that he would have to wait for the sun to go down, but he never can wait anything out. Then he would realize: He has no more ego, the shadow, there is no more I to the shadow. It IS I.

And yet, we will never come close to each other again. He can throw himself on me, yes, I lie below, but he won’t notice. Why does he want to fetch something that’s always there anyway? A shadow for all seasons? Could it be he wants all the shadows, all of those as well? Does he still have them all? Do they all want to come at me jointly? At him? Then they’ll be in for a surprise! They’ll also fall into the bottomless which is this shadow. Into the Nothing. Falling all over and through each other. The shadow is nothing, I said it already, but that’s the way it is. All of us down here are nothing. That’s why one doesn’t have to be afraid of us. They have no power, they are the night, they are the darkness in front of the window, they can’t go up any more than they can go down. There is nothing they can do, they don’t have and are not the unconscious, for that would measure itself against consciousness, one won’t work without the other. We are done working. Us shadows. They put an end to us. We are misunderstandings which could never be understood, any which way. For various reasons we cannot be executed, like tasks which nobody set. We don’t get tested, we wouldn’t even be admitted to the exam. None of us can become the object of another’s consciousness under any condition. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just bad weather, fog and darkness is all the singer would have to fear down here, though not from us, nothing comes from us, but he doesn’t know that yet. He bleats for me. He lies down right in the shadow which I am. An intuition? Did he finally have an idea? Did he finally overcome the smallfolk whom he despises so much? Does he really think this is how to make my lot more bearable? By throwing himself on me, crying over me? By stretching out languorously inside me, closing his

104  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 eyes? By avoiding getting his skin burnt so he wouldn’t get cancer? I don’t feel anything, he doesn’t feel anything, and still, he wants to have me again. Well then, have fun! That’s what I wish absolutely everyone. Have fun! So that the singer can underscore his desires, but he won’t score.

Down there the wild animals. So I am told. To my snakelike gliding across the grass that’s coming closer they will respond with loud sounds. I can already hear them scream, funny, I can hear something even though I can’t hear anything at all. Maybe I am in a holding pattern. What’s going on? ‘Oh Lord, I do not know, but truly, I do fear it.’ Strange, one can still have such fear even after one’s own death! I do know I have nothing to fear anymore, not even fear itself and there is nothing here that could have any fears, not even fear itself. I no longer have anything going for myself. What do I see? I don’t feel like describing it. A river, no? Sleep-inducing Nature. Were I not sleeping the eternal sleep already, I’d be falling asleep right now. So let’s move the foothills out of the way, they say, I am to go in here, I shouldn’t fool around the door as a fresh, a freshly caught shadow, I should get inside, into the truth, into the final darkness, well, alright, let’s get it over with, it’s already all over for us. But the singer will follow me there as well. I can feel it. I know him. That one’s hearty. He’s got courage. He’ll even want to seize my shadow. But there is nothing to it. A shadow has no weight and offers no resistance whatsoever. Cold souls don’t take hearty bites, they wouldn’t even know how. Let’s flee then, so we’ll at least have something left of ourselves, otherwise nothing would be left of us but some sort of shadow-filling goo, that will glue together everything one wants to close up with oneself. We are all that’s left in the end, spit out by our own guilt that glides like a breath of air from one to the next. Anyone who has ever seen the abyss, scratched at it with an eagle’s claws, wants nothing but being abyss himself, which for a shadow is no longer a problem. It can get in anywhere. Nothing is a problem for it, except life. A shadow can be folded, moved, beaten, shaped and then let go, it immediately falls back into its original state, which is no state to be in. Can it be touched, moved by a song?, no, I don’t think so, one can touch it or glue something together with it, a shadow is versatile and it knows no obstacles, in the dark it’s gone, that’s all, but that’s all there is to it, just because it’s gone in the dark doesn’t mean at all gone for good, it is there also in the dark, but without an owner it still is always weird somehow. It would like to mingle with people, in theory it should be possible, but no one has ever tried it, might not be without danger, given how many people there are, they surely wouldn’t be able to distinguish their own shadow from others. No gain in distinction for a shadowy existence. But shadows won’t even mind that, they merge into one another with ease, then separate again, represent someone else, no, they could represent another, if only in rough outlines, who cares, they aren’t good, they aren’t evil and if evil were a power they would

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  105

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 spurn it just like they would boring goodness. That is true. Maybe I should go to a rock concert instead of the underworld? No one would notice there. I would not be there yet be there still. Hands grabbing for me, maybe paws of animals? Body parts? Purely mental activities? Parts of my psychical anatomy? No, there is nothing. Not a soul. We got far enough without it. Now we are here. And there. We are all over.

There is only he. He is still here. So there he is. He came here. I don’t know. My brain has no translation app for body parts or inner psychical processes. Should those psychical processes still be inside me, I wouldn’t know where. I can hear that I don’t hear anything. That dog barked earlier. Now he is quiet. Instead I hear the singer, I think it is him, it’s got to be him, I can’t distinguish the par- ticular groups, I am not an expert, it could also be another singer. Not likely. Something tells me it is mine. I am not quite sure what it is. I can’t see his face, I don’t know his motives, I don’t hear him singing, I can only hear that all else is silent. The roar of the water I got used to so quickly, as if it had always been inside me, a tinnitus in my ears, always there, it can be blocked out now and then, when our hearing gets carried away by something even lewder, ahem, louder, well—Lieder, more vicious, ahem, virtuous, than any laudatory could ever assess. That dog has been silent all this time, does he take a snap at some water? Because it recedes? Don’t think so, his bowl is always filled, they have nothing else to do here. We shadows are no work for them. We are a shadow carpet, which never has to be cleaned, as no one wipes his feet on us. We are simply there. They are used to us being present amidst a humongous absence, which we left behind up above. Kisses must be left there too, also flowers, we take nothing, we need nothing. The whining we hear from up above, what is it? Compared to the shrieks of those piss-chicks, who keep my singer encircled it is nothing, those pissy buds open up towards the sun of our singer, turning to him like a flower to our dear sun, which does not accept its mail, the sun, the one who creates us shadows, accepts nothing, the blinded blind one, that dew-dousing dodo, no, not the bird, shriek, shriek, shriek, business as usual. The crying of a few can’t be heard, but that shrieking one should be able to hear, I think, if one can hear anything at all. Sloppily the rock throws the water over the shoulder like a few kernels of salt thrown by someone superstitious, this river bleeds out, but the blood does not get all the way to us. Are those bloodless souls crying? No, that can’t be, no one’s bleeding here, and nothing’s bleeding on our carpet that is us, not the one we have, the one we are and always will be, that’s for sure. If you have to bleed go someplace else, please. I don’t hear our bosses, never saw them either, the dead don’t have any supervisors, the way you envision things! Who could order the shadows around once they don’t have masters? The singer wants something, but I can’t hear what. Maybe he didn’t even say anything. Of course

106  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 he wants it right away, he doesn’t even have to say anything, that’s how he is used to it. So he somehow stomps in here in his stage costume, he spurred himself as their jingling tingling sound and I bet, he gets what he wants. As usual. Stand- ing behind him as always his group, which he peels himself out of, a fruit everyone wants, which they tear out of each other’s hands, before the coating comes off completely, I mean the cloak. Totally changed situation for me. The water recedes, no rock-fan, the water, that’s clear, I mean, the water, surprisingly, is absolutely clear, maybe because it can thrive under shadows? Or perhaps the water has a self-cleaning program, a virus protection program, a fire wall, nothing gets into this water, only the dead arrive here, but they don’t get in, the dead come here by water. That’s clear. How else? A wheel stands still, which isn’t even there, who’d want to travel anyway, who’d be able to travel. Why would anyone with a comfortable shadow existence want to get away from here? We are content. No one out to grab us. Oh yes, one and once again, it’s the singer, typical! Thinks he can have everything and usually he’s right. He thinks he’s got everything, and what he no longer has he wants back, it stands to reason. He thinks he is. He must not lack anything. That would be an affront to him he could not stand for, and he would not take my being here lying down either, because he thinks I am bound to stand by him forever. He thinks, I am still dying to sacrifice my life again and again just for him. Does he think the shadows here are like his little girls above? That he can do whatever he wants and get whatever he wants? Even though we can’t hear at all? But we are hearing something, it probably can’t be called hearing, maybe it will pass as well. The bosses don’t want to hear and we can’t. He can sell it to the girls—that he could have them all, but certainly not to us. And that he always has to emphasize his wishes with that hum of his and also the group’s that stands behind him, I won’t mention it again, a muddy drone, compared to which even a shadow is a model of variety, thrilling like a papercut- ting! He’s still singing, they haven’t stopped him yet, it must mean something. They don’t do him any good, his wishes, or do they? If he stored them in his nerve cells and downloaded them on his smart phone, as the latest app, maybe they’ll come in handy somehow? Otherwise, wishes don’t work here for anyone, but maybe he has the right program? Wishing for something here would be use- less, no one has any more wishes here, nothing is available here, what would a shadow still wish for? More light, so there’ll be more of him too? Only my singer happens to want something, looking down, as usual. Typical. No? What no? That can’t be! Looking down on us he’s coming down, expressing—at bottom unhap- pily, as one can hear in the drippy ballad he’s performing now—desires, desires, desires. Anything else? Well, those are musicians, I mean, musicians are like that, those whatchamacallits, they don’t have to voice their desires, it’s dripping and drooling already from thousand gaping girl slits, greedy as crab claws, open-close, open-close, on and on, slavering and slobbering onto the floor, luckily not the

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  107

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 carpet, which we are, that’s quite something they cracked, those claws, here they go again! Compared to those girls’ heat, which isn’t mirrored anywhere, which can’t be seen, which isn’t reflected in anything visible since their faces, as men- tioned earlier, are completely motionless and unmovable, all the more stirring are their little slits, I am talking of slits, not feelings, compared to them the stream that brought us here is just a little brook of my dreams, no, no, I don’t have dreams either. I am a nothing. Always have been. How often do I have to say it? Everyone can get away from what I’m saying, really, everyone! All crap what I am. Nothing. Nothing to wish for. Perfectly nothing. For even this nothing I am and sometimes perhaps even produced, is not by me. Compared to me, those girls, whom I despise, are actually rich, at least they have their lust pulling at their limbs, they feel something, they want something, they turn towards the light that is the singer, while I can’t turn, I am completely dependent, I must obey the light. Luckily, there isn’t any here. No light. For the girls the singer is the light. There is no light for me. I no longer have a life of my own. The nothing I produce is not by me. It is mine, but not by me. It wasn’t my idea, this nothing. What does he want, he, who descended to save the living and the dead? Jesus! The only one risen more famous than my singer, famous for deeds, words and works, admired by the whole world. He came to exist, because his mother was not allowed to use a condom and that made him pretty conceited. We, however, we, the shadows have no desires. We are beyond desires. We are not desires, we don’t have any and we don’t express any, but we have nothing to suppress either. We are—not. No, of course we are not crazy either, because for that we would also need language, which lunatics are especially careful about. They express themselves in a distinguished literary manner, almost mannered, they construct their sentences with special care, lunatics do, who we aren’t either, to avoid any misunderstandings. We say nothing. My language is nothing. Our language is altogether nothing. We do and say nothing. We are. The propositions of lunatics, however carefully constructed, destruct themselves already in the process of construction, those are self-destructive propositions, like rocket propellants, propellants, which never propel anything, self-destructing, they get so painstak- ingly constructed by the lunatics, but already during construction they destroy themselves. What an ideal scrap heap, the language of lunatics! But it’s of no use to us. Lunatics must also turn into shadows at some point. Self-destructing, self- extinguishing, self-rotting, but constructed, that language, and the sick explain their speeches very fluently on demand, and their explanations are unintelligible as well, they want to explicate, lunatics do, but the explication is as complicated as that which is to be explicated: speech. We would be happy had we at least one or two words at our disposal, maybe three. But we don’t have any. Oh well. Language. My language. I lost it too. So, whatever they are talking about, those tongue-twisting lunatics, I’d be content with that, with what they have to say

108  PAJ 115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 and no one understands, who does not understand our language either, that is, absolutely no one, absolutely everyone does not understand us, and it isn’t necessary either, it is no more difficult to understanding the Nothing than understanding nothing, and I am saying this in such an elaborate manner, in order to elucidate that we are not lunatics, who can screw up their speech in their own vise, as one might think at first sight, that yes, we are, but not crazy, not insane, we are simply off and away, but it’s not all that simple, how shall I put it, what kind of away we are, no, not the way, away is what I mean and that doesn’t exist either. There is no more talking, no way of speaking, no crazy talk and no more walk on the wild side, we can’t complain about our body parts no longer sitting well with us, no longer sitting in the right place, not functioning anymore, even though they have been sitting tight inside us and also setting themselves upon us, we cannot sit down, we cannot get upset, no, we can’t complain, the poor lunatics still can complain, but not here anymore, except if they are our domestic workers, who, however, don’t get anything done, they can’t have complaints here, though they can file them, about the state wanting to poison them, about secret services fucking them over and then, used as they are, wanting to throw them away, but we full body shadows are beyond wishes, we can’t even imagine desires, or fears, no, thank you very much, we can’t complain. The singer can complain or sue, he can do anything and he also gets everything. Nevertheless, thanks but no thanks, we can’t complain.

What? He wants me to come with him? Well, so I’ll go along, I as nothing always do what I am asked to. Well now, how can I go, where shall I go?, I am shadow, that’s a problem, I am a contradiction to myself, I can’t even be for real in that shape, since my shape depends upon something I don’t know, thus I don’t know my shape either, I just know that I am in pretty good shape. What’s being thought up here? How should I be handed to the singer? Wrapped in myself? Packaged light-proof? Foil-sealed? How would the singer know that I am coming along, since I am just a shadow? How can he make sure—if he can be sure of anything here—not to take me for his shadow, that he can tell me from his shadow? Hav- ing been nothing before, then being nothing, nothing after as well, this will come to nothing, we have already tried for so long, but a woman is a nothing, my work is nothing, that is, I don’t even have one to show, but the result is the same, tried countless times, sometimes I tried to emphasize it with a new nail polish or lipstick, but it was nothing, all for nothing. All crap, gives if stepped on, beaten, trampled on, how could I get out of this, huh? What’s supposed to come of it? Don’t ask. How should I, who doesn’t exist anymore, come at myself’s side and walk up there?, alright, as requested, I’ll give it a try, but of course I already know it won’t work, I won’t be able to go up there, how does he think this could work? Not my body again, please! No body, please! I have taken it off

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  109

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 successfully, Death told me: forever, he assured me, quite pointedly, that I may take it off, with the promise never to return it. Should I bargain and seal the deal with myself, with my own shadow, so I can deal with the world again? That’s too hard for me, it was such a treat to be light; I was really good as a shadow, I just started to get so good at it and now he wants to rip me out of the shadow carpet again?, can’t wait to see how he’ll go about it, the singer with his cocki- ness, does he want to receive me like his tussies, his groupies?, okay, I’ll come along then, if he says so. Something will come up, something always comes up with the singer, between the nothing I am and the nothing I produced. Never produced anything, not me. A person has to have a shadow, but in the underworld s/he has to be one. A shadow cannot assert anything, not even itself, it won’t even be able to after its life will have faded away. Well, in any event I’ll absolutely refuse my soul, no way for it to get back in here, not into that soft shadow material, how could it hold on to anything there? It will slip out, okay, maybe I could lay it down and fold myself over it as a shadow to protect it? Maybe glue it, maybe instant glue, if there is no more time! Omygod! Save my soul! All souls. That won’t work, it won’t even let itself be caught! What’s the singer been thinking, I’d like to know. After his concert he’d just come down for a moment to get me, that’s all the time he’s got, the girls are waiting already in front of his hotel room, they are already lined up, he’s got them in line for a job, stepping down for just one moment, that’s all the time he has to invest in me, such a Nothing and that’s already too much, he says come with me and I obey, I can’t help myself, I am not, I am not yet, let’s hope I won’t get to be, I just come along as I was told to, that’s all, the nothing that is me is coming along, and that isn’t me, I already said so, nothing of what I am is me. If you want to travel with me you have to unravel my words. But that’s just Greek to him. And I won’t be taken for another a ride. I won’t ride anything. I don’t know how to ride. I won’t ride any train, I won’t ride anything, I don’t know how to ride, and there are no trains either. Is that one of the singer’s nicer traits, that he wants me, come what may? In what shape does he want it? I don’t even want my body anymore. But the body wants me because it was told so. The body had been constructed at some point and now it is getting instructed it better come to me because it belongs to me. How would I even know it’s mine? To me it was a closed chapter. The singer wants bodies and he gets them alright. Otherwise he wouldn’t want me. If my body hadn’t been so ordered it wouldn’t have passed the order on to me. Nothing of me does what it hasn’t been ordered to do. Are they going to force it on me, my body? They can’t do that! I don’t want it. I would follow it obediently through all the crap we shadows are, which wasn’t our doing, but which we are. A shadow does not produce crap, it is crap, and I: crap, nothing but! The crappy cave we live in, which we make with ourselves and out of ourselves, darkness inside darkness, darkness to darkness, bleeding without ecstasy, torn apart without joy,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 torn to shreds, the shadows, we can do anything because we can’t do anything, and I am supposed to leave this place? When I finally found what I’ve always been looking for: absence. Being gone. From everything. Being absent, but con- sistently! Away from colors, images, smells. Obediently I turn toward the wrong guy who came to get me. He won’t get far with me. I know him. He’ll have to drag me. He’ll have to drag me by my robe, which is also shadow, by no means roomy enough for another person. I am too soft for walking, something’s dragging me, is it me, dragging myself? No, it comes from behind, not from up front. The shadows don’t want to let go of me and I don’t want to let go of them. Is it my figure pulling me from behind, wanting me back? Coming to get me? No idea how the singer managed that. My body pulls me, it was brought to me by the singer himself, he wants to get into me, the body, it wants to chastise me, it wants to put me in order, it suddenly is such a busybody, and poor little shadow me should stay behind it? Just because the singer wants it that way? Because he wants nothing? Because he wants me, the Nothing? Because he wants the Noth- ing to join him? Perhaps just so it can show him off to his advantage? He doesn’t need it. He jingles a bit, plucks a few riffs, which he promptly stumbles over and right into the surge of his own excessiveness, and already the raging swarms of girls have arrived, look, here they are, didn’t I know it!, shrieking as if dragged all the more quickly by their own hair and all at once to boot. Does he want to pick up shadows all by himself, like playing cards, does he want to cut them, does he want to show his hand, does he want to expose what’s underneath, does he want a good, a better hand? Then he’ll have to play a lot of shadows until he finds one who wants to kiss him. There are so many of us. There are tons of shadow layers, how could he find me? Maybe he was tipped of? A quickie pick tip? I can’t believe it! Who’d hand in a quickie pick after the draw? How would that work? The ticket would be invalid then. Who’d hand in anything he hasn’t found yet. Or something of value, if only for the owner and no one else? Now he drags me behind him like a landed parachute, now some ropes are getting loose, apparently I am strapped in somehow, aha, that’s how he wants to do it! I see. Like a parachute he wants to drag the stuff I am made of behind him, like the bloody, stinking mess I am, the Nothing I am, this can’t be fun for him, while so many adore him up above! Why me? Why me too? Why this soft material that’s constantly slipping through his fingers, which he can’t get a grip on? A minute ago I was neatly folded, shadow among shadows, many of them ancient, already baked together in layers, melted together, glued together ragamuffins, and now he even drags me behind him like a pile of parachute silk. Something wants to get inside me here, my body, it screams after me, don’t turn around, the commissar’s in town, it could be screaming something else, the problem is, I don’t want to look back for my body, I am the one who doesn’t want to see anything!—I don’t want to see how it looks right now!—it, however is wanted,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 has been requested by the singer there in front of me, one always wants the other, no one’s ever at one with himself, all of us are always full of wishes, my singer is also such a firm fat wishbag, douchebag!,which, alas, always empties very quickly and fills up right away again, he gives himself the eye, long forgotten the tears of his own childhood, when the girls are shrieking, they suck him dry, he drinks from them, he gets everything he wants, the singer, he gets it all, I can hear them already, now I hear them more clearly, we are coming closer, I can already hear the little girls outside, teething for blood, they still have their milk teeth, at least some of them!, funny, just a minute ago I didn’t hear them at all. Did my body catch up with me? I won’t turn around to check, no way. I don’t care what the singer’s doing, but I won’t turn around, that’s for sure! If he catches up with me, my body, I am done in, then the singer will be able to do me, then I will have a figure and a structure, under those conditions I can stay in his company, which I don’t want at all, once I get into a shape that can be shown off, that’s his wish. And then I get into his wish-bag, that bloated tick. Others would be happy. Everyone else would be happy if the singer came to get them. But for him the main thing is getting me. Provided I have a shape, I can stay in his company. Not as a shadow. He does not want me as a shadow. I don’t have a choice. I must do what’s expected from me. My body keeps heckling close behind me, if it catches me, I am done in, this catchy body, no, it’s not a put-on, I am the one being put on, that’s all there is to me, shadow without a vessel, structure without a body, this catchy body, this body not catching on, it wants me, it wants Nothing me, it wants to get out of the Nothing, it wants to come inside me. No way. I am not moving. No way! Me: not one more step! But if I stop my body gets me! The body keeps going, stomping unstoppably like a politi- cian on the go. Makes no difference anymore. I won’t go any further. Let him catch up with me, his net consists of nothing but holes. I am just going to sit down, but I have only one moment of peace to stay in one piece and fold my shadow-self together again, but if I do sit down for just one moment, my body will catch up with me, it will come inside me and then its all over for the shadow, fun’s over. I am dragged over the stones, I don’t feel it, I feel nothing, there—isn’t it getting lighter already?, I can hear my body breathe behind me and my singer in front making conditions, he’d only take me with him, if he can show me off, if I can be shown, not like some blown away figure no one remembers, come on now, get a move on! Have you finally got your body?!, if you insist, singer, I might as well pack up, pack up my shadow and take back my body again, and then I can really pack it in, no, I don’t have room for reality, reality is a horrible threat, but I won’t let go of my shadow, then I can really pack it in, so then, let’s try a new role, I’d love to lie down in the shade I am, but it won’t let me do that either, it chases me, my own body chases me!, get away from me, body!, it had lost the light so long ago and now it wants to find it again inside me, what a

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 joke!, I roll myself up in myself, maybe if I roll myself tightly, it can’t unroll me again, I roll myself up like a rug, I am a role model, I am a model on rolls, I am available only folded up tightly, into ever smaller little squares, no, rather randomly or rolled up or made so it can roll, but someone always has to pull it, it won’t be easy getting me onto myself again, it would completely undo me, I can assure you. My body breathes heavily, it pants from the exertion, before the singer has reached the exit of the cave, it absolutely has to get back inside me, that stupid body, and why? What for? So it can cast me off, so it can cast me in the same role again and cast me, throw me away again? Why then does it insist on getting inside me once more? Only to cast me off again? Like a pebble across water? It isn’t quite with it, it seems! I won’t take it just like that, but as a Noth- ing there’s nothing I can do about it. I must let id happen. Just not letting the body come near me. Just not letting me get inside this body! No worry, I’ll watch out! A bright ray of light is already coming up ahead, if I can manage to remain a shadow before my body can get inside me, before any body can get inside me, before that body can make me shove it, I don’t even know if that really is my body, before id can become I, it must be avoided that my dear shadow will be occupied by a body, most likely mine, they’ll have picked out the right body alright, I don’t know, they might just as well have given me another one, an alien one, who knows, I won’t turn around, I don’t want to see it! All this so that my dear shadow won’t be possessed by a body—taken possession of; so that my warm, soft shadow won’t ever be possessed by a body again! and even if it were to be force-embodied, this body could only embody the Nothing I am and produce, okay, this sentence is a wreck now, I fell for this sentence construction and now the sentence is ruined, its construction did not hold up, a great example for body and shadow, nothing holds together, not even a sentence. Nothing everywhere and my body would be sucked into it. The Nothing I produce, the Nothing I am. I feel something, I can feel something, there, in my shoulder, I am running through it, I let myself run through my own fingers, I am almost embarrassed that there is this body, probably mine, wanting to put some life into my shadow, only to throw me out again, just so it can cast me. Why? Because it can. It should be the other way around, the shadow should be able to cast the body off, that is—but that’s not possible—the body’s the one who’s got the strength and that’s what counts, the body’s the one who’s got power. No body, no power. No body, no weapon. What’s the singer up to now? Did he just grab his smartphone?, he wouldn’t have to, it’s firmly grafted on him, does he want to capture a moment?, which is actually what films and photos are all about, aside from the fact that both are about nothing?! Does he want to capture what he doesn’t even see, capture the Nothing, does he want to capture the moment of my embodiment? Sure, let him do it! Fine with me! If he’ll do it, then the moment he does, my body, my form, that which is yet to be formed of me, made of the shadow I

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 am—a shadow that finally makes something of itself!, it was about time!,—then everything will come to light. It’ll all see the light of day and wither and rot there, that’s what the sun loves most, what it loves to do most of all and best of all to our loved ones. Nothing can remain hidden. Unbelievable, but the singer believes it, because cell phones always keep flashing around him, thousands of flashes, because he’s constantly standing in a ring of fire, he believes he can do that too, he thinks, he can throw such flashes, no, he demands that I should make something out of my shadow, that I should step out of his shadow and finally make something of mine, and that in that case he could also do something, though it’s always only he who crashes; he crashes into the ring of fire, the flames rise, flashes strike through the smartphones, and he must go down, down, down; while the flames strike higher and higher, he’s got to go down, driven by his desires, which pull him down to me. Though I am not doing anything! I have no more desires. Those are all his. He hasn’t yet noticed that he is falling, but he is falling into the flashing ring of fire. He can help me, he can send my pictures around, while the flames keep licking him with their tiny tongues, he thinks people will thank him profusely, the agencies will pounce on, no, kill for them, but what I am and what will be seen of it will always turn into dough and stay that way—formless, whatever he’ll make, of me that is—he can make a picture of me, he can take one and then another one and another, but nothing will show up on the tiny memory stick, it won’t work as a ticket to bodies in shadows!, and the hard drive of his cute little note pad, where he probably would have recorded everything that’s happening to me and my little body—and immediately off into the cloud with it—will be totally empty, save it or trash it? Trash it!, no question!, I am nothing hard, nothing solid, me and the singer, that was something solid, but on my own I am not solid, never will be, and even turning into dough would be too much to ask from a shadow who has no form and doesn’t want one either. The singer naturally wants to record what he has done and everything else he is doing, which is finally solid again, which is his work, which are his new songs, his new titles, his new ratings, which are his newly promoted hits, with his marketing talent he wants to hold on to his songs, to save and not trash them and he also wants to hold on to me, he wants to introduce me as a figure again, he wants to capture, to save and to savor his work of vivification. But he wants to hold on to a shadow! He wants to save a shadow! That nut!, I don’t have the words for it, but he is available only for—, no, with a song, he comes with a song and wants to keep a shadow in the sunlit space he is headed to. This only works with light, of course, and it has to be the right light for his entrance. Anyway, one needs a light to see the light. A shadow too can only be captured with light, nonsense, I see something directed towards me, that’s good, I feel some kind of brace in the back, a body em-uhm-brace, something that’s trying to get into me. Hey, I am not a train, someone’s getting

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 into me, and from up front it’s supposed to last for eternity, or what the singer takes to be eternity. Save or delete? Delete! I can feel it and I see it. I roll myself into myself. I hold on tight, but there is nothing tight to hold on to, I am soft, I softened, I let myself be softened, I won’t hold up, I won’t be able to hold myself in for long, the body behind me won’t be able to open this roll, let it fiddle around with me as much as it wants, and all of that is to be recorded? That’s what the singer wants to capture so he can captivate his audience? There’s a flash. Something flashed just now! No, it’s not the savior. That’s not him. It can’t be him. It must have been the ripper, ahem, rapper, the opposite of the singer. I hear shrieks while I’m already stumbling backwards, finally tumbling back again, no longer do I have to get a grip on me, to get a hold of myself, my soft shadow falls back into darkness, darkness to darkness, nothing to nothing, nothing comes from nothing, the nothing comes to the Nothing, no problem, it’s nothing, it won’t come back from the Nothing, I promise, the grip around me is easing already, that body they let loose on me is suddenly gone, where did it go now? I hope it really is gone now, gone for good, finally, gone through the end, finally trashed by way of the end, an unspeakable relief, softly I am trickling down the few steps back into darkness, shadow to shadow, sliding over the steps like the snake that made me a shadow. We must part, I and I, finally, coming to nothing again, to the Nothing again, sure thing, and the howling from above, just one moment!, it’ll be just a moment and I won’t ever hear it again, in just a moment the shadow’s darkness will have swallowed me, the nothing I am, finally really nothing, with my nothings of fellow-nothings, finally I can withdraw from my own presence, no one’s drawing me out now, on the contrary, I withdraw, I have drawn the line, maybe some day I’ll be able to roll myself out again nice and smooth and snuggle up against the other shadows, once I’ve recuperated a bit, which means nothing anymore, finally nothing, in the silent desolation. Just a moment ago: danger, not anymore, now the singer is greeted by that howling, taken possession of, saved with countless back-up copies, if anyone got safely stored, it’s him. I don’t hear him anymore, I know rather than hear it, but he is used to getting devoured by teenies gone wild, swallowed by shrieks. I sense rather than hear it, all crap, but crap that’s us and crap we want to be, it’s nothing what we want to be, nothing is what we are, I don’t even hear it anymore, the piercing shrieking up there, [56] that penetrates walls but not shadows, never a shadow!, I am running back, still a dark runlet on the stone, one more or less, who cares, vanished without a trace, because I was no runlet, not even shadow, I was darkness and emptiness and nothing and silence, my works’ darkness and silence and nothing anymore, I have no works, never again will I have works, how nice!, no more works, no one will see my works, no one has ever seen them, they are nothing, they are crap, my work is crap and I am the darkness thereto that watches over them, watching in darkness over them, the Nothing holds

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  115

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 watch over the crap and I am the correlated, corresponding darkness surrounded by still more shadow pileup. Everything deepest darkness. Impenetrable, but who’d want to penetrate it? No one. It is there, but it isn’t there at all. No one sees it. It is nothing. All the same. All nothing. All for nothing. Darkness. Distant noise outside, I know it is there!, but already I don’t hear it anymore, my body is gone, everything gone, I am already gone again, luckily slipped down the stones already, a piece of cloth, no more, a shadow cloth, no, not even cloth, the shadow of a shadow, I am gone, far gone already from the upper rim, shriek, shriek, shriek, that’s it, I know how it sounds, but I am gone. I don’t have to know anything, don’t have to remember anything anymore, don’t make anything anymore, I didn’t make it anyway and would have never made it, nothing left of me. Very good. No one worried anymore about my strength, which I don’t have, sunk-back-me, not even sunk, slipped, slid, done and gone. It would never occur to me to stretch out my arms longingly, I want to get back, as the nothing I always was and am again, not upright, not to write, my greatest happiness— nothing; finally, no one grasps anything, no one gets grasped, not a thing can be grasped by me either, no more happiness, no misery, only blackness, something soft, collapsing from within, shadow to shadow, blackness to blackness. Far away the flashing of every device, far the clicks, far the memory chips, all the hits, all the links, far away all of it. Shadow me, how nice I’ve got it, no more, there is no more. Those at the gate, the newcomers, one can still feel them a bit, but rather like smoke, like morning mist, like dusk, I move through them, parting their new shadows like curtains that are not quite worn out yet, they still feel stiff somehow, even if only for a moment, but further inside one can no longer feel anything, at the gate there are always a few new ones hanging around, longing for something, they don’t understand, soon they will, it doesn’t take long and then they’ll make room for the next and disappear in us, because the most beautiful of all is the Nothing, being nothing is the most beautiful, the greatest temptation of all, no more reaching for soft breezes, soft arms, for the soft breezes of arms, no more laments, what would be there to lament when nothing gets lost? Nothing. No more greeting for an ear up there that’s already opening wide to the shrieking, the howling, the grinding of teeth, the gorging, devouring, swallowing, digesting and already losing me to what’s to follow, which does not exist, no greeting, no grabbing something bony, something hard, no more, just a shadow, a brief shadow on the stone, I am being pulled, pulled away, no, I am pulling myself together, no, yes I am, I am pulling myself together with the last of my strength, with shadowlike hands, without hands, without nothing, with Nothing, I am pulling myself together, pulling myself who is no longer there, shadow to shadow, I am here no more, I am.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 Now then, for reading along: Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlehmil [Peter Schlehmil’s wunderbare Geschichte]. Sigmund Freud, absolutely everything. And that’s what you get! Ovid: Metamorphoses.

All rights whatsoever in this play and the translation are strictly reserved and application for permission for any use whatsoever, including performance rights, must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to theater@rowohlt .de or mailto:[email protected]. Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Hamburgerstrasse. 17, 21465 Reinbek, Germany. No performance may be given unless a license has first been obtained.

JELINEK / Shadow. Eurydice Says  117

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021 Puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan with Elfriede Jelinek mask. Photo: Reinhard Werner. Courtesy Vienna Burgtheater.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00354 by guest on 02 October 2021