Shadow. Eurydice Says
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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 I gliding 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 com- pletely 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 © 2011 Elfriede Jelinek. PAJ 115 (2017), pp. 73–118. 73 Reprinted by permission of Rowohlt Theater Verlag. doi:10.1162/PAJJ _a_00354 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 for- est’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 74 PAJ 115 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.