Lust by Elfriede Jelinek

co-operatives are at each other's throats, all of them competing; they cannot for very long bear the scrutiny of even the smallest holder, who cannot supply much milk and who cannot even be allowed to bleed dry. The woman is cloaked in the darkness of silence. But then she laughs, laughs till it seems she will never stop, to humiliate her husband. The
    pedantic patriarch. Such notions, keeping such a close eye on the girl at the check-out. Like so many of the wives of the unemployed, she mustn't make even the slightest mistake. The Direktor steals up beside her, she has to enter all the items again to make sure there isn't a single one too many. It's almost the same as in his factory. Except that the people here are smaller and wear women's clothing, from out of which they look about, finding that the family fits tightly and pinches. The Direktor has been known to pinch too. They fold in their wings, and from their bodies the children shoot forth, and the fathers zap their flashing lightning into the kiddies' newly-opened eyes. Disorganized flocks of women shoppers, intent on their shopping, shove past the ones who are enchanted by the goods, trying to make it to the grave as soon as they can. Their heads rise sheer as cliffs at the special offers. There are no freebies for this lot, quite the contrary, they are relieved of a part of their earnings from the paper mill. Horrified they stare at the boss, whom they hadn't expected to see here and of whom, to be plain, they were hardly thinking at all. Often we open our doors only to be confronted with people we hadn't been expecting at all, and then we're supposed to feed them. Salted sticks and potato snacks are all we can come up with to overshadow them.
    Gorges of shelving recede to the distant horizon. The bunch of people disperse. Already the last of their wishes, like the straps of sweaty vests, are slipping from their weary morning shoulders. Sisters, mothers, daughters. And the holy Direktorial couple, in perpetual repetition, are on their way back to the penal colony of sex, where they can whine for redemption to their heart's content. All that they receive in their cell, through the flaps and holes, is gruesome gruel, lukewarm, poured over their outstretched hands. Sex, like Nature, has its following. Who enjoy its products. And wear frilly lace for the purpose and the products of the
    cosmetics industry. Yes, and perhaps sex is the nature of humanity. I mean, it is in humanity's nature to chase after sex, until taken whole the one and the other are of equal importance. An analogy may convince you: you are what you eat. Till work pulps the human creature into a grubby heap. A melted snowman. Till, marked with the weals of his origins, he no longer even has a hole to retreat into. How long it takes, till humanity has finally been questioned and learns the truth about itself . . . While we're waiting, why not listen to me. These unworthy creatures are important and hospitable for just a single day, the day they marry. Only one year later they are made liable for the furniture and car. The whole family is liable for the crimes of one member if he can't keep up the payments. They even buy beds on the never-never, the beds they frolic in! Smile into the faces of strangers who lead them to their mangers. So that a stalk or so of hay wisps in the breath of sleep.
    Before they move on. But we, we have to get up at an ungodly hour every day. Alone and in a far-off place, we merely gaze down our narrow road, where the sweethearts we couple with are now the objects of other desires, to be used by others. They say a fire burns within women. But it's only dying embers. The shadow of afternoon falls on them in the morning when they creep from the gullet of attic bedrooms, where they have to look after a bawling child, into the maw of the mill. Go home, if you're tired! No one envies you. No one finds your beauty disarming any more. He hasn't for a long time. Rather, he strides out