Greed

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The translator wishes to thank Peter " Bar " Gattinger, Esther Kinsky, and Alex Schmidt for making this a better translation than it would otherwise have been.

– M.C.

Today country policeman Kurt Janisch is once again looking at the photo on which his father, Police-Colonel Janisch, saluted the King, thirty years earlier. Look, his father is still standing there, evidently forced to draw back just an inch from his own enthusiastic motion of standing to attention, but why is there nothing to check him?-there's something soft, indecisive about his shoulders, which then seems to push him forward again. Perhaps it was no more than an involuntary bow before the monarch, more or less as an encore to the frequendy rehearsed salute. There's nothing at all subordinate about the son anymore, standing there in front of the cabinet in his striped track-suit harnessing his body by slowly warming it up before going running. His father had still borne his subordination, with drooping shoulders but capable hands, down the dusty country roads and to smashed up car wrecks. Perhaps the son is more versatile and can also give orders, the way he looks makes me curious: a somewhat angular face, across which the thoughts, which in all people like to spread out, merely seem to shyly slip through. Well. But the will would be there now, what is he going to use it for? The boat has heaved to, the traffic lights are switched on and are permanently at green, the fine distinction between him and other people is growing.

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