by Peter Handke
The murmuring of the stream—and once again the bushes were murmuring as gently as on the summer day when he arrived and gained his first intimation of the river landscape.
The man who rose from the ground was not ecstatic, only appeased. He no longer expected illuminations, only measure and duration. “My face an unfinished sketch—when will it be complete?” He could say that he enjoyed life, accepted death, and loved the world; and now he saw that, correspondingly, the river flowed more slowly, the clumps of grass shimmered, and the sun-warmed gasoline drums hummed. Beside him he saw a single yellow willow leaf on a flaming-red branch and knew that after his death, after the death of all mankind, he would appear in the depths of this countryside and give form to all the things on which his gaze now rested. The thought gave him a blissful feeling that raised him above the treetops; only his face remained behind, now a mask “representing happiness.” (And then there was even a kind of hope—disguised as a feeling that he knew something.)
Seizing the moment, Sorger, “the hero,” dropped the stone that he had meant to put in his pocket as a memento, and ran through the grassy meadow to the gabled house. The spotted cat, which was sitting out in front, had forgotten him again. Why had Lauffer once said that he would “probably live here for quite a while but go back to Europe to die”?
As Sorger stepped into the house, Lauffer greeted him with an almost mischievous look of superiority—meaning that he was staying in the place his friend was leaving. He was wearing white woolen socks and a bunched-up shirt. A checked handkerchief and a pair of gloves were dangling from his back pocket—he might have been mistaken for a native. All Sorger’s ideas dispersed, he would somehow have to take his leave, and that dismayed him. If some people could go away while others were sleeping, why wouldn’t it be possible to go away without consciousness, in one’s sleep? Then suddenly this thought: Tonight we shall celebrate my departure, and in the gray of dawn, while you are still lying in bed, I shall take the mail plane.
It was decided that they would work together that day; or rather, one formally invited the other to participate in his activity, and in the end they agreed to take aerial photographs together.
The rented single-engine plane flew so low over the river valley that even the outlines of the dark little ice lentils under the surface vegetation were visible. Though Sorger had often observed the region from the air, it took on a special form for him now that he was about to leave it. He saw the essentially shapeless plain as a body with many limbs and a unique, unmistakable face that was now turned toward him. This face seemed rich, eerie, and surprising—rich not only because its forms were so varied but also because they seemed inexhaustible; eerie because innumerable forms, which always reminded him strangely of (or foreshadowed) a human world and seemed to cry out for names, were in large part nameless; and surprising because every time he looked at it, there was the rolling stream; every pre-vision was a mistake; the wideness of the river was always a new event, even if one had looked away for barely an instant; it was truly unthinkable.
What made Sorger, who soon forgot about photography, regard the river as a feature in a face was the palpable gratitude and even admiration he felt toward the territory that had been his place of work for the last few months. Horseshoe lakes, saucepan springs, trough-shaped valleys, lava cakes, or glacier milk from glacier gardens—looking down on “his” landscape, he understood these conventional terms, which had often struck him as unreasonably childish. If he saw a face here, why shouldn’t other observers, in other parts of the world, see dream edifices with columns, gates, stairways, pulpits, and steeples, furnished with bowls, basins, ladles, sacrificial vessels, situated—why not?—in a trumpet-shaped valley and edged about with flocks of hills; and at the moment he felt like adding friendly epithets to the scientific names of all these formations, for the few names on the map were derived either from the region’s brief history as a gold miner’s mecca (Phantom Gulch, Hard Luck Lake, Chilblains Hill, Half-Dollar Creek, Four-flusher’s Island) or they were mere numbers (Six-Mile Lake, Nine-Mile Lake, Eighty-Mile Swamp). The few Indian names had an archetypal ring: The Great Crazy Mountains to the north of the Little Crazy Mountains, or the Great Unknown Brook that ran through Little Windy Gulch and ended in a nameless swamp.
Although the river was forbiddingly cold even in summer, Sorger suddenly had an image of himself happily bathing in it, swimming and diving under. Hadn’t rivers been embodiments of the gods in olden times? “Beautiful Water,” he said, and realized that he had given the river a name. (Down below him, the truncated meander arms danced like garlands.)
He would never have expected to love this landscape, or landscape in general—and along with his surprising affection for the river he felt his own story, felt that it was not ended, as his nightmares and even opinions might have led him to suppose, but was going on as patiently as the flowing water. As he gazed at the richness of this landscape, the realization that he himself was immeasurably rich awakened him like a cannon shot, and urged him to give of his riches now and forever, for if he didn’t, he would suffocate.
His next thought was that he would now be able to handle his long-planned dissertation “On Spatial Configurations,” and he said to Lauffer, who had explained his aerial photography camera to the pilot and to whom the pilot was explaining his flight instruments: “I’m going to treat you to a telephone call to Europe when we land.”
The public telephone was in a windowless log cabin built in one corner of a sheet-metal hangar on the side of the airfield. As though meant to be lived in, the cabin was furnished with a table, a reading lamp, a bed covered with wolf hides, a shelf of books, and a small cast-iron stove (it took a long time to put a call through). The telephone, which had a distinctly public look, hung on one of the two sheet-metal walls formed by the hangar; the key to the cabin could be obtained in the market at the other end of the village.
In the early days Sorger had often driven the jeep here, in part because he enjoyed sitting at the table in the dark cabin, waiting. Just before the line was at last opened to him and he could hear the bell ringing far across the seas, a satellite crackling set in and with it an image of oceanic distances. As he was preparing his mind for the conversation, this brief sound threw him into a state of indescribable excitement in which he literally “called” the person “at the other end of the wire.” After that, even in the middle of the conversation, he was often enough merely bewildered; clearly as it might come over, the other voice seemed to recede farther and farther as it spoke, and to make matters worse, there were never any background noises (music, dogs barking, or even a plain voice); at his end of the telephone cable Sorger felt excluded, his own voice echoed in his ear; and his dizziness as he hung up had all the earmarks of unreality.
Consequently Sorger, who was nevertheless attracted more and more by the strange room, had gradually got into the habit of taking Lauffer to the phone and of drinking wine and playing chess with him while waiting. It had even become customary for Sorger to invite his friend to a phone call, whereupon Lauffer would invite him to come along and listen.
In Europe it had long been day, while here they sat in the little cabin, in the hangar, in the far-flung night. The only sound was an occasional clicking inside the phone, which, however, was meant for someone else in another “township,” another numbered square of wilderness.
When the call came through, Lauffer became absorbed in asking questions, answering, or reporting events; Sorger didn’t listen to his words but just saw him wedged into the corner, clutching the phone, all speaker or all listener; at such times his friend cast off his almost bashful one-man-to-another attitude and gave him a hint of who he was.
This last night in Eight-Mile Village (it was eight miles north of the Arctic Circle) was to prove adventurous for Sorger, though nothing in particular happened. Thoughts rose up which had long been turning over in the back of his mind but now became more distinct. They concerned a duty—not a neglected dut
y, but one that had gradually fallen due; and because this duty would call for actions that he was still unable to imagine, it seemed to him, though without precise images, that this was the first night of an adventure.
Sorger, who sometimes felt drawn to cooking, made dinner for himself, his friend, and the Indian woman. Afterwards the three of them sat around the table playing cards with a new, fresh-smelling deck that the woman had brought as a farewell present. The figures on the cards were ravens, eagles, wolves, and foxes; the joker had an Indian face in the middle, and all those animals formed a circle around it.
In the gabled house there was a chandelier with long, thin glass pendants, in the light of which each one examined his bright, tranquil hand of cards. The doors to all the rooms were open, including the one leading to the attic darkroom, and the lights were on all over the house. The cat was sitting glassy-eyed on Sorger’s packed suitcase, twitching its ears and from time to time moving its tail from side to side; it displayed its claws, as if they were fingernails, drew in its forepaws, and finally fell asleep.
Lauffer’s chin shone. He had on a white silk shirt and a black velvet vest with gilt buttons; elastic armbands gathered in the wide sleeves; and for the first time since his arrival he was wearing the low shoes he had brought from Europe, which could occasionally be heard creaking under the table—up until then they had been occupied only by shoe trees. He had snipped the hairs in his nostrils and was sitting up straight, never throwing cards but always setting them down gently. He took an innocent pleasure in winning, and lost with grim dignity. He seemed perfect, with his inner composure and outward splendor.
Though they were sitting at a table without beginning or end, their circle seemed to start with the Indian woman. She was not to the left or right of the men; no, they were at her sides; the initiative was with her. Her movements in playing resembled those with which she distributed medicines when at work; a deft, nonchalant, continuous, many-handed giving (while the gathering-in of what was coming to her was always done in guise of thanks). The way she had made up and decked herself out (a jade amulet hanging from her neck), she was no longer an Indian but a dark, dangerous machine in radiant human form; as soon as she lowered her human eyes to a card, the eye of the machine stared from the black-rimmed vault of her eyelid and held the room in its gaze.
“Yes” (with this one word Sorger finally accepted as an obligation what for so long he had only mused about). At times Lauffer had really been his friend, and recently he had been one with the woman in their true, screaming, and clutching bodies—but what presumption in him, the “Stranger” (the name of an emetic fungus), to importune these two with the claims of a “friend” or “lover.”
Sorger did not foresee that these two would come together, he saw their union before him in the present: the perfect couple, the consummate student of earth forms and the divine beast.
No one asked why he was laughing—they knew. And the next moment placed Sorger, who mechanically went on playing, in the midst of a prehistoric event that was just taking place. In the river there was a narrow, gently sloping island with a small, rounded hollow in the middle, where the conifers, which were sparse and stunted everywhere else, grew dark and dense. This hollow had probably resulted from an underground cavern, into which Sorger—while his fellow players, who at that very moment were on a level with his eyes, rose to the upper edge of his field of vision—sank all at once, as slowly as in a dream. Already moss was growing in the pit and dark bears rose up between the trees.
As though in triumph, Sorger went out into the open. He moved in the glow of the windows; outside, there was no other light, not even the dot of a star. At first he saw the two of them sitting at the table; then the bushes merged with the receding bright rectangle, as though the panes had been smeared with dirt. “Please forget me.” He saw so little ahead of him—now and then, a lighter-colored stone silhouette—that he had to feel his way with his feet and elbows. Not even a splashing; only a soft scraping from time to time.
Then nothing more stood out from the darkness; at last, no more images. A short while before, all distinct surfaces, regardless of color (wasn’t there such a thing as a wedding color?), had reminded him of dead people, as though he were staring at those who had died there. Then he saw the river flowing in the darkness: thick anthracite against thinner black; and these forms, as a painter he admired had said, were now his “performers”; able to “perform” in his place because they were unabashed, free of his embarrassment.
Once all recognized techniques had been applied to the description of a phenomenon, Sorger’s science called for one additional, ultimate technique, which he called “comprehensive vision”; here, in the face of the black-on-black Arctic night, such comprehensive vision was achieved, though it had not been planned and the requisite composure was lacking; a different sort of calm took hold of him (he literally experienced center and depth) and at the same time reached out beyond him; it warmed the palms of his hands (and his gently spreading fingers), arched the balls of his feet, made him conscious of his teeth, and transformed the whole of him into a body which became a radically extroverted organ of all the senses. Seeing himself in strips of darkness, he was overpowered by the calm of a savage—which could be expressed only in the one word “beautiful.”
Not merely turning his head, but nimbly twisting his shoulders and hips on their axis, he recognized in the darkness that his life would inevitably become dangerous. He did not see the dangers; he had an intimation of them; he could not go looking for them, they were necessity itself; he had an intimation of necessary solitude and continued remoteness; and all these intimations crowding in on him, but forming no clear prophecy, added up to a feeling of adventure, as if he had just gone away from all his dear ones with no possibility of return; and, his head whirling with the intoxication of being forever alone, he rejoiced out loud: “No one knows where I am. No one knows where I am!” (For a moment the moon appeared, and he hissed at it.)
And then he heard a whimpering beside him in the darkness, as of an abandoned child. Or was it the breathing of some large animal?
But it was only a human, standing beyond reach but fairly near him, clearing his throat to show no harm was intended. And between these two, who could not see each other, the following words were said: “Hi, stranger. How are you feeling this evening?” Sorger: “Fine, thank you. How are you?” The speaker: “Short autumn. Run out of fuel.” Sorger: “Isn’t there a woodpile down by the river?” The speaker: “Good river. Fine summer. Long winter. Could you spare a quarter, mister?” (A hand, warm like Sorger’s own, took the coin.) The speaker: “God bless you, man. Green northern lights, yellow around the edges. Where you from?” Sorger: “Europe.” The speaker: “I’m going to tell you something. Never look at the snow too long. It can make you blind. That’s what happened to me. Want me to tell you something else?” Sorger: “No, thank you.” “You’re welcome, friend. Don’t eat too much fish. Enjoy the rest of your stay here. Take care. Have a good time. Pleasant trip. Touch home soon.”
Sorger heard the speaker—whether Indian or white, man or woman, he couldn’t be sure—moving off in the darkness, and sure of the way, sure of his direction and his body, he ran back to the village and the gabled house. The other two were standing at the window but didn’t turn their heads in his direction, as though they hadn’t even noticed his absence, or as if he had already been so forgotten that he would have to breathe at them. Over the Indian woman’s shoulder, two glassy fox eyes stared at him.
No more talk; for a last time the smooth woman drew him to her with both her hands, pushed him away with a little laugh, and grazed him with a look of astonishment in which her whole face seemed to expand, though no part of it moved; but Sorger had thrown his arms around his friend, who had taken his place beside her in the goodbye line; and in the end gone dutifully (“the mail plane and all that”) to bed in the next room, which was suddenly (but not for very long) freezing cold.
I
n his sleep, Sorger kept waiting for someone who didn’t come. Once he woke up and saw the cat crouching in the corner of the room. “Monumental little beast.” Quietly addressing the cat, he coaxed it to him. It came and laid its head on his knees. The cat wanted to live: and Sorger wanted to be forgotten by his best friends and perish. Unthinkingly he addressed the cat as “child,” loved it (his arms grew strong with love), and named his loved one with its color: “Black-and-white.”
In a dream, Sorger’s brain became a map of the world, and when he woke up, he was a mound of earth with a lot of stones in it. In the gray of dawn, Lauffer was lying in the supposedly empty room, a malignant grimace with closed eyes. Hauling his suitcase, Sorger passed the absently staring cat, which now gave no sign of knowing him. He left many possessions in the house. “Let’s get out of here!”
At sunrise in the mail plane (he was sitting in back with some Indians who had already dozed off) Sorger saw the yellow foliage of a lone birch smiling out of the endless virgin pine forest, thought of the Indian woman (“There’s a sweet woman down there”), and sat up straight with directionless curiosity, which soon changed to a feeling of hunger, not for anything tangible, but for whatever might be coming. Without images, he anticipated “the future.” In the midst of his imageless fantasy, he saw the pilot turn around and read from his lips the words: “We have to turn back.”
The reason for turning back was the first snowstorm of the winter on the high plateau beyond the southern mountain ranges, where the larger settlement (formerly a gold-mining center), where one could change to a jet, was situated. Even as the pilot was looping back, the landscape changed its face. A round swampy lake became a hypnotic stare; meandering little rivers took on so dense a covering of aquatic plants that a sparkling of water could be seen only here and there, and the long gullies on the hillsides, long, straight stripes etched into the rubble by the spring thaw, curved in all directions. The plane would not be able to leave again until the following morning.
