Slow Homecoming

by Peter Handke

  4

  The child was now more than three years old. Thus far, she had played alone almost exclusively, turned inward in quiet contentment, unlike the gloomily self-absorbed adult. But in the course of time (and specifically of the seasons) both had made themselves at home in the community on the wooded slope, and the adult was sick of visitors who with their falsely sympathetic or ironically citified remarks about the house and its location regularly demolished what little spirit the place had. One, who expressed himself only in forced quips, with which indeed he made his living, spoke of the clip-clop community, the reference being to the clatter of high-heeled shoes in the silence of the night.

  But more and more often children from the neighboring houses would come to visit, and through them a kind of neighborhood feeling arose. Being with others was something new to the child; it seemed to change her sensitiveness, in which the adult had so delighted, into a spoil-sport prissiness. The most trifling setback would throw her into such a rage that the other children would stand there gaping, and this in turn would transform her dismay into utter misery, so adding to the glee of the strangers around her, who would be as likely as not to ring the doorbell again the next day, possibly in the expectation of another such scene (but also perhaps because in the course of time all the rooms in the new house—the architect had surely intended nothing of the kind—had merged into one partitionless children’s room).

  At the same time a reversal occurred. No longer was the adult “alone with the child.” Although her encounters with children of her age had almost always ended with a sense of injury and defeat, she soon began to look forward to these visits, not so much with pleasure as with excitement. For a while at least, she lost her ability to immerse herself, with splendid equanimity, in every trifle. The adult was no longer what she wanted; and often, when at last the voice of a neighbor child approached the house, the sound was welcome to the two of them (even if this particular child had been the cause of the past day’s gloom).

  Again he was of two minds. Would it be best to remain alone—the child playing, the adult working and to the best of his ability present, both prepared to speak and listen, yet “child” and “adult” as they had always been, without precocity on the one side or condescension on the other—or were “children” not a race apart, in their element only among themselves, and there alone, regardless of all the injury and injustice, capable of moving with self-awareness and making something of themselves? So weren’t other children their true family and weren’t adults entitled, at the most, to take care of them? Wasn’t it plain in any case that even after the most unpleasant incident, the worst humiliation, the child would welcome another child as a bringer of good tidings?

  The dilemma was solved when the man at last hit on an idea, implying a proposal to others (and here he was struck by the fact that in the course of the years he of all people, he who tended to regard himself as a loner, unable and unwilling to live in society, had repeatedly, quite on his own initiative, promoted social groups, though small ones; but that on each occasion a profound illumination or “synthesis” had been necessary, without which, he held, there could be no true community).

  The material foundation of the idea, on the strength of which a proposal to others became possible, was, as it had always been, a specific place, a location. At first, conversation with the neighbors had been confined almost exclusively to the new community and the children. The complaints about the distance from all public conveniences and the desire, not for a kindergarten or its modern equivalent, but rather for a modest little meeting place, accessible without a car and open at definite hours—undoubtedly a necessity for those children who could not yet make a playground of the surrounding country and were consequently confined to their own house or the one next door. This desire became practicable (and its fulfillment a matter of course) when a locale was thought of: a large, hitherto unused room in the man’s house, with a southern exposure and “free access” to a large “front yard.” (Backed up by the image of running children, these terms meant something, for once.) The availability of the locale even made enthusiasm possible; this at last was the right thing to do. Dispelled were the suspicions usual among people who are strangers to one another. By early summer the room was suitably remodeled, and the following autumn a kind of club was opened informally with a few children.

  In the ensuing period the adult spent a few half days as a kind of counselor, saw his own child with an unaccustomed number of others, and began—no other word would be appropriate—to doubt her; not as an individual, but as a superior authority. His dominant feeling for her, even outweighing affection, had always been an unconditional, enthusiastic confidence. Without ever forming an opinion of “children” in general, he believed in this particular child. He was convinced that she embodied an important law, which he himself had either forgotten or never known. In the very first moment of her life, he had seen her as his personal teacher. What he had faith in was not any particular utterance “from the mouth of a babe,” but her mere existence as a human being who was what she was. The fact of her existence was to the adult the measure of truth, of a life as it should be. In this light, he was able to respect her dispassionately, and at times allow himself to utter certain words which he had hitherto rejected as pathos, shut his ears to at the movies, closed his eyes to as obsolete in old books, and which now turned out to be more real than anything else in the world. Who were the fools who had dared to claim that these “high-sounding” words were of purely “historical” interest, and that time had divested them of their meaning? Weren’t they, in their blindness, or perhaps only lukewarmness and faintheartedness, confusing words with whole sentences? How did these modern people live? And with whom? And what had they forgotten, once and for all, that they should listen only to pusillanimous yet loudmouthed and, on the whole, anything but open-minded language? Why did all the terms current in public speeches, in the daily papers and on television, but also in new books and personal relations, have the crushing, stinkingly banal, soul-murdering, godless, nerve-shattering, harebrained quality of dogs’ names? Why on all sides did one hear only the drone’s language of a sheet-metal age? In any case, it was thanks to the child that the much despised great words became more intelligible to the adult with each passing day; these words didn’t make for hubris but carried you to higher and higher levels; and anyone was welcome to them, the only prerequisites being “goodwill” and insight into “strict necessity.”

  Doubt came when he saw the child not alone or with random individuals but in her regular group. There, in the midst of a majority, she ceased to be a haven of peace, and was gradually, from day to day, metamorphosed into an earthworm, writhing with fear—more wretched than all the rest. No longer was she prissy, no longer ill-tempered or even listless (for that the adult would at least have found an explanation); she was simply beside herself with misery. In the group, the child who by herself had been so wonderfully slow-moving, humorous, and intelligent was at best excitable and obtuse; most of the time she displayed blind panic, accompanied by an acute, groundless, immediately perceptible anguish. No sooner in the crowd, she struggles, like one forcibly held underwater, to escape, looks in her misery for a secluded room, but is usually unable to find so much as a quiet corner. Thus far, her story has presented an even flow; only now is its irrevocable, diabolical inevitability revealed. And the adult’s doubt, like his previous faith, pertains not so much to her special characteristics as to her whole existence: if she, as she is (that is, her whole being), is forced to become something different, she obviously ceases to be anything at all (but only suffers suffers suffers). But was she made for this apparently necessary tragedy of destruction? Here the adult is preoccupied with emotional, pointless questions that have probably been talked to death; yet they are made understandable by the despairing glances from the midst of the mob, which go straight to his heart and express something more urgent than mere doubt. Of course the parents connected with the gro
up knew the reasons for the child’s behavior (and hinted as much with kindly solicitude), but all he heard in their explanations was more dogs’ names: seeing no cause, he was nevertheless convinced that he knew better.

  Besides, it was plain that some of the children, even the smallest, were not right for one another. There may have been no “wicked” ones, but certainly all were not “innocent” (at the most, there were some who had started at an early age to wash their hands in innocence). All knew what was wrong and did wrong, not only in passion but also with premeditation, yet even then without consciousness of wrongdoing—with the result that their actions were often more sinister than those of the most sordid scoundrels, and just as revolting. It couldn’t be denied that among the children—regardless of sex—there were some who from the start were quite at their ease playing the executioner in word and deed, with the adults looking on; they performed their act of destruction with cool expertness and when it was done walked calmly away as from an official function. And it was equally unquestionable that none of the children liked being scolded, made fun of, or beaten—in other words, victimized.

  It was then the prevailing opinion that adults should not interfere in children’s squabbles. Nevertheless, it was hard on the adult, seeing his child getting the short end of it day after day. For she alone never defended herself; even when punched in the face, her only response was to flail about in the void; and the sounds that came out of her mouth were not battle cries but helpless whimperings. When insulted or accused, she never replied in kind and never ran away, but stood spellbound on the spot, physically bent beneath the hostile harangue, which in the end boiled down to a repetition of one especially wounding word or phrase. In her rebuttal she did no more than tonelessly deny everything, thus by her voice and posture identifying herself as the accused. Impossible, at the sight of this pale, trembling thing, to refrain from stepping in. And so, as often as not, the adult stepped in, took sides—and found fault with his sniveling, solipsistic, asocial child.

  But little by little, as time went on, the children merged into a free, easygoing, and even amiable little band. Or perhaps the adult had only learned to look at them with new eyes. One spring day he climbed a hill with them and, observing himself, saw perfect joy, simply because he was moving among so many different children. His enthusiasm gave him for the first time a voice to which they listened. It was as though he had leapt into their midst; here he no longer saw “ruffians” and “victims,” as he had when looking at them from outside. No doubt about it. It was only when he began to take pleasure in their company that his forlorn standing-around and frantic running-around gave way to a natural buoyancy and ultimately to a proud, poised, and no longer childlike participation in their common adventure. A lasting image must as a rule be grounded, as it were, in the feel of a certain terrain, its upward or downward slope, roughness or smoothness. In this case we have a steep slope, which all the children are climbing vigorously; though they are strung out over quite a distance and they are constantly changing places, each one knows as a rule where the others are, and none will get lost. Never before has the adult been conscious of a gentler, happier power over others.

  His newly won lightheartedness rubbed off on his own child; once more she was able to be what-she-was; among others her movements were distinctly more spontaneous and self-assured than in her solitary days. The adult realized that all he had to do was “leave her (as well as the others) be” but that the ideal ordering energy, the drive that held them all together, would operate only if he remained for her (and the others too) the “ever-present one”—with whom they could journey safely as in the hold of a ship of peace. True, he was not always equal to this twofold power. That would have been high art. But little by little he assimilated the idea of the good teacher.

  Just then, however, just as he was taking comfort, he was forced to recognize that the child really was different from most of those in the group. She had ceased to be a loner, but she still got in the way, though not very noticeably, and when playing games showed the excess of zeal and slight muddlement that are sometimes found in obese children. But what particularly sets her apart from the other children is her manner of speaking (though it is quite free from specifically grownup locutions); or perhaps it is only that she spoke more deliberately, choosing her words with greater care: in any case, this habit of speech often made her lag behind or made what she was saying go unheard. True, the glance she casts at the adult from out of the turmoil is no longer a forlorn, imploring stare; it twinkles with good-natured irony. She is content to be with these people—but they are not her people. And here it passes through the adult’s mind: Your people exist. They are somewhere else. A different people with a different history. We are not the only ones. At this very moment, we are moving through time with this other people. You will never be alone. And at the same time the adult once again caught sight of the drama to come and actually looked forward to it. For though he saw many parents who armed their children for the struggle, and though he understood this perfectly, he felt that the right way was to do nothing of the kind.

  5

  There was something outrageous about moving back to the beloved foreign city with the child, who by then was about five and had grown accustomed to the community on the edge of the woods; but he didn’t hesitate long, for he thought of it as a natural and even necessary thing to do, requiring no justification. He felt that the image spoke for itself: a man taking his own and setting out for an unfamiliar world. Shouldn’t everyone attempt something of the kind, time and time again? Wasn’t it in foreign surroundings that a man’s own becomes his determining certainty? Besides, in going back to the foreign city, he was simply resuming the regular life he had led there; throughout the interim, he had thought of the distant metropolis as his permanent base; it was the only place that gave him a feeling of “reality” for any length of time, a lasting tie between outside and inside, body and soul. And with regard to his charge, he had always thought: What’s good for me is good for her (and conversely).

  In the foreign country the child’s history, without unusual events, became a small paradigm of the history of nations, and of ethnology as well; and the child herself, by none of her own doing, became the heroine of frightening, sublime, ridiculous, and on the whole plausible everyday-eternal happenings.

  On a day in December they arrive in the somber apartment, brightened by the sparkling water that flows with brooklike gurgling in the gutter outside and by the vault, to be found nowhere else in the world, of the sky over the fringe of the metropolis, where the staggered traffic lights reach out into the void, incessantly jumping about, changing color, and pointing the way to a vast and sweetly mysterious western gate. Here the large grass plots around the house in the community, which brought nature constantly close, are replaced by narrow French windows with small diamond-shaped panes in which the outside world seems reduced to the right scale; and the silence of the house is replaced by the sound of steps from the floor above and the voices next door, which at first are welcome as something long missed. The many alien objects in the apartment borrow an air of familiarity from the few things that have been brought along—books and stuffed animals suffice; and the long hallway leading to the surprisingly light back rooms has the feel of a suite in a luxurious hotel.

  The child had her first schoolday toward the end of winter, in midterm. This had not been planned by the adult, it just happened. The school also happened to be a special sort of school—intended, that is, only for children of the one “people” deserving of the name, the people of which, long before its dispersion to the four corners of the earth, it was said that, even “without prophets,” “without sacrifices,” “without idols”—and even “without names”—it would still be a “people”; and whom, in the words of a later biblical scholar, those wishing to know “the tradition,” the “oldest and strictest law in the world” would be obliged to consult. It was the only actual “people” to which the adult had ev
er wished to belong.

  The schoolhouse resembled many city schoolhouses, with a small, dusty yard, cramped, ill-lit rooms, and the rumbling of the Métro from deep underground. But taking the child there gave the adult a feeling that he was going the right way, a vast and for once absolutely suprapersonal feeling of happiness. His child, by birth and language a descendant of murderers who seemed condemned to flounder for all time, without aim or joy, metaphysically dead, would learn the binding tradition, would go her way with others of her kind, and embody that steadfast, living earnestness which he, who had been rendered incapable of tradition, knew to be necessary but forfeited day after day to frivolous caprice. Though the child was accepted only provisionally, for one semester, he hoped she would stay there for good, and not only in the school. Just as she was, despite the color of her hair and eyes, wasn’t that where she belonged? And these strange holiday celebrations, in which the child, a participant and not just an onlooker, joined the others in the symbolic gestures recapitulating their exemplary history—didn’t such celebrations at last supply a possible meaning for words such as “community” or “initiation”? And when for the first time the adult saw the child transcribing the strange characters of the ancient language, did he not experience the emotion of one witnessing a historical moment (and was he not at the same time determined, as the ancient historian had been, to understand it clearly)?

  The child, too, was pleased with the school. She didn’t even have to get used to it; with the first step across the threshold, into the little vestibule with its layers of different-colored coats hanging on hooks, she had forgotten her fear, as one sometimes forgets a burden; thanks no doubt to the teacher, by whom, through the usual hubbub, she immediately and for all time felt seen. This old woman had mastered the art of the inquiring yet overwhelmingly hospitable glance (though her interlocutor never felt observed, let alone scrutinized). And it was she—herself of German descent, she spoke German—who taught the child the language of the land in no time. It was not yet summer when the adult heard the child engaged in fluent conversation with the other children. How charming she seemed when speaking the foreign language. Whenever she slipped into it, she seemed to summon it up by magic, but never employed the unfortunate turns of phrase used by many of the native children. Listening to her, the adult remembered how he himself as a child had longed to speak a foreign language and had occasionally mistaken a certain play gibberish for one. He saw that his child was now in many respects ahead of him, and for that he was thankful to be living in the present time.