Moment of True Feeling

by Peter Handke

  Suddenly Keuschnig forgot what he had wanted to prove, and was glad of it. He tore up the paper. Then he looked around for more papers to tear up. For a while it cheered him to crumple them, tear them up, and throw them away. It seemed like some sort of vengeance. He ransacked the office for things to throw away, lined them up in front of him, and threw them one by one, after an elaborate windup even if they were only light envelopes, into a wastepaper basket. He tore up the picture postcards sent him by vacationing colleagues, and threw them away too.—Actually I could prove the opposite by these same films, he thought. Only yesterday he would have tried to prove not only some point but also himself with a demonstration developing logically from sentence to sentence—now he preferred to go on reading the newspapers and treat himself to a painless afternoon. He even read the horoscopes, and felt himself growing more and more inconspicuous. Cozily irreproachable, he sat alone in the room, at most allowing himself an occasional glance through the window at the chestnut tree, among whose dark-green leaves the much-lighter-colored prickly nut husks were already in evidence. How right the newspapers were today—how he esteemed the commentators today for having opinions! Those people don’t think about themselves, he thought—why couldn’t he be like that? He was in the mood to underscore every line. In reading a story about “the sad lot of …” he felt that he ought to follow the example of this reporter, who had selflessly risen above his own lot, which, Keuschnig felt sure, was just as sad as that of … He was especially moved by the jokes. What courage one needed to think up a joke! How free from vanity one must be to look for the comical aspect of everything that happened to one—because there HAD TO be a joke in everything! “Have you heard this one: somebody dreams that he’s become a murderer?” “Yes, but where’s the joke?” Was humor the solution?—In any event, as Keuschnig read the evening papers in cozy inconspicuousness, he envied people in general their contempt for death.

  Then he noticed that he had stopped reading some time ago and was only looking at the desk in front of him: the typewriter, the neatly lined-up pencils, the fountain pen POISED in his hand. How sanctimoniously I have arranged these things! he thought. In doing so, I talk myself into a sense of security that doesn’t exist. I pretend that everything will take its usual course and that nothing more will happen to me, provided I get my tools ready.—What self-deception to set up things as INSTRUMENTS and entrench himself behind them, as though he were their representative and nothing else! Did the short-wave receiving set secure his future because he used it? Or was the OUT basket beside the door a guarantee that the office boy would actually find the reports and letters expected of Keuschnig ready at the right time?—A car braked on the square outside with such a screech that Keuschnig heard the howl of a dog on whose paw he had once stepped. Once again, from one second to the next, everything hung in the balance. He would finally have to start thinking about himself. But how would he go about it? He was born into … My father was … My mother had … Even as a child I sometimes felt … Was that the only way of thinking about oneself? If I die now, Keuschnig thought, I shall leave nothing but disorder behind me!—and picking up his fountain pen, he began to draw up his will, writing every word, even the figures, in full, so as to prolong the act of writing, which made him feel safe, as much as possible.—As long as his pen was scratching, death seemed far away. He put the will in an envelope, on which he wrote: “To be opened only after my demise”—deliberately avoiding the word “death.”

  He looked out at the Esplanade des Invalides: nothing characteristic, nothing for him. He forced himself to look at something to stop the pain in his heart: the construction shacks, for example, for the workers engaged in joining two Métro lines. They were so small that the workers came out backwards and stooped. So that’s it, he thought. A good many of the leaves of the shade trees on the big square were already yellow and gnawed: Well well. Or the pale moon in the eastern sky? Why not? A windowpane in the Air France bus terminal across the square was flashing sunlight into his office—as usual, but a little earlier than the day before. No harm in that, thought Keuschnig. Aloud he listed everything that was to be seen—that was his only way of perceiving.

  Then he noticed that on the same story as himself, a few rooms farther on, behind the flagpole, someone was standing at the window: a girl he hardly knew, a file clerk, who had been taken on as a holiday replacement a few days before. Paying no special attention to him, she was pouring water out of a small coffee cup on a pot of geraniums. A moment later she disappeared, then came back with her refilled cup. He noticed how high over the flowers she held the cup and how carefully she regulated the stream of water. Her lips were parted, her face strangely old. All at once it seemed to him that he was watching her doing something forbidden. He felt hot and dizzy, but it was too late for him to look at something else.—When she left the window, he hoped she would come back. She reappeared sooner than he had expected; this time she positively came running, she seemed excited. She gave him a quick sidelong glance, then poured more cautiously than ever; it took her a long time to tip her cup, as though there were some resistance to overcome. Suddenly, without changing her expression, she turned back to him, and this time her glance was long and sustained—old, evil, ravaged with lust. His member went stiff, he gave a start and stepped back.—Then he forgot everything and went quickly down the corridor to her room. Inside she came to meet him. He paused to lock the door. Two, three movements and they were into each other on the floor; after two or three more she opened her eyes wide and he closed them.—A moment later they were both laughing uproariously.

  Keuschnig hadn’t had the feeling of being with a unique, individual woman, and afterwards he felt free from the impersonal power that had gripped them both.—They helped each other up. They sat on two chairs, she behind the desk, he in front of it, and exchanged conspiratorial looks. She was grave, smiled only once with set lips while looking at him, and soon grew grave again. He too was able to look at her as a matter of course, without strain, without fear of giving himself away. His glance had no further need of something to hold on to, some detail, some particular by which to recognize her—he saw her all in one, noticing nothing in particular. If in that moment he had told her he loved her, he would, at least for the time it takes to draw a breath, have known what he meant by it. For the moment it was REAL, that’s all there was to it. With her he had no need of secrecy, never again. Without fear he immersed himself in her, they had no secrets from each other, only a secret in common from others. For a few moments they had EVERYTHING in common. They let the telephones in the building blare, let the elevator hum, the door-opening device in the courtyard buzz, a fly in the room hum; nothing could divert them from their unthinking calm. He looked at the handwritten sign on the wall—PER ASPERA AD ACTA; it didn’t strike him as ridiculous now, and he wasn’t repelled by the cooing of the pigeon menage which had settled in the ivy on the opposite wall. He wouldn’t have minded in the least if someone had been watching them all along. Let him watch!—They needed no secrecy, and perhaps it would even give this other fellow an idea. He kept looking at her and suddenly he thought: So now I have an ally! Though he didn’t say a word, she nodded, held a finger in front of her mouth, then set it on her lower lip, as though to underline her meaning. They laughed again, surprised and almost proud. Then they talked together, and he didn’t even mind when she said: “When I’m with a man … when someone touches me here …”—Actually he was glad to be interchangeable as far as she was concerned. In leaving the room he kissed her hand.—But when he thought of her again, back in his office, his breath caught, because he had no recollection of what it had been like to make love to her. There was no particular he could hold on to—no feeling of warmth or yielding softness. Then for the first time he felt slightly ashamed.

  When at about six Keuschnig stepped out on the square, on his way to the press conference at the Elysée Palace, he suddenly stopped still and propped his hands on his hips. He felt hostile towa
rd the whole world. “Now I’ve shown you,” he said. “I’ll get you down yet.”—With clenched fists he headed for the Pont des Invalides, crossed the Quai d’Orsay with utter unconcern for the traffic. He felt an urgent need to break some resistance, to prove himself. Now he was sure that something remained to be done —but where? The coins jangled in his pocket as he walked, but he only walked faster, ran, PURSUED. For a short time at least he had the feeling that he was all-powerful and could look down at the world. It had been made for him, and now he was forcing his way into it, to convert all its renegade objects to his way of thinking. “There you are, Mr. Seine,” he said patronizingly, as he hurried across the bridge. “Just keep up that senseless flowing—I’ll get your secret out of you yet.” Then he thought: I’m having an experience; and with that he was happy and walked more slowly. Agnes had often said to him: “You never tell me any stories.” Now he had a story to tell, how he had said: “Be still!” and for a few moments at least the world had obeyed. And he would add further particulars: steep streets had suddenly become level and whole rows of houses one floor lower. That would be the right kind of story for her, because for her “the world” was still a unit of cubic measurement.—And what if he were to tell her nothing, because he had nothing more to say?—Then at least he would have something for himself, a memory that might help him to envisage and deal with what lay inexorably ahead of him. I can be pleased, he thought with surprise: I am a person capable of being pleased. One more thing I had never thought of until today. Suddenly he wanted to draw. Moving one finger through the air, he drew the spiked-helmet roof of the Grand Palais, which he was passing on his way down the Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt …

  In Paris one can usually see the sky without raising one’s eyes; even when looking straight ahead, one sees it at the end of many streets. Consequently Keuschnig noticed that clouds had now come into the sky, white immobile stripes high overhead, and under them, rather low and running at an angle to the stripes, other clouds, whose proximity made them seem somewhat darker, moving rapidly just above the rooftops and changing their shapes before he was able to fix them in his mind. Why, he wondered, am I so struck with the sky? It didn’t exactly strike him; he merely looked at it with interest, but thinking nothing in particular. For a few steps it held his attention so exclusively that afterwards he thought: I wish I could learn to prolong these selfless and yet full moments, when I observe nothing in particular but nothing escapes me. But his very next glance at the clouds soured him. He never wanted to look at anything again. Why couldn’t everything finally disappear—everything! He walked in the middle of the sidewalk with his hands on his hips. He would have liked to shout insults at everyone. Out of my way, you clever clever people! He would shout just one word at a woman, and she would have to think of it as long as she lived. He must find the word to which no one knew the answer!

  At the far end of the Champs-Elysées, there was only one thing to catch the eye, the Arc de Triomphe. Looking through it from down here at the Rond-Point, one saw nothing but the western sky, which was reflected in the surface of the wide avenue. “If I looked through the arch from farther up the avenue, I would see the cranes being used to put up still more buildings in the Defense quarter of suburban Puteaux.”—I observe as if I were doing it for someone else! thought Keuschnig. But that was a brief diversion.

  In turning into Le Drugstore from the sidewalk of the Avenue Matignon, he suddenly felt saved, for the moment at least. The mere act of TURNING IN—of deviating from his depressing rectilinear course—suggested a break in a journey, and as he moved through Le Drugstore along with many others, in a rhythm, determined by others, of stopping, dodging, and starting up again, his only movements now being Drugstore movements, performed in common with others, he was able to see himself leading a totally different life, derived from his Drugstore feeling, in which all his problems would cease to exist. “That’s it, I’ll start a new life!” he said aloud, on a note of urgency. A memory came to him: Schoolchildren in shorts were standing in a row, in front of them the two team captains, each in turn calling out the names of the boys he wanted on his team. Those named stepped forward. The good players were soon taken, and only the incompetents stood there, squirming with embarrassment: please, please call my name! The next-to-last would still be taken—oh, don’t let me be the last of all, don’t leave me standing here by myself . . And here now, those crumpled paper napkins on ketchup-smeared plates, those young women sitting alone, rereading their love letters over their open handbags—in such confusion a game in which someone had to be last ceased to be possible.—At a bookstand Keuschnig bought three diner’s guides. He would read them from cover to cover. One more thing to go by, he thought.

  He stepped out into the street again … That sordid Drugstore with its trampled pommes frites on the floor and its already dog-eared magazines! Even as he watched it—while waiting to cross the street—the sky clouded over. He tried to remember the new feeling he had had just after turning in. Turning in where? All at once he couldn’t remember anything at all, neither that nor anything else. He could list all sorts of things but remember nothing. He retained the facts, but not the feelings. When some years ago the nurse at the maternity hospital had shown him the child for the first time through the glass partition, something in him had undoubtedly stirred at the sight of that face, which the child itself had badly scratched. He had known a feeling of happiness, of that he was sure—but what had it really been like? He couldn’t remember the feeling, what he remembered was the fact of having been happy. He had been moved, no doubt of it, but even with closed eyes he couldn’t bring back the feeling. “Try inhaling slowly.” He tried … but his breath went down the wrong way and he gagged.—He saw an empty bus going by; the low-lying sun shone on it from the side, lighting up the serried nose prints on the windows. An animal, thought Keuschnig unremembering. The only way he could keep on walking was to count his steps out loud: one … and two … and three, as though he had to trick himself into moving.

  As he crossed the playground in the Carré Marigny, which now, at the end of July, was deserted, the whole sky was overcast. A strong cold wind was blowing and the rustling of the chestnut trees was so loud he couldn’t hear the traffic on the Champs-Elysées. Little dead twigs crunched underfoot. The horses of the merry-go-round had been covered with sacking and plastic for the summer and tied with heavy twine. It was beginning to get dark; Keuschnig was alone in the Carré, dust was blowing up his nose. By then the wind was so strong that he was suddenly seized with uncontrollable panic. He ran to the bus-stop phone on the Avenue Gabriel and called home. Agnes was there—it was she who picked up the phone. Pleased with herself for answering, she bit into a piece of candy …

  As he walked on, he remembered that he had just been afraid. A feeling;—remember it. What had it been like? His muscles and sinews had suddenly frozen into a structure of their own … a kind of second skeleton. Yes, that’s what fear had been like. I’ll have to rediscover all these feelings! he thought.

  Although the Avenue Marigny, on which the Elysée Palace is situated, is in the very center of Paris, there isn’t a single shop on it. The windows of an inhabited house are a rarity, all one sees is chestnut trees and high park walls until one comes to the restaurant and newsstand at the corner of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. For an approach to so prestigious a residence the Avenue Marigny is neither very long nor very wide, but it is straight and open. Few cars park on it, not even on the sidewalks, which are blocked off by rows of concrete posts.—Pedestrians, too, are rare; only policemen stride back and forth outside the high walls, their hands behind their backs. Involuntarily, as he turned into the avenue, Keuschnig reached for his passport, as if it were forbidden to enter such a thoroughfare without one’s papers … At the corner a policeman was standing in a sentry box, twirling a whistle attached to a long string. Luckily Keuschnig had to sneeze. Wasn’t that a proof of innocence? Even so, he felt that with the face he had on him that day
no one could forget him. Any attempt to seem natural would only make him more conspicuous. He saw a mosquito bite on the policeman’s neck, and simultaneously another image from his dream came back to him: the upper part of his body spotted with mosquito bites. He had been naked, he recalled; that often happened in his dreams—but in this dream there was a difference, he had wanted to be naked. For the first time it had given him pleasure to show his nakedness, not just to one person but to a whole group of people; and instead of merely running past, he had stood still in front of the whole lot of them.

  What a lot of withered chestnut leaves have already blown into the gutter! he thought word for word—as though thinking in words could protect him. Two other policemen were coming down the street, their leather gloves stuck in their belts, their trouser legs gathered into the tops of their high-laced boots. There being two of them made them seem less menacing, though united against him, the lone outsider. But even if he had been with more people, with lots of people, a witness would have pointed him out instantly in the line-up: That’s the one!—He envied the policemen their faces. How beautiful they seemed to him in their self-assurance; beautiful because they had nothing to hide; beautiful in their unmarred extravertedness. In an emergency they would both know exactly what to do next, and what to do after that. As far as they were concerned, everything was tried and tested; nothing could go wrong because the ORDER of things had been set in advance. Every possibility had been gone over, every eventuality provided for. He saw them as pioneers, as Americans, from Grand Rapids for instance—and such men could only be immortal!