Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

by Peter Handke

  Of late more and more such sounds of utter abandonment or rejection had reached her from the out-of-sight children of the neighborhood. And then she actually got to see one of these children at least. It was a spring evening, the starry sky already clear over the forest and outskirts. The child was passing the playing fields on its way home, alone. The lights around the field were just going out. Along the road a row of ornamental cherry trees. The child beneath them, seen from behind, almost big, long since of school age. As it walked along, again and again at regular intervals there was a shuddering of the shoulders under the flowering trees, their color particularly rich in the glow of the streetlights against the surrounding darkness. The constant shoulder-shuddering is weeping, the sound accompanying it hardly audible, despite the nocturnal stillness, yet, once one’s hearing has adjusted to it, not to be drowned out by any airplane’s droning or any railroad cars’ clanking. And thus the rearview-image child trudged along with that shuddering of the shoulders until it had passed the row of trees and the athletic field. Who would tell of that sound of abandonment someday?

  One had neighborly feelings precisely for these strangers, these barely visible people. From far away one could often not make out their profiles or silhouettes, only small white—no, pale—blotches amid the general gloom: their heads, their faces, their hands; their professions also formed pale gray blotches like this; where all the new residents worked remained a secret (concealed by them on purpose?); how a person earned a living no longer mattered; and their clothing revealed nothing: and all this simply reinforced the sense of neighborliness. What was clear was only that none of these people numbered among her clients. Or perhaps they did. Weren’t they full of surprises?

  On the other hand, the fact that they could not form a complete image of her brought the new residents even closer to her. True, her property, the former stagecoach station, occupied a significant location, at the point where the road leading out of the city began a steep climb (in earlier times, at least one team of horses had been added at this point). True, the house was striking simply by virtue of its age, its size, its construction, its form, its distance from the other houses. But no one, not even her tenants in the carriage house, knew any particulars about the occupant. And people did not want to know anything about her.

  Once, however, at an Indian restaurant around the corner, she was asked by the proprietor whether she was a movie actress. And another time, in the nearby Chinese fruit and vegetable shop, the ancient greengrocer, who had just moved there and rented the place, asked, “Weren’t you in Macao as a child?”—“When?”—“Fifty years ago.” Fifty years ago! In Macao! It was as if the Chinese man were transferring some of his years to her and as a result instantly became younger. Or was this a manifestation of the famous Asian inquisitiveness? Which was usually more an act than genuine? At any rate, the others around here did not even pretend to be inquisitive. And that meant, to borrow a favorite expression of the stagecoach relay–owner and financial expert (instead of “I don’t want to,” or “You’re not allowed to,” she always said, “It is out of the question”): it was out of the question that anyone here should know any particulars or intimate details about anyone else.

  Altogether, this area seemed to her to exemplify a new way of living. That people kept their distance from one another to such a degree (although it was by no means an upscale area) did not signify the end of neighborliness. Without showing off, people paid attention to one another, respected one another. When the moment came, and only then, they would be there to lend a hand; and then promptly keep their distance again, staying anonymous, and, after greeting each other for a little while, silent again.

  In one respect she even seemed out of step with the times by comparison with the new neighbors (and it was out of the question, that she, the banker, should be out of step): the majority of the new people did not move into houses of their own but into housing acquired for people like this—who would be moving on in a couple of years; in the period covered by this story almost everyone was like this—by the companies, firms, corporations, research institutes, laboratories for which they worked (this housing could include old structures bought up by company headquarters). A growing number of her neighbors were not homeowners, in contrast to her. The cars, too, were company cars, or leased. The same held true for their household goods, including televisions and chain saws. Nothing, or certainly nothing large, heavy, or entailing responsibility, belonged to them.

  And by now she almost envied them for this; or rather, she was jealous of them, just as it was not out of the question to be jealous, as an involved observer, of a game in which one would like to participate. For wasn’t the pleasure she had so long taken in ownership pretty well exhausted? Above all, owning land had once given her a very special sense of space, a feeling of having broad shoulders. To buy a piece of land to add to her own, then another: pure joy. (She actually used the word “joy” in the author’s presence.) To beat the bounds of one’s property with head held high (not to say “ride the bounds”). But by now one tended to beat the bounds with lowered head or searching gaze: What needed to be done? What tasks were pressing? What had to be repaired? cleaned? replaced?

  Free through property? In her case, at least, it was becoming a threat to her freedom. One’s perceptions were no longer free. Only parts, and particles, nothing whole anymore. And oneself, as a property owner, no longer whole. Strangely enough, one way out, a form of liberation, was managing money, other people’s money, but also her own—as if money, being a moveable asset, had nothing to do with “possessions” and provided an opportunity for free play, like that of the others in the neighborhood. Hadn’t this free play turned into something particularly uncontrollable by now, hardly subject to rules anymore, dangerous, threatening, and not only to her?

  Some of the new ways of living also had to do with the location of her city. After a period of decline for riverports, they were flourishing again. There had been a time without any shipping at all; the rivers on the entire continent deserted. But now the waterways were serving as the most modern traffic and transportation arteries, and the cities located on them were becoming hubs as never before in history, even during the Roman Empire. And her own city, at the confluence of two rivers, formed something like the hub of hubs. A financial center like Augsburg in the Fuggers’ day, especially in the time of the family patriarch, Jakob—but less because of its wealth than because of the sheer volume of wheeling and dealing. A life like this, on and between two world-famous and commercially significant rivers, imbued the inhabitants, and the new arrivals more powerfully than the longtime residents, with a particular sense of place: stamped with self-confidence or even pride, quite different from that of the residents of New York or some other great metropolis by the sea, an inlander’s pride, so to speak.

  Part of it was that the rivers and their characteristic surroundings were increasingly shaping everyday life, were gradually permeating it almost to the exclusion of everything else. In the market stalls you could still see all the varieties of saltwater fish laid out. But the point was that these were “laid out,” dead or half-dead, whereas the freshwater fish “cavorted” in glass tanks nearby; even if there were not quite so many varieties, each individual exemplar was almost a species unto itself, and not only because it was so palpably alive, leaping about amid the throng of other fishes. For many years out of style, they were now increasingly prized, purchased, and prepared according to the old recipes, and even more according to new ones, were a component of the daily regional cuisine (“regional” having become no less important than “national”).

  Similarly the old orchards and the vegetable gardens or fields or terraces along both rivers, which had long been left fallow, now, wherever they had not been turned into building lots, were experiencing a second spring—summer—fall. The varieties once planted there were being supplemented and enriched by imported varieties or varieties moving on their own into the area as a result of the abr
upt warming of the climate all over the continent. Of course exotic fruits, as well as olives, wine grapes, pistachios, and such, continued to be imported into this northwestern region. But in the meantime it had become customary—this, too, part of the new way of living—that once the locally grown crops had been sold, used up, consumed, no substitutes were flown in from another hemisphere. No more fresh cherries or blueberries from Chile in the winter. No more early fall apples from New Zealand in the spring. No more cepes from South Africa with lamb at Eastertime. And in her two-river city, the ripening of the local fruits, rather than being accelerated, was actually held back.

  And soon hardly anyone missed such luxuries. Now the very absence of a familiar vegetable, an accustomed fruit, imposed a rhythm on the year; this periodic absence could add a kind of zest. New ways of living? The return or recovery of the old ways? (Though without folk costumes, customs, songs and dances.) What a historian had characterized as the phenomenon of “cultural continuity,” the most reliable rhythmic recurrence in history, indestructible (or was it really, over time)? Be that as it might: how the old varieties of apples, now brought back, stood out from the interlopers, on the trees, in the orchards, but also under the artificial lights of the huge warehouse-style supermarkets. How they gleamed, how fragrant they were, and this was no humbug. Or was she the only one who noticed, with her eyes and nose from childhood, from her Sorbian village?

  On the other hand, it was not she who created the demand, and with it the return of the continuity phenomenon, but rather her odd, evasive neighborhood. And equally odd her sense of being at home there. She knew, after all (had experienced), that it took only a tiny jolt, a phrase picked up in passing, and one would tip from presumed continuity into an isolated moment, not historical in the slightest but torn out of any temporal sequence, into a unique instant of complete isolation.

  3

  She had many enemies. And she had made almost all her enemies through her work. And they were far away. But one enemy was stirring things up in her vicinity; nearby. It had begun as love. At least this was the word the man used, the moment they met, or the second moment. They ran into each other in a clearing deep in the woods. She entered the clearing on a corduroy road whose logs were already half-rotted. Without warning, the image of a deserted beer garden, shaded by chestnut trees, in the hills above Trieste on a midsummer morning came to her, and she spread her arms. Just then the man slipped out of the dense underbrush on the edge of the clearing and was right next to her. She did not start. Perhaps she would have jumped under any other circumstances, but with the image present nothing could harm her. It was out of the question that anything should affect her. So she stood there, arms still spread, and even smiled at the stranger. It was a spring evening, long before dark.

  It was the man who uttered the word. Was he a foreigner? For he spoke the word with an accent. The majority of those living in the area were foreigners. Or did his excitement act as an accent-generator and tongue-twister? His outfit resembled that of an escaped prisoner, not because of the fabric or the cut, but because of all the rips (along with his disheveled hair), probably from his running through the woods. And he did not say, “I love you,” and so on, but rather, “You must love me. You are going to love me.” And continued at once, stammering, “You need me. You have been waiting a long time for me. Without me, you are done for. I will save you. You will not have loved me in vain.”

  She kept silent. Only her eyes gleamed, thanks to the persisting image, which it was up to her to intensify. In the center of the chestnut-shaded garden stood a limestone column, damp from the night’s rain, a stalagmite. Water spewed from an iron pipe. An espresso machine hissed. And in the darkening clearing a gentle wind now sprang up. The man resumed: “Listen to me! Listen, I say. In the end, God, too, for whom the prophet Elijah, or which prophet was it? waited so long in the desert, did not come either in lightning or thunder or in the whirlwind, but in the softest, barely audible rustling.” He advanced a step toward her, but then, on the recoil, dove back into the bushes. His nose had been bleeding, and the white handkerchief he had dropped in the grass of the clearing revealed a red, many-eyed, checkered pattern.

  Next to that tavern in the hills—not a single guest—the Paris–Moscow express stood waiting; the place was a border-crossing point. The windows of the sleeping car were open; empty berths; through the windows on the other side the bare white limestone cliffs were visible. Didn’t the stranger know that the god who had made himself heard in the rustling breeze was an Old Testament god? That his voice in that gentle whirring was not whispering about love but was filled with wrath? That that god wanted vengeance, vengeance, and more vengeance?

  After such a beginning, it came as no surprise that the man soon found out where she lived; and that his voice was heard over the intercom around midnight: “In all these years here I never set foot in that clearing—and then to find you there. It was a sign: you love me. And although I had never met you in the flesh, I recognized you instantly. If that isn’t a sign, what is? And the third sign: whenever I come to an unfamiliar place, I look straight ahead and pass through it without looking to right or left—but this time I looked to the side at once, to where you were standing, waiting for me. Unlock the door. You must let me in.”

  She did not unlock the door. For all the doors were already unlocked. But he did not press a single latch, did not turn a single knob; just rang and rang outside the garden gate, all night long. Eventually she turned off all the lights and lay down on a sofa in the dark parlor, her sword, a relic from one of her earlier lives, at her side. The ringing went on and on. But in time that was precisely what calmed her and finally caused her to doze off. And the next morning, after an almost restful sleep on the sofa, the bloody-nose handkerchief again, on the driveway, like a playing card.

  Next a letter: “How easy it was to penetrate you. Your cunt was panting for me. Your sex instruments drummed on me, plucked me and rubbed me, danced around me. Your vaginal membranes rattled and fluttered, swelled and swirled, sailing from firm land over an ink-dark sea as a storm raged. No doubt about it, I was made for you. And I promise never to leave you!”

  Now the time had come to sit down with the man, in broad daylight, for a sober hour in late morning. But where? Even the choice of a meeting place was critical. It was out of the question to meet in one of the many little eateries in her area: she had never been seen there with a man, and that was how it was to remain. The bars on the outskirts were also out of the question. The patrons there almost always stood or sat alone (she, too, was sometimes there among the guests, so briefly that she seemed like an apparition). And when people happened to come in as a twosome, it was to be assumed they belonged together, and in a slightly unsavory way; these couples usually spoke in lowered voices and huddled far from the others, in the darkest corner, behind a screen, if possible, where, one sensed, one of them would reach for the other’s hand now and then. And she? She was clearly without a lover. And yet looked as though she were constantly and intensely loved, glowing from being loved, from having been loved, just moments earlier.

  She chose a playground near the main rail line. In accordance with an odd principle, here, as throughout the river city, two benches stood facing each other, as if for two pairs of knees. An even crazier principle governed the chairs placed around the benches, each at a different angle, as if they had been shoved together or apart, like furniture in an outdoor display—yet when one wanted to straighten them: the chairs refused to budge, cemented in, bolted down, anchored.

  So one day, before noon, they turned up, on two such chairs, almost close enough to touch each other, and yet, because the chairs’ axes were askew, at an unbridgeable distance, while to the left and right of them the playground equipment creaked under the hordes of children, and the express trains roared by, with shreds of paper and white river gulls in their wake, their flight quite different from that behind the keels of ships.

  She began, unconsciously
imitating him, with “You listen to me!” and then said something like this: “It is not that I am against you. But for a long time I have had a sweetheart, a partner, someone who belongs to me. And the man I love is infinitely handsomer than you. You are nothing by comparison with my man. I will never abandon him. Only in his arms do I feel arms. His hips are the only ones for me. Only his arousal arouses me. His smell is the only one for me. And he is not merely my lover, but also my co-conspirator and squire. He is my up-hill and down-dale companion, my rope, steppe, and desert partner. He is my bodyguard, as I am his. He is my slave, as I am his. He is my judge—unfortunately not strict enough. He is my attorney, who wins all my cases. But above all this man is my chef. He is a chef such as you will find nowhere else on earth. Not a swindler like the others, not one of those phony magicians, conjuring up an illusion of ultramodernity with their overly clever dishes, a tart seemingly straight out of the oven, fish on the platter as if just reeled in, colors and forms as if shaken out of their sleeves just that minute—creating the illusion of a present that in reality almost always originated yesterday, the night before, or even the previous week, and thus tasting of anything possible, or rather of anything unreal, anything but the current moment, the present. My beloved, on the other hand, cooks mainly with leftovers. He neither throws leftovers away nor tries to disguise them in the dishes he serves me. He has a masterful way of combining leftovers with fresh ingredients, and the leftovers are the main part of what he prepares for us. On our plates it is the leftovers that create a full sense of the present. Combining what was there earlier with what we have now is his and our secret. You are the wrong man for me. And you are not the only wrong man.”