Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

by Peter Handke

  And in this spirit, my, our, adventurer suddenly turned aside, that is to say strode straight toward a tent-shaped structure, the same height as the others, which, according to its neon sign, was apparently called LSC, or “Lone Star Café,” and took a seat at a small round table that seemed to be waiting for her in the middle of the tent. But why did she not go home to her venta, where the bunk was waiting for her in the same way, yet entirely differently?—First of all, she had forgotten how to get to the hostel, and in particular it was out of the question for her to capitulate in the face of such centrality, all-encompassing and devastating to any alternative sense of place and time. There was an adventure to undergo here. Even here, in this off-putting realm, there had to be something worth telling. But do the things that happened subsequently in the Lone Star Café fit the spirit of our book? “They do.” (She to the author.)

  In the middle of the night, on the tent site at the heart of the center of Nuevo Bazar, a familiar face finally crossed her path (though hadn’t it been the morning of that same day that she had been in the company of the businessman she had ruined and the cook?).

  It was as if all those who had not yet found their way home, local residents and new arrivals, had gathered in the Lone Star Café. Much jostling at the hundreds of glass-topped tables, even among those who were already seated. If one was not at home—wherever that might be—at least here in the tent, which, like the tables, chairs, and counters, was of glass, one had to stake a claim to one’s place and one’s seat.

  And amid the pushing and shoving (especially when a seat became free, as in the subway during rush hour), suddenly at a distant table she saw the face of a woman with whom she was almost friends—“almost”; for she did not have any women friends; and the situation with her vanished daughter entailed something altogether different.

  The other woman was in the same profession as hers, in a similar key position, but less visible. At the global “monetary experts’ conferences,” at that time not yet and no longer held under police protection, the two of them had repeatedly interacted and had grown closer. Why? Because they had both studied economics (to the extent this subject could be taught and learned)?—No. There was no more bitter rivalry, despite their putting a good face on a bad situation, than between businessmen, and especially businesswomen. Each expected to be stabbed in the back by the other man, and especially the other woman. Why, then? Because both of them had found their way into banking and finance more or less by accident, because it had just “turned out” that way, and both of them, the minute they left their workplaces and business hours, at the drop of a hat, in the twinkling of an eye, when the lock snapped shut behind them, forgot their jobs: not merely refraining for the time being from mentioning the money markets and the power of money, but also not giving the matter a second thought, and each time setting out for a completely different life?

  Almost all our tycoons—and this has been confirmed by more or less thorough surveys conducted by the author—landed in their profession without plan or purpose; when they were students, if they had any goal in mind, it was certainly not “that kind of thing.” And once in the profession, they had no sooner stepped out of their temples than they metamorphosed in a fraction of a second into carefree mountain climbers, kayakers, gardeners, lovers (source: the author).

  Because both women’s ancestors had had nothing to do with the business in which their descendants were now involved, because they were both descended from villagers, though from different countries, and both had been born and had grown up in a transitional period, when, at least in a village, goods and barter played a greater role than money, and in the villages “money” was not yet automatically associated with “bank”? Because both of them had lost their parents early? Because both of them, without otherwise resembling each other in figure or facial features, radiated a similar beauty, when the moment was right?: a twinlike beauty, that of a very rare type of twins, able to be mistaken for each other only at certain moments, but then what a beauty! a rustic beauty, which was certainly quietly aware of itself yet did not thrust itself into the foreground or make much of itself, and could, in the next moment, turn into homeliness or even repulsiveness, or simpleminded, idiotic, no, moronic, ugliness—because both of them were in every sense noncompetitively beautiful, also of an “old-fashioned,” no, “timeless,” beauty, no, of a beauty belonging to a different time—which did not mean, did it, that the two women stood outside of current reality; did not help shape this reality; had no power?

  Because that other woman, before she landed by accident in her current field, had, in her youth, just like the woman here, been a star for a year or so, the woman here by playing the lead in a film, her only one, the woman there on the strength of a song, a soft ballad, which in the middle suddenly erupted in cries for help and cries of rage and then returned to its starting point: a song still often broadcast today, at least in her country (portions of it also used in tourism promotions), which had been imitated, in contrast to the film role of her current “colleague,” by several other songs, performed in a provocatively similar style, in the same rhythm, and with a melodic line that hardly differed from hers?

  Or, on the contrary, had it not contributed to the vague attraction between the two of them that our heroine, often without identifiable reasons, found herself suddenly confronted by people with hostile intentions toward her: acquaintances, who up to then had been the soul of considerateness, or at least had displayed unfeigned respect, and now suddenly bared their teeth, and likewise strangers, men as well as women, repeatedly smearing her out of the blue, as the one person responsible for all misfortune, including their own—while the other woman, her occasional twin, had the reputation of having never had an enemy; of being incapable of speaking a single unkind word or making a face; of being unable to raise her voice, let alone utter a scream as in her hit song long ago (indeed, so her almost-friend told the author later, “I never heard anyone with a gentler voice, a voice that came more from the heart, and consistently so, without fluctuation, in the work setting as well as outside, and no contradiction between her business dealings and her voice”)?

  And now, in the depths of that night, in the Lone Star Café, she saw her almost-friend make a face, and then another. The other woman, the former singer, was not alone at her table. Across from her sat the man who, it was said, had been the love of her youth, and had then become her husband, and at the same time, at least up to now, had remained all the more the love of her youth. If the woman witnessing the scene had been asked to name one couple among her contemporaries one could have faith in, only these two would have come to mind. To put it more emphatically: to the extent that one could have faith in this couple, no, had to, one could have faith in something else, something that transcended these particular two people and their particular case.

  Until that nocturnal hour in Nuevo Bazar, she had thought that their love story had been pretold by the author for her book, if only in passing and as a prelude, and above all as a contrast to her own “harebrained and hair-raising” story (her words): how, even when separated, each of them remained so present to the other that when they came together again in person, after no matter how long a time, even after a month, a year, they without ado resumed a conversation from time out of mind, in the same tone, the most amiable tone imaginable, usually beginning with “And …” (“ … and how the ravens cawed … ,” “ … and the plate is still warm … ,”

  “ … and then you clean my glasses for me … ,” “ … and at Whitsuntide you eat the first strawberries from my palm …”; how, sitting across from one another, after a long silence they began without transition to speak again, and again in the most amiable of tones, and were promptly in the middle of the dialogue they had already been conducting in silence (“just as you say … ,” “I see it the same way … ,” “and where were you after that?” “and I you, too!” “and I you, since that day when you are sitting in the bus and are about to leave for board
ing school, while I remain behind at the bus stop!”).

  Altogether, up to then their entire life had been an unbroken conversation, continued during the intervals, often lasting for days, when they did not open their mouths, as well as during the even longer separations occasioned by their work; continued in their sleep, whether with dreams or without, and, so to speak—no, not “so to speak”—confirmed each time in the sexual union of their bodies, the eternal conversation, as it were—no, not “as it were”—raised in complete silence to the acme of physical and mental awareness, impressing itself on the memory with primeval force, so to speak—no, without “so to speak” and yes, “primeval force”—and utterly independent of time. (How does the witness know this? Or isn’t this a case of an author’s letting himself go—not the certified, authentic, legitimate author but rather one of those would-be authors, who hardly miss an opportunity to elbow their way into our joint story?)

  It is true: the couple’s conversation took place outside of any time and remained unaffected by any ordinary sequence of time involving past, future, present; with their dialogue, the two of them had each other constantly present, in the past as well as in the future, from alpha to omega; for them there was no passage of time, and thus neither a beginning nor an end, no “Once upon a time” and no “It will come to pass,” only “You are,” “I have,” or vice versa; like children, perhaps, who, when one tells them that in the summer they will go swimming in the ocean, point out the window and reply, “But it’s snowing!” or, when an adult tells them that he was a child once, can laugh out loud at such an obviously nonsensical notion.

  And now, in that midnight hour, the witness saw her almost-friend, after making a face at her husband, open her mouth and say—she read the words from her lips at a distance: “And I hate you. And I have always hated you. And I will hate you until after you are dead.” And having said that, she turned her head away from the man sitting across from her and looked up at one of the televisions playing everywhere in the place, each tuned to a different program. On the screen she looked up at, a squad of soldiers was just storming an enemy position, shooting everything in sight, including dogs, hens, and, with particular gusto, pigs. And then the former ballad-singer stood up, pulled out a knife, not a very long one, and plunged it straight into the heart of her husband and lover of many years. He did not even have a chance to close his eyes, and did not slump to one side, but remained seated right where he was, at first with wide-open, then with still half-open, eyes.

  Why this murder? For in a contemporary book reasons must be given? there must be no unexplained elements?—One possible explanation can be found in the descriptions offered by the historian of the Zone. He expresses the opinion that the Zone creates states of mind, and compels them to manifest themselves in deeds, that never existed before, not even in secret, and not even unconsciously. According to him, the new arrivals in particular suffer from this phenomenon and make others suffer terribly in turn; and precisely those among the new people who are the soul of gentleness and never raised a finger to hurt anyone before.

  He thought he could provide a graphic image of this mechanism with the example of the oxen—as if the word “gentle” were appropriate to them—who, no sooner than they had been driven from the open steppe of the mesa into the Zone, rushed at everything that moved, like fighting bulls. In the Zone, the sheep—who actually were more or less “gentle”—also knocked down children and even adults, and the sparrows dive-bombed passersby, bloodying their foreheads. In Nuevo Bazar, a sort of arch-enmity, arch-disgust, arch-rage, flared up out of the clear blue sky, directed at everything and everybody, more virulently at the familiar than the unfamiliar, without any particular cause, insisting on expression through violence; and directed primarily at the people closest to one, and most nakedly and fiercely at the person one loved most intimately: the Zone, at least in this initial and transitional period, could be fatal to love and conjugal life. In Nuevo Bazar, he said, one was two thousand light-years away from home and from love.

  And since here, too, the historian had merely made assertions rather than providing explanations, at the end of his insinuations he threw in just one explanation, a single one, and one that seemed deliberately shoddy: a reason for the sudden switch from nonviolence to often lethal violence was the artificial daylight in the Zone. “Murder and manslaughter can be attributed to the light.” Yet he said not a word about the properties of this light or what there was about it that produced such effects. Only this: “Toward midnight the light suddenly begins to be too much, especially for those who are not accustomed to it.”

  There was some truth to this, according to my heroine: the artificial light around the glass tent of the Lone Star Café seemed even a few degrees harsher, also more palpable, than the light elsewhere in Nuevo Bazar. Besides, it had a different coloration from the rest of the light, which was a hazy yellowish gray; it was pale violet, similar to the light after sunset over an ice-smooth glacier, and in this light, the bodies of objects, of the cars parking outside (apart from which there were no other objects there), and of people (only those sitting inside, no more pedestrians) acquired even sharper contours, yes, sharp edges, like sliced laboratory sections.

  Midnight around the bar lit up by an ambulance and a police car? Perhaps: if the lights have stopped flashing and merely illuminate the space. But that, too, was not accurate, for the impression was deceptively like that of “day,” of a day that should long since have turned to night, and which simply refused to become night, “come hell or high water.”

  And in this light the witness saw her almost-friend continue plunging in the knife, no longer into her husband and best beloved, who was long since dead, but indiscriminately into those seated at the next tables, with screams like those that had occurred in the middle of her successful ballad (or was I merely imagining this? Wasn’t she silent as she wielded the knife?): a woman’s attempt at running amok; as if she had jumped in to take the place of the person staggering along the diagonal street earlier—and now she was promptly stopped by a couple of policemen, or members of a military patrol?, in plainclothes, with whom, as it now turned out, the glass tent was packed.

  The moment in which the woman stood there handcuffed, waiting to be taken away (the image instantly appearing live on all the television screens): the essence of gentle beauty, as if transfigured. Next to her, in place of her husband, who had been taken away even faster, in a different way, sawdust strewn on the ground. And only now can one see: she is dressed like a woman wayfarer from a much earlier century, riding in a coach to one of the kings of the time, Charles the Fifth, Philip the Second, with a shipment of money to deliver, and she, the donor of the money, is equal in station to the queen. And aren’t the other guests also in costume? A midnight costume ball at the Lone Star Café in the center of Nuevo Bazar on the mesa? An incident or scenario that was actually a sort of placeholder for a prologue, such as she had in mind for her book?

  Television off. Music off. Lights out, not only in the bar but also in the entire settlement. No more artificial day: a pitch-dark postmidnight hour; then the night light gradually creeping in, the night sky arching overhead. Everyone leaving, including her. And, now, in the night, no problem finding her way home to the hostel. With the flood heaters in the air over Nuevo Bazar turned off, the cold of the wintry steppe streaming in from all directions. A rushing in one’s ears, as if in the barrenness high overhead, in the pitch darkness, the crowns of trees were stirring. A return of the sense of taste, tasting of the air and the icy wind.

  Not another person out and about, from one minute to the next, as was almost the rule in this southern part of Europe (although the region had nothing southerly about it). Only an idiot, astonishingly old, by the way, almost a graybeard, with a harelip, making his nocturnal rounds, seemingly as always, with a flashlight, shining it first on her, then on himself, and doffing his knitted cap as he passed: “Buenas noches, señora andante!; Buenas noches, señora de mi
alma!” (Good night, lady out walking … lady of my soul!).

  14

  Back at the hostel, with the help of a tiny light attached to the front-door key, she lit her way up to her compartment in the gallery off the interior courtyard. The curtains to all the sleeping compartments were drawn and hooked from the inside. If there was a light on in any compartment, it did not show.

  On the other hand, at considerable intervals, and each time from farapart sections of the patio, came a variety of noises and sounds; yet hardly the usual, more-or-less regular sounds made by sleepers; rather almost inaudible ones here, more distinct ones there, and in particular sudden sounds that ceased abruptly, like voices responding to each other, or like certain voices involuntarily led by others, amid the all-the-more-powerful silence that enveloped the hostel from top to bottom; a silence as physical as only the deep sleep of a very disparate crowd can generate; a crowd in which each person is not at home in this place, having found his way there from quite distant parts, by difficult, if not life-threatening, paths, and, in his sleeping compartment at last, and safe for this night at least, has tossed and turned for hours before finally falling asleep; but then from sleeping berth to sleeping berth; and one person right after the other, the first as a sort of sleep-leader among maybe a hundred, drawing the rest along into the now general deep sleep; and as if this sleep had come only with the arrival of the woman, the last guest to turn in.