by Peter Handke
I did not know whether you had a child
I did not know where your country was
I did not know how many reals, maravedis, and dubloons you had
I did not know when you came into the world
I did not know what your intentions were
But I knew and knew and knew who you were
I knew the lines of your hand
I knew the length of your stride
I knew your scars
I knew your childhood diseases
I knew your passport number
I knew your voice
I knew your habits
I knew your tastes
I knew your circle of friends
I knew your rhythm
But I did not know, did not know you
I no longer knew the color of your skin
I no longer knew your shoe size
I no longer knew your neck size
I no longer knew your blood group
I no longer knew your favorite trees
I no longer knew your favorite animals
I no longer knew your preferences
I no longer knew your Zodiac sign
I no longer knew your name
I no longer knew your day- and night dreams
I no longer knew your direction
I no longer knew the day of your death
I no longer had an image of you
But I knew and knew and knew of you
What a young voice to go with her face, so ageless. And at last, in the middle of the song, she had found the pitch, and one time even uttered the shrill Sorbian-Oriental whistle. And the song was called: Guilt Was Healed. Healed and avenged. The song was called: Vengeance Is Mine. And that alone was the best revenge.
This tenth- or twelfth-from-last paragraph of our tale of the loss of images, as it is supposed to be told, on and on, for the centuries to come—for what else? and for whom else?—for him and her, and for all souls—was transsected by the gravel highway, in Arabic tariq hamm, where the aventurera, the asendereada and ablaha, paused in her running. Her footprints were erased by the hem of her dress. A single dwarf tree stood there, a little oak, let us say, from whose leaves the dew no longer merely dripped but showered, in a pelting downpour, while round about silence reigned. In the sky a false Milky Way from a plane’s jet contrail. The wind was blowing, but it had no strength to stir the tree’s leaves. Next to its dark form, the bright spot glowing in the exact shape of the tree: its nocturnal afterimage. (This sentence I stole from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. And the word “highway” reminds me that in an earlier time the inhabitants of the village in La Mancha, when one of their loved ones fell ill, had the habit of running out on the highway and begging one of the foreigners, who passed that way more often in those days, to come into the house of the sick man and heal him—but it had to be a total stranger!)
Then her hand on her hip, which reminds me of two lovers who had agreed to meet after years of separation, and then unexpectedly passed each other on the road before the appointed time, and acted, or had to act, as though they did not see each other, and both thereupon betrayed the meeting and their love. But now they went into the house, and the story was over? Not yet.
Sitting inside in the dark. To be seen there, on a table in the back, the author’s pencils lying higgledy-piggledy, smeared with mud, clay, mica, as if he had dug in the ground with them. Next to them his collection of Jew’s harps, most of them rusty, each one propped up like a praying mantis; to strike one after the other supposedly added depth to the epic.
Was this really his own house, his warehouse or almacén? Or had he merely rented it for the night and filled it with props?
Sitting there created a connection and a link at the same time with what was happening out in the empty and now Madonna-less Mancha: one sat there, in the company of a yellowish, almost red, camel that was swaying along the tariq hamm; in the company of a child making its way home, pushing a twig ahead of it through the dust as a divining rod; in the company of the cloud dunes covering the moon, to which down on the residual earth a white, barely noticeable sand dune corresponded.
But were the windmills missing? No. They were turning on all the horizons; their old wooden vanes creaking. And still that thirst, a burning one. And still the obstacles, as there should be, and still the mutual storytelling, about what? “The pages tell their life, the knights their love” (again your Miguel). And in spite of the coolness of an October night in La Mancha, a warmth in the hands, there especially, as if they were sticking in sun-heated hay. Saghir-aisinn was the strangely long Arabic word for “young.” She, the mature youthful woman. Covet the body when it trembles.
Were their two bodies, then, not in such a hurry? No—because all that time they had been literally inscribed in one another. And compás was a Spanish expression for “rhythm.” Yes, he had been expecting it only from her, the woman, the aventurera, the asendereada, the ablaha, the aldeana. What? It.
Two falling stars, one with a long tail, one with a short one: Who was who? The castanet-like clicking in the deep pockets of her dress, what did it come from? From the last couple of chestnuts and hazelnuts, the last remains of her provisions, her survival rations. And still the last gulp of wine in her mouth, unswallowed.
This night was supposed to go on and on; no day and no additional sun were needed now.
Once she had dreamed a dream with nothing but taste in her mouth; in which the entire dream was nothing but tasting and taste. Hondareda! She would rename the settlement “La Nueva Numancia,” after Numancia, the original settlement in the meseta to which the Romans had laid siege far more than two thousand years ago and which they had eventually leveled completely. No one had ever lived, done things, worked, left things undone, like the people of Hondareda or Nueva Numancia, and never again would anyone live, do things, work, and leave things undone like the people of Hondareda or Nueva Numancia far off in the Sierra de Gredos—fortunately? unfortunately? Only a story? Imagination: the crown of reason. There was a form of searching in which the thing sought seemed to have been found already, far more real and potent than if it had really been found. And such searching was the searching on behalf of someone else and for others.
And finally, the bed made up with old linens, shimmering as white as snow, somewhere in a remote spot in the Fugger warehouse-palace, as if in another country (the author had situated it in the cellar, in the underground vault)—at last! And the great rush of blood toward the other person set in, at last. And the river of return flowed, unlike any other. And the in-between spaces glowed: one was ready for the other person. Twitching of lips. Stumbling along in the dark, as over the hummocks in a stalactite cave. All as it should be. Standing on tiptoe in the dark was not easy. And who held whom? And: that was still not it, not yet completely. But it came close, as close as it could.
And for the last series of sentences in the tale of the loss of images, the author for a change allowed something that he otherwise abhorred: that a story, instead of dealing with problems, asking questions, and taking detours, narrated itself, without problems, without questions, and without detours, so to speak—no, without “so to speak.” And he sensed that the story was true. And what made him sense that? (No questions!) He sensed it from its beginning or commencement—no, already before that (no detours!)—in his heart; and toward the end he felt it in his hair—no, in the roots of his hair, in his scalp (do not turn this into a problem!)—and especially in his legs.
And with that the story was done, and we went home. In the storytelling site the lights were turned off. On our way home, it started to snow. It was as if a garment were being draped over us. A bird flew through the flakes and played with them.
A vehicle halted at its destination, at the end of a long, long journey, and continued to sway after coming to a standstill. And this swaying did not end all that soon; will not have ended all that soon.
ALSO BY PETER HANDKE
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Ki
ck
Short Letter, Long Farewell
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays
A Moment of True Feeling
The Left-Handed Woman
The Weight of the World
Slow Homecoming
Across
Repetition
The Afternoon of a Writer
Absence
Kaspar and Other Plays
The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling
My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay
On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House
Copyright © 2002 by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main
Translation copyright © 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2002 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany, as Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
www.fsgbooks.com
Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott
eISBN 9781466807112
First eBook Edition : December 2011
First American edition, 2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Handke, Peter.
[Bildverlust, oder, Durch die Sierra de Gredos. English]
Crossing the Sierra de Gredos / Peter Handke ; translated by Krishna Winston.
—1 st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-28154-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-374-28154-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Winston, Krishna. II. Title
PT2668.A5B5513 2007
833’.914—dc22
2006031525
