by Peter Handke
Then I said, “I’m reluctant to write about the steppe in your story. First of all: where does such a steppe still exist in Europe? And then I don’t like the word. ‘Steppe.’ It seems overused.”
The pharmacist’s reply: “But my story doesn’t take place on a ‘meadow,’ and also not on a ‘prairie.’ It was the ‘steppe’! I went onto the ‘steppe.’ I crossed the ‘steppe.’ There are certain words for which no substitutes exist, words that even keep the same form over thousands of years, very few—for instance rossignol, the nightingale, which was written in the medieval epics exactly the way it is today, or la joie, joy, or la gué, a ford, or le droit, right, or perdu, lost. And there’s also the steppe, the region. Almost all Spanish towns are located by themselves on the steppe, hundreds of steppe miles from the next town, Ávila, Salamanca, even Madrid. The Alhambra in Granada is located on a rocky promontory overlooking the steppe. From the Mezquita in Córdoba it’s a few steps to the Río Guadalquivír, and from there onto the steppe, where the goats drag their full udders along. Even here in Taxham there’s the steppe, or, as it’s rather pejoratively called, steppification, and not only on the railroad embankment and the place that’s kept free for the circus, which in any case doesn’t come anymore. And in my lab, that’s a steppe bouquet, not flowers, just their empty, indestructible, endlessly varied calyxes and holders. Never will I throw away this bouquet! One time I sat on the steppe by a lone tree and received a nudge from behind, as if from a horse, urging me to ride on: This nudge came from the steppe tree’s trunk in the wind. It was and is the steppe, and it has to be called ‘the steppe.’ And you have to make the reader eager to experience the steppe—and also afraid of it, within reason. Smell this! I’m not really sure whether the sense of smell has the strongest memory. But when exercised regularly, it certainly prevents forgetfulness. And here, taste this: a dried bitter steppe mushroom, good for headaches, sensations of unreality or madness, all forms of blarney, muteness, the staleness of being alone.”
“This is the prescription man speaking,” I thought—and only now saw the scars on the pharmacist’s forehead, and that they weren’t completely healed yet.
And he said, after a pause, “Out there on the steppe, now and then I was even thrilled with myself, amazing for an older person, and particularly amazing for me. And believe me, or look: No one can be trusted who isn’t thrilled with himself at least now and then.”
* * *
Long before the first bird, a jogger turning up—so there were joggers in Taxham now?—coughing and gasping, as if he were calling for his mother in the middle of the last world war.
And, after another pause, the pharmacist: “And besides, you have to slip into my story the word ‘pause.’ ‘He paused.’ First of all, it’s an expression that sounds poetic in German—innehalten—and then pausing gives strength, is an intervention, in the course of events, in the blind course of events, in the world’s blind course of events, in the flood of phenomena, in all the talk, including your own inner flood, and good for racing of the heart, rushing in the ears, stomachache, and many other things.”
And after a longish such “pause,” a final prescription: “Write nothing but love stories from now on! Love and adventure stories, nothing else! — Someone went away. The house became silent. But something was still missing: I hadn’t heard a certain door close.”
* * *
“Come on now, snow!” one of us said. And in fact a flake now flashed. “Here it comes, the snow!” we said in unison.
And now the first bird appeared on this morning, a fat raven, who screeched and squawked and craned his neck as if he were choking down a snake.
“Go ahead, raven, screech and squawk,” said the pharmacist of Taxham in the voice that had almost been failing him for a long time now, the voice that first had to find its way out of him: “I know perfectly well you can also do otherwise.”
Summer/Fall 1996
About the Author
Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. He is the author of books, plays and screenplays, including the recent novel Crossing the Sierra de Gredos (FSG, 2007) and the nonfiction work Don Juan - His Own Version (FSG, 2010). You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Peter Handke
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
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
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Note
One
Two
Three
Four
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Peter Handke
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright © 1997 by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main
Translation copyright © 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
All rights reserved
First published in 1997 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany, as In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First edition, 2000
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eISBN 9781466895393
First eBook edition: November 2015
