Crossing the Sierra De Gredos (26 page)
Read Crossing the Sierra De Gredos Online
Authors: Peter Handke
And in the most silent hour of the night, the one before the predawn graying of the sky, still at the speed of a walk, the two of them will have neared, by way of the secret route, the crossing point, recognizable only to her brother, devoted to even the smallest feature in his elective country, and thus to the alpine-hut-like shelter of his new lover. In the meantime, that moment when the brother will have become aware that he has just shaken off the last breath or scent of the years in prison, the mustiness swept away and out of the world by a clump of stones under a snow tire: a powerful push from deep, deep inside, which is followed as a matter of course by his free hand's groping for the hip of the strange woman.
The principal traveler awakened as if someone had been moving through her all night, crawling through her armpits, stepping on her ribs, balancing above her legs. She opened her eyes: in spite of the heavy curtain, the red light of dawn filtering into the berth. A body next to her; or no, her own body, her chest and stomach and knees, nestled against the back, buttocks, and knee hollows of someone else, almost as if her body and the stranger's were one.
She found herself waking up in the company of the young girl from the next compartment. Had the girl crept in with her during the night? No, again the opposite: in her sleep she had sought out her neighbor. So she was sleepwalking again, as she had done long ago in the village, as a child, but never since then. And how she had nestled against the other person's back! This person, the girl, lay there sound asleep, with sleep-puffy lips; the rock-crystal chess pieces set up in orderly ranks for a new game, within easy reach.
Moving, as if weightless, from the stranger's berth back to her own. Everywhere else, blessed stillness, not only in the
venta
. “Saved!” Falling asleep again in her own bed, this time without any dreams. Awakening refreshed, after a couple of deep breaths. Pulling open the sleeping compartment's curtain, carefully, so as not to wake anyone.
venta
. “Saved!” Falling asleep again in her own bed, this time without any dreams. Awakening refreshed, after a couple of deep breaths. Pulling open the sleeping compartment's curtain, carefully, so as not to wake anyone.
She wanted to be the first one up, and to remain alone like this for as long as possible, surrounded by the thousands who were sleeping peacefully at last, if only for the time being. In the morning chill of the mesa, gusting from above into the open inner courtyard, a larger, intensely frosty, almost breathtaking cold: a breath of the air from the peaks of the Sierra de Gredos, invisible from the new settlement down in the hollow.
She made the hostel bed, shaking the bedclothes out over the patio, smoothing and stretching the linens, as if the bed were located on her own estate and she were beginning the day there with simple household chores. Yet she carried them out several degrees more meticulously than back home in the riverport city; she could not leave a single wrinkle or lump in the bedâfrom which the hostel maid would later promptly strip the bedding. In the same way, after her solitary, ceremonial morning ablutions in the still empty common bathroom, as big as a hall, she applied shoe cream and polished her laced boots with more obvious care than ever at home; combed her hair longer than before going to a party there (not to mention before going to the office).
She did notice that, unlike on the other mornings, not one image from other places where she had once been flashed before her or came dancing along, although she performed these everyday actions so much more carefully and calmly, but this fact did not trouble her: she ascribed it to the peculiarity of the “Zone” of Nuevo Bazar, including its location in the hollow.
It gave her pause that one of her bootlaces broke and that her brush split in half while she was brushing her hair. She had always experienced such misfortunes, often precisely after a confident awakening, and from one time to the next, the more trivial they were, the more menacingly they restricted if not the day then at least its first hour, which had seemed so open to possibilities. No matter that the author indicated to her that according to his research “all truly beautiful women” (“truly beautiful” in the sense that they goaded everyone who saw them to go forth and seek his own lost beauty) were clumsy, and that precisely this trait animated their beauty and produced a soothing effect: she herself remained cross at her clumsiness, did not consider it harmless, but rather an expression of the guilt she was keeping to herselfâwhereupon the author, as was actually to be expected, retorted that “all truly beautiful women” were afflicted with a more or less vague sense of guilt, and precisely that ⦠and so on.
After breakfast from her bag, which resembled something not just from the Middle Ages but from an even more bygone timeâleftovers, but what leftovers! packed up for her by her friend the chefâin the gallery, at the one small table there (making constant noises, but the softest possible, so as to allow the others to continue sleeping, better and more gently than complete absence of sound), she went down to the ground floor. There, surprisingly, the entire hostel staff, which was numerous, already up and
preparing for the day: filling out orders, writing up menus, carrying cases of wine down to the cellar. And from them, too, came no loud sounds. Voices uniformly quiet, yet without whispering, and thus also no hissing.
preparing for the day: filling out orders, writing up menus, carrying cases of wine down to the cellar. And from them, too, came no loud sounds. Voices uniformly quiet, yet without whispering, and thus also no hissing.
And overnight various
venta
people seemed to have switched roles in some way. One who the previous evening had stood way in the back of the kitchen as a dishwasher was now sitting in the booth at the entryway, obviously the boss. The girl in the taproom the day before, hardly out of school, was now his wife, her hair drawn back tightly, wearing a gray suit and holding a child in her arms. The only other guest, at one of the neighboring tables, was busy today in the boiler room, serving as the house electrician and plumber. The chamber- or compartment maid from before, who had shyly backed away from every stranger, was the boss's sister, now a teacher by profession, sitting this morning in a corner and, with a stern face and expansive gestures, correcting the last of her pupils' notebooks.
venta
people seemed to have switched roles in some way. One who the previous evening had stood way in the back of the kitchen as a dishwasher was now sitting in the booth at the entryway, obviously the boss. The girl in the taproom the day before, hardly out of school, was now his wife, her hair drawn back tightly, wearing a gray suit and holding a child in her arms. The only other guest, at one of the neighboring tables, was busy today in the boiler room, serving as the house electrician and plumber. The chamber- or compartment maid from before, who had shyly backed away from every stranger, was the boss's sister, now a teacher by profession, sitting this morning in a corner and, with a stern face and expansive gestures, correcting the last of her pupils' notebooks.
And similarly, out on the otherwise empty street, one of the falling-down drunks from the previous evening's crowd had become a traffic policeman, on duty but with nothing to do, standing all the straighter out there with no one around. And in the next figure, the only one far and wide, she recognized the person who, the night before, had been filled with wild despair and looking daggers, but in the light of the new day had been transformed into a brisk jogger and, dressed accordingly, was bounding lightfootedly over all possible obstacles, even seeking out wheelbarrows, traffic barriers, and garbage cans as he circled the Zone for the sixteenth or twenty-fourth time.
To the vacant lot, the only one remaining, where she had left her car the previous day: the site built up overnight, the exterior walls already erected, only the roof still missing. Had that really been the place? Yes; the splintered medallion with the white angel still lay in the construction debris, among other tiny fragments. On a side street her Santana Landrover: smashed and burned out. No surprise: she had already dreamed this. And no thought of reporting it to the police, but on the contrary: “All right. Time to go. Now everything can get under way.” (Here the author characteristically deleted the exclamation pointâmerely hinted at in any caseâin contrast to his positively elaborate question marks.)
So off to the bus station, to which no sign had pointed for a long time already, but which was familiar to her from earlier, together with the
venta
the only somewhat older structure in Nuevo Bazar, with a round inner courtyard in place of the hostel's rectangular one. In this circle now
dozens of buses, their engines running, roaring with readiness to hit the road, the rotunda mottled with blue clouds of exhaust. Boarding one particular bus without hesitation, taking the last free seatâhow many people had suddenly turned up in the bus, after the hour of emptiness that morningâ, the door closing, and off they go. In the mirror above the driver, her face, one among many: she almost does not find it, almost does not recognize herself in the violently vibrating bus-mirror image. But the turnoff from the previous evening is the sameâexcept that the sign seems to have become even smaller and more out of date, as if no longer valid, scrapped: “ÃvilaâSierra de Gredos.”
venta
the only somewhat older structure in Nuevo Bazar, with a round inner courtyard in place of the hostel's rectangular one. In this circle now
dozens of buses, their engines running, roaring with readiness to hit the road, the rotunda mottled with blue clouds of exhaust. Boarding one particular bus without hesitation, taking the last free seatâhow many people had suddenly turned up in the bus, after the hour of emptiness that morningâ, the door closing, and off they go. In the mirror above the driver, her face, one among many: she almost does not find it, almost does not recognize herself in the violently vibrating bus-mirror image. But the turnoff from the previous evening is the sameâexcept that the sign seems to have become even smaller and more out of date, as if no longer valid, scrapped: “ÃvilaâSierra de Gredos.”
The faces of quite a few of the passengers looked familiar. While boarding the bus, she had involuntarily nodded to them, and her greeting had been returned promptly and as a matter of course. And the driver seemed familiar as well. And she knew where she had seen him before, unlike the others. He was the one she had taken the previous night for the new settlement's idiot, the one who had looked almost like an old man, with the harelip, shining his flashlight into her face. By daylight, in the rearview mirror, the same harelip, only less noticeable, under a broad pug nose. Yet no more resemblance to an idiot or an old man.
As usual the driver was engaged in conversation with someone on the seat diagonally behind him, without ever turning to look at this passenger. But the person he was talking to was not the young girl who would usually stand next to the driver, displaying herself to the other riders and thus making herself the star of the bus trip, but a child, the driver's young son, still far from adolescence. And several more children on the bus, all crowded together in the back; the vehicle also serving as a school bus. And the windows in the midsection blocked all the way to the roof by bookshelves, every inch of space filled with books, a sort of darkened corridor; the bus also serving as a traveling lending library.
From where did she recognize one fellow passenger or another? These were no cases of mistaken identity. They had met before, and not merely once, though not in this particular way and constellation, which was as new to her as to the others, but rather in their everyday settings, where she, the adventurer, and the familiar faces likewise, in contrast to here, were all at home. They had had a relationshipâbut where? in the riverport city? or earlier in the Sorbian village? or at some other way station in her life and his and theirs?âif perhaps not a daily relationship,
nonetheless a fairly constant, regular one; and even if such a relationship far away in their shared setting had no doubt been a rather impersonal and fleeting/momentary one, for instance that of seller and buyer, of mail carrier and mail recipient, of cemetery superintendent and visitor, or simply of passersby on the, her, their, particular street, on opposite sidewalks each time, here and now in this unfamiliar and remote region, very early in the morning, unexpectedly together in this somewhat unusual vehicle, heading for a not exactly frequented region, they appeared close and familiar as never before, familiar half an eternity already, familiar almost like accomplices or even desperados who had already been involved in some pretty unsavory schemes together and were now setting out on a particularly shady adventure.
nonetheless a fairly constant, regular one; and even if such a relationship far away in their shared setting had no doubt been a rather impersonal and fleeting/momentary one, for instance that of seller and buyer, of mail carrier and mail recipient, of cemetery superintendent and visitor, or simply of passersby on the, her, their, particular street, on opposite sidewalks each time, here and now in this unfamiliar and remote region, very early in the morning, unexpectedly together in this somewhat unusual vehicle, heading for a not exactly frequented region, they appeared close and familiar as never before, familiar half an eternity already, familiar almost like accomplices or even desperados who had already been involved in some pretty unsavory schemes together and were now setting out on a particularly shady adventure.
And each of them brooded, for at least part of the way, over where he or she had had something to do with her, under what murky circumstances? And what guilt they had incurred toward one another back at home? Or she toward him? Or him toward her there? Or had it been only in their thoughts? And now deeds would follow here. But if the few of them in the bus really (really?) did know each other from earlier: no one remembered from where or how. And the brooding soon ceased. They were all simply riding along; letting themselves be driven.
They were heading south, with numerous roads turning off to the left and right toward villages far from the main road and invisible from itâoften merely appearing to be villages, for once the bus passed the first houses, they often turned out to be towns, with a network of narrow, twisting streets and in the center a large, if unpaved, sandy square.
The terrain rose, fell, and rose in long waves, dips, and elevations, almost imperceptibly, as was usual on the mesa. But after a while the land climbed noticeably for quite a long stretch. Ice flowers formed around the rims of the bus windows and then melted away in the hour after sunrise. Despite the climb, hardly any curves. Instead, where previously there had been turnoffs, there were now repeated detours, taking them away from the
carretera
in great arcs and then back to it, traversing the bleak, barren landscape, an utterly uninhabited in-between region, on gravel tracks. No one had got on or off the bus.
carretera
in great arcs and then back to it, traversing the bleak, barren landscape, an utterly uninhabited in-between region, on gravel tracks. No one had got on or off the bus.
The only inhabited place visible from the road, at a distance, was the city of Ãvila, on its hill, far to the east; the houses of the old town almost hidden behind the encircling wall, bumped out in hundreds of places;
round about it on the high plain, New Ãvila, La Nueva Ãvila, the larger of the settlements, half cordoning off the hill with buildings, forming a second, very different perimeter. The black clouds above the cathedral tower were flocks of jackdaws, as always.
round about it on the high plain, New Ãvila, La Nueva Ãvila, the larger of the settlements, half cordoning off the hill with buildings, forming a second, very different perimeter. The black clouds above the cathedral tower were flocks of jackdaws, as always.
The bus had bypassed this old and new Ãvila, maintaining always the same distance. The detours in the uninhabited area now occurred in the same rhythm as previously the turnoffs to the villages or towns. Later, when she described the bus trip to the author, she kept falling into the first person plural. “We had long since taken off our earphones.” (Yet at most one or two girls were listening to their music this way in the beginning.) “Instead of watching the film on the monitor above the front windshield, we looked out the windows, and despite the low angle of the sun had drawn back all the curtains.” (Yet only she and the children in the back, whose view of the screen was blocked by the library shelves in the midsection of the bus, were not following the film. “We sat ramrod straight, our hands on the backrests in front of us. Although we were familiar with the route from long ago, at every turnoff and detour we wondered where we were now; was this really the route to the Sierra? was it possible that this familiar village had changed so much since the last time we passed through? only the name still the same? and over there, was that still the cliff from all the previous years, in the form of a rabbit stretched out on the ground? and is it only because of the detour that today we see in its place a kneeling camel?
“And on the one hand, as unfamiliar as the foreland of our Sierra de Gredos appeared to us in almost every detail, on the other hand it seemed tremendously homelike to us; the more novel, the more homelike. The more unknown the fountain in the marketplace thereâiced over, by the wayâthe clearer; we had had it before our eyes all along, and had merely overlooked it. The more surprisingly the medieval stone bridge arched away from the concrete bridge over which our bus drove straight ahead, the clearer: from the very beginning we had been crossing this section of bridge, we knew every stone, we could balance in our sleep on the remains of the parapet high above the rushing brook. The foreland was strange to us during that morning bus ride in a way that an area could appear strange only when we had not only traveled through it many times but had once actually resided and lived there, if very long ago. Resided long ago? Perhaps the entire time.”
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