Crossing the Sierra De Gredos (8 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

BOOK: Crossing the Sierra De Gredos
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A strange state of affairs: back home hardly anyone knew who she was, and that helped her feel at home there, but elsewhere many people recognized her, and this recognition was usually accompanied by hostility. Threats, danger, exposure: so there were times when one experienced oneself out there in the real world only this way, as an adventurer more or less against one's will? And now she suddenly found herself back—at last—in just such a period (which in the meantime had faded from memory, relegated to the realm of legend). Heroic life? From now on, nothing but the heroic life! (We shall see.) She swung her bag onto her back and now had both hands free. And she stuck one of the feathers from her belt into her hatband.
It was a man's hat. Except that in the period when she undertook her legendary journey there was hardly anything for men that could not also be for women (the reverse, however, was hardly the case). From the top of her head to the tips of her boots she had on nothing that a man could not have worn just as well. Yet the way she wore it, and the way she strode along: there, under the open sky, on the shoulder of the highway, this was a woman if ever there was one, and not a woman disguised as a man, but a woman with rather broad shoulders, unusually large hands, and also rather large feet, recognizable from a distance, at first glance, as a woman to the core, as never before: Good God, what should one look at if not at her? And will she favor me now with so much as a glance?
Yes, she did look at me as she passed, in fact straight at me, and so sweetly, it seems to me, with a positively kind smile, or was she just making fun of me? Or did she not even register my presence, and her miraculous smile was inspired by her mental images—remembered or anticipated? As I turned to look after her, expecting her to do the same, all I can see is her rolling shoulders, already at a distance, and I see her pull a handkerchief out of her deep pocket and ceremoniously unfold it to the rhythm of her stride and blow her nose in the same fashion (and yet heartily), a handkerchief, or snot rag, as if from olden times, with blue and red checks, an embroidered monogram, not hers but that of her village grandfather, from whom her tight-fitting, seemingly bulletproof vest may have come as well, with braid woven of fine bronze wire, broken in many places and sticking out like jewelry, her only jewelry? No, she was also
wearing earrings, a necklace, and bangles, which had jingled as she passed, and she looked made up, without any added color, even painted, her features seeming traced, her eyes in particular outlined to emphasize their shining. To whom was she on her way? To what party? And why was she walking alone, did not invite me to walk with her?
And what did she have back there in her apparently weightless bag, that of a parachute jumper? A parachute? Whose cord she would pull when she needed it? Certainly none of the following were in it: a hairdryer; flares; a framed photograph; a gold-plated ballpoint pen that could double as a flashlight; a bathing suit; a sleeping bag; a compass; suntan oil; today's newspaper; a nightgown; binoculars; a magnifying glass; a microscope; a lighter; a razor blade; a novel, a volume of poetry, a travel guide (at least not an ordinary one); small gifts; slippers; a survival kit; a spare hat, a spare vest, a spare pair of pants, spare boots, a spare vial of perfume.
So she was wearing perfume? No. But as she passed me that time on the highway, she seemed to be surrounded by an invisible nimbus, a nimbus made up of the breeze caused by her motion and coldness, a perfume of unparalleled freshness, and she positively exuded this breath of coldness, her lips most of all. I wanted to turn back at once and follow it, follow her; catch up with her. But she moved too fast for me, and not only for me. (This kind of narrative, too, dear reader, this bowing and scraping, is supposed to remain a rarity as events unfold, if it in fact intrudes at all.)
The day of her departure fell in the middle of the week. At any rate, Sunday was still far off; she already knew where she wanted to be by then, and was looking forward to it. The sudden change in the weather, the break in the cold, also swept away the last obstacle to her wanderlust: perhaps in compensation she would experience the frost, the continuation of pure winter weather that she had wanted to last as long as possible, as all the more persistent on her expedition, even if this expedition would be taking place far down in the south, which, with a view from the Pico de Almanzor, was almost all the way to Africa (didn't
al-manzar
mean “the view” in Arabic? or did the name come from
al-mansûr
, “the victor”?, hadn't a victorious Arab general and king during the Middle Ages borne that name?).
In the Sierra de Gredos, the summit plain, extending from the eastern massif across the particularly high central massif and all the way to the western massif, a distance of almost two hundred kilometers along the ridge, would certainly (or “without a doubt,” one of the phrases in common use at the time of our story) be snow-covered, with the snow extending down into the highland valleys, and would no doubt remain so well into springtime. And when the January sun, so consistent during all the weeks leading up to her setting-out, veiled itself and then disappeared behind cloud banks moving in quickly from the west, that only contributed to her old, new, returning high spirits. The inky gleam of the asphalt, the clear, dark horizons, so far, far off, and the blue of the olives, covering the ground in a circle under the trees on the Sierra's southern slopes, where the time for shaking them to the ground and harvesting them would just have arrived! Even now, a thousand miles from there, up
here in the northwest, she jogged a few steps toward that blue-shrouded world.
From the beginning she had been one of the pioneers of new ways of life (which in turn might represent the return of ways of life that had been forgotten or seemingly rejected for good). But ways of life did not mean sensational carryings-on, a whole new terminology, ear-shattering parties, dreamlike couplings, futuristic organizations; did not mean anything generally considered future-oriented, but rather present-oriented or present-enhancing practices; did not mean anything public or officially sponsored, either, but arose only from her and for her, without any reference to society or even to a community, and it became a way of life only through example and suggestion, and because it was perhaps already in the air; nor did it lead to anything more than having something in common with this person or that, without any sense of belonging to a clique, an avant-garde, an elite; such nonconspiratorial and sporadic sharing with people who were otherwise strangers, who could go back to being strangers after an amused or timidly deferential meeting of the eyes, such sharing represented to her during that period not exactly the most lofty but just about the most truthful feelings; at any rate, people like her, she thought, did not need—at least for a transitional period—a sense of community, let alone a sense of society; what she was aiming for was a sense of life independent of society and all systems (except, of course, in her profession, but for now that was to appear in her story only as a blank, unwritten, white space, making the adjacent passages—everything was adjacent to it, after all!—appear all the more vivid and colorful). And from such a sense of life the new or revived old ways of life usually took shape on their own, and in turn preserved the sense of life and kept it vibrant.
What ways of life? Neither climbing trees nor plunging into holes chopped in the ice. Neither running marathons nor retracing old pilgrimage routes. Neither mushroom hunting nor sleeping in caves. Neither spiritual exercises on Mount Athos nor journeys on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Neither love-ins nor joining the Peace Corps. One example (which, truth be told, is no example at all): as a child in the Sorbian village, when it was raining, she had often dashed from her grandparents' house across the courtyard to the woodshed, because there, behind the slats that let in every wind gust, with her head almost bumping against the thin tin roof, she was so much closer to the action, the experience of “rain,” and it surprised her that she was always alone there, standing
among the stacks of firewood, within earshot of and facing the rain: a way of life!—but no one followed her and shared it with her. No, it did not merely surprise her but after a while actually infuriated her that she did not get anyone to share the experience with her: so even as a child she had the sense of mission that later appreciated in value with each article written about her.
A further example (which again is not an example): as a schoolgirl, and then as a university student, too, on all official occasions and at all public or political speeches, she made herself scarce as soon as possible, yet without leaving the hall: she would stay there, but would render herself invisible by going to sit or stand behind a curtain. And at such times there was always a curtain suitable for hiding behind—she would spot it immediately, and if it was not a curtain, then a blackboard, a screen, a map rack, or a wardrobe would serve the purpose. But it worked best, was most full of life, behind a real curtain, if possible a stage curtain, in front of which, at a lectern or such, the solemnities or whatever were taking place. Through the years, the schoolchild and later student of economics crouched in the dim light behind just such a stage curtain at every “event” (though in those days they did not yet use the English term), and felt surrounded by a space entirely different from the one out there in the social realm, felt that an entirely different time was in effect—but why did no one ever join her here, either? for wouldn't even her enemies—from childhood on she already had a large flock of enemies—if they had only stepped behind the curtain where she was hiding, have promptly if not forgotten their enmity, at least put it aside for a few moments—decisive moments?! Where are you, you fellows? Why do you not come out and admit it: This is the right way!? What do you expect to accomplish out there in that phony light; have you forgotten the rest of the world? Was she a Cassandra? No, to people like that she would not have pointed out impending disaster. No catastrophe-early-warning mission. No treason. No messing with destruction. But all the same, a child, a girl, a woman with a mission?
Not until much later did she find here and there some who shared her little idiosyncrasies when it came to ways of life. But that was in a period when she had long since ceased to be surprised and annoyed that no one cared to imitate her. That, for example, she kept the identity of her child's father a secret: in those days quite a few women did the same; and, like her, these women managed to live without a man. Another, rather
small, example, more a feature of everyday life than of the larger arc of life: among a minority (though not a statistically relevant one, and not merely in her region but throughout the world), it had become the custom not to listen to music anymore, either at home or at concerts; merely the custom or a deliberately chosen way of life? A way of life. And a further, even more insignificant, example: another tiny minority had taken to turning off the lights in their houses and simply sitting quietly in the dark, at a window or in front of a screen: a mere habit or a way of life? A way of life.
Another such new or old way of life could be seen in the way she set out for the airport now. She walked to the airport, which lay almost half a day's journey on foot from her city in the northwest; she hiked to her plane. She had started undertaking such hikes long before this, whenever she had time, and as we know, she always had plenty of time.
She had undertaken the first such hike in Berlin, when she walked from a street off the Kurfürstendamm all the way to the entrance to Tegel Airport. Although it was a weekday, in her memory it became a Sunday. She followed Schloss-Strasse, looped around Charlottenburg Palace, first taking a slight detour into the Egyptian Museum, followed Tegeler Weg along the perimeter of the palace grounds, unexpectedly found herself walking along the Spree—which she remembered from her childhood in the Sorbian village as a rivulet, unprepossessing yet deep—almost close enough for dipping one's hand into and at the same time fast-moving, winding, meandering, alternating between river-breadth and brook-narrowness, then, before the branching-off of the West Harbor Canal, even coming up with a real island, the water pulsing westward in wide, rhythmic curves, following the drainage bed of the ancient river valley, with a hint of long ago in the wind currents and the shimmering at the bends, which detracted not at all from its presentness. And onward, then as now, turning north, away from the Spree, on the shoulder of the city autobahn, with the Jungfernheide on the left and Plötzensee on the right—was she still in Berlin?—scrambling half-illegally through allotment gardens and over fences, pinching fruit from the trees, slipping under barbed wire, dodging ferocious dogs (although after their first, feigned lunging they backed off even faster, into the farthest corner), shouting at fleeing rabbits, whereupon these halted just before their bramble bush and pricked up their ears, and a few moments later came the automatic doors of the terminal,
with its monitors and loudspeaker announcements like “Moscow,” “Teneriffe,” “Faro,” “Antalya,” “Baghdad” (as she was still crawling through the brambles onto the tarmac, the destinations were being called out, sounding as though they were coming from the airplane engines just being started above her head).
Later she almost preferred walking home after a landing in her area, often hiking from the runway over hill and dale straight to her house. And in this practice, too, she was not alone. By now quite a few people made their way home in this fashion, especially after long trips; hiked the last stretch, which could sometimes take longer than the whole flight. Besides, when going in this direction one had no need to fear arriving in a crowd, as could happen at the airport: initially one might be more or less accompanied by others, in a fairly large (though usually rather small) group, but then one person after another would peel off, and one would reach one's destination alone.
Now homecomers of this sort could also be recognized even at a distance by their (deceptively) light luggage, which nonetheless was clearly luggage, well traveled (without stickers), and by a certain self-assurance, almost arrogance, in their gait that allowed them to walk along the shoulder without wasting so much as a sideways glance at the vehicles rushing by them, often passing perilously close on purpose and honking senselessly. Among themselves, too, they acknowledged each other at most with a once-over out of the corner of the eye: such an acknowledgment providing a sort of sustenance to keep them going.
Nevertheless she then wanted to persuade the author of her story to come up with a different beginning for her journey: hadn't too much been revealed already, less about her—she perhaps had something entirely different to reveal—than about the circumstances prevailing at the time, which, as previously mentioned, were supposed to be portrayed more “ex negativo,” through things that did not make up the foreground? The author: “But isn't that what has just been described?”—She: “Why not let me take a boat down the river? or: ‘She walked to the large new bus station on the very edge of the city, where buses depart several times a week for all the other riverport cities on the continent: for Belgrade, for Vienna, for Düsseldorf, for Budapest, for Saragossa, for Seville, and across to Tangiers by ferry, each of these modern buses more fantastical or dreamlike than the one before, hardly recognizable as buses anymore,
interplanetary transport modules—only the clock in the bus station still the same as when I moved here a decade and a half ago, still showing the wrong time, five hours fast, or seven hours slow.'”
The author: “But what will happen to the message of your book?” —She: “What message?”—The author: “For instance the one about the new or recaptured ways of life.”—She: “Well, have you ever had a message?” —The author: “Yes, messages and more messages. But only the kind my book unexpectedly presented to me.”—She: “Happy messages?” —The author: “Up to now, almost exclusively happy ones.”
With scratched forehead and muddy boots, her, and our, arrival at the terminal. So much fresh air earlier, and now, from one step to the next, in a different element. Element? Almost exclusively revolving doors now, holding back the world outside. But even where an old-style door stood open for a bit, no breath of air made its way into the hall. On the gleaming floor no footprints but hers. Nothing but scrape marks from suitcase wheels and luggage carts. Not a speck of free space; every inch of the airport floor occupied by people walking, standing, queueing up, running—each sticking to the beeline to which he or she had laid claim. Many talking loudly to themselves—no, they were shouting at people who were not there. But not every one with a hand to one ear was holding a so-called mobile telephone: here and there amid the racket a person simply cupped his hand over his ear and kept silent.
In one place there were drops of what looked like a nosebleed, in a dice pattern: one of the passengers, of whom there were not a few, had walked into an interior glass wall, perhaps seeing a reflection of the outside and thinking he was outdoors? On all sides, illuminated maps of the world and globes rotating as if four-dimensionally—was this the atlas of distant places from her childhood? Or is the atlas of distant places instead the view from my window here? Where are you all trying to get to, with destinations you have been talked into or forced to choose, at times, on days, and for a length of time over which you also have no control, that you must allow others to determine, and all of which—destination, departure and arrival time, duration—have nothing to do with your former and perhaps persisting love of travel, as well as your still possible spontaneous longing to set out, rendered impossible, however, by this dictatorship of money and the computer? Didn't the current restrictions on travel conflict with the right to freedom of choice, one of the fundamental rights
enumerated in democratic constitutions, and the need for spontaneity—the pleasure of surprising oneself and others? (“End of message”)

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