Peter Handke - The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

Then they recount: “‘Cold,‘he said, ’cold, completely cold.‘”—“‘Ice,’ as she used to say then.”—“‘Like a glance out of a ranch house in Nebraska,’ they told us.”—“‘Where the train got stuck in the snow,’ she wrote back to me.”—“‘Indescribably white!’ she exclaimed.”—“‘No!’ he screamed.”—“‘Light, nothing but light!’ she squealed like a pig on a spit.”—“He cabled: ‘In the chest-high snow where the two, who had become snowblind in the meantime, were surrounded by St. Bernards …’”—“And I replied: ‘And what are you?’”—“‘Put in cold storage,’ I still understood, then the line went dead.”—“‘A mouse?’ I couldn’t resist asking.”—“‘For New Year’s Eve in the fridge!’ he wrote in so many words though the stamp allowed room for one more.”—“The note said in Gothic script: ‘Born dead …’”—“‘The ice pick already lodged in his head,’ I read, ‘he still bit his murderer’s hand.’”—Someone then produces a poor imitation of the sound of “croaking,” a chocking noise with the gums— kch— and his female partner emits a quick light laugh.

For a short while one hears the characters leave out one word in their sentences and sees them casting significant and conspiratorial glances at each other: “You remember how ( smirking and nodding of heads ) … used take lonely walks with his dog?”—“I don’t need to tell you that … held different opinions on the matter.”—“I often thought of … when I sat in my deck chair.”—“When the radio announcer says … I drop everything at once.”—“For days after … had squeezed my hand my whole body would break out in hives.”—“I can’t forget how … dangled on his suspenders on the hotel room door.”—“It’s unthinkable that … would have gone out on the street without his umbrella.” —“What would have been different if … had succeeded in getting a hit at that time?”—“Not only when I sat on Plymouth Rock did I have to cry about what … told me about death.”—“I often worry myself nearly to death whether Paraguay is really the right place for …”—“Usually one glance by a dark-eyed foreigner in an Indonesian restaurant is enough and I can’t breathe any more and only see … ( outraged recollection ) in front of me — how he suddenly stepped out from behind the column toward ( melancholy recollection ) …”

Or they use the wrong instead of the correct word under the assumption that they understand each other anyway. “One should herd them together and then—‘treat them to a good meal!’” ( Smirking and gentle laughter. )-“Go after them—‘and slap them on the shoulder!’”—“ … because his ‘shirt tail’ hung out of his ‘door’ …”—“ … When she came up to me and told me that I could ‘visit’ her.”—“All I had to do was ‘smile’ at him and blood began pouring from his nose.”—“ … grabbed between his legs to help him ‘get upstairs.’”—“His dentures fell out of his mouth even before I’d ‘said a single word.’”—“The ‘slight draft’ when we entered the room was enough for him to catch his death of cold.”—“Up on the platform ‘I kissed him on the forehead,’ so that he suddenly lost his balance.”—“Drove him, ‘drove him out of his wits.’”—“Got caught in the fan belt and—‘woke up!’”—“I sent him a ‘get-well card’ registered mail and the man thanked me and dropped dead!”—“He aimed at—‘progress and change!’”—“ … I tried putting the ‘cookie’ in his mouth!!”—“Across the barbed wire—‘into the soft moss of the Okefenokee, …’”—“Cut a ‘piece of bread’ off for him!”—“ … will give her a teaspoonful of ‘cinnamon,’ ‘to taste!’”—“ … so that these bastards will let her ‘come.’”

Then one of the figures in the background tells a joke of which again one only hears the key words, such as “then he said,” “the second time,” “again nothing”; all the other characters except maybe for two or three and the bodyguards are assembled around the narrator at this point. They listen quietly and finally, each in his own way, smile quietly to themselves, scream with laughter, shake their heads in puzzlement, inhale deeply (one of them perhaps out of turn), and then continue to circle about the stage.

From the conversations one has also managed to pick out with increasing frequency sentences which a figure speaks with a slightly raised though not overly excited voice: sentences from the repertoire of politicians when they are forced to defend themselves against catcalls from the audience, and which are useful to them as defense against interjections from the audience but are employed even when there are no interjections. For example: “Anyone who shouts shows that he doesn’t have anything to say.” “I would die to defend your right to speak, but would you do the same for me?” “What you don’t have in your head gets stuck in your throat.” “Your parents don’t seem to have brought you up to let other people finish what they are saying.” “Take one look at these characters and you get a permanent itch in your trigger finger.” “I won’t take back one iota of what I said.” “Our economic accomplishments give us the right not to be constantly reminded of the past.” “Oh, I see the lady is a gentleman!” “Those people with their caveman feelings and their Stone Age laughter want to set back our discussion by a thousand years.” “You don’t even notice how useful you are to us!” “Long hair and dirty fingernails are no proof that you’re right!” “Just take one look at them, that’s what they all look like!” “All I say is: Stalin, Stalin, Stalin!” “There’s only one weapon against radicalism, and that’s the vote.” “They should first condemn the torture of the prisoners in North Vietnam.” “We are controlled by the iron law of history.” Plus what other set rejoinders of this kind exist [campaign speeches contain some rich pickings. — Trans.]. Not that the characters exaggerate them or address them directly to the audience or someone particular in the audience — rather, they speak them as asides, almost in a monologue, quietly and with finality, while they walk about the stage in their state of extraordinarily malicious and melancholy solitude. If someone fails to recognize this, and wants to join them on the stage, the bodyguards gently and without hurting him or her should lead the person off. To let the person remain on stage would only be a show of disdain.

While all characters begin to busy themselves more and more with themselves — stroking their hair, forehead, cheeks, lips; cracking their joints, picking lint off their clothes, slapping themselves on their arms, stomach, neck, and throat, stopping occasionally to tug at their earlobes — one also hears fragments of monologues which keep breaking off or become inaudible, as though the speakers were ashamed of what they were saying: “ … I decided to join the company as a silent partner …”—“Last night I dreamed of Arizona …”—“ … I saw the people’s faces change color in the completely sold-out stadium …”—“ … I wrapped the boa around my neck and winked at him like Jane …”—“ … I suddenly saw a landscape as quiet and dreamlike as the transparent wing of a butterfly …”—“ … I kept the option of taking further steps …”—“ … at that time when I slipped off a pile of logs in my dream …”—( A lady slowly raises her dress, beneath which she is completely. naked, and slowly lets it fall again .) “ … and I heard my baby sister sighing in the kitchen …”—As though remembering, a few characters shake their heads one after the other and walk on. And while they are already walking again one of them says: “ … while I was about to fall asleep I saw two hanged men dangling from one noose …”