Peter Handke - The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

PAULA

Hans, you’re good at helping people into their coats.

HANS

Mrs. Quitt has the same one.

PAULA

(To QUITT) I would like to tell you something about myself, Quitt, just like this, without being asked to. And note that, for the first time, I’m speaking about myself. After your wife left I slowly exhaled. And while exhaling … please don’t laugh.

QUITT

I’m not laughing.

PAULA

While exhaling … please don’t laugh.

QUITT

Another second and I will.

PAULA

( Loudly ) As I exhaled, love set in. (She leaves.)

QUITT

( To HANS) Don’t say anything.

HANS

I’m not saying anything.

(QUITT’S WIFE enters, turns on mild indirect lighting, and sits down. She gives HANS a signal to leave .)

QUITT

Nobody’s cleaned up. (HANS proceeds to dust. To his WIFE) And what did you do all day?

WIFE

You saw what I did: I went in and out and back and forth.

QUITT

And what was it like in town?

WIFE

People respected me.

(HANS leaves. )

QUITT

Was there anything new?

WIFE

I stole this blouse.

QUITT

The main thing is not to get caught. Anything else?

WIFE

I stopped here and there and then walked on. Why don’t you sit down too?

QUITT

You don’t look well.

( Pause .)

WIFE

Yes, but at least it’s already evening. ( She gets up and walks out quickly .)

(QUITT sits down even before she’s gone. He remains alone for a while. The silhouette of the city is completely illuminated in the meantime. HANS returns with a book. QUITT looks up. )

HANS

It’s me, still.

QUITT

Tell me, Hans, what’s your life actually like?

(HANS sits down .)

HANS

I knew what you would say the moment you opened your mouth. But I couldn’t interrupt you at that point. So let’s forget it.

( Pause. )

QUITT

Stop looking me in the eye.

HANS

I do that whenever I’m at a loss how to please you.

QUITT

Tell me about yourself.

HANS

What do you mean?

QUITT

Don’t you understand, I am curious to know your story. How do you behave when you would like to speak but can only scream? Don’t you sometimes get so tired that you can only imagine everything flat on the ground? Doesn’t it also sometimes happen to you that when you think of your relationship to others you only see heavy wet rags lying around everywhere? Now tell me about yourself.

HANS

You mention me.

Yourself you mean.

( Pause. )

QUITT

Why does my itty-bitty mind go yakking so affectedly into the big wide world? And can’t help itself? ( Screams ) And doesn’t want it any differently? I am important. I am important. I am important. Incidentally, why don’t you look me in the eye now?

HANS

Because there’s nothing new to see there.

( Pause .)

QUITT

Please read to me.

HANS

( Sits down and reads. ) “‘I shall have to let you go after all,’ his uncle said one day at the end of the midday meal, just as a magnificent thunderstorm was breaking, sending the rustling rain like diamond missiles down into the lake, so that it twitched and seethed and heaved. Victor made no reply whatever but listened for what else would come. ‘Everything is futile in the end,’ his uncle started up again in a slow drawn-out voice, ‘it’s futile, youth and old age don’t belong together. The years that could have been used have passed now, they are lowering down on the other side of the mountains and no power on earth can drag them back to the near side where cold shadows are already falling.’ Victor could not have been more awed. The venerable old man happened to be sitting in such a way that the lightning flashes illuminated his face, and sometimes, in the dusky room, it seemed as though fire flowed through the man’s gray hair and light trickled across his weatherbeaten face. ‘Oh, Victor, do you know life? Do you know that thing that people call old age?’—‘How could I, Uncle, as I am still so young?’—‘True, you don’t know it, and there’s no way you could. Life is boundless as long as you are still young. You always think you still have a long stretch ahead of you, that you’ve traveled only a short way. That’s why you put so much off to the next day, why you put this and that aside, to tackle it later on. But then when you want to tackle it, it is too late and you notice that you are old. That is why life is a limitless field if you look at it from the beginning, and is scarcely two paces long when you regard it from the end. It is a sparkling thing, something so beautiful that you feel like plunging into it, and you feel that it would have to last forever — and old age is a moth darting in the dusk, fluttering ominously about our ears. That is why you would like to stretch out your hands so as not to have to leave, because you have missed so much. When an aged man stands on a mountain of achievements, what good is it to him? I have done much, all sorts of things, and have nothing from it. Everything turns to dust in a moment if you haven’t built an existence that outlasts your coffin. The man who has sons, nephews, and grandsons around him in his old age will often become a thousand years old. Then the same many-sided life persists even when he is gone, life continues just the same; yes, you don’t even notice that one small segment of this life veered off to the side and never came back any more. With my death everything that I myself have been will disappear.’ After these words the old man stopped speaking. He folded his napkin together, as was his custom, rolled it into a cylinder, and shoved it into the silver ring which he kept for the purpose. Then he assembled the various bottles into a certain order, put the cheese and sweetmeats on their plates, and plunged the glass bells over them. Yet of all these objects he took none away from the table, as was his usual habit, but left them standing there and sat before them. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm had passed, with softer flashes and a muted thundering it moved down the far slope of the craggy eastern mountain range, and the sun fought its way back out, gradually filling the room with a lovely fire. At daybreak the next morning Victor took his walking stick into his hand and slung one strap of his satchel over his arm. The spitz, who understood everything, bounded with joy. Breakfast was consumed amid much small talk. ‘I’ll take you as far as the gate,’ the uncle said when Victor had gotten up, had hitched his satchel on his shoulder, and was about to take his leave. The old man had gone into the adjacent room and must have triggered a spring or set off some kind of mechanical contraption; for at that moment Victor heard the rattling of the gate and saw, through the window, how that gate opened slowly by itself. ‘Well,’ said his uncle while walking out, ‘everything is ready,’ Victor reached for his walking stick and placed his cap on his head.

The uncle walked down the stairs with him and across the open space in the garden as far as the gate. Neither said a word during their walk. At the gate the uncle stopped. Victor looked at him for a while. Tears shimmered in his bright-colored eyes, testifying to a profound emotion — then he suddenly bent down and vehemently kissed the wrinkled hand. The old man emitted a dull uncanny sound like a sob — and pushed the youth out by the gate. In two hours the latter had reached Attmaning, and as he stepped out from the dark trees toward the town he happened to hear its bells tolling, and never has a sound sounded so sweet to him as this tolling which fell so endearingly upon his ears, a sound he had not heard for so long. The Innkeeper’s Alley was filled with the beautiful brown animals of the mountains which the cattle dealers were driving down toward the lowland, and the inn’s guest room was full of people since it was market day. It seemed to Victor as if he had been dreaming for a long time and had only now returned to the world. Now that he was back out in the fields of the people, on their highways, part of their merry doings, now that the expanse of gentle rolling hills stretched out wide and endless before him, and the mountains which he had left hovered behind as a blue wreath; now his heart came apart in this great circumambient view and outraced him far, far beyond the distant, scarcely visible line of the horizon …”