Peter Handke - My Year in No Man's Bay

Such structuring was accomplished even by those fairly numerous pieces which, in conformity to a preference of the collector’s, had unequal spaces between their rungs or were missing some altogether, and even by the few chicken-house ladders from five continents, simply nailed with cross-slats, boards almost without gaps.

But the eye was drawn farthest by the natural ladders, where nothing had been added, at most something taken away, like the numerous tree trunks leaning against the walls, hardly ever more than arm-thick, often left in their bark, merely capped, and the branches on the sides trimmed to just about sole-worthy rungs. And among these, my chief attention was drawn to one that, instead of segments of branch as footholds, had rock-hard tree fungi, alternating, now left, now right, actually grown out of the trunk at rung intervals, and that all the way to the top, firmer to the step than the branch stumps otherwise, a spirited formation, and furthermore in its white-on-white a handsome contrast to the blackish wood of the inn: but the person who had discovered this natural wonder in his meadow, cut it down, hauled it through the woods and over the hills, and added it to the other ladders in the restaurant, that was once again not the ladder fanatic himself.

Otherwise the dining room in the Auberge aux Echelles in Porchefontaine, as I noticed that evening, had gained a column in the middle, which, from the base up, represented a tall, shrouded figure.

And behind it, between the rung patterns, two suburban streets crossed, one leading from the railroad station in the direction of the forest, the other the local main street, with the bus line in the direction of the center and the royal palace. And here, too, outside a wide-open window, there was a birds’ sleeping tree — as I was entering I had promptly received my share of their largesse on my good suit — in the prophet’s view more densely occupied this year than “yours over there,” also more variously, for the sparrows let in other birds as well. Just now it was the moment in the tree for competing for perches and making a racket, along with the whirring of wings like splitting pieces of bark, as indeed the rest of the evening traffic out there was also more lively.

By contrast every one of the chef’s actions indoors took place almost imperceptibly. When pouring seasonings he seemed to reach into midair with both hands. And I did as he did. And likewise I drank tap water while working (“no comparison with the water in your bay”).

And then the familiar signal for another of the petty prophet’s devastating tirades: the humming, without any particularly intentional derision, of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”! And, this breaking off abruptly, there came, as if out of the blue: “What is left to narrate at your eye level? No one deserves a story anymore.” Or: “Where is the person who has not gambled away his potential story during these decades? The number of animal species is declining more and more, and the human species are increasing steadily. And to be interested in these people you would have to be a botanist. But worms, which do not undergo metamorphosis, still belong, according to your Goethe, to the plants. Storytelling survives at most as a disease or as phantom pain. The heavens have disappeared, like a book turning in on itself, the book has disappeared like the heavens turning in on themselves. Life still exists only in the spandrel realm between railroad tracks, runway, and highway. Perhaps for each individual the book of his life continues to exist. But what is in it? A person without ideas is even more dangerous than one without feelings. Ideas: those would be arms, durable — but I see only stumps. Metamorphosis was demanded of you. But haven’t you just continued to swindle? What has fallen away from you but a rotten toenail? You could not be deeper, warmer, more alert in the world than in your book. Are you still in that book? As a storyteller you are no longer needed, and as a chronicler you are being chased away. A ladder, quick, a ladder! were Gogol’s last words. Rainbow light, yes, but no rainbow appears. All of my chillun are weary.”

He fell silent sooner than usual, and I said, “Marina Tsvetayeva wrote of a friend: ‘As a farewell he made a fire in the stove for me’!” Whereupon he replied, “She used to come often to my place at the Fontaine Ste.-Marie in Meudon, and in the middle of the woods she complained that there were no woods there. I wonder whether she is still so upset. On the other hand: if a poet is not upset, she will die.”

“ On the other hand”: such an expression I had never heard from him before.

For the moment the prophet had nothing more to proclaim. Previously he would have favored the pedestrians moving past outside as if on wheels with the remark “Scurrying do-nothings!” On this evening, for the moment when they came out of the darkness and took on first form, I saw them as an infinitely repeating ornament, lacking only — but how! — linkage. This linkage, however, seemed achieved with the behind-the-ladder painting, the only one on the restaurant wall, which portrayed the great meteor of Mecca, surrounded by a huge, solid mass of people (a linkage that did not suit me, a deceptive one). And at the same time, outside, very much by himself, a black street sweeper went by, on his head, to protect him while he was vacuuming leaves, earmuffs — but no, it was not yet autumn.

How instructive, how full of visual impressions, such waiting could be; “willing waiter”—that could have been another name for me at one time. On the railroad embankment above our heads trains were passing, for a while almost without interruption, the express trains so fast that one saw only streaks of light flashing by (accompanied by a shuddering in the restaurant from the ground up), while in the commuter trains they were passing, windows and heads remained distinct; altogether a racket that, after my time in the noise oven, spoke to my heart. At the same time, the owl’s hooting from up in the woods, which could be heard intermittently, traced the outlines of all the bays in the world. And on the kitchen radio Arab music was playing, a man and a woman in turn, each snatching the last note from the other’s mouth, as it were.

Then we paused to watch the news on television.

In a war zone, hanging gardens that covered an entire slope, nothing but purple wisteria, in the form of a frozen waterfall, were blown up — what a splintering.

Altogether, there were strange wars going on now: those of the hikers against the bikers; those of the smokers against the drinkers (“the good drinker is proverbial,” the proprietor and prophet remarked, “but good smoker?”); those of letter writers against telephone callers. In another part of the world, in a muddy arena in front of a hundred thousand spectators, a larger-than-life pig and an equally enormous so-called pig fighter were rushing at each other in a life-and-death struggle, with monstrous squealing, trumpeting, snorting, and gasping, in which one could not distinguish what belonged to which. An old priest, from the looks of him the abdicated Pope, climbed into a pulpit for his last sermon, and spoke: “I shall say nothing, so that all may be made new!” whereupon his young successor called out from below, “I am afraid!” A war criminal who had slit the throats of innumerable people had to, while he factually reported this, repeatedly swallow hard. And finally, on the foreign television news program, there was a picture in which nothing was happening but a slow, steady snowing in the Pyrenees or the Alps.

And then the waiters summoned to help out for the evening arrived and were dressed by the proprietor; among them, being held by the hand by his little son, the Russian bus driver and widower, who, looking at the mushrooms on the table, announced that they were nothing compared to those in Russia.