Peter Handke - My Year in No Man's Bay

Using it in this sense could mean that I simply went from one to the other of the many nooks and crannies in the house as well as on the grounds and did nothing but let the effect of this spot in the beech thicket, or the shoe closet at the bottom of the cellar stairs, or the room with the stalactite-like plaster, sink in for as long as possible. And time and again it was as though in the process that particular dream of mine was fulfilled in which an undiscovered floor turned up in a long-inhabited house, with rooms like the chambers in a castle, all of them with quiet festive lighting, all of them having stood empty for a long time until I entered them, at the same time filled with an expectancy that now merely strengthened with my presence.

As an owner I also rid myself of certain opinions about right and wrong, beautiful and ugly objects.

Thus among other trees in the yard there was a pine that I would otherwise have judged did not belong there; its place was in a forest. Yet now I thought nothing of the sort, but instead rubbed the smell of the fresh shoots under my nose in springtime or from time to time soaked up the special pine wind rustling through it, no different from the sound I had heard long ago on the edge of the forest in Rinkolach on the Jaunfeld Plain.

That the weeping willow next to it, a sight that would earlier have made me gloomy, now appears differently to me, I owe to what I heard a workman in the bay say one Sunday evening about such a tree as he stood in front of it with his family: “They’re lovely, these weeping willows” (although his voice sounded subdued).

I wanted my fellow residents in the bay to see the owner in me, yes, in their eyes I should be nothing but the owner of this house here, of these grounds, of this narrow, gorgelike lane, in the same sense as on quite a few tombstones in my place of origin, instead of the person’s profession, beneath the name was inscribed “house and property owner” —except that in my case they would not even know the name. The most they would glimpse of me was a silhouette at the window, by the garden gate, in the lane, and they would say nothing but “Ah, there he is, the owner, the same as yesterday, the same as always!” with an undertone of relief, as if my being there like this contributed to their daily sense of security.

It may be that all this led me to feel, if not like the owner of the entire area beyond my own property, then at least responsible for it, especially since hardly anyone else seemed to care about the place, to see himself as one who also had something to say and some say, if only “Out of the way!” “Don’t build here!” “Don’t you dare cut down this apple!” or even just “Quiet!” Although not borne out by the facts, it seems to me as though my chief occupation during that first period in the bay consisted of such using and cherishing, guarding and defending.

When did the woman from Catalonia disappear for the second time? One can almost describe it as “an entire lifetime” that we have been playing the game of losing each other. Perhaps we are both convinced that nothing can happen to us, we will never be finished with each other, and thus push the game to the limit, keep putting off the serious part, or what is real in us, longer and longer, until suddenly there will be no going back, and one of us will be irrevocably lost to the other. It is a dangerous game, a sinful one (it was not my friend the priest who said so, but I myself); for we see that we should stay together, even without the formal sacrament, in glory, and that it would be a dreadful shame to spoil it. “Fragmentary experience — complete dreams”: in this belief, too, one of my favorite mottoes for many years, Ana resembles me.

So it was always for only moments at a time that we were serious with each other. And but a moment after such a repeat honeymoon we might run into one another, coming from different directions, and cringe; so thoroughly had we forgotten the other person’s physical reality in no time at all.

Very often the intimacy we had just experienced would be transformed abruptly into mutual rage. Who was this man? Who was this woman? The house in the bay, not so much roomy as full of odd corners, favored such estrangements, and as far as I am concerned, so did the fact that I was infatuated with my property, or, to use an old expression, I “had a fancy for it.” Such a fancy tended to have a paradoxical effect. And once more Ana and I used the game of loss to put off thinking about our true relationship with each other, put it off until the relationship was over. With each new day of grim dissension she and I both thought to ourselves that there was still time to find our way to the relationship we had had before, and one day: too late. It was the end not only of the game but of the two of us. And now, in retrospect, too late, I think: we were not really those two who once walked toward each other on the bridge to find harmony, nor those two who wanted to destroy each other with their bare hands, but beings of a third sort who had not yet been discovered for one another.

Ialmost missed the right moment for telling the story of or reporting on this particular year in this region.

For one thing, it seemed to me that simply by living, walking about, taking things in, I had already written the book, that each day in itself was at the same time the day’s work, and explicit word-making was more like a superfluous addition, a retracing, that would result in gratuitous ornamentation; for another thing, now that I had already spent several years in the bay, it was too late for such a one-year report, because, always thinking “too soon, too soon,” I was waiting for the aforementioned right moment, instead of simply beginning at some point.

This is what I finally did, actually with little faith, half convinced that the execution of my plan was a mere re-presenting, and was also taking place at the wrong moment, too late, or perhaps too soon after all. But I did it, and with the very first sentence all these hesitations were gone. (They were replaced and intersected by others.) I, the writer, was now the one who decided; and if I was ever anything, it was the writer. I experienced that once again simply by sitting down, as after every longer intermission, and writing — from the activity itself.

First of all I decided what would not be included in my notes on one year in the bay. And what would be included would not be decided in advance; to paraphrase Wittgenstein, or simply to play with language, it would dis-cover itself, and in my writing down of things I would follow it.

What would not play a role but at most be mentioned: anything I had not experienced myself as an eyewitness, or verified, at least after the fact. Thus in the course of this year the statue of the Blessed Virgin was stolen from the pilgrimage oak at the edge of the forest. And upon hearing the news I went there and first observed the empty spot up in the fork between the branches, then, a week later, the plaster replacement figure, obviously mass-produced, and finally the original, which had turned up again. And I found out only from the bay’s weekly newspaper about the old lady who left her house one morning and with her diamond ring scratched the paint on all the cars parked on the main street, and yet I felt as though I had been there.

What they call world history was also to be kept out as much as possible, less because of my dislike or distrust than in recognition of my weakness where not only that but also all major events are concerned: I do take an interest — and television does not prevent my feelings from being profound — yet I could hardly say anything about these events, let alone write anything. Not that the world’s seemingly endless obstacle race leaves me speechless. It is only that in this connection images very seldom occur to me, images which, I sense, I would need in order to say anything, and when they have occurred to me, they have not once provided me with the necessary opening bars.