Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

And it is also correct that the Hondarederos, whenever they have time — and they almost always have time — post themselves on their property lines, each on the edge of his fairly narrow lot, and lie in wait for one another. But what we are lying in wait for, with ears cocked, hands poised, and knees and feet ready to break into a dash, perhaps for instance toward a shirt blown by the wind over the wall marking the property line, a dress, a handkerchief: so that we can promptly hand it back to our neighbor, ladder to ladder against the wall, or it is a ball: if only it would fly by accident again onto my land, and I, in an elegant, utterly natural gesture, could kick it back, without a word, with sleight of foot, as if the child next door had sent it my way on purpose.

Or we intentionally lob our own ball over the property line and wait to see what will happen next. Or we lie in wait, with our whole body pressed against the wall, the impenetrable fence, the barrier of broom berries and intertwined roots, for a call for help from across the way, for sobs, for whimpers, not out of ordinary curiosity or malice, but in the sense in which we also lie in wait for a singing or humming — not random singing or humming — and also for simply a kind and gentle voice from next door.

We watch our neighbors from all sides in this fashion because we wish them only well, and because, for our part, we feel protected and reassured by whatever we see and hear them doing, just as we, for our part, allow something to blow, or throw something, over to their side, in the hope that it will be brought or thrown back.

Or we engage in small, tolerated violations of each other’s boundaries, and also of each other’s property, and thereby show that our neighbor’s land, what grows on it, and thus also our neighbor himself, attracts us and is dear to our hearts. There is no greater proof of our respect for him than for us to let him catch us — to make a point of letting him see us — as we enter his greenhouse (neither dwellings nor other buildings are locked here) and, as calmly as you please, go over to his apple, pear, or orange tree and let one, never more than one, fruit, just for our own consumption, drop into our hand, and promptly bite into it. (In Hondareda the word “let” is one of the most frequently used verbs.) And I am flattered and appeased in turn when my neighbor clambers into my yard.

And thus a saying has come into use among us: even though we give each other a wide berth when we happen to meet, etc. — which does not mean the same thing it means elsewhere — sometimes the other person calls out to me, “I saw you!” which implies, however, neither a warning nor a threat, but the opposite, and along with “Not to worry!” and “Who’s counting!” is one of the greeting formulas regularly heard in the Hondareda region.

And besides, it is only superficially accurate to say that the immigrants hardly communicate with each other and at most utter a few empty phrases: precisely by means of these empty or coded formulas, which sound strange to an outsider, they convey a number of things to the other person, even beyond ordinary communication; in which case it is always the voice, yes, the voice of the fellow resident, that provides this additional element.

Nowhere else in the world had she, the adventurer, the roamer, heard voices like these here. They were not trained voices, not those of announcers or actors, such as various members of the observation team had. These immigrants’ voices took one by surprise. She understood the observer when he was put off by the inhabitants’ appearance, more vagabondish than hers by x rips in their clothing and y tangles in their hair and z scaly patches on their faces. Yes, they resembled a peculiar cross between knights and beggars.

But: once, long ago, on a street in Paris, or in Palermo, she had passed a similar figure that looked terminally scruffy, and had heard issuing from this seemingly abandoned heap of misery, which had long since lost any resemblance to a human being, a tremulous voice, God! what a voice! And in her mind, she/one had fallen on her/one’s knees at the sound of that tentative and pitiful but oh so vital voice — the voice of a living being if ever there was one — and in reality? one had stopped and listened to that voice, on and on, with one’s back to it, and was sure that the other person was conscious of establishing contact with his voice, at least getting through. How could she be so sure of that? She/one could taste it.

And this same surprising voice rang out, yes, rang out — despite the complete absence of tonality and resonance — from each of her people here in Hondareda.

Without exception they were broken voices, rough and hoarse even in the young people and children. The dying sometimes had such voices, when they were fully conscious — as no healthy person is or any person freed for the moment somehow of all limitations — when they saw their lives, and life in general, pass before them, and were at once filled with zest for life and acceptance of death; or survivors also; or people gratefully exhausted after some mighty task or effort.

These voices resonated for her like — as — no, neither “like” nor “as”: the voices resonated, that was all. (The author likes to slip in the word “resonate,” whether obsolete or not.)

No one else had such a voice nowadays. And besides, the people of Hondareda were not really shabby or ragged in the least — she almost shouted at the observer and scolded him — even the older ones went about in the finest fabrics, with the most elegant cuts, and there, under the mountain sky and close to the trails of wild animals, this seemed infinitely, to the nth power, more appropriate than on models on the catwalk and their imitators sashaying through the megalopolises with rolling shoulders and high-stepping legs — except it happened that the Hondarederos’ garments, which they wore everywhere, even on the spiny savannah and in the coniferous forests, had gradually acquired rips and tears, and in that region people even took pride in this, just look at me! and as far as mending, etc., went, they followed the example of that literary hero of many centuries ago, who left the rips in his garment unmended as a token of the adventures he had survived.

And how could this be: Were my people down there in the glacial trough unemployed, without regular occupations?

This much had again been observed accurately: none of them ever let himself be seen by outsiders engaged in any organized form of work. And, in particular, whatever the Hondarederos did, and especially what they left undone, never looked like work. Except that it was not enough to watch them during their days and nights. And besides, it was wrong to interrogate them about it, or about anything. The trick was to get them to talk by some other means. To get them to talk of their own accord!

In this manner, for example, you would have learned that they do things every day, make things, move things along — without any sign of working or toiling. Yes, they not only have no conventional occupations; they also reject separate professions, along with their labels. And yet, although this is not obvious with any one of them, each is many things in one: producer, manufacturer, tradesman, engineer, entrepreneur, dealer, processor, distributor, and also a knowledgeable customer (of the others). Every time they allowed me to watch them while they were doing something or intentionally leaving something undone, I thought to myself: These are my people, or: These are my kin — and every time — this shows how much I continue to live according to the rhythm of the profession I gave up — I misspoke in my thoughts and said: These are my clients!

And every time I entered their dwellings, even the sight of their shoes in the entryway, of a dog-eared book, of a few hazelnuts, slivers of mica, chunks of alabaster, juniper branches, a black boar ham hanging from the doorpost to cure, made the property seem well managed to me.