Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

For the most part, however, she was performing in this film alone. And for the most part it was not daytime. She was sitting one evening in an easy chair by the window, holding a book, and once she reached a particular line she felt the camera at her back. She herself a blurry profile in the image; only the print in the book in sharp focus, and her finger following the sentences; the turning of the page almost a ceremony, before which she paused for an appropriate interval and then finally, if possible without the slightest sound, turned the page (if there was rustling, the scene was repeated, and if the paper crackled, like a newspaper page being turned, the shooting would be called off for the evening — an end to the reading).

Or she was lying in bed at night, half- or already sound asleep, and suddenly she became aware of the camera above her on the ceiling. All she had to do now was go on sleeping — not pretending to sleep, as in other films, but rather sleeping soundly and peacefully while also portraying sound, peaceful sleeping, for the benefit of the whole world; for the “public at large.” And having the camera running even helped her: in portraying someone sleeping, she “really and truly” slept (the expression used by children in her Sorbian village), and more soundly and peacefully than at any other time.

But she had never had to do a take with a child this way. She looked up at the invisible camera to see whether there might be lines for her to read: nothing but the blank sky, almost blackish-blue (it was the period when airplanes, like buses and high-speed ferries, as well as the coaches that had come back into circulation here and there, were more and more equipped with glass roofs). Instead she heard the boy next to her. Speaking softly, yet as clearly and audibly as the first birdcalls before dawn — despite the almost deafening roar of the engines—, he said, “I must see what you have in your backpack.” She said nothing. She had no need to say anything. She had no script—“fortunately,” she thought.

The child was already busy loosening the pack, the many knots posing no difficulty: a few tweaks, and he had one after the other undone. “What a smell!” he said, delving into her personal effects not only with his fingers but also headfirst, and it remained unclear whether he meant a stench, a lovely fragrance, or simply a smell. And already some of her possessions were laid out on the tray table in front of him. “Chestnuts, freshly peeled!” he said, letting them roll out of both hands again and again. “The size of blackbirds’ eggs. The color and form of a plucked and scalded chicken’s hindquarters. In other words: cream-colored. A smell like new potatoes, dug only yesterday, the first of the year, the best, the famous ones from the island in the Atlantic. Taste [already he was taking a bite out of one] of nuts? of almonds? of peach pits? No, unlike anything else: of pure, raw chestnuts. Number [he counted them all at a single glance]: forty-eight!”

And on to the next thing, but without haste, carefully, as if it were something precious: a travel guide, an unusual one, in fact with the title “Guide to the Dangers of the Sierra de Gredos.” The child leafing through it, cautiously, section by section, reading out some of the titles: Mountain Brooks and Floods; Thunderstorms; Free-Range Mountain Cattle; Snakes; Wildlife; Dangerous Plants; Forest Fires; Getting Lost (the longest chapter); Snow- and Icestorms; Avalanches; Razor Cliffs; Poisonous Waterfalls.

— Author: Aruba del Río—“That’s you, isn’t it, under a pseudonym, you’ve taken along your own book as a guide for the trip!”

Now a third object picked up with both hands by the child: another book, the Arabic reader belonging to her vanished daughter. The boy was small but must have been of school age already, for he read, and fluently, too: “ Bab , gate. Djabal , mountain range. Sahra , desert. Firaula , strawberry. Tariq hamm , highway. Bank , bank. Harb , war. Maut , death. Bint , daughter.” He hesitated over one word: “ Huduh , silence. Silence, that’s a word I do not know. I do not know what it means. I do not need to know that, either. I do not want to know, either. Huduh , silence.” And he read on: “ Haduv , enemy. Chatar , danger. Djikra , memory. Zeit , oil. Hubb , love. (I do not know that word, either.) Batata , potato. Nuqud , money. Asad , lion. Fassulja , bean. Hassan , the handsome and good. Thaltz , snow. Bir , well. Chajat , tailor. Banna , stonemason. Ja , oh dear, and oh.”

He stowed the book carefully in the knapsack and suddenly struck her on the thorax, with a tiny fist, a single blow, but one that really hurt. She felt not only struck but also injured — wounded. She would die of the wound, now, during the flight, during the journey. Meanwhile the child continued rummaging through her things. “A snake skin. A mountain thistle. A fan. A veil — how strange that it is wet, as if it had just been pulled out of the water — strange, something wet among the dry things. A chef ’s tocque. A chef ’s neckerchief. A chef’s tunic. Cooking mitts. A chef’s belt. A chef’s apron. A chef’s knee pads. Chef’s clogs made of linden wood. Everything but the clogs linen-white.”

Finally the boy’s hand dug carefully to the very bottom of the bag and emerged at last holding a bookmark: a present from her daughter, made during her first year in school, a photographic self-portrait, glued onto a strip of cardboard, with a colorful design painted around it: she thought she had lost it years before, during a walk with a book through the woods of the riverport city: she had missed it for a long time, had hunted for it in vain, on wood-roads, under the deepest layers of fallen leaves, also the following year, and even the one after that: and now here it was, as intensely as anything can be. She closed her eyes; opened her eyes.

The child in the seat next to her unbuttoned his shirt. Curled up on his naked chest was a dormouse, squirrel-like but smaller, its tail shorter but all the bushier. The animal was breathing; it was alive; it was sleeping; its sharp claws partially extended, harmlessly touching the child’s skin; its soft fur ruffled by the air from the vent above them.

The child gazed unblinking at the woman next to him and said, “You will never go home. You are lost. But perhaps you are not yet lost, not completely. Why are you so alone? Not even in a dream have I met anyone so alone. And perhaps you will die and be even more alone in dying. Without anyone. La-Ahad. Ahada, another of your assumed names. And what beautiful and tender hands you have. And what gentle eyes — like those of people who doubt they will return home.”

And while the unknown child continued to speak, softly yet distinctly, she noticed that for the first time, since when? yes, since when? she was close to tears. And she was utterly amazed; and just this once she wanted to be seen this way on film, in a full-screen close-up. The author: “Should this go in the book? May it?”—She: “Yes.”

While the child was speaking, sentence after sentence, a strip of light traveled beneath the plane, which was flying at a perceptibly lower altitude now, moved across the plateau, and caused a band of asphalt to shimmer, a reservoir to glitter, an irrigation canal to flash. A topsy-turvy new world on the first day of the journey (but hadn’t several days passed already?): the sky above the glass roof almost black as night, with a hint of the first stars, and down below the sunlit earth. In similar fashion, on the way to the airport, an ancient crone, without her dentures, had come toward her, driving a factory-new race car, as if trying to set a new record, the car’s number emblazoned from stem to stern. And similarly, that morning the outskirts’ troop of drunks had been hauling cases of beverages from the supermarket to their lairs in the woods — without exception bottles of mineral water. And was it possible?: a flock of wild geese, flying past the plane window in a long, jagged V, from right to left: “Arabic writing,” the boy commented. And could there be such a thing?: in the same fashion a swarm of leaves swept by the window, holm oak leaves typical of the plateau? And where and since when did this exist?: and next, a pale-pink drift of snowflake-like blossoms, as if the almonds were in bloom and almost finished blooming, now in late February, early March.