Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

The child had moved on to another subject some time ago. He was talking about money. — The author: “Didn’t you stipulate that this topic should be kept out of your book, at most implied, through not being mentioned?” —She: “At a few points it belongs in the story. And this was just such an exception.” The monologue of the child in the seat next to her began with his taking a packet of banknotes from the purse hanging around his neck. Leafing through them, he exclaimed, “Oh, money of mine!” The author, interrupting, to her: “And what would be your equivalent exclamation?” —She: “Oh, dear, money. Ja, an-nuqud. And yours?”—The author: “Ah, money!”

The child said more or less the following: “My money is nice to look at. And it has such a friendly feel to it, my money does. And it does me so much good, my money, my cash money. It is my first money. And it is money I earned myself. I did not find my money. I did not steal my money. And my money was not given to me, either. For my first money they wanted to open an account for me and deposit my money in it. If my money had been a gift, I would have said yes at once. But because I worked for my money, giving lessons in math, Russian, and Spanish, shoveling snow, helping with the potato harvest, herding cows in the pasture, mucking out the barn, I wanted to see my money, each bill and even the smallest coin. And I insisted that my cash be given to me in person each time, on the spot, right after the completion of every job, without involving anyone else. When I saw other people going up to the counter in the bank with their money in bundles and briefcases, to get rid of their banknotes in exchange for a teller’s receipt, in my eyes that meant it was not money they had earned themselves but dirty money. Every one of them, I thought, was bringing to the bank money that had been either found or stolen or extorted — at any rate it was not theirs, and they converted it into mere numbers, to launder it, by the numbers. But my money, even if it looked a bit soiled on the surface, was clean money. And even if a bill had really and truly been dirty in the hands of a previous owner, as my banknote it was washed clean in the twinkling of an eye, and, unlike at the bank, the whole thing was on the up and up. When I exchange my money, it is only from coins to bills. I know that you are one of the few people who no longer touch money, in the form of either coins or banknotes; who no longer even carry credit cards; and whose fingerprints are accepted all over the world as a form of payment. But how beautiful my money is. And you do me so much good, money of mine, my cash money.”

She closed her eyes and promptly opened them again. A gull, white as ocean spray, flew past her porthole, and this in the middle of the plateau, far inland. But of course there were reservoirs even here, and not all the rivers had dried up. If they had ever been aloft, now the passengers were no longer flying. Without having noticeably touched down, the aircraft was taxiing along a rather narrow landing strip far from the city, at first speeding like a race car, then, on rather bumpy ground, bouncing along evenly as it slowed and circled the terminal, as if they were on an old bus with ruined springs or in a carriage, an impression that was reinforced when, as the propeller vanes became visible — prop planes were in style again — they appeared to be turning backward, like wagon wheels in Westerns. It was a small airport by today’s standards, when even midsize cities had runways stretching from one horizon to the other, unusually small, surrounded on all sides by empty steppe, with at most a couple of rusty tin shacks and automobile carcasses, a few stalks of steppe grass so high they almost grazed the window. And this prop plane was that low to the ground, although it was the largest thing on the broad field, with nothing else around but a few one- or two-seaters.

And yet this was the airport of Valladolid, formerly the capital of the plateau region, the city of princes and kings, and today a city of half a million?! For almost every crossing of the Sierra de Gredos she had landed here rather than in Madrid. But the last time was now several years in the past. And as if in keeping with the topsy-turvy new world: the Valladolid airport had not been expanded but instead been reduced considerably in size — just as the local soccer team (of which she was fond, for no particular reason, and whose fortunes she followed on the Internet) had meanwhile slipped from the top league to the third, and any local princes and kings one approached would have been transformed instantly into frogs if one had kissed them.

Ceremonial taxiing around the steppe airport, as if to salute every side. Meanwhile the child next to her was reading a comic book. He had already read these pictorial stories at the beginning of the trip, and now he was rereading them. He flipped the pages rapidly, yet it was clear that he was absorbing each frame completely. He swallowed image after image with his eyes, blinking after each narrated event. Only toward the end of each story did he slow down. And once the story was finished, the child did not go right on to the next, as one might have expected, but paused for a while, motionless, his eyeballs protruding as if made of glass, even holding his breath, which he released late, audibly even, amid the plane’s taxiing roar, a prolonged sigh. (And she noticed that she involuntarily sighed with him, almost silently.) Before the child reader finished the last story, the aircraft came to a stop and the signal for deplaning sounded. Out on the airfield, there were hares and foxes in the high grass, a sight that had vanished from airfields everywhere else.

Along with the few other passengers, the child stood up, having promptly closed the comic book. But in the moment immediately before that, he had glanced from the page he had just read to the next and read it, skimmed it, as if he wanted to soak it up like a map showing the direction in which he was to strike out.

“Vladimir!” she said, and that indeed turned out to be one of his several names, as Ablaha, Aruba, and Ahada were hers. And suddenly a dream from the previous night came to her, in which she had set fire to a child, first hesitantly, then mechanically, carrying out an order—“It is the law”—until the child and its little animal were in flames. How violent her dreams had become of late, and not only hers? With other people, was it not merely their dreams? And now at least this child here was as unharmed and healthy as a child can be, and as only a child can look. And they were seeing each other at this moment for the last time. I, on the other hand, have seen them forever.

It was almost night on the great plain of Valladolid. In the airport, the conveyor belt had clattered like a mill wheel. Next to the airfield a bonfire was burning. Tree roots from the steppe were being burned. The flames were small, whitish blue, and very hot. This fire had been going for several days. Soldiers were standing nearby, warming themselves. It was winter on the plateau, too. Valladolid: seven hundred meters above sea level. Other soldiers were standing in the small arrival lounge, which was also the departure lounge, keeping in the background, half in the shadows, and unarmed. She was the first to set foot outside the terminal; all the other passengers were still waiting for their luggage. There was no wind. A single bush, shudjaira in Arabic, was swaying violently next to several other bushes that were not moving at all. A very large, heavy bird had flown out of it just moments before. And the bush is still shaking and quaking.

And the stranger did not strike out in the direction of Valladolid. She is walking along the highway, tariq hamm , which branches off just past the airport into the desert, sahra , no, the steppe, into the grassland. And then someone ran after her, a man with a suitcase, one of the people from the plane. And she turned and smiled, but the smile was not meant for him. And she unlocked a vehicle parked, or standing, in the tall grass among a hundred and twelve wrecks, apparently ready to drive, a Landrover built in the year such-and-such, from the Santana Works in Linares, mud-colored like a military vehicle, but without any lettering.