Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

“And curses on the Sierra de Gredos, and not only on the almost insurmountable southern flank, and not only because of the fiendish flies, which you are not spared even in winter, which surround you in swarms that grow larger with every step, which although they do not sting, fly into your eyes and ears, into your nostrils, and, since you cannot keep your mouth shut tight while climbing, eventually get into your throat, into your airway and gullet, which corroborates the story told about King Charles V, the later and only Emperor Charles (the first and last): since childhood he had stood around with his mouth open so wide that even when abroad, in Flanders or elsewhere, he was tracked down and besieged by those famous flies of the Sierra de Gredos, on whose southern slope he then in fact died, though by then almost an old man. Curses on the Sierra de Gredos!”

Suddenly she broke off her scarcely begun narrative: that was another habit for which she was known. She went to the kitchen, which was far away, not merely around several corners but also up and down several staircases, and brought back food. And with every dish it was plain that she was the one who had put the finishing touches on it.

They shoved the little table over to the one window, “the flue” (her expression) for the former smoking room, so as to have a view during the meal, if only of the blackness of the night. Later the chef and lord of the manor came and ate with them; and as a threesome they then had even more room than as a twosome earlier.

She named each of the dishes in turn: “smoked bacon”—actually slices of the superb ham from the “boar of the black claw”; “cellar salad”—actually the cress that grows in star-shaped clusters even in wintertime on the steppe, above subterranean veins of water, with an especially delicate sourness at that time of year; “ragout of pickled herring, salt cod, and chicken drumstick”—actually she brought in a brass bowl in which strands or strips of freshly steamed brook or river crayfish, trout, and equally light-colored little cubes of lamb were meticulously arranged in meanders that nestled against each other, reproducing the courses of the brooks or rivers of the plateau; “prunes and dried apples”—actually oranges, oranges, and more oranges, which had just ripened, in wintertime, their freshness and juiciness unequaled by any other fruit; “with the last bits of dry cheese rind”—actually dry and actually hardly more than bits of rind, but how pungent; “the last smidgen of cider, from the year before last, the last drops from the last cask”—actually a last smidgen, though of wine, and what a last smidgen.

In between she appeared with a portrait, framed in rock crystal, of Juana, the allegedly or supposedly mad queen, a work painted by Zurbarán, painter of saints, almost a century after the death of the allegedly or supposedly mad woman; she placed it on the windowsill — the painting’s height exceeded that of the window, for it was not only Zurbarán’s saints that demanded height — and offered the following description: “a charcoal drawing by the local village idiot, a portrait of a stable maid here, who is also the village idiot’s mother, father unknown.”

In the oil painting, mad Juana, painted very dark, was gazing out the window of her tower in Tordesillas; far below and at a considerable distance lay the río Duero in the last or first light of day, with glittering banks of granite, still there today in almost the same locations. And this queen showed no signs of insanity whatsoever; at most perhaps in the brightness of her long garment, with no source of light visible in her chamber; bright, positively glowing against the dark masonry, also her hand, with which she was pointing not outside but rather to some interior space, perhaps the room next to hers?: she had just risen from her chair — but there was no chair in her chamber, the chamber was empty — no, jumped up, no, she had dashed there from somewhere else, had run there, and now was pointing, with eyes wide and gazing upward and her mouth open, into impenetrable darkness, while holding in her other hand an open book, a single page of which was standing straight up in the air from her running. How the palm of her pointing hand glowed, as did her abnormally long index finger, which against the dark background resembled a flashlight.

“How differently this supposedly insane woman points out of the picture than the white angel toward the empty grave. She seems to be pointing out something to herself alone, and not in a regal or commanding fashion at all, but in inexpressible astonishment, terminally astonished. Never again will she emerge from this moment of staring in wonder and amazement. At one time, when children became distracted in the middle of a game or some other rhythmic activity and just stared into space, people might say, ‘Hey there, stop staring into the idiot box!’ But this supposedly insane woman is certainly not staring into any idiot box.” Who said that? None of the three at the table could have answered the question. Perhaps no one had really spoken at all.

If they had been somewhat on edge earlier, the evening meal had calmed them. And if they had been calm earlier, it had calmed them still more. And if they had been fighting fatigue before, now they let it have its way with them, and at the same time part of them became wide awake. And at the same time they were porous, unusual nowadays during a meal? porous in the direction of both day and night, as porous as sometimes on the borderline between the clarity of being awake and the very different clarity of a dream.

She looked through the key bow at the lord of the manor / chef. The wrought-iron bow was so wide that it could accommodate both of her eyes. Behind the interwoven Oriental motifs they appeared as if behind a grating. And she said he had not yet learned to stand at the stove as a whole person. The way he cooked left part of his body disengaged. The idea that one should be completely involved in any process and any activity—“The whole person must take part”—applied especially to food preparation. One’s toes, knees, thighs, hips, shoulders, all had to pitch in. In his case, only the hands and eyes were active. And the result?: despite all the seasonings he had obviously tracked down for his kitchen, didn’t one seasoning seem to be missing, or rather a rhythm, from the individual dishes as well as from the sequence of dishes?; didn’t rhythm have to be the main seasoning for a chef?

The chef replied, which means that he did open his mouth after all in the course of this night, with this story (“Do not be afraid to let something contradictory appear now and then in these pages!”), and commented that “The whole person must take part” probably applied as much to a baker or a hermit or a lover as to a chef. And, he said, he had just cooked for them as a “whole person,” and then he had tasted the difference himself. Except that occasional breaks in his rhythm had been caused by this dear visitor’s presence. He did not mean her in particular, he added, but the presence of a stranger in general, no, not a stranger — but anyone. The minute someone watched him cooking, he lost his rhythm, even when the observer was kindly disposed toward him or truly enthusiastic about what he was doing — especially then. In his profession he could not stand observers of any kind.

And that was also true of actions that had nothing whatever to do with food preparation. If someone stood beside him while he was hammering in a nail, he was “guaranteed” to bend it. Even if someone watched him simply tying his shoelaces — and the person in question did not have to be looking straight at him; the mere presence was enough—: the laces were bound to end up all knotted.

As a child he had already feared any kind of observer, he continued. He had learned early to ride a horse, in secret. But the first time someone watched him ride, he had promptly fallen off. When he and others had shown off how well they could shinny up an oak tree, he had been the only one to get stuck halfway up the thick trunk (he could still see himself hanging there, on the lone tree in the middle of the cow pasture, and slowly sliding back down the trunk) — and when he had tried it again alone, he had reached the top faster than the fastest one in the group. And his fear of observers had then become a sort of hatred of them. Yes, he hated observers — of whatever sort. Even love was in danger of turning to hate, or to irritation, which was just as bad, when the loved one stood watching him do something he could do only when he was alone. And (here he laughed once) almost everything that mattered to him, and particularly his cooking, was something he could do only completely alone and unobserved.