Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

The man heading toward the Atlantic. And the woman toward the Mediterranean? On this morning the sky above the meseta was blue. The highland plain of grass, stone, and sand extending in all directions from the hostel was green, brown, red, and silvery gray (the silvery color from the flecks of argentine mica in the weathered granite sand). By daylight, the hostel, with its gaping chimney, its roof sprouting thistles, its crumbling stucco, and its empty window frames, where black jackdaws with yellow beaks constantly flew in and out, uttering their hoarse cries, now had only the silhouette of a castillo , or castle, and was almost as black as the jackdaws, black without the sheen of their feathers. Then the jet contrails — it was an era of black jet contrails — even a shade blacker than a black background as they passed in front of the sun, at which moments it became palpably colder, as during a total eclipse.

All colors seemed to be gathered here, and the objects also revealed a new color — which had existed nowhere in the world until this morning — which had never before been seen by a human eye — and for which there was also no name and never would be — and rightly so. Was the unknown new color purely a wish? A wish awakened at the sight of the slowly wandering line separating sun and shadow, between the area of rigid white hoarfrost and the glistening, seemingly windblown thawing area in the steppe-grass-filled courtyard of the hostel? At the sight of the thawing grass, whose tips stirred not from the wind but rather from the steady melting of the layers of hoarfrost, which accumulated in droplets, causing one stalk after another to sway?

Yes, a wish — a wish that sprang up at the sight of that one dewdrop in the sun which, in contrast to the myriad glass-clear, transparent, white-flashing droplets, stood out from the dewdrop field as a bronze sphere, not glistening and flashing but glowing, shimmering, shining; no mere glittering dot but a sphere, a dome, challenging one to discover — not some unknown planet but the old familiar one, the earth here, challenging one to engage in unceasing daily discovery that led to no specific outcome, nothing that could be exploited, unless perhaps for keeping possibilities open — discovery as a way of keeping possibilities open?

A wish for a new color on, in, with the earth, a wish that became even more intense with the discovery that simply by looking, and without stirring from the spot, without stretching out one’s hand, one could generate and also multiply this one bronze-colored — no, nameless-colored dew-globe — how monumental it appeared among all the other merely glittering droplets: with nothing but a slight movement of one’s head, back and forth, up and down, with one’s eyes as wide open as possible: suddenly in the thawing field an entire aisle or loop of new shades scintillating between bronze, ruby, crystal, turquoise, amber, siena, lapis lazuli, and especially the unnamed color.

Why was there no legend, like the legend of the ancient giant whose strength drained away as soon as he lost contact with the earth and returned the moment he touched the earth again, of someone who found his strength, an entirely different kind of gigantic strength, to be sure, by simply looking down at the ground? Wish-color, wish-strength. But didn’t a letter from her brother, the enemy of mankind, contain the diametrically opposite wish?: “Were it not for the children, I would wish that the final world war might break out and that those of us here now would be wiped out, one and all.”

No one must know that she wanted to make her way through the Sierra de Gredos. Neither the people at her bank, her banks, nor the author, nor anyone else, not even her old acquaintance here, the hostel-owner and chef. (Only with her daughter would she of course have shared her intention at once—) Were anyone to learn of her plan, it would be — so she thought—“as if my secret came to light, and that would mean humiliation, whereas unrevealed it remains a source of riches.”

Where was he, the chef? The chef was out in a corner of the courtyard, busy with his morning preparations for the day’s cooking. And without a word she deposited the whole bunch of shelled chestnuts from the forests outside the riverport city among the other ingredients on his work counter. On this morning-between-frost-and-thaw, the chestnuts, too, appeared not merely “light or quince yellow,” but gave hints of that new color.

For that afternoon a wedding party was expected. By then she would be far away, and at the same time she would be present. If the previous evening the hostel had seemed about to close its doors forever, today it was filled with activity, as if this were its usual state and yesterday’s deserted atmosphere an illusion. One delivery man after another appeared, and not only from the nearby yet invisible Tordesillas, but also from Madrid, and from the Galician fishing ports. In between even a refrigerated truck from a distant foreign country, with river crayfish, perch, and pike; where could they possibly come from? and then a little hand-drawn cart with rather wizened mountain apples and potatoes, which had come a long way, from the Sierra de Gredos. At the same time, arriving from all points of the compass, crews of masons, carpenters, and roofers, who promptly went to work.

She would not be there to see the outcome, and yet she would be: by the time the wedding party arrived, the dive would look more or less like a castle again. In the midst of all this a postman appeared with a stack of mail, for the innkeeper, for the guests, but also for her, a letter from her brother, written while he was still in prison. Almost at the same moment an itinerant knife sharpener turned up and sharpened the innkeeper’s knives on his grindstone, driven by a foot pedal, and her scissors, at no charge. And then at one point a soldier came by, in uniform and armed, but without a cap — hair flying and face flushed—, bummed a cigarette and rushed on, searching for his lost unit?

With the change in circumstances on his property, the innkeeper had also become a different person. He had risen at the crack of dawn, while the others were still sleeping, to get to work on his cooking. He felt as if he were doing these things for his many children. Standing on one leg, shifting, while cooking, from one leg to the other. Chefs, the race of one-leg-standers. Even throwing his whole body into it when washing up. His pleasure at the heat rising from the stove. Applying final touches, to the nonedibles as well. Letting the seasonings fly to him — his elegance an additional seasoning. The chef, a different kind of embodiment. His cooking performance as a performance of the world.

Now it stimulated him to have someone watching. While peeling, grating, slicing, dicing, and turning, he repeatedly stood up and strode back and forth in his courtyard work corner, constantly busy, less a chef than an athlete, gathering strength for the competition. She assisted him, or rather: she was allowed to assist him, if only peripherally, by bringing a bucket of water, for instance, and collecting the trash. In between, the moment arrived when she was finally allowed to hand him her present; he took it matter-of-factly and ran one hand over it, while with the other, his left hand — a left-handed chef — he continued with the preparations for the wedding feast. This was a period in which women were more likely to give men presents, and what presents, too, and — at least where this woman was concerned — without ulterior motives. And meanwhile he was also cooking up a stew, on the side, for a mortally ill neighbor on the meseta . The man’s child then carried the heavy ceramic pot home to his father.

And worthy of describing was also the particular corner of the courtyard where the ventero (= innkeeper) was working that morning. There were remnants of the former park surrounding the castle, such as a box hedge and a small almond tree. But the ground already showed less of the gravel spread there long ago than of the reappearing sandy-stony-grassy subsoil of the steppe, yes, desert, along with the polygonal pattern of cracks caused by the dryness. It was indeed “ bel et bien, ” a corner or nook formed not by the castillo but by two sheds standing at an angle to one another, nowhere near a right angle, one shed half-finished, evidently left that way for centuries, the other half in ruins.