Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

And that is by no means all. This would-be historian has even worse things to say. He works himself up to describing the people of Nuevo Bazar in terms that bear not the slightest relation to any visible reality, less descriptions than figments of his imagination.

Thus he mentions, as a custom shared by all the different ethnic groups in his day, that they do not clip their mobile phones onto their belts or elsewhere but drag them along, in the settled areas, on a line or a leash, almost as long as for a dog, “on a rail specially installed for this purpose by the Zone administration.” Furthermore, according to him, all the inhabitants, without exception, including any children who know how to count, are required to have such a device with them at all times, and to keep it switched on.

“On the other hand there was a regulation stipulating that if one received a call one had to put on a special helmet, which concealed the speaker’s or listener’s face, along with its expressions, from the eyes of others on the street, and muffled his voice, at the same time distorting it to the point of incomprehensibility. Time and again it happened in the Zone in those days that a person telecommunicating out on the street without the prescribed facial shield would have his hand knocked from his ear by one of the specially appointed enforcers, with a stick designed just for that purpose (and not a few civilians played policeman, using their bare fists), and time and again mistakes were made, when a presumed violator was merely holding his hand to his ear as he walked — mistakes that did not always simply end with an apology and the apology’s being accepted.

“Altogether, the entire Zone was notable for being a source of mistakes and mix-ups. The residents of the Zone did not even become aware of most of them, or if they did, fortunately there were no serious consequences. To mention (for the last time!) those long-distance-calling minis that everyone had to carry: especially in the spring, which still occurred in the Zone, though very inconspicuously, quite often one of those out on the street would mistake the sudden squawking of birds, whether close by or high up in the air, for his telephone’s ringing, and would promptly press the little button, after obediently popping on the helmet. And one never saw anyone in Nuevo Bazar doing actual work; certainly there were people slaving away, but they were kept out of sight or were so far off that they no longer had any significance. And all the wares from the wide world seemed to be available, but when one really needed something, it was nowhere, but nowhere, to be found. And while all the alleged monuments glowed and glittered, the hordes of pedestrians below waited in vain for the simple headlights of buses and other means of transportation.

“And since each of the approximately nine hundred ninety-nine ethnic groups in the Zone had its own ring tone, when a titmouse squeaked, only the Galicians would answer; when a blackbird chirped, the Valencians; when a falcon screeched, the Andalusians; when a lark trilled, the Carinthians; when a woodpecker rapped, the New Spartans; when a jackdaw squawked, the Chumadians. But no one in the throng would react to the clattering, or rather rattling, of the storks, which periodically drowned out all the other sounds or noises. Here, as everywhere on the mesa — in spite of everything, the Zone continued to be a part of it — the storks built their basket-like nests atop the church towers, but their sound not only did not match any of the different rings; it was not even heard by the people of the Zone, or if it was heard, it was mistaken for a stick caught in a vehicle’s wheel. No one knew that there was life up there among the presumably dried-out twigs atop the tower; not even the children looked up to see the dagger-like beaks poking out of the nests, or the fighter planes overhead.

“Among the innumerable mix-ups occurring daily in the Zone at that time, others were less innocuous: the mere sound of the wind had become so unfamiliar that a person hearing a rushing behind him would take it for a truck bearing down on him, and would involuntarily jump out of the way, and precisely thereby … Another person might hear the crunching of footsteps growing louder and louder on all sides, and, assuming that he was surrounded by enemies, would fire blindly in all directions — many adults in the Zone were armed, and not only adults — yet the crunching was actually the croaking of frogs, which continued to have their moist places, though hidden from view.”

And the height of the Zone’s self-appointed historian’s ridiculous imaginings, an example of his utter disregard for the principle articulated long before him by a narrator of an entirely different sort—“to present this and that to the reader without drawing any conclusions!”—could be found in his conclusions, which he prefaced with a few final aspersions, cast not only on the people of the Zone but also on the animals, plants, and objects there.

“To be sure, there were still a few original inhabitants in the Zone who referred to themselves as being ‘of the old school.’ But they were dying out. All the others had moved there from elsewhere, most of them already two or three generations back, without displaying any trace of the regions and countries from which their ancestors came, indeed without any knowledge of those ancestors. Each person stalked around as his own hero; there was bragging even in the eyes of the infants: ‘Whatever you people are, I’ve been for a long time already. In a pinch, I’d be a better singer than Orpheus or Bob Dylan. If I wrote a book, Cervantes and Tolstoy would be rank amateurs by comparison. If I had to direct movies, they would make Birth of a Nation and Viridiana look like home videos. If I were asked to paint a picture …,’ and so on. Admiration and enthusiasm for the actions and accomplishments of anyone else was considered old-fashioned and embarrassing, or was merely feigned, and in such a way as to be intentionally transparent. Yet in the Zone and on the street, as well as on the Zone TV and the Zone Internet (which was limited to the Zone!), one of the most frequently used words was ‘love.’ ‘I love this salt shaker, I love this purple, we (couples always spoke in the first person plural) love New Zealand wines, we loved the latest work by …’ (even the booksellers used nothing but the first person plural, whether they were several or only one) …

“In truth, what had once been love had long since disappeared from the Zone. And that revealed itself above all in the fact that each person had his own way of measuring time; in fact, all the digital watches beeped to mark the hours at completely different intervals. And each person followed his own clock, lording it over everyone else with his personal time. Not only the credit cards but also the paper currency displayed their owner’s picture almost immediately after coming into his possession. While on one street veritable hordes of judges paraded in full regalia, on a nearby parallel street the daily procession of felons took place. Even the worst criminals (often former statesmen and their ilk) moved about freely in the Zone, openly and as a matter of course, aware that they would never ever be punished.

“As far as I am concerned, perhaps here and there a hint of that extinct love may have revived. But the person in whom it revived remained hopelessly alone with it. Only the haters still formed a community. Even the children in the Zone were handicapped by bad qualities, at first imposed on and instilled in them, soon innate. If one of the last two or three original inhabitants happened to speak to such a child from the heart, saying, ‘Be yourself!’ (this might be an old photographer, setting up a school photo), the child would promptly, at a complete loss, make a whole succession of faces, not one of which was anywhere near ‘the right one.’