Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

“And even during the brief stretches of blue sky and sunshine, without a cloud or wisp of fog, now and then heavy, dense drops of rather mild rain would plunk down on us, out of the clear blue sky, as if coming from a sky somewhere behind the other one — just as, when a few moments later the appropriate cloud came over, despite the dampness and near darkness, only single drops would fall — or out of this blue would also flash single yet steady snowflakes, as if coming from outer space, which, when they hit the current of southerly air, were blown back up into the blue of the atmosphere.

“Those of us who, unlike the children — who stayed together in pairs or groups — did not perch in the almost entirely empty window openings, squatted for the most part on our heels in a circle around the driver, his son, and the crate of provisions; and a few stretched out in the corners, on the ground, on paper, the adults as if taking cover, while the children everywhere in the ruins’ window openings constituted a sort of peacekeeping force. In one corner of the former venta still stood a cast-iron stove, not all that rusted, but minus its pipe, and next to it, and looking even older than the stove, a heap of firewood, as if stacked there in ancient times, whose bottom logs, however, neither rotted nor mildewed like the others, produced a remarkably fresh, almost smokeless fire in the open stove — which, however, gave off hardly any heat — and it is true that none of us wanted to warm ourselves, whether we needed to or not.

“Even in its better days the inn’s floor had consisted not of wooden planks but, in all of its three or four rooms — in the meantime merged into one — of packed clay, and in one corner was a stone-lined tub, full of water: rainwater channeled in from the outside by a gutter? no, an actual spring there, inside the building a barely visible pulsing and swirling from way down below, and one of us who stuck his hand in exclaimed in surprise, made a face, and we all followed suit: the springwater in the niche, or, to use a current expression, in the ‘wet room,’ of the medieval venta was warm — unexpectedly so for us, coming from the wintry air, even hot to the touch, and it emitted or rather exuded that smell ‘of rotten eggs’ that indicates sulphur, as I hope you, an author who should know his science, will realize, the stench now growing stronger, invading the nostrils of even those most impervious to smells: the stench was so powerful for a few moments, the sulphurous wave so overwhelming, that we, with the exception of the children, who merely laughed, as at everything unexpected, at first reacted with an almost imperceptible impulse to flee, which expressed itself in our holding our breath or failing to blink: gas attack? ptomaine? But then: the driver and his son stretching out on the clay floor by the sulphur spring, and, on their stomachs, their faces half in the water, drinking from it, ‘good for sore throat, stomach problems, panic attacks,’ while they continued to converse, calmly, as they had done all the while, their speech intermittently reduced to a gurgling, but nonetheless still comprehensible.

“And we followed the lead of those two, whether it was really and truly a healing spring, and whether that had been the case since Roman times, indeed since the original inhabitants, the so-called Numantians, or not; even the children gulped the water, lying on their stomachs, and how. And at the same time an airplane, very low over the old pass, flying excessively slowly, to the eye hardly faster than the falcons overhead; with a heavy belly, its dark-green paint like camouflage (which, on the other hand, clashed with all the natural colors in the area, whether in the air or on the ground), its fuselage as broad as it was short, and its roar menacing. As the children had previously waved to everything along the way that showed a sign of life, they now did the same, gesturing from their windows in the ruins, arms flailing, voices yelling. And a hand up in the cockpit waved back, as if it could not help it, just as on the previous stretch of road the children’s impetuous and enthusiastic greetings had been answered from the trucks, from the horse-drawn carts — there were more and more of them — and also from the cars of the police patrols. We adults presumably remained invisible to the pilot under the crown of oak leaves, and likewise our bus, or was it taken for a wreck or a greenhouse?

“Where the old road, beyond the puerto —which means, as you will know, if, as I hope and trust, you are familiar with foreign languages, both ‘pass’ and ‘harbor’—joined the new one down below, a hiker was walking along the shoulder, heading south and toward the Sierra, with a knapsack over his shoulder, and although the airplane’s shadow swallowed him up for a few moments, the man continued on his way, calmly, or at least without missing a beat; without glancing up or to the side; his gaze fixed on the granite gravel, as if he were walking in someone’s footsteps.

“Before the bomber appeared, when only its roar was to be heard, whatever was in motion in the sky or on the ground had fled. Everything scattered; or seemed to scatter. A hare dashed off in a zigzag, followed in a straight line by a herd of wild boar. The falcons scattered, or rather swooped off in all directions — a provision for actual fleeing clearly not part of their natural endowment? Even the clouds and billows of fog taking flight.”

She continued her narrative: “Yet that was only an isolated incident, a colorless one, seemingly bleached-out, among thousands of colorful ones during our bus trip. That we were constantly biting our lips during the meal was actually caused by the cold. As far back as childhood, on particularly cold days, time and again we had unintentionally and painfully sunk our teeth into our frost-swollen lower lips, even drawing blood. In the ruins of the inn up there at the top of the long since abandoned pass, everything tasted delicious. Even if that same morning we had eaten an apple or a chunk of the very kind of juniper-cured ham that was in the crate of provisions, we thought: How long it’s been since we ate an apple. We’ve never tasted the difference between mountain and lowland nuts so distinctly.

“And it is not only the person who first came up with the wheel but also the person who first combined ham and juniper berries who deserves to be called an inventor. We consumed with gusto even foods we had hated up to then, as I had hated pickled mushrooms.”—“Perhaps also because you were all entertaining the thought that this might be your last meal?” (The author.) — She: “No. If we felt in danger, it was the same as every day, there for a moment and then gone again; and sometimes for another moment, and so on.”—The author: “Why do you constantly use the first person plural in your narrative? ‘We, we, and we’? Even when it’s only ‘I’?”—His client: “To keep us together. To keep us us! To keep me only me is not right, at least not for this book of ours!”

And then she fell silent. She closed her eyes. Her eyes remained closed for a while. She said nothing, just breathed, deeply. When she finally opened her eyes: a blacker black than usual, unblinking, the pupils pulsing evenly. Then she said: “In earlier times quite a few people had the ability to summon to the inside of their eyelids the residual image of a place, weeks or months later. But what I was seeing just now was not an image of us bus passengers during our rest stop by the ruins, but rather writing, lines that ran both from left to right and from right to left.” And turning her head away and gazing to one side along the line of her shoulder, she ordered her hired writer: “I want you to take this over! Take it over from me, author, more freely. Let it emerge. Let it acquire its own shape.”