Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

And on the way from the bus, now parked in the orchard next to another that resembled it like a twin, the other woman traveler identified herself as someone who had accompanied her once before, and actually for a not inconsiderable length of time, for days, indeed — memory now chimed in — for weeks, not on a journey, but rather from workplace to workplace, from appointment to appointment, from outskirts to downtown and back again, to write the cover story on her for an Italian? Brazilian? magazine — the heroine of the feature no longer remembered which — but now, walking somewhat behind her and addressing her back, explained: she was traveling the Sierra on her own this time, not as an author, let alone as a journalist, which she had been, by the way, only for a while and for the purpose of earning a living, and she had intentionally not brought any of her professional tools with her on this journey, neither her computer (she said ordenador ) nor her hand telephone ( portable ) — besides, there was “no service” for the Pedrada region, at least at the moment — not even a notepad and pencil; in fact, she had set out for the Sierra without any luggage, any encumbrance, so as to forget how to speak and in fact forget all her languages; whereupon a memory image of this former author finally came to the woman to whom she was speaking: the image of a terribly young woman always tottering along on high heels, constantly blushing, with tears forever welling up in the corners of her eyes for no apparent reason, the image most sharply focused on the wheel-less suitcases, weighing a ton, and the equally heavy gear bags dragging down both her shoulders, all of which she had hauled from a great distance, if not from far-off countries, to their fleeting rendezvous, and always without help, always “alone” (in the sense in which a woman in her land of origin, when company arrived unexpectedly or a telephone call came and she had a man with her, would say defensively, “I’m not alone just now”).

And on the basis of the image she turned to face the other woman, now following in her footsteps with hands completely free: how “terribly young” and “alone” the woman, the girl, still was, and yet how small, how tiny she appeared in the current surroundings, out in the orchard as well as inside the hotel tent, although today, too, she was wearing high-heeled shoes, but this time more sturdy ones: “My God, you’re so little!” said her former feature-article heroine, in a hoarse voice and clearing her throat, as if for her, too, this were the first time she had spoken out loud this day; and this exclamation, furthermore using the intimate form of “you,” uttered by her, who in the past had never exchanged a personal word with this writer, expressed a friendliness surprising even to the speaker herself — sounding entirely different from the way “My God, she’s so big!” would have sounded — conveying immediate affection, after which she grabbed her fellow traveler under the arms, as if to confirm that she was really walking along without luggage, with hands and arms free, this woman to whom she had extended only the tips of her fingers back in the days when they met in major cities.

Ultimately one was most surprised there in Pedrada, in the innermost reaches of the Sierra de Gredos, by oneself, above all by the way one interacted with others, for instance with this woman whom one knew more or less, or hardly at all, from the world outside: by the words and gestures that became possible when one met, words and gestures unthinkable “out there in the world,” and by how matter-of-factly they came out of one. Did these expressions, of which one would previously have considered oneself incapable, perhaps have to do with the so-called remoteness of this place? And also with a shared sense, perhaps imagined, of vulnerability? And what did “remote from the world” mean?

The individual sleeping quarters in the Milano Real II consisted of tents inside the tent, arranged more or less in a semicircle at the back, along the walls of the mother tent; not made of wood and clay like the big tent, but of classic tent material, though not of one in common use; each one — there were only a dozen such “tent rooms”—in another color of the spectrum, from which the little tent also got its name; and instead of being conical or pyramidal in form, cube-shaped, except for the concave back wall, which at the same time was part of the wall of the main structure.

She had never seen and touched a material like that of her tent chamber, dubbed “Orange,” or Burtuqal . Completely opaque from the outside, although a bedside lamp was lit, from the inside the material allowed one in some places to see the neighboring tents and especially the front part of the tent inn, which was left free of smaller tents and was several times larger than the sleeping area in the back.

For a moment she thought she was at home in the riverport city, in her office, likewise located way at the back of the floor for top management, where, without having been visible herself, she had been able to follow the goings-on in the open-plan office outside through a wall of one-way plate glass instead of a cloth wall. (“Had been able to”? “having been visible”?: Did this mean that all that was a thing of the past? over and done with forever?)

The tent material somewhat resembled a patchwork, though without detectable seams; in one place it felt like brocade, in the next like jute, in the third like silk, and in another more like a man-made fiber, with what seemed like temporary patches here and there of plastic or even waxed paper. Although it would have been possible for her to look outside through the holes, tears, and slits that seemed to have been made intentionally in the rear wall of her night-tent, forming a sort of aperture and at the same time delicately chiseled ornamentation, she decided instead to survey the neighboring sleeping tents and the wide interior space under the dome of the main tent. After this day of being in constant motion, almost always with very distant horizons up ahead, she did not want to see any more of the world outside; did not want to have to see anything outside the walls of the inn; also did not want to set foot that night outside the curtain at the entrance to the tent.

But certainly to look through the cloth walls: at the likewise opaque tent walls to her right and left, which allow one to sense a forehead leaning against the material or a fist being clenched — this one called “Violet,” or Banafsadzi , the sleeping place of the former magazine writer, still blushing blood red; the other one, “Gray” or Aswad , where the hiker or stonemason who refused a ride is sleeping; and looking straight out at the great hall, as big as a barn, or the barn as big as a hall — the area in front of the semicircle of rooms is in fact something between the great room of an inn and a threshing floor — empty except for a long supper table, extending from one mud-and-wood wall to the other, set with dishes in some places, cleared in others, and in places crowded with useless stuff.

Nothing else but these many tables, pushed together along a ragged diagonal in the front portion of the lodging tent. And this area without any partitions: a single high, broad expanse, illuminated by lightbulbs dangling from the dome, which in the uneven flow of current from the generators sometimes glow, sometimes flicker, sometimes just splutter and intermittently go completely dark for a fraction of a second, and in this fashion give the impression of being constantly rocked back and forth by a draft (but aren’t the light fixtures actually rocking?).

No kitchen in the place; no sideboard; no heater; no reception desk (if El Milano Real Roman Numeral Two is even supposed to be a proper hotel); no credit-card stickers at the entrance or exit, or were there? that one, lone little sign there, a logo completely unfamiliar to her — and that was something — also faded and seemingly long since invalid, that particular card out of circulation, from a prehistoric credit-card era, so to speak, the emblem unrecognizable from a distance, even if she had eyes as sharp as the red kite.