Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

And it was then that tears almost came into the eyes of the traveling observer. As a man trained as a social scientist, whose research specialty was anxiety and fear, he was familiar with the phenomenon whereby an individual who was profoundly frightened by something would later make involuntarily “empty chewing movements,” with nothing in his mouth, so to speak, but the breath that had been dammed up by fear: and, as he now recognized, the dances, like the other manifestations of life among the people of the region, were similar empty chewing movements. Empty chewing movements caused by nothing but terrible fear, which also explained their recourse, or, more precisely, regression and reversion, to long since faded regional legends, myths, and sagas.

Empty chewing movements: that atavistic fiddling, often merely on an instrument with a single string, and the plucking of a Jew’s harp, which he observed with particular frequency. Empty chewing movements: the constant looking away from each other, the abrupt, rude, almost dismissive behavior of the sexes here, the men and women toward each other — in his report he wrote of the “absence of any culture of eroticism,” of the “disheveled art of wooing,” of the “complete lack,” at least in public, “of mutual displays of affection”—and at this he almost, almost jumped up, either to shout at one of the dancers or another, or to take one by the hand, or to throw his arms around one, and only the fact that as a child, when he had run toward others to touch them, to embrace them, he had always been pushed away or ignored, as an intruder, a superfluous and ridiculous extra wheel, restrained him, at the last moment, fortunately for him and his report.

Accursed Pedrada. Confounded Sierra de Gredos y de Caponica.

She had crossed the Sierra de Gredos quite often, in every season, taking all the various passes, including passes that still bore that name but had been out of use for generations, either for the driving of cattle from north to south, the transhumancia , or for transports of any kind, and had meanwhile become almost impassable, even on foot.

And now the plan called for her to set out on another crossing, which she wished or wanted to be her last — did she really wish that? — by way of the so-called Puerto de Candeleda, a route from before the war, on today’s map merely a name — but wasn’t a name something, at least? — and recognizable by the complete absence of any indication of a road or even a footpath down the steep southern flank of the Sierra directly after the “pass,” more like a random spot up on the ridge.

And at the same time she was confident that by evening she would be down in Candeleda, at the foot of the southern flank, over fifteen hundred meters below the out-of-service pass named after the small town that did not belong to any meseta or plateau but, rather, lay on the edge of a lowland, surrounded by groves of palms, oranges, olives, and who knew what else. (She instructed the author to insert words like “confidence” and “confident” into her story, from way station to way station, from section to section, but to avoid expressions for “hope,” including the Spanish esperanza and even the Arabic hamal —“I do not want this word, and I will not learn it — any more than the word for ‘guilt,’ hithm !”—so she had learned these words after all?)

So in spite of the short winter day she was confident? Yes. Time and again, especially in the morning, as now, in the mountains, one (one?) was seized by the scruff of one’s neck, so to speak (so to speak?), by a confidence that was all the more powerful the more baseless and senseless it was, and hoisted into the air. And although she did not have much time, it seemed to her as if she had plenty of time. It seemed to her? She made up her mind again to have time, and it was so. “Plenty of time!” that was also the farewell used by the people of Pedrada — the farewell used by all those moving out of the region. And she heard another farewell, one introduced since the last time she had passed through, astonishing in light of what had happened in the region since then: “Have no fear!”

Everywhere in the spaces between the granite houses and the clay-and-wood tents, the ridgeline could be seen, and somewhere was the pass or crossing. No, every point was a possible crossing. And it seemed close by. It was a clear day. Or was it? (More than once, just such clear and promising days in the Sierra de Gredos had ended with a life-threatening storm or, if the clear weather persisted, with a no less dangerous loss of all sense of direction or a close call, perhaps simply the result of a slight misstep.)

In spite of the many snowy and icy patches, it was a day outside of any season, windless, and warm from the mountain sun. And it seemed to one as if it would be that way forever. When one placed one’s hand on a granite outcropping, on the yellow lichen there, or reached into a tuft of grass by a spring or one of the broom thickets, a quiet warmth, a heating warmth, penetrated one’s body to the bone, such as one had never felt so comfortingly in an actual calendrical summer — in the middle of the purported Sierra winter, a fullness of summery warmth experienced previously at most in a dream. “It is summer!”—and as one said that, it became summer, even if it was perhaps still late winter.

And at the same time the adventuress was of course thoroughly aware not of some specific danger or other but of the unidentifiable and yet by no means less serious danger. This danger simply had to be there, as already described, not that she particularly wanted to look for it. One could not manage without it, at least from time to time. This danger, whether connected with the Sierra or with something else, was the be-all and end-all. Without it, no story. Danger and the story were necessities — and again she saw herself in this respect as anything but alone.

Did anyone else intend to cross the Sierra de Gredos from north to south on foot that day? She posed the question not to the people of Pedrada, who were visibly relieved to be staying down below in the settlement, and understandably had no intention of undertaking long journeys into the unknown, but to one of the Internet screens in the village — it goes without saying that there were locations in the village for them, as for almost everything. No answer, or rather yes, there was one, from someone who wanted to make his way up into the Caucasus that same day, to the Sierra de Armenia there. So no one else was heading for the Puerto de Candeleda? Terrific. Gusto: for walking, climbing, tracking, cutting a trail.

And it occurred to her then that she still lacked something important for the expedition: bread. In the whole of Pedrada she had not come upon a single bakery. How could that be, with the new mills downriver on the Tormes? But there had to be a panadería , and hastening up and down the yurt alleys and around corners, she said this word to herself, first under her breath, then out loud, as an exclamation, or merely “Bread!” “¡Pan!” and finally, involuntarily, in Arabic, “Chubs” : and almost in the same breath she smelled from around the corner the aroma of freshly baked bread, which she then followed — to be sure, it was still quite a distance to the bakery, halfway across the village. The precincts and geography of the bread aroma. Cozy oven fragrance in the midst of the far-flung, deserted rocky mountains.

The bakery was the smallest of the hundred shops in Pedrada, installed in a hut of worked stone that had perhaps once been a rabbit shed. And now it was one of the few buildings there (the tents were also “buildings,” of course) with a glass door and strings of metal beads in front of the opening. And as she entered, the glass door reflected for a moment her vanished child. A glance over her shoulder: no one there.