Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

After the girl’s first disappearance, when they had found each other on the island in the Atlantic, after months of searching, near Los Llanos de Aridane, she, the mother, was then received with everything “from soup to nuts” by her daughter in the hut where she had taken refuge, no, her home, and she had been served, among other things, “homemade bread.” And now, buying bread in the Sierra bakery, she asked after the girl she had lost track of for the second time. Except that she did not manage to describe a single feature of the young woman, her own flesh and blood, not a single one. Yet she had an image of her, and such a distinct one. Name? What is the child’s name?

And at that she realized that she no longer even knew her name; in the course of their long separation, it had escaped her! So what was the vanished girl’s name? Only a moment ago she had felt strong enough to bring a mill wheel to a stop with one finger, and the next moment—

The liturgy of preservation continued as she left the settlement behind and climbed toward the summit plain of the Sierra. For as she departed, she was convinced she was seeing the Pedrada region for the last time. Because she, the visitor, would not be around much longer? Because she would never pass this way again, would never set out again for anywhere? No. It seemed to her rather that in the fairly near future the entire tent- or yurt-town, together with the village’s old stone houses, would vanish from the face of the earth, perhaps already after the snowmelt, perhaps with the emergence of the summery swarms of flies.

Back home in the riverport city she would stock up on images from all the possible channels, images of the clean-swept mountain and feeder-brook landscape, aerial photographs of leveled ground, where even the granite outcroppings had been flattened; the former tent sites, like the footprints of the houses, recognizable only from fragmentary dark patches here and there in the churned-up ground, portions of circles and rectangles, as from a plane one can see in a plowed field below the darker lines among the otherwise evenly light-colored furrows that indicate where buildings once stood, decades, centuries, millennia earlier, and were cleared away or sank into the ground, and the meandering courses of brooks and rivers that may have disappeared, dried up, or flowed in entirely different directions as much as a million years ago: thus — and certainly worried about herself, “Do not worry!”—she took leave of Pedrada.

A pregnant little dog with piglike bristles (“dog,” kalb in Arabic) and a belly whose teats dragged on the sand and stones accompanied her well beyond the upper limits of the town and then even much farther, deep into the mountain steppe; at times remained standing some distance behind her, as if to turn back, but was then beside her again, gazing up expectantly.

And then who had claimed that in the Pedrada region even the children had forgotten how to play? Not that she saw any of them playing — school was still in session — or any proper toys, but at every step of the way, far up into the wilderness, she saw signs of play. While still in the village, where the bedrock had been eroded, forming sandy patches, she saw rows of little craters, like sand and dust baths for small birds, sparrows? (So there were sparrows after all at this elevation? Yes. And as previously mentioned: it is not necessary to avoid a contradiction here and there in her story.) And these bathing hollows, as was clearly recognizable from the markings, were alternately used by the children, or by whom else? for shooting marbles. Likewise she came upon signs of ninepin games, with wooden sticks set up as the pins, now fallen every which way, and among them, serving as the bowling balls, more or less round fieldstones.

“Or did I merely imagine these Sierra children’s games? Did my Sorbian-Arab village interpose its image again? Or, even more likely, my long-ago film set in the Middle Ages, in which the children had to play typical medieval games, with marbles and ninepins?”

The only person she really saw playing, on an athletic field carved out of a wasteland of stones, actually the mere suggestion of one, was the observer from abroad (she passed him unobserved): he was playing basketball by himself, at his knees a cluster of quite small children, not yet old enough for school. The basket, with mere shreds of a net, was bolted to a cliff, high up, and the reporter repeatedly jumped up to it with the ball for a “slam dunk.” He was playing in the sweat of his brow, cheering himself and the children on. They were supposed to join in and get the ball away from him. They were supposed to participate. They were supposed to play, please, please. He almost pleaded with them to play with him. But it was true after all, they did not play. They did not want to play — they were incapable of playing. All these children of Pedrada knew how to do was look on.

And it was even unclear whether they were watching him or something else altogether, for instance a trail of ants crossing the rocks or an invisible joust taking place behind him, fought with lances and swords by two men on horseback, their faces hidden in their visors; who said that the remote playing field there could not just as well have been the lists? Wasn’t this the place and the time to approach the solitary player, so that he could accompany her, at least for part of the way? “Not here yet, not now.”

In the telephone booth, up there way beyond the outskirts of Pedrada, surrounded by brambles and honeysuckle vines that formed a sort of lane, she dialed her own number, that of her property on the edge of the riverport city. She had entered the booth without any particular intention, desire, or decision, and had picked up the receiver. In this region there was still, or permanently, no service for her hand telephone.

The booth was far from everything, she later told the author, but besides, it was the one from which she had always called her daughter when crossing the Sierra de Gredos on foot; usually her daughter had stayed home alone (the girl was independent at an early age, or at least wanted to be). “Everything all right?”—“Yes.”—“Not too lonely?”—“No, no.” And so on. And now? On the first ring, the telephone was picked up, and she had her child’s voice in her ear.

And now she also knew her name; it popped out, her only word. But then the voice said, “I am not your daughter. I am the boy from next door, the son of your neighbor in the porter’s lodge. I am taking care of your house until you get back.”

And it remained the voice of her vanished child nonetheless, and it continued: “It is my wish that you not be too lonely on your journey. Here everything is all right. I have set the alarm and turned up the heat. The house is warm. The morning sun is shining in. Ah, behind the quinces there I can see the idiot of the outskirts going by. He is rowing with his arms and whistling. And now a train is blowing its whistle. And a few ship’s horns are blaring from down on the two rivers, several, many! When are you coming back? You have been gone so long already, such a long time. At night your admirer still circles the property. And each time he leaves a letter in the box for you. I have burned them all, but read them first and committed them to memory — in case you want to hear them. I am not reading a newspaper anymore — no longer need to. Ah, and now it is starting to snow, even though the sun is shining. One letter had no return address; I did not read it. The stamp had mountain peaks, the Sierra de Gredos. No one has asked for you. A hedgehog is going through the orchard right now, slaloming past the trees; shouldn’t he be hibernating? A ladder has tipped over. An outdoor table has collapsed. A statue, the one in back by the beech, is missing its head. Your bed looks used. The toys in Salma’s or Lubna’s room are lying all over the place. Otherwise everything is fine. Ah, now the fireplace screen is rattling. I have made a fire. And the oak roots in the forest that were ripped out of the ground by the storm are more and more matted, and hard as rock.”