Peter Handke - Crossing the Sierra De Gredos

And because, as she made her way through the Sierra, no “property” crossed her path and disrupted her rhythm, she became, and was, so free that she could do the smallest thing, or, with reference to others, the majority, could “undertake” them. At least this conception accompanied her, and for a stretch her “I” or “one” became a “we” and a “you.” We laced our boots. We would bring this rock crystal back for you, and this sheet of mica for you, and this snakeskin for you.

Yes, just as she was making the journey for herself, she was undertaking it for others, and in the rhythm of her stride she felt constantly accompanied by others. It was crucial to stay away from property, as far as possible. We have been property owners long enough. And there was very little that got in the way of observing and perceiving — of seeing the big picture — as much as property ownership. And if we lost the ability to observe, we ceased to be worthy of observation, of being kept in the picture.

And at the same time she remained aware that one false step, one stumble, not even a broken foot, merely a sprain, would be enough to put an end to this cocky “we.” One momentary slip, and the veil of universality, the epic sweep, would be ripped off our big picture of the world, and all such words as “we” and “you” and “one” would be blown away, and only the teeny-tiny “I,” more solipsistic still than the property owners’ “I,” would be left, more wretched, ridiculous, and, in her eyes, now “not worth describing.”

And even more powerful than her constant awareness of the external danger of falling, which was mechanical and merely threatened her body and could also be anticipated and to some extent forestalled, another awareness was at work inside her, one that had pursued her since her first time in the Sierra de Gredos, when she was halfway to the top and suddenly found herself without her companion, the father of her child, which she could feel, ready to be born, in her protruding belly; under her heart.

Just as then, when she had stood alone with the fetus in the blazing granite-cliff sun, there would again erupt from deep within her something that would turn everything upside down, uncontrollably: labor pains, which would have nothing to do with giving birth, bringing something into the world, and which, also, instead of just hurting, produced sheer, revolting horror — turning not only herself but the entire exterior world upside down, so that again she would be unable to distinguish her head from her feet, but also north from south, earth from sky, horizontal from vertical, mountain from plain, up from down, large from small, body from surfaces, eagles from lizards, ants from ibexes, cliffs from houses, rockslides from metropolises — all hopelessly mixed up before her eyes. Hopelessly? Hopelessly.

Yes, infinitely more to be feared than a false step was the repetition of that tumbling and stumbling of her insides, casting her, and with her the world and everything in it, into a chaotic state in which the cosmos (which meant “ornament” and “order,” did it not?) seemed utterly insane and the entire creation fell out of joint — and far outstripped the so-called primal chaos in its frantic confusion.

“To get a grip on things,” she went on, “I sank my teeth into my arm, and as I did so felt my arm growing teeth and biting me back in the face … The tops of the cliffs, although they were standing still, began to tip in all directions. The kite circling in the distance grazed me with its beak. The shoe I had kicked off became a person in his death throes, his mouth gaping wide. A circle of dead tree trunks bent over to become a herd of elephants, about to stampede over me and the child in my belly. I jumped backward at the sight of a cloud. I leaned over to pick some blackberries that were hanging high above my head. When a butterfly approached, I jerked my head to the side as if it were a mountain vulture. Like someone cutting her own hair in front of a mirror — no, not like that — I reached to the left for something on the right, in front of me for something at my back, and vice versa, and vice versa again. And finally, in a panic, I even looked for the doorbell in a rock wall …” For once she did not interrupt her story in midstream, but was all afire (the author: “an expression still in use?”) to go on and on, describing the episode.

So was the narrow, rigid gaze of the property owner therefore preferable to the threat of such dire confusion? The halfway-safe “What’s mine is mine”?

“It is true,” she then told the author in his village in La Mancha: “Even far from my earthly possessions, on my way to you, I allowed myself to be influenced, incidentally and not even all that reluctantly, by one of my belongings, as if that could keep me from being thrown off course. Yes, among other things, while crossing the Sierra this time I was guided by the thought that in a bush or somewhere I would come upon a certain object I had lost on another crossing, nothing special, nothing valuable, some small thing, insignificant in itself, but linked with a memory. I am repeating myself? As I should. You should repeat it as well, author of mine.”—The author: “A scarf? A glove? A pocketknife?”—She: “A scarf. I was constantly on the lookout for the black scarf I lost maybe ten years ago, one summer, in the Sierra.”

The author: “So that means a yes, within limits, to owning such personal items? But not real estate, not house and land? When it comes to the latter, your story should say the exact opposite of your immortal predecessor’s, in which house and patience are named in one breath: ‘He abandoned his house and his patience.’ So instead: ‘She abandoned the house and impatience’; ‘She abandoned the house and intolerance’; ‘She set out for distant parts and patience’; ‘She set out for foreign parts and tolerance’?”—She: “Yes, something along those lines.”

Despite all the measures and precautions taken, the moment nonetheless came when up again turned into down, houses became cliffs, cliffs became lodgings, and chaos took hold.

Except that this soon lost its power to terrify. For the first time now it was right and proper. It started — so the story goes — with her pausing on one of the outer shelves of the main Sierra ridge that were staggered in an even rhythm all the way to the horizon and looking back into the high valley of the río Tormes and its headwaters, where she had begun her ascent that morning.

She saw Pedrada lying below, the stone-thrower village. But was this still her Pedrada? Weren’t the tents she recalled actually a cluster of those conical and pyramid-shaped haystacks typical of the Sierra de Gredos, far from any settlement, fenced off from the mountain wilderness by stone walls, which surrounded the stacks, always in a circle? And these hay cones, precisely in the middle of the otherwise empty stone enclosures — no cattle or sheep in sight — looked as if they had long since been abandoned there, blackened with age, stacked perhaps years, if not decades, earlier, the hay unusable, the tarpaulins covering them tattered to shreds.

Her, and our, Pedrada no longer existed; the stone buildings were blocks of granite heaved out of the ground; “Pedrada” a mere name, with no village to go with it, similar to the way in which, on the route ahead of her, the Puerto de Candeleda had long since ceased to be a pass or a crossing and merely bore the name, with not even the suggestion of a notch there at the top of the ridge.

And she did not see that phantasmagorical Pedrada at her feet, far below; rather the tent-shaped haystacks and the boulders, strewn about as if by an explosion, appeared as if high above her; although she had been climbing for all those hours, they now seemed to be above eye level — just as in the game German children call “Heaven and Hell” the players see themselves rolling along the ground through an undulating landscape bisected by furrows, down into one furrow and ditch, then up, then down again, and up again, until in the end below becomes above, heaven above becomes hell below, and vice versa again.