Peter Handke - Moment of True Feeling

I too need an order, Keuschnig thought. — But an order presupposed a system. — But for him a system had ceased to be possible. — But then again, what did he need an order for? — To conceal the fact that he no longer had a system. — The only ideas that occur to me are ones I can’t use, he thought.

The next policeman he passed was alone — but even alone he was in harmony. Maybe the uniform does it, Keuschnig thought. Then he passed a solitary man in civilian clothes; his face, too, was in harmony. How human they all seemed in comparison with him. The wind upset a no-parking post, and again he began to see signs of death. He had already passed, but then he went back and set the post up again, as though that might invalidate something. — The next thing he saw, through a slit in the park wall, was a row of empty, overturned sentry boxes on a gravel path. Again he retraced his steps, this time to examine the sentry boxes in every detail — the sight slits on both sides, the little radiator on the rear wall — and turn them back into man-made objects. He even counted the ribs of the radiators: six — that couldn’t mean anything, could it? The next omen was the restaurant on the corner: If it’s recommended in one of the diner’s guides, he thought, nothing can happen; if not — none of the three guides so much as mentioned the place! A police car approached with its blue light and siren operating, and turned into another street. At least the keeper of the newsstand he was just passing, who was putting plastic covers over his papers to shelter them from the impending rain, might for a few moments regard him as an innocent bystander, and for a short while they had something in common. A glass half full of beer stood precariously on a pile of newspapers! Keuschnig wanted to go on, deeper and deeper into space, twirling a cane like …

Borrowed life feelings, which that day the organism instantly rejected. His organism had stopped doing anything but rejecting; once he had eliminated all simulated feelings, there was nothing left of his self, nothing, that is, except the dead weight of an unreality at odds with the whole world. Rejection as aversion to all impulses breathed into him from outside, to the charlatanism of internationally certified forms of experience! True, he could go to see a Humphrey Bogart movie; it was summer, the revival season; Key Largo, for instance, was playing all over town that week. After the picture he would climb the stairs side by side with Bogart and his troublingly moist upper lip, but he also knew that after his first few steps on the street, if not before, he would be alone again, with nothing and no one for a companion, asking himself why he bothered to go on, and where to. No, he wouldn’t delude himself; for him the time of revivals was past; there was no article to be had for money that could help him to cope with his new situation, nor would any system whatever or any amount of research ever get what he needed off the drawing board. What then did he need? What was he looking for? Nothing, he replied; I’M NOT LOOKING FOR ANYTHING. With that thought, he suddenly felt in the right and wanted to defend his right against all comers. Why was he still going under false colors? Was he a public menace? Almost all that day he had only wanted to do things — to bellow, to show his nakedness, to bare his teeth — but except for the one incident with the girl (no particular of which he remembered) he hadn’t actually done anything. Coward, he thought. And at the same time he was terrified of giving himself away the very next moment.

He realized that he wanted to look at the soldier with the bayonet over his arm, who was standing in the sentry box at the entrance to the Elysée Palace. What’s more, he thought, I’m going to do it! He watched the tip of the bayonet swaying back and forth; but when the soldier suddenly began to look at him, he quickly averted his eyes and looked at his watch. How imperturbably the second hand kept running along! There was something almost comforting in the passage of time. Keuschnig went on acting as if; he looked around as if … No, no one to call out to as if he’d been waiting for him. What about that street sweeper — it must be all right to look at him? But in this neighborhood even a street sweeper seemed to sweep as a mere pretext, and someone who watched him couldn’t be an innocent passer-by.

He would have preferred to pass through the gate with other people. Could he be the last? Is that why there was no one else? What time was it? (He had looked at his watch before, as if a mere glance sufficed to tell you the time!) Had he come to the right place? In any case, he could see the French Television truck in the courtyard. He showed his invitation and was waved through the gateway. On the top floor of the Palace a window banged; behind another window a waitress in a white cap passed; the driver of a black Citroen limousine at one of the side entrances pushed down his radio antenna while looking up at the dark sky; a man on a motorbike disappeared through a small gate in the park wall. These happenings made the building seem almost homelike; looking at things was tolerated. — An officer frisked him, another examined his attaché case. Looking between his upraised arms at the lid of the case as the officer carefully reclosed it, Keuschnig thought: At last something is being done with no help from me — something I can watch without taking part. A free second! He wanted to be grateful to someone for something … At that moment, to his surprise, the impersonal touch of the hands patting his shoulders had the feel of an encouragement, and in the next free second, under the spare professional movements of the officer feeling his chest, the ugly, prolonged suffering of that day dissolved into a pleasant, compassionate sadness. This time, thought Keuschnig, I mustn’t forget everything so quickly. Today, at six o’clock in the afternoon, I experienced the touch of those hands, which were only doing their job, as a caress.

He trembled. At the same time his face went blank with anxious self-control. The empty, pompous solemnity of a Fascist, he himself thought. The officer glanced at him in astonishment, then he and his fellow officer laughed very briefly at that stupid face.

Keuschnig had never expected to see anyone run in these surroundings — and now he himself was running across the courtyard, past the potted trees to the main entrance. No one blew a whistle and summoned him to halt. Some men in dark suits approached in the opposite direction, and the moment he saw them he slowed to a walk. He remembered that, as a child, if people came along while he was running he had always stopped and continued at a walk until they passed. Then he had broken into a run again. Now the men had passed — why didn’t he start running? — So many situations, so many places in which he had stopped for people had suddenly occurred to him — so many different people as well — that in recollection he could only walk. And something else had surprised him: that with his first running steps the surroundings, which had receded from him until nothing remained but a number of vanishing points — nothing there for him to look at! — were again surrounding him protectively. Where previously he had seemed to be passing the backs of things, he now saw details, which seemed to exist for him as well as for others. — Running again, Keuschnig noticed glistening puddles in the gravel beside the freshly watered potted trees and in that moment he had a dreamlike feeling of kinship with the world. He stopped still outside the entrance and shook his head as though arguing against his previous disgruntlement. Now he was able to look freely in all directions. Before going in, he cast a last hungry glance over his shoulder to make sure he had missed nothing. How his surroundings had expanded! It took free eyes to see them so rich — so benevolent. Now the sky with its low-lying clouds seemed to be sharing something with him. Keuschnig gnashed his teeth. — As he ran up the stairs, he was surprised to find himself reenacting a run that had happened in a dream. Then, for the first time in a dream, there had been actual motion in his running.