Peter Handke - Moment of True Feeling

The writer sat down beside him, spreading himself so wide that he almost pushed Keuschnig off the bench. After a while he said: “All of a sudden I feel like seeing Hitchcock’s Vertigo again, that Spanish church tower with the crape-framed blue sky behind it — right this minute! The editors of some anthology have asked me how I felt about prayer, which is apparently being rediscovered. Have you ever prayed?” Keuschnig was going to say something in answer, but only exhaled. The next moment he experienced a thrill of pleasure because he hadn’t said anything. I’m free, he thought. I don’t have to talk any more. What a relief! And he gave a startled laugh.

They walked on as far as the Passy station. Keuschnig felt an impulse to disappear in the blackness of the Bois de Boulogne. But he didn’t want to walk any more. The blue signal light down in the railroad cut would go on shining uselessly all night … Surrounded by chairs piled on tables, they drank cognac in the one café that was still open. The writer told Keuschnig how a certain bass guitarist had amazed him by never losing his rhythm. “He must have made his peace with the world,” said the writer, who. had just broken a cigarette while putting it in his mouth. A dog barked in the silent streets around the Porte de Passy, and another, up the boulevard, almost at the Porte d’Auteuil, answered, as dogs in the country do at night. In one of the totally dark buildings a toilet light went on and a moment later went out again. Though it was after midnight, a shutter was rolled down. The comfortable apartment houses now gave the impression of impregnable fortresses. The roar of cars could be heard from the Boulevard Périphérique, but none came this way. Was that a rat running across the street on light-colored legs? The sidewalk glistened like the steps of the Métro … By this time Keuschnig was tired and nothing else.

On the way home his fatigue turned to fear and fear made him ruthless. He walked so fast that the corpulent writer fell behind. In his fear he even forgot to see SIGNS. The bare tree roots on the unpaved path beside the railroad cut were terrifying in themselves. When he reached the house in a panic, the two women were sitting on the front steps with their heads together, talking softly. Hostile in their security, they paid no attention to him. Guitar music was coming out of the open door.

They didn’t move aside when he went past them into the apartment. Their only response to his grazing them was to talk louder. He wished them dead.

He sat down in the dining room. The dirty dishes were still on the table. Thoughts pell-mell, in complete sentences, but all unutterable. Unthinkable that he would ever again draw breath to say a word. But equally repellent that he should go to bed now. Like a sick man, he could neither stand nor lie, only sit motionless, leaning forward. He wanted to close his eyes, so as to see nothing more — but for that he’d have needed lids for his whole body. He couldn’t help hearing the women on the steps talk about him in the third person plural—“men like Gregor”—as though he didn’t count any more. Some people passed the ground-floor window talking Spanish in the silent night, and he experienced a fleeting moment of longing and appeasement. The writer came in panting and sat down facing him on the floor. How ridiculous! He knew the writer was there, but didn’t look up. In the presence of this man with his affectation of omniscience, innumerable little worms began swarming in and out of every opening in Keuschnig’s body; an intolerable itch, especially in his member and nostrils. He scratched himself. Dried ear wax detached itself from his auditory passages and fell somewhere … Now I would like to see someone INNOCENT, he thought; someone I know nothing about; neither where he comes from nor what he’s like. — From the writer’s mouth he heard a smacking sound, as though his tongue were detaching itself menacingly from his palate, preparing to speak — and then he really heard him clearing his throat. Don’t speak! “Once I get the hang of it,” said the writer, “I can make do with your gestures. But when your situation gets really critical, you’ll have to start talking.” Keuschnig only bared his teeth. The writer wanted to leave but couldn’t get up off the floor. He rolled back and forth for a while, then called the women to help him. They picked him up, the three of them went out. They didn’t say a word in front of Keuschnig and they didn’t laugh. Once outside, they talked without interruption.

Keuschnig stayed there motionless, until he heard the guests departing from the seated entertainment in a fulsomely rattling diesel taxi. He heard Stefanie putting out the lights all over the apartment and going into the bathroom. He sat in the dark and heard her brushing her teeth. He heard her going down the long hallway to her room, opening and closing the door. He heard things happening one after another, and that day he was unable to skip or disregard any of them.

Much later, without knowing how he got up, he suddenly found himself on his feet, going to her. It was dark in the room. She was breathing as though asleep. He stood there indifferent, beginning to feel sleepy. And then, very much awake, she said slowly: “Gregor, you know I love you …” but her calm gave him a jolt. He switched on the light and sat down beside her. She looked so solemn that the sight of her scattered clothing seemed incongruous. Yet, because of it, he saw her more clearly than usual. Suddenly, while they were looking at each other, he wanted to butt her chin with his head. She began to sob, and he noticed that her arms were breaking out in gooseflesh. “Are you sad?” he asked. “Yes,” she said. “But there’s nothing you can do about it.” He bent over her and caressed her, himself trembling and without ulterior motive. How cold she was all over! He grew excited and lay on top of her. At that she kicked him off the bed and he fell on the floor. Almost contentedly, he left the room.

At that point everything had really become a joke! Humpbacked and squinting he entered the PARENTS’ BEDROOM. With malignant sloppiness he dropped his trousers on a chair. Then he sat up in the bed and read the diner’s guides, pencil in hand, drawing circles around stars, crowns, and chef’s hats. The tiniest village at the end of the world was still on the map if it could boast a recommended restaurant. How many escape routes were open to him! — He tried to remember the past day and realized he had forgotten most of it. He began to feel proud that he was still alive. His head drooped and quickly he put out the light. He was asleep before his head touched the pillow.

He awoke soon afterwards at the edge of a precipice, from a dream in which he was about to be murdered. He woke up because it occurred to him at the last moment that he himself was the murderer. He was the intended victim and he was the murderer, who was just coming into the house from the fog outside. Waking didn’t mend matters — the only difference was that his horror no longer expressed itself in objects and images. He had awoken stretched out, his arms straight at his sides, one foot on the other, sole on instep. His teeth were clenched, and his eyes had opened as quickly as the eyes of an awakening vampire. He lay speechless, incapable of moving, infected with the terror of death. Nothing would ever change. There was no possibility of flight, no salvation of any kind. His heart no longer seemed protected by ribs. It pounded as though it had nothing but skin over it.

The room was so impenetrably dark that in his thoughts he groaned with hate, disgust, rage — though he didn’t utter a sound. Yet he used to think that here in a foreign country, in a different language, the fits of terror he had had all his life might take on a different meaning, that at least they would not be so utterly abysmal, that, chiefly because thus far he had not learned to speak the foreign language instinctively and in general lived much less instinctively in France than he had in Austria, he would no longer be so helplessly at their mercy as he had been in the land of his birth and childhood … As though these thoughts had given him back his mobility, he began to slap his bed just as in childhood he had slapped some object he had barked his shins on.