Peter Handke - Across

I bent down and washed my eyes and temples in wet snow. I wished it would start snowing again. My lips and forehead thirsted for snow, as though I hadn’t had my full share of winter yet.

In the suburb of Gneis, there was little light except for the streetlamps. An old old woman was standing at the window of a dark ground-floor room. The curtains were open and her face was close to the pane, but half concealed by her misted breath on the glass; no one would now have stood up to the look in her eyes.

Near the center of the village, the outlines of two children were painted on the roadway. The boy, who was a head taller, held his arm protectively around the girl. Both carried schoolbags. The sister was characterized by a pigtail, the brother by the prominence of his occiput. Under the layer of snow, the pair recurred several times in almost, but not quite, identical versions. The snow around them had melted, and the luminous paint glistened, though blackened from head to foot with tire marks.

I stood for a long time in the street, deep in contemplation of the schematic figures. Contemplation? In any event, there was nothing contemplative about the look I gave the driver of the oncoming car (who braked just in time), because he quickly closed the window he had already half opened and drove off without a word. Maybe he had only wanted to ask for directions — would the woman beside him otherwise have said: “Forget it, can’t you see he’s a stranger here himself?” And I called out after the car: “I’m only fit company for enemies now. Only my enemy is my friend.” Since this enemy no longer existed, all that remained was an aimless “Wipe him out!” (But at the same time I thought: Lucky none of my pupils’ parents was in that car.) Only then did I notice how many plays had been going on inside me, plays upon plays only a few hours before — and now not a single play was left. Or rather: I had run out of lines.

In the wooded section before the Colony, a mist arose. Only a few jutting branches could be made out clearly; trunks and treetops had almost disappeared. I dove into the mist as into a familiar element, one that suited me. The amount of space seemed infinite, and all for me. Suddenly on a tree trunk my shadow came to meet me.

I was almost disappointed when houses came into view; the gray of night was plenty of light for me. But in Oak Tree Colony I was — important to get this straight at such an hour — at home. The asphalt under my feet was home ground; this was in every sense my territory. Hadn’t I once wanted to shout at a noisy group of foreigners in the Old City: “Quiet — this is Austria!”? My country: an enamel sign in a provincial railroad station showed a pointing hand, with the words: “To the well.” My country, indeed. A man’s own country meant refuge, he could defend himself.

“But would you also defend this country of yours?” “Perhaps not the parliament building” would be my answer to such a question, “but this barn and that vintner’s hut, definitely.” For I can say of myself: “I am sick with my country.”

Now in the dense mist of the plain there was nothing but the Colony; no mountains, no sky; the desolation was almost complete. Some of the new houses were still unoccupied, and here and there the streets still smelled of fresh paint. The curtains of the foreign workers’ houses were of various dark colors, and even on the fully laden clotheslines there was seldom anything white to be seen. A barn glowed with inner light, shadows of animal bodies and human heads moved about and intermingled, as though a mare or a cow were being delivered. By the football field, a landfill far out on the heath, the dark tavern was being guarded by a dog named Nadir du Mistral with glass eyes and ears that resembled horns. A short, fierce, peacock-like screech issued from the Home for Retarded Children; a fluorescent light flickered; the windows were open at the top and the blinds hung down at a slant. A car had just driven into the garage; the top was covered with snow mixed with greenery; the driver, his hands on the wheel, was listening to the news on the radio; the only light in the villa that went with the garage was in the aquarium, where ornamental fish slowly swam back and forth.

I sat down by the canal, on a bench next to the phone booth, facing the apartment house where I lived. From time to time, the wind whistled through a solitary spruce by the water. I shut my eyes. Behind me, the Alm, almost silent over the rest of its course, roared like rapids — at this point, it drops steeply. Had I slept? When I opened my eyes, there was the half-moon with the face of a decrepit old man; a spruce branch was waving like a bird’s plume in front of it. In the moment of my awakening, the whole tree darkened and became my shadow.

I went into the house and without turning the light on anywhere, either at the entrance or in my apartment, went straight to bed. I lay with my eyes shut and began to feel warm. The mountain that goes by my name appeared to me. (It’s known to me only from a picture.) Mount Loser stood detached under a spacious sky, as though in a sphere of its own; and yet it seemed only a few steps away. From a rounded hilltop, which formed the pedestal, rose the naked cliffs of its gigantic upper story. Its flat roof was covered by a deep layer of snow, overarched by transparent gray air. The snow lay in wavelike dunes, and on the side of the mountain a white fountain surged into the gray air — a sign that a storm was raging up there. It must have been a severe storm, because the snow cloud was long and almost horizontal; indeed, it had a slight upward tilt. At the same time, the scene, beheld from a distance, seemed perfectly still; even the white of the fountain was motionless. In the sheer wall below it, there were dark spots, almost like gates or niches. Open, O gate in the rock. Take palpable form, 0 Aeolian Mount Loser.

Yet no peace came. Something was missing, something without which any appeal to any object whatsoever was premature. And premature meant pointless. The object ceased to be a thing of this world. “Something is missing” meant: there was room within me, but it remained empty. I did not expect the missing thing, I couldn’t — I had no reason to expect it. There was simply an unfilled space within me — and its emptiness was sorrow.

“But what is this thing that is not to be expected? The rustling of a tree that becomes a voice? A fountain rising from a cliff? A burning bush? Why not admit for once that what you lack is love!”

At this point, I finally lost my temper. “What kind of love are you people driving at? Love between the sexes? Love for another person? Love of nature? Love for what one has created? I, in any case, am homesick just now for a body, and not for its sex, but for beloved shoulders, a beloved cheek, a beloved glance, a beloved presence. Love? Incapacity for love? Lover’s sorrow? The sorrow is present only now that I am without love. You have only invented ‘incapacity’ as a pretext for your loveless argument. And when love sets in, I won’t have to appeal to the distant mountain anymore; of its own accord, it will move into our sphere, a salt dome, confirmation of thy, my presence. With the onset of love, I shall be safe. Or it will not have been love.”

In the days that followed, I didn’t leave the house. Most of the time I lay prone on my bed, my head in the crook of my arm. This arm was a kind of bulwark, behind which I felt sheltered. Now and then I’d pick up a daddy longlegs and let it run about in the palm of my hand, which tickled pleasantly. Occasionally I’d lie on my back, looking at the wall, where a flashlight and a shoehorn were hanging on a hook.

Outside the window, two thick ropes hung down; the housefront was being renovated and they served to pull a basket filled with mortar up and to lower one that had been emptied. In the dawning light, the ropes seemed strikingly massive and dark. At night, they made themselves noticed now and then by slapping against the windowpanes. In the moonlight, they glistened like glass; the melting snow had run over them during the day and then frozen.