Peter Handke - Absence

The old man is the spoilsport. Suddenly he steps in, gathers up the cards, and throws them far out into the river. As though he had been absent a long time, his face is covered with stubble and sunburned. His cape, reversed, has become a bright linen sail. Wearing ankle-high shoes, a water bottle and haversack slung over his shoulder, he is equipped for a long march. On his head a bright checked woolen cap with fringed edges; in one hand an unfolded map, in the other a freshly cut hazel stick. Wearing baggy, clownlike trousers, he has thrust one leg forward and seems to be standing on one foot. Despite his violent action, he is in a cheerful mood; it’s just that he has made a decision and throwing the cards away was a part of it.

After letting himself be inspected, he speaks: “The joyride is over. From here on we walk. No more riding. When people ride, there is no departure, no change of place, no sense of arrival. In a car, even when I myself was driving, I was never really traveling. My heart was never really in it. When I ride, I’m confined to a role that is contrary to my nature: in a car, that of a figure behind glass; on a bicycle, that of a handlebar holder and pedaler. Walking is the thing. Treading ground. Having my hands free. Swaying to my own rhythm. Only when absolutely necessary should one drive or be driven. Places to which I have been driven are places where I have never been. Only through walking can a place be in some measure repeated. Only through walking do spaces open up and the spaces in between sing. Only when walking do I turn with the apples on a tree. Only a walker’s head grows on his shoulders. Only a walker experiences the balls of his feet. Only a walker feels a current run through his body. Only a walker perceives the tall tree in his ear — silence. Only a walker overtakes himself and comes to himself. Only a walker’s thoughts have substance. We will walk. Walking is what wants to be done. And you mustn’t walk like other people who, anyone can see, walk only when they have to or by accident. Walking is the freest of sports. And now it’s time to get going. Places get their virtues from walkers’ virtues. Oh, my undying appetite for walking, for walking out of a place and walking on forever!”

The listeners accede without protest to the old man’s command. The gambler, who always has what is needed ready at hand, distributes walking equipment. The clothing is airy and the shoes, too, are light. The odd part of it is that on the four even the most ungainly garments acquire style, as though made to order for them. For all the disparity of their dress, its elegance enables them to form a group. The woman wears her headband like a tiara, the soldier his parka like a dress uniform, the gambler his dust coat like a robe of office. The last two load heavy knapsacks on each other’s back, and instead of crumpling under the weight, they seem to grow, as though the extra weight were just what their shoulders needed.

The camper has been left behind deep in a shadowy thicket, where its slats gleam like a forgotten woodpile. The forsaken spot is enlivened by a bird; its wispy legs are perched on a stone in the middle of the brook and its longer-than-body-length tail keeps bobbing up and down. Incessant, too, is the sound of the water, racing over the massive round stone, a dark, rhythmic pounding that pervades the general roar, a sonorous vibration as of a musical instrument, or the after-echo of a forgotten epic. The bullet holes in the ruined building are covered by spiderwebs sprinkled with mortar. From the bridge rises the vapor of thawing ice and snow; the planks creak. The place has the feel of a forbidden zone.

The walkers did not cross the bridge but followed an old mule track along the river. We were heading downstream, but sometimes, when we looked to one side and the waves came fast, we seemed to be moving in the opposite direction, that is, upstream; in the end, the picture became so reversed that we were confused — as at old Westerns, when the stagecoach wheels appear to be moving backward.

Our first stop was at the point where the river emerged from its valley and the bank on our side flattened out into a plain, while the opposite slope, though still steep, receded from the bank in a long arc, leaving room beside the water for a road, a railroad line, and finally fields, before turning into a long mountain chain paralleling the river at a distance.

Here, at the end of the defile, we crossed the river on a high footbridge so narrow that we had to proceed cautiously step by step. From then on, it was a different river, bathed in southern light, shallow, its water dispersing into rivulets between broad banks of gravel. Sparsely inhabited; as far as the eye could see, only an occasional lone fisherman, none of whom so much as raised his head as we hove in sight.

When we came to the road on the other side, we saw why it was unused: it had long fallen into disrepair and had never been open to ordinary traffic; it had been specially built during the world war to carry troops and supplies to the front. Grass was growing in the cracked asphalt; whole bushes and small trees had taken root, and their tops had joined to form a leafy roof. We could have walked comfortably on this straight empty road, with an elastic ribbon of moss under our feet, but our leader motioned us to the railroad embankment that ran parallel to the road.

The railroad had not by any means fallen into disuse. Trains kept passing, those heading upriver gathering speed, those heading downriver slowing down, as though approaching a considerable city — though of such a city we saw no sign. In the trains moving away from the invisible city, the passengers were sitting still, while in those approaching the station, a jolt went through the cars from first to last, ushering in a general rising from seats, and there were also repeated scenes of conductors in seven-league boots racing through the corridors from back to front. After crossing the embankment through an opening shaped like a portal, we took a gently winding path up the mountain slope, wide enough to have permitted us to walk abreast. But all of a sudden our aged leader was in a hurry and apparently wanted to be alone, so that even at the start of the climb we walked in single file. A little later the woman passed him with a cocky side glance, signifying that she no longer needed a leader, and vanished around a bend, only to reappear much later on an open stretch, silhouetted against the sky, high above her companions. Not once did she look around. Even on the shortcuts, she moved with swinging arms and head aloft, on steep hills as on level stretches. The gambler and the soldier with their knapsacks brought up the rear, walking slowly. The soldier came last, so as not to leave the gambler alone, for he was not accustomed to climbing and his knees kept buckling.

Only a short time has passed since they left the plain, and yet the very first S-curve has carried them far away: the plain’s details and movements stand out clearly all the way to the snow-covered mountains on one side and the luminous mist on the other which, along with the dark ships that sail it, is called the “sea.” At the same time, almost all its sounds have been swallowed up, and those few that are still audible transformed: the clanking of trains into a soft knocking, as though from behind a glass wall; and the crowing of cocks, also as from behind a glass wall, into incessant call signs. The clear, varied, quiet design is that of medieval panels, in which for the first time pure landscape became subject matter, and taken together, sea, tilled plain, and high mountains represent the whole world. The car flashing somewhere in the distance is also a part of this silent world, and despite their many different colors the houses of a settlement plunked down in a niche in the mountainside give off the same sienna tone of earth shooting up at the sky. So sharpened is the hearing by the silence here that not even the grazing of butterfly wings against the sand of the path goes unheard.