Peter Handke: Absence

Along with her monologue, the woman has concluded her from-start-to-finish indecipherable writing, in which only the often double and triple exclamation points and underlinings are clear: her reply. She rises, not abruptly, but with graceful vigor. Her pen and paper fall to the floor. She squats down, looks at them, but leaves them where they are. The room with its army of lamps and disorderly piles of television magazines distills the slightly subdued atmosphere of a Sunday evening. With wide-open eyes the woman stands in front of the large mirror. Quarreling voices are heard from an adjoining apartment. Her absent look and crouching posture give the figure in the mirror the air of an animal that has strayed into a high rise. Then suddenly she looks back over her shoulder and laughs into the void, a carefree laugh that might have been addressed to someone on the street. Lightly she slips into the other room; dressing and doing her face, she flits gracefully back and forth between the two rooms, which thanks to her parading take on the character of a grandiose suite. In no time at all she is in the doorway, ready to go out. There, to be sure, she drops her handbag and has to bend down to pick up its scattered contents. Rising to her full height, she stands for a long moment, letting herself be looked at, so to speak: no longer a displaced animal but a star. Finally, with a toss of the chin, she says to her audience: “Don’t bother me with your everyday life. No one else can give you people the pleasure I give you. You all need me. And so do you!”

Outside a movie house displaying posters of entirely different stars stands a soldier in street uniform and tilted cap. He is flanked by a middle-aged couple outfitted for travel — umbrella in fair weather, hats. His mother has taken his arm; his father, at some distance, is covertly watching the other two from the side. The movie house is across from the railroad station; they have only stopped there for a moment, and now they are crossing the square. Here the Sunday evening is betokened by the old newspapers blowing over the asphalt or filling the trash cans to overflowing and by the fact that the handful of travelers in the station hall are far outnumbered by drunks sleeping or bellowing and groups of foreign workers in the corners. The three cross the platform to a waiting room, a separate structure situated on an island between the tracks which, though hardly bigger than a hut, has a marble doorway. The interior is rather like a parlor: curved benches and lacquered tables in which the overhead lamp is reflected. The slender stove in the corner reaches up to the ceiling. In one recess there is a miniature fountain and across from it a tiny palm tree. Instead of the usual oversize views of tourist attractions, the walls are decorated with faded landscape paintings, and the tables are equipped with ashtrays. Here, where in both rows of windows trains are perpetually stopping and starting off again, the group sits down. The parents keep their hats on and their faces remain half shaded; the soldier rolls up his cap and puts it in his trouser pocket. Bareheaded, with his scraggly short hair, his somewhat pimply forehead, and his chubby cheeks, he gives the impression of a schoolboy, but sitting there between the two others he shows no sign of being their son; while they are visibly concerned with him, his attention, his watchfulness, as it were, is directed toward the things around him, the cigar rest in the ashtray, which in his eyes takes on the shape of a mountain pass, and the bent tips of the palm leaves, groping like tentacles. Thus the soldier seems independent of the parents to the left and right of him. If he bows his head like a son, it is only as a favor to them, a pretense. His mother has the floor; his father sits silent, his expression suggests disengagement, resolute neutrality. The woman, still young in voice and bearing, speaks as follows: “I’d been hoping that army life would help you to come out of your shell. I saw you turning into the different man that you’ve always been deep down, the kind of man who knows the right moment for everything, the right moment to take action, the right moment to withdraw, the right moment for the right word, and who consequently becomes the one who counts, the mainspring, even when he isn’t the actual leader. Instead, you’re just absent, now more than ever. You mustn’t suppose I care if after all these months you haven’t a single stripe — I’m just disappointed that you don’t make your presence felt, either in the barracks or outside. To your comrades you’re a nobody; when you come into a room, nobody sees you; when you leave it, they hear the door closing and that’s all; your salutes are ignored; when we asked for you, your name meant nothing to anyone; even when your father described you, and you know how well he does that, the only reaction was a shrug. At a restaurant you’re still the one whose order the waitress has forgotten, and when waiting in line you’re the one who gets shoved aside. You could be all alone in a room, you could be on a raised platform with a spotlight shining on you, and you’d still be overlooked. You’re always absent. At home, where you’ve spent twenty years of your life and have hardly ever been away, nobody asks for you. Nobody remembers you, neither your teachers nor your classmates; and even your friend of those days doesn’t think of me anymore as your mother but only as Frau So-and-So. Even we, your parents, when we see you find it hard to believe that it’s really you. You’re there and then again you’re not. It’s your absence that drives us away from you. Because it doesn’t come natural to you, you put it on as a defense against us, against others, against the world; it’s your weapon. You frighten me with your absence. Sometimes I get the feeling that you’re not my child at all, that you were foisted on me. Even when you were little, I caught myself knocking at your door, as if you were a stranger. Who are you actually? Show yourself at last, let yourself be recognized. Show your other weapons, my child, the weapons that disarm, just as time and time again at the right moment you have disarmed me, or your father, or your opponent, with a glance, a question.”

During his mother’s speech the soldier keeps his eyes on his surroundings, as though ready to leap. If a ball were suddenly to come flying, he would catch it. During some of the woman’s sentences he glanced over his shoulder at something. For a moment or two a black man on a distant bench came closer. The weak irregular jet of the fountain grew strong and seemed to be the outstanding event of the station area; the fountain became monumental. The letters on the glass door framed the view and the objects in it; a face in the window of a train, a lighted switch at the edge of the tracks, became as palpable as though seen through a telescope.

Now the waiting room is occupied by other people. The three have gone. The platforms are empty, and so are the many tracks; the rails give off a cold gleam. A last car vanishes around the long curve. After that there are only the high-rise buildings beyond the dead fields, the lighted windows almost as close together as in the old people’s home. This is the time of day when most people are back from their Sunday outings, but few want to be in the dark; countless silhouettes are seen standing in the middle of rooms, motionless except for hands moving up and down with cigarettes.

The soldier has put his cap on again. Already far from the station, he is walking along the river — alone now — with giant strides, as though flying. In almost every telephone booth a motionless shadow. An arm that seems to have been dangling all day from a car window is pulled back. Three teenage girls are waiting in front of a house; a very small child steps out of the door. Knots of foreign workers are standing around, looking more Slavic than ever with their prominent cheekbones. In response to a homicidal look the soldier salutes, and the saluted person suddenly comes to life.