by Peter Handke
Some of us thought he feared we might jump to conclusions; perhaps he wanted to avoid having any conclusions drawn about himself, let alone about his relationship or nonrelationship to a woman; wanted to prevent anyone from forming an image of him, from putting any image of him in circulation ever again. Others thought he was afraid of women altogether. “He’s scared of them!” said one, and a second went so far as to say, “He’s terrified of them, terrified to the core.” And didn’t such a fear, or terror, haunt some of his books, although his time as a writer was now quite far behind him, the emotions of his early years a thing of the past? Yet hadn’t the tour through Europe over the last few months—as we knew from hearsay—been motivated at least in part by a need to escape, to escape, in fact and in particular, from a woman, an escape very different from the one that had once caused him to start writing?
Not that he and the unknown woman there in the boat’s salon appeared as a couple. But there was an easy familiarity between the two of them, at least so long as they were tending to the guests, serving the meal and pouring wine for them. We were not merely his guests, we were their guests. Apparently the two had experienced something that had brought them together. But what? Evidently, too, it had not been only a momentary experience, a brief episode. And if brief, if momentary, then in a different time dimension, where neither brevity nor length held sway, but rather some third element. They seemed to assume the role of accomplices during that first hour of the night on the boat, devoted as it was mainly to eating and drinking, with hardly anything said, let alone recounted. Nothing more natural than that the stranger should display a dancer-like quality in the calm way she passed back and forth through the swinging door to the galley and circled among the various tables. But that the man, too, whether in front of, next to, or behind her, joined in, becoming something like her dance partner, this man of all men: that was amazing. True, they were dressed in no way alike, he more in “Western” style (if that term has any meaning nowadays), and she, as one could dimly make out, more in “Balkan” style. Yet each outfit looked coordinated with the other. A woman and this man complementing each other so naturally: that was something none of us would have expected. Much less his providing a woman with a home, as seemed to be the case. And one or another of us remained skeptical all night long.
And what did they give us to eat? Since it was still too early for Easter lamb, what else but catfish and carp from the Morava, accompanied by salads whose main ingredient was cabbage, kupus, flavored with caraway, and potatoes baked in the glowing embers of the fireplace, and before that aspic, piktija, made from fish and also wild hare, accompanied by flat bread, freshly baked, and followed by sheep cheese from those sheep grazing as far as the eye could see on the hills beyond Porodin, drizzled with Montenegran olive oil, which, thanks to United Europe, had completely shed its former taste of rancid motor oil and, according to the label on the bottle, could be classified as “toscanissimo.” And as a beverage they poured us wines from the southern plains of the Morava—from vineyards in Kruševac, Aleksinac, and especially Varvarin, long since in Burgundian, Lower Austrian, and Californian hands but allowed to retain their old vintage names: “Emerald,” “Ruby,” “Onyx,” “Exhaust,” “Market Hall,” “Melencholija,” “Bridge Cider”—and even wine produced more to the south, far from the Morava, in what was earlier Kosovo Polje, and generally labeled “Bordeaux-quality,” was still called “Blackbird Field.” Only “Rakija,” once the most indigenous brandy, no longer existed, at least not under that name; but on no account were brandies to be drunk that night in any case.
At a certain moment the issuer of the invitation had joined the rest of us and eaten the evening meal, also alone at a table. The beautiful stranger, however, stayed in the half-darkened galley, in a throwback to an almost vanished Balkan custom, emerging only later to clear the tables wordlessly. Through the bull’s-eye window in the galley door anyone who got up from his table could glimpse her, when her work was finished, perched silently on a stool in the niche by the stove, motionless but not rigid, her hands folded quietly in her lap. But soon after the meal the boatmaster got up and began to pace back and forth in the salon. With the tables standing every which way, hewing to a straight line was hardly possible, so he snaked among them, first erratically, later smoothly, and eventually keeping to the same path back and forth, back and forth. It was as if he had no intention of ever stopping. He had opened all of the salon’s doors and windows, and as time wore on the rest of us began to feel chilled to the bone.
After he had finally aired out the space to his satisfaction, he continued his pacing for a while—except that now he went backward, backward upstream and backward downstream. When at last he seemed ready to sit down, one of his shoelaces had come loose, and having tied it, he resumed his pacing, back and forth, backward, as if there were no help for it. And a second time he was already seated when a log in the fireplace did not explode, no, but must have been insufficiently seasoned, for it began to sizzle and hiss, sounds akin to a whining or whimpering. And the third time he was not only seated but was already straightening his back, turning his head to the nocturnal horizons and at the same time surveying the circle of guests, and had just taken a deep breath when—no, it was not that one of our mobile telephones rang, not even that someone’s stomach growled (how could it, after such a meal?), but merely that a breathing became audible, a very, very soft breathing, in preparation for pure listening (perhaps precisely that became an obstacle?)—and once more: see above. So apparently the master of the house was not cured of his noise sickness after all, even though he had given up writing for good? Perhaps in the meantime the sickness had even intensified and now interfered with his speaking, as it had earlier with his writing books? The slightest, most innocuous sound, when it reached his ears, could constitute a disturbance, seal his mouth, constrict his throat, snatch away his speaking breath? And even a sound that anyone else would have perceived as open, friendly, plainly well disposed toward the speaker, a sound, the sound, signifying selfless anticipation, yes, unconditional assent, promptly stifled his breathing, assumed material form as a blockage in his windpipe? Yet he had rather sturdy ears—with multiple ridges surrounding the auricle, providing concentric fortifications, as it were, ears seemingly made for hearing—proper listening organs.
What finally induced the former writer to remain seated after all, to speak, to tell his story during that nighttime hour on the Morava, was danger. Before it showed itself, I think he would have perceived a disturbance even in our holding our breath. Danger? He might have merely imagined it, or had he perhaps seen signs that were in fact no such thing? Signs? Suddenly, from the trans-Balkan expressway a searchlight raked across the meadows on the other side of the river, so powerful that it could hardly come from the tractor trailers—which in any case all had to drive straight ahead (the highway had no curves in that section)? And here, on our bank, at the moment when this light swept across the trees and bushes lining the river, it silhouetted a figure, that of a woman, who seemed to be aiming at the boat, as if with a weapon, yet empty-handed, and making faces that mimed the sound of shots, several in quick succession, yet inaudible? Imagined danger? Signs that were nothing of the sort? Whatever the case, I think it finally prodded the former writer into speaking, made him loquacious, or caused the story to speak. Was that figure out in the fields actually a buck, roaring in the night, as if in a rage and at the same time piteously? The owl that now hooted: was it a real owl? (A strange time, when one felt one had to add “real” and “actual” to so many words.) He ignored both sounds, and likewise the crash as something in the galley fell to the floor, the squeaking when one of us shifted his chair, someone’s coughing, the kind of coughing produced only by Balkan tobacco, even if it had long since found its way into all the world brands.
Yet he was not the one who began the story of his so-called tour, a story that would be interrupted time after time, then continued at another spot on the river, an
d would finish, as day dawned, on another river altogether, no longer the Morava. The first sentences were spoken, on the urging of the boat’s owner, by the person among us who had set out with him in the beginning. “You tell it. You start.” Once the story had got under way, the former writer chimed in. For the duration of several sentences the two of them spoke in unison, or almost. If they contradicted each other at all, it hardly had to do with content, more with the use of one word or another. Yet it must be said that these few clashes, inconsequential for the most part, pertaining to minor details, nothing of note, were waged with an apparently obdurate insistence on principle, with each party fiercely defending his version; when it came to individual words, the host was adamant, in that respect probably still considering himself an authority whom no one in our circle had any right to question, in spite of his having abandoned writing as a profession.
From the moment the first speaker uttered his introductory phrases, the host seemed to be taking notes, apparently only a single word each time. It had been so long since the rest of us had seen him spontaneously pull out a pencil and jot something down. The action seemed almost involuntary, for every time he quickly put his writing instrument aside. Yes, was he embarrassed to be seen doing this?
That was how the recounting of the stages or stations of his tour continued all through the night: he signaled those who had accompanied him during the phase under discussion to begin, and he? he picked up the thread as soon as they provided an opening. In between, for one or two sections, especially those in which he had been particularly active, he would tell the other to keep on talking, and hearing the two voices from a distance, during these moments and transitions, one might well have mistaken them for a conversation, a dialogue, a harmonious one, well suited to such a night on the river—but (see above on the main speaker’s niggling over words) from one moment to the next an irritable, almost shrill, choleric tone would erupt: Was someone yelling bloody murder on that boat? Would the first shots ring out any minute? How could that quiet murmuring be swept away so suddenly by such yelping? (Which lasted so briefly that from a distance one might think one had been mistaken—had it perhaps been just a parrot screeching on board?) And what else could one have heard from a distance? All through the night the vowel sounds the trees along the banks made in the wind, and the sounds the storyteller on the boat made in harmony with them, like a response, an addendum. The trees’ vowel sounds? Basically nothing but an ah—ah—ah, again and again …
Some stages or chapters of the tour the boatmaster recounted without a second voice. The stages in question involved stretches during which he had found himself cutting across Europe alone, the case especially during the last phases before our rendezvous near Porodin, the starting as well as the end point (point?) of the journey. In that stage no eruption of sound interrupted the flow of the narrative. The voice of the solitary speaker became not only softer and softer but also smoother, yes, and then completely smooth. It also trembled. Was that possible, to be soft and tremulous at the same time? Yes, it was possible, a soft, tremulous, smooth narrative flow, far from resonant, yet close to it? And did this tremulousness stem from what had happened to him as he traveled on alone, or from the current, changing, real or imagined threats? Or from both? What struck us listeners as most important, to be sure, were the current threats: were he to be jolted out of his equanimity, he, and we with him, would be done for, as a column of mountaineers trying to cross a glacial fissure on a bridge of snow and ice would be if the person in the lead shifted his weight for so much as a second. And during that night his tremulousness infected the rest of us: the tremulously soft-spoken storyteller was surrounded by his tremulously silent listeners. And as day broke, when on the boat, now in motion, colors began to emerge, eventually we, too, felt responsible for any threat hanging over us, saw such a threat as almost justified: for was it anything but a provocation, and a dangerous one, at least at this particular time, that the owner had not only equipped his Moravian Night with an outsized flag from a long since disbanded or disgraced country but had also painted the entire vessel, from the hull to the very top of the funnel and from stem to stern, in those ominous colors? Did he want to see his houseboat as an “enclave,” as a self-proclaimed extraterritorial refuge? Did he refuse to acknowledge that such enclaves had long since been banned? That anything of the sort, any “enclave mentality,” was totally “unacceptable”?
He created more and more obstacles to his undertaking, or imagined them, which amounted to the same thing. Without these obstacles or challenges that night of storytelling would have been meaningless. Under no circumstances, however unpleasant, could he dispense with them, as he gradually, not immediately, became aware. He had to keep to his circuitous route (which did not mean that the circles, or even a single circle, had to close). During these hours, during this time, something was at stake, for heaven’s sake—who knows what? He appeared ever more determined, ever more defiant, ever more undeterred; ever closer to a kind of fanaticism. It seemed then as if nothing, nothing at all, could put a stop to the undertaking. Thunder and lightning would have merely heightened its intensity, likewise the onset of fever, an injury, a blow to the head, a collapse of the ground beneath his feet. It was a fact that in one way or another this night-long speaking eventually had such a powerful effect that not only the speaker but also we, his listeners, felt closer to taking action than ever before.
There was something, however, that could have brought the night-long speaking to a screeching halt, from one moment to the next. He had no need to mention it. The rest of us recognized it without words. This one thing, one single thing, could have made him instantly forget the earthshaking expedition he had experienced. And it became clear to each of us at his own table when later that night the woman, the stranger, showed her face in the galley door’s window. The story at that point also had to do with her, and she had emerged from her corner, probably to listen. And what became clear to us? That for the sake of this person, if she were in need, in truly dire need, if she had to be rescued, he would abandon not only the current tour but any imagined or actual storming of the gates of heaven. This one person in need of rescuing took precedence over the tour. At that moment we did not yet know, or had at most intuited, that on the contrary it was the young woman who had rescued the man, and not merely “as it were,” and not merely “so to speak.”
Although the former writer did not explicitly say so, the journey had begun as an escape; in the beginning, and later on as well, though less unambiguously, it was a kind of flight. And this flight—how assiduously he avoided the word!—was an escape from a woman. That woman: at the time he did not know her in person, did not even know what she looked like, did not want to know. What he did know was that the woman was his enemy, his mortal enemy. She made that plain, and there was no way to turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to that. If it had seemed at first that her enmity was directed at him as a writer, at his writing, it became evident later that the woman, this complete stranger, hated not merely his way of being but the very fact of his existing, his very existence. Once he had stopped writing, her letters—initially those of a single-mindedly hostile reader—expressed her satisfaction at having played a part in “getting you to shut up at last.” But then the letters did not stop coming; on the contrary, they became more numerous, one a day, then several a day. And as seemed to be usual in such situations: even after the former writer moved to another country, an entirely different one, to the boat here on the Morava, she soon, very soon, obtained his new address, and … There seemed to be no escaping certain people. She had a sixth, even a seventh or ninth, sense for tracking down this man on whom she had fixed her sights. And not in a lifetime would she let him be, not in her lifetime. She would neither rest nor let him rest until he faced her for a showdown that he could only lose, even were he to win it.
The rest of us wondered what accounted for such hatred. He had no explanation either. But he did not want to know. He did not need an
y explanation; the question did not arise for him. In his childhood it had already become obvious to him that he attracted hatred, groundless hatred. And since then he had accepted this fact. This was how it had to be. The more groundless, the more self-explanatory, not that he accepted the hatred without defending himself. His entire previous life—whether in this role or that or whichever—had been dogged to a greater or lesser extent by inexplicable haters. By men as well as women, who would one day disappear somehow or other, or run out of steam, or, as sometimes happened, even make amends.
He was used to these haters. But eventually this last one in the series took even him by surprise. Such persistence on the part of the woman in question, accompanied by steady escalation from one act of hatred to the next, was something he had not experienced earlier. It began to affect him after all, or to wear him down, the more so because in the last few years all his other enemies had fallen silent, whether because he lived so far away, because they had forgotten him, or for some other reason. Wear him down? Yes, in that the woman had found her way into his dreams and become the main character in them.
And this she achieved by switching from letters to signs and symbols. Another writer, ah, so long ago, had once told him that his favorite letters from readers were mere signs. Or rather, his preferred visitors were those who left nothing behind but signs, at a decent distance from his house: a feather in the hedge along the path; a hazel or whitethorn stick carved by the reader and left leaning against that same hedge; a bottle of wine; a bag of nuts. But the signs left by this woman were not nice at all. By light of day they might seem trivial—a dead baby hedgehog at the foot of the gangplank, a baby bird speared on an acacia thorn, a snake in a canning jar among the dill pickles, one of his books (a book he himself considered a failure) dipped in liquid manure, its pages smeared and stuck together, or merely a few beheaded flower stalks from the riverside, or perhaps just one, a tiny one. These trifling items, however, took on much larger significance in his dreams, with the unknown woman calling the shots.