The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

by Peter Handke

  PAULA

  But you were the one who started it.

  QUITT

  Do you see that nail sticking out of the wall there?

  PAULA

  Yes.

  QUITT

  It’s long, isn’t it?

  PAULA

  Very long.

  QUITT

  And how thick is your head?

  (Pause.)

  PAULA

  Perhaps I should turn on the light after all.

  (Pause.)

  QUITT

  Today the doorbell rang. Because I was curious who it was, I went to open the door myself. It was only the eggman, whom the so-called estate sends around from house to house once a week. He always comes at the same time. I’d forgotten. “Can’t you be someone else for once?” I wanted to scream.

  (Pause.)

  PAULA

  And what if I were someone else?

  (QUITT takes one step toward her. She does not step back.)

  QUITT

  And recently I saw a silent film. No music had been dubbed in, so it was almost completely quiet in the theater. Only now and then when something funny happened a few scattered children laughed and stopped again at once. Suddenly I had a sense of death. The feeling was so strong that I yanked my legs far apart and spread my fingers. What social conditions can you use to explain that? Does this syndrome already bear someone’s name? If so, whose?

  PAULA

  I can’t explain it to you by social conditions. It is unconditionally yours and can’t be emulated. As a social factor it’s not worth mentioning. The masses have other worries.

  QUITT

  But which will pass.

  PAULA

  Yes, because the conditions will pass too.

  QUITT

  And then the masses will perhaps have my worries, which do not pass.

  (WIFE appears with a magazine in her hand.)

  WIFE

  Austrian dramatist, dead, seven letters?

  QUITT

  Nestroy.

  WIFE

  No.

  QUITT

  Across or down?

  WIFE

  Across.

  QUITT

  Raimund.

  WIFE

  Of course. (Exits.)

  (Pause.)

  PAULA

  The watch—it isn’t an heirloom. (Pause.) Is that still too conceptual?

  QUITT

  Now I won’t tell you what I’m thinking.

  PAULA

  And what are you thinking?

  QUITT

  It’s kind of you to ask. But why don’t you ask me of your own volition? I yearn to be questioned by you. Do I have to bang my head against the floor to make you ask about me? (He throws himself on the floor and actually bangs his head a few times against it, then stands up at once and steps up to PAULA. ) I would like to snap at the world now and swallow it, that’s how inaccessible everything seems to me. And I too am inaccessible, I twist away from everything. Every event I could possibly experience slowly but surely transforms itself back into lifeless nature, where I no longer play a role. I can stand before it as I do before you and I am back in prehistory without human beings. I imagine the ocean, the fire-spewing volcanoes, the primordial mountains on the horizon, but the conception has nothing to do with me. I don’t even appear dimly within it as a premonition. When I look at you now, I see you only as you are, and as you are entirely without me, but not as you were or could be with me; that is inhuman.

  PAULA

  Excuse me, but I can’t concentrate any longer. (She takes a step, so that their bodies touch.) So what were you thinking?

  (Pause.)

  QUITT

  You know it anyway.

  PAULA

  Perhaps. But I’d like to hear you say it.

  QUITT

  Now I feel strong enough not to tell you any more.

  PAULA

  (Steps back.) We are alone.

  QUITT

  I am alone and you are alone, not we. I would not want to transpose the “we” of our deal to you and me at this moment.

  PAULA

  Isn’t this moment, too, part of our deal?

  QUITT

  Don’t you get out of your box even for a second?

  PAULA

  Your impatience is what keeps me boxed in.

  QUITT

  (Flings her to the floor. She lies there, supports herself on one elbow. Then she gets up.) How gracefully you get back on your feet!

  PAULA

  I’d like to leave now.

  QUITT

  Hans!

  (HANS appears with a long fur coat over his arm and first walks in the wrong direction.)

  QUITT

  Over here. Where did you think you were?

  HANS

  (Helps PAULA into her coat.) Always with you, Mr. Quitt. It was bright in the room I just left.

  PAULA

  Hans, you’re good at helping people into their coats.

  HANS

  Mrs. Quitt has the same one.

  PAULA

  (To QUITT) I would like to tell you something about myself, Quitt, just like this, without being asked to. And note that, for the first time, I’m speaking about myself. After your wife left I slowly exhaled. And while exhaling … please don’t laugh.

  QUITT

  I’m not laughing.

  PAULA

  While exhaling … please don’t laugh.

  QUITT

  Another second and I will.

  PAULA

  (Loudly) As I exhaled, love set in. (She leaves.)

  QUITT

  (To HANS ) Don’t say anything.

  HANS

  I’m not saying anything.

  (QUITT’S WIFE enters, turns on mild indirect lighting, and sits down. She gives HANS a signal to leave.)

  QUITT

  Nobody’s cleaned up. (HANS proceeds to dust. To his WIFE) And what did you do all day?

  WIFE

  You saw what I did: I went in and out and back and forth.

  QUITT

  And what was it like in town?

  WIFE

  People respected me.

  (HANS leaves.)

  QUITT

  Was there anything new?

  WIFE

  I stole this blouse.

  QUITT

  The main thing is not to get caught. Anything else?

  WIFE

  I stopped here and there and then walked on. Why don’t you sit down too?

  QUITT

  You don’t look well.

  (Pause.)

  WIFE

  Yes, but at least it’s already evening. (She gets up and walks out quickly.)

  (QUITT sits down even before she’s gone. He remains alone for a while. The silhouette of the city is completely illuminated in the meantime. HANS returns with a book. QUITT looks up. )

  HANS

  It’s me, still.

  QUITT

  Tell me, Hans, what’s your life actually like?

  ( HANS sits down.)

  HANS

  I knew what you would say the moment you opened your mouth. But I couldn’t interrupt you at that point. So let’s forget it.

  (Pause.)

  QUITT

  Stop looking me in the eye.

  HANS

  I do that whenever I’m at a loss how to please you.

  QUITT

  Tell me about yourself.

  HANS

  What do you mean?

  QUITT

  Don’t you understand, I am curious to know your story. How do you behave when you would like to speak but can only scream? Don’t you sometimes get so tired that you can only imagine everything flat on the ground? Doesn’t it also sometimes happen to you that when you think of your relationship to others you only see heavy wet rags lying around everywhere? Now tell me about yourself.

  HANS

  You mention me.

  Yourself you mean.

  (Pa
use.)

  QUITT

  Why does my itty-bitty mind go yakking so affectedly into the big wide world? And can’t help itself? (Screams) And doesn’t want it any differently? I am important. I am important. I am important. Incidentally, why don’t you look me in the eye now?

  HANS

  Because there’s nothing new to see there.

  (Pause.)

  QUITT

  Please read to me.

  HANS

  (Sits down and reads.) “‘I shall have to let you go after all,’ his uncle said one day at the end of the midday meal, just as a magnificent thunderstorm was breaking, sending the rustling rain like diamond missiles down into the lake, so that it twitched and seethed and heaved. Victor made no reply whatever but listened for what else would come. ‘Everything is futile in the end,’ his uncle started up again in a slow drawn-out voice, ‘it’s futile, youth and old age don’t belong together. The years that could have been used have passed now, they are lowering down on the other side of the mountains and no power on earth can drag them back to the near side where cold shadows are already falling.’ Victor could not have been more awed. The venerable old man happened to be sitting in such a way that the lightning flashes illuminated his face, and sometimes, in the dusky room, it seemed as though fire flowed through the man’s gray hair and light trickled across his weatherbeaten face. ‘Oh, Victor, do you know life? Do you know that thing that people call old age?’—‘How could I, Uncle, as I am still so young?’—‘True, you don’t know it, and there’s no way you could. Life is boundless as long as you are still young. You always think you still have a long stretch ahead of you, that you’ve traveled only a short way. That’s why you put so much off to the next day, why you put this and that aside, to tackle it later on. But then when you want to tackle it, it is too late and you notice that you are old. That is why life is a limitless field if you look at it from the beginning, and is scarcely two paces long when you regard it from the end. It is a sparkling thing, something so beautiful that you feel like plunging into it, and you feel that it would have to last forever—and old age is a moth darting in the dusk, fluttering ominously about our ears. That is why you would like to stretch out your hands so as not to have to leave, because you have missed so much. When an aged man stands on a mountain of achievements, what good is it to him? I have done much, all sorts of things, and have nothing from it. Everything turns to dust in a moment if you haven’t built an existence that outlasts your coffin. The man who has sons, nephews, and grandsons around him in his old age will often become a thousand years old. Then the same many-sided life persists even when he is gone, life continues just the same; yes, you don’t even notice that one small segment of this life veered off to the side and never came back any more. With my death everything that I myself have been will disappear.’ After these words the old man stopped speaking. He folded his napkin together, as was his custom, rolled it into a cylinder, and shoved it into the silver ring which he kept for the purpose. Then he assembled the various bottles into a certain order, put the cheese and sweetmeats on their plates, and plunged the glass bells over them. Yet of all these objects he took none away from the table, as was his usual habit, but left them standing there and sat before them. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm had passed, with softer flashes and a muted thundering it moved down the far slope of the craggy eastern mountain range, and the sun fought its way back out, gradually filling the room with a lovely fire. At daybreak the next morning Victor took his walking stick into his hand and slung one strap of his satchel over his arm. The spitz, who understood everything, bounded with joy. Breakfast was consumed amid much small talk. ‘I’ll take you as far as the gate,’ the uncle said when Victor had gotten up, had hitched his satchel on his shoulder, and was about to take his leave. The old man had gone into the adjacent room and must have triggered a spring or set off some kind of mechanical contraption; for at that moment Victor heard the rattling of the gate and saw, through the window, how that gate opened slowly by itself. ‘Well,’ said his uncle while walking out, ‘everything is ready,’ Victor reached for his walking stick and placed his cap on his head.

  The uncle walked down the stairs with him and across the open space in the garden as far as the gate. Neither said a word during their walk. At the gate the uncle stopped. Victor looked at him for a while. Tears shimmered in his bright-colored eyes, testifying to a profound emotion—then he suddenly bent down and vehemently kissed the wrinkled hand. The old man emitted a dull uncanny sound like a sob—and pushed the youth out by the gate. In two hours the latter had reached Attmaning, and as he stepped out from the dark trees toward the town he happened to hear its bells tolling, and never has a sound sounded so sweet to him as this tolling which fell so endearingly upon his ears, a sound he had not heard for so long. The Innkeeper’s Alley was filled with the beautiful brown animals of the mountains which the cattle dealers were driving down toward the lowland, and the inn’s guest room was full of people since it was market day. It seemed to Victor as if he had been dreaming for a long time and had only now returned to the world. Now that he was back out in the fields of the people, on their highways, part of their merry doings, now that the expanse of gentle rolling hills stretched out wide and endless before him, and the mountains which he had left hovered behind as a blue wreath; now his heart came apart in this great circumambient view and outraced him far, far beyond the distant, scarcely visible line of the horizon …”

  QUITT

  How nice that this armchair has a headrest. (Pause.) How much time has passed since then! In those days, in the nineteenth century, even if you didn’t have some feeling for the world, there at least existed a memory of a universal feeling, and a yearning. That is why you could replay the feeling and replay it for the others as in this story. And because you could replay the feeling as seriously and patiently and conscientiously as a restorer—the German poet Adalbert Stifter after all was a restorer—that feeling was really produced, perhaps.

  In any event, people believed that what was being played there existed, or at least that it was possible. All I actually do is quote; everything that is meant to be serious immediately becomes a joke with me, genuine signs of life of my own slip out of me purely by accident, and they exist only at the moment when they slip out. Afterward then they are—well—where you once used to see the whole, I see nothing but particulars now. Hey, you with your ingrown earlobes! it suddenly slips out of me, and instead of speaking with someone whom I notice, I step on his heels so that his shoe comes off. I would so like to be full of pathos! Von Wullnow, with a couple of women bathing in the nude at sunrise, bawled out nothing but old college songs in the water—that’s what’s left of him. What slips out of me is only the raw sewage of previous centuries. I lead a businessman’s life as camouflage. I go to the telephone as soon as it rings. I talk faster with the car door open behind me. We fix our prices and faithfully stick to our agreements. Suddenly it occurs to me that I am playing something that doesn’t even exist, and that’s the difference. That’s the despair of it! Do you know what I’m going to do? I won’t stick to our arrangement. I’m going to ruin their prices and them with it. I’m going to employ my old-fashioned sense of self as a means of production. I haven’t had anything of myself yet, Hans. And they are going to cool their hot little heads with their clammy hands, and their heads will grow cold as well. It will be a tragedy. A tragedy of business life, and I will be the survivor. And the investment in the business will be me, just me alone. I will slip out of myself and the raw sewage will sweep them away. There will be lightning and thunder, and the idea will become flesh.