Moment of True Feeling (8 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

BOOK: Moment of True Feeling
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Here we go, thought Keuschnig, and the bite he had just taken of a peach became tasteless in his mouth. “Even here in France,” he said aloud, “the fruit doesn't taste like anything any more.” “We were talking about you before you came in,” said the writer. Keuschnig asked no questions, though he was curious to know what they had said. “There's nothing to say about me,” he said. Stefanie was looking at
him from the side. That disturbed him, but he didn't want to justify her by returning her look. Above all, I mustn't grin as if I'd been caught out! He thought of the sleeping child and wanted to rest his head on the table and fall asleep. From the hallway he heard water trickling in the plumbing of the apartment upstairs, and suddenly he started scratching the base of his nail as he had done years before, in order to see the moon underneath. In the next moment a ball-point clicked, and he gave a start. Now the catastrophe, he thought. He has found out who I really am. He stood up, went to the window, and quickly drew the curtain; now, at least, no outsider would see what was about to happen. He remembered something Stefanie had once said at the sight of Agnes and another child sitting surrounded by toys but not knowing what to do. “They can't play any more,” she had said. I can't play any more, he thought, and a blood vessel under his eye twitched almost soothingly. He wanted to prepare himself, but didn't know how. He sat down at the table again and wound his wrist watch. Not a grain of dust on his suit. At last the ball-point was being pointed at him and Keuschnig couldn't help grinning.
“I saw you in town today,” said the writer slowly, smacking his lips on the wine he had just swallowed. “You had changed. You always used to look the same when I ran into you now and then, but my impression of you was different each time—I felt good about that. But today you were changed, because you were trying so desperately to look the same as usual. You were so intent on seeming to be your old self that you startled me, it was like seeing a double of someone who's just died walking down the street. You were
the same, but in such a peculiar way that I only recognized you by your suit. And stop looking into my eyes, it won't work; you can't fool me any more that way. After Stefanie took your plate away just now, you secretly, behind your cupped hand, cleared away the peas you had spilled while eating. After every sip of wine you wiped your lip marks and fingerprints off your glass, and once when your napkin was lying on the table with the stains where you had wiped your mouth on top, you quickly turned it around—just as you turned that loaf of bread you'd bitten into. You won't let anyone do anything for you, Gregor. You won't even let anyone pass you the salt—as if you were afraid that in helping you someone would get close enough to see through you. What are you trying to hide?”
Keuschnig pretended to look at the writer; in reality he was watching the bubble that formed on the crepes suzette Stefanie was flaming in hot brandy sauce, and finally burst. He put the point of his knife to his forehead and thought: The only purpose of all that talk before was to make me feel unobserved. He searched the table for something to throw. Now I'm going to do it! he thought, and actually threw a chunk of bread at the writer. Not even Stefanie laughed. In a minute he would DISGRACE himself forever. Now he really looked at the writer, imploringly, and the writer turned away, not mercifully, but with the air of a man certain of his triumph and modestly proud of it; turning away from his victim, who was still alive but no longer knew it, with an elegant smile.—Keuschnig felt so ridiculous he thought his head would fall off. He realized that he had unintentionally taken on the writer's facial expression, the
same grin, the same lowered eyelids. In the general silence they exchanged the same short sly glances …
At this moment—he had a big peach stone in his mouth—Keuschnig, in full consciousness, had an experience he had never before encountered except in occasional dreams: He felt himself to be something BLOODCURD-LINGLYLY strange, yet known to all—a creature exhibited in a nest and mortally ashamed, IMMORTALLY DISGRACED, washed out of the matrix in mid-gestation, and now for all time a monstrous, unfinished bag of skin, a freak of nature, a MONSTROSITY, that people would point at, and so revolting that even as they pointed their eyes would fix on something else!—Keuschnig screamed, spat the peach stone into the writer's face, and began to take his clothes off.
He carefully undid his tie, then laid his trousers, carefully folded, over the back of a chair. The others had stood up. The writer observed him. Françoise tried to catch the eye of Stefanie, who was looking down. The naked Keuschnig ran around the table and jumped on Françoise, who was still trying to laugh. They fell in a heap. Blindly Keuschnig thrust his hand into a plate and smeared his face with leftover stew. He chanced to touch the writer's leg. “Don't you butt in!” he said, and hauled off at the writer. Keuschnig rose to his feet, and they began to exchange blows, slowly, blow after blow, eye to eye, soundlessly, systematically, and with the obstinacy of children. After a while Keuschnig realized that he was going to burst out crying, with relief at no longer having to dissemble any more, with grief that it was all up with him. Ah, he thought with satisfaction, I'm
crying. But he only turned away from the writer and said gleefully to Stefanie: “This afternoon at the embassy I made love on the floor to a girl whose name I didn't even know.” —She smiled with only one side of her mouth, and he repeated the sentence to emphasize his malicious intent.
Washed and
dressed again, Keuschnig asked the writer to go for a walk with him. The women had disappeared into the back room, and could no longer be heard. “As we crossed the Pont Mirabeau on our way here this evening,” said the writer, “the Seine was perfectly calm. Not a ripple.” “I've had enough water for today,” said Keuschnig. “Let's go to Passy, along the railroad. I feel like walking, just walking straight ahead. I can't do anything else any more.”
In silence they walked down the boulevard. Nearly all the windows in the tallish houses were dark, and a good many of the shutters had been let down, where people had gone on vacation. Only some of the little attic windows were still lit. What with the boulevard and the railroad cut beside it, the space between the rows of houses was so wide that the sound of their footsteps echoed back from the far side. There were no other walkers. A man and a woman were sitting in a car drawn up at the curb, but they were only looking into space. The sky was full of night clouds tinged with yellow city light, and stars could be seen in the openings between them. The breeze was so faint that only the leaves at the end of a branch or twig stirred. In the light of
the street lamps behind them the branches had the look of hard black tracery, in and out of which leaves, that seemed illumined from within, played a game of light and shadow. One had to prick up one's ears to hear the movement of the leaves; no rustling, only a soft, almost eerie breathing. Here and there among the green leaves a lone withered leaf whispered audibly. Looking out of the corners of his eyes at the slowly shifting foliage, Keuschnig suddenly saw knots of animals thrusting forward and drawing back. A black beetle fell brittly to the ground. The sidewalk was awash with fresh dog piss … Though watching nothing, Keuschnig sensed that nothing escaped him. He stood still and felt the breeze only as cool air on his temples.
As they were passing the RUE DE L‘ASSOMPTION, he remembered the Café de la Paix and the woman he had arranged to meet there the evening of the next day. He sat down on a bench, from which one could look down the long, dark, yet because of its name gratuitously promising rue de l'Assomption. He hadn't wished for a sign, but now unintentionally he had EXPERIENCED one. Did he need it?
The writer sat down beside him, spreading himself so wide that he almost pushed Keuschnig off the bench. After a while he said: “All of a sudden I feel like seeing Hitchcock's Vertigo again, that Spanish church tower with the crape-framed blue sky behind it—right this minute! The editors of some anthology have asked me how I felt about prayer, which is apparently being rediscovered. Have you ever prayed?” Keuschnig was going to say something in answer, but only exhaled. The next moment he experienced a thrill of pleasure because he hadn't said anything. I'm free,
he thought. I don't have to talk any more. What a relief! And he gave a startled laugh.
They walked on as far as the Passy station. Keuschnig felt an impulse to disappear in the blackness of the Bois de Boulogne. But he didn't want to walk any more. The blue signal light down in the railroad cut would go on shining uselessly all night … Surrounded by chairs piled on tables, they drank cognac in the one café that was still open. The writer told Keuschnig how a certain bass guitarist had amazed him by never losing his rhythm. “He must have made his peace with the world,” said the writer, who. had just broken a cigarette while putting it in his mouth. A dog barked in the silent streets around the Porte de Passy, and another, up the boulevard, almost at the Porte d'Auteuil, answered, as dogs in the country do at night. In one of the totally dark buildings a toilet light went on and a moment later went out again. Though it was after midnight, a shutter was rolled down. The comfortable apartment houses now gave the impression of impregnable fortresses. The roar of cars could be heard from the Boulevard Périphérique, but none came this way. Was that a rat running across the street on light-colored legs? The sidewalk glistened like the steps of the Métro … By this time Keuschnig was tired and nothing else.
On the way home his fatigue turned to fear and fear made him ruthless. He walked so fast that the corpulent writer fell behind. In his fear he even forgot to see SIGNS. The bare tree roots on the unpaved path beside the railroad cut were terrifying in themselves. When he reached the house in a panic, the two women were sitting on the front
steps with their heads together, talking softly. Hostile in their security, they paid no attention to him. Guitar music was coming out of the open door.
They didn't move aside when he went past them into the apartment. Their only response to his grazing them was to talk louder. He wished them dead.
He sat down in the dining room. The dirty dishes were still on the table. Thoughts pell-mell, in complete sentences, but all unutterable. Unthinkable that he would ever again draw breath to say a word. But equally repellent that he should go to bed now. Like a sick man, he could neither stand nor lie, only sit motionless, leaning forward. He wanted to close his eyes, so as to see nothing more—but for that he'd have needed lids for his whole body. He couldn't help hearing the women on the steps talk about him in the third person plural—“men like Gregor”—as though he didn't count any more. Some people passed the ground-floor window talking Spanish in the silent night, and he experienced a fleeting moment of longing and appeasement. The writer came in panting and sat down facing him on the floor. How ridiculous! He knew the writer was there, but didn't look up. In the presence of this man with his affectation of omniscience, innumerable little worms began swarming in and out of every opening in Keuschnig's body; an intolerable itch, especially in his member and nostrils. He scratched himself. Dried ear wax detached itself from his auditory passages and fell somewhere … Now I would like to see someone INNOCENT, he thought; someone I know nothing about; neither where he comes from nor what he's like.—From the writer's mouth he heard a smacking sound,
as though his tongue were detaching itself menacingly from his palate, preparing to speak—and then he really heard him clearing his throat. Don't speak! “Once I get the hang of it,” said the writer, “I can make do with your gestures. But when your situation gets really critical, you'll have to start talking.” Keuschnig only bared his teeth. The writer wanted to leave but couldn't get up off the floor. He rolled back and forth for a while, then called the women to help him. They picked him up, the three of them went out. They didn't say a word in front of Keuschnig and they didn't laugh. Once outside, they talked without interruption.
Keuschnig stayed there motionless, until he heard the guests departing from the seated entertainment in a fulsomely rattling diesel taxi. He heard Stefanie putting out the lights all over the apartment and going into the bathroom. He sat in the dark and heard her brushing her teeth. He heard her going down the long hallway to her room, opening and closing the door. He heard things happening one after another, and that day he was unable to skip or disregard any of them.
Much later, without knowing how he got up, he suddenly found himself on his feet, going to her. It was dark in the room. She was breathing as though asleep. He stood there indifferent, beginning to feel sleepy. And then, very much awake, she said slowly: “Gregor, you know I love you …” but her calm gave him a jolt. He switched on the light and sat down beside her. She looked so solemn that the sight of her scattered clothing seemed incongruous. Yet, because of it, he saw her more clearly than usual. Suddenly, while they were looking at each other, he wanted to butt her chin
with his head. She began to sob, and he noticed that her arms were breaking out in gooseflesh. “Are you sad?” he asked. “Yes,” she said. “But there's nothing you can do about it.” He bent over her and caressed her, himself trembling and without ulterior motive. How cold she was all over! He grew excited and lay on top of her. At that she kicked him off the bed and he fell on the floor. Almost contentedly, he left the room.
At that point everything had really become a joke! Humpbacked and squinting he entered the PARENTS' BEDROOM. With malignant sloppiness he dropped his trousers on a chair. Then he sat up in the bed and read the diner's guides, pencil in hand, drawing circles around stars, crowns, and chef's hats. The tiniest village at the end of the world was still on the map if it could boast a recommended restaurant. How many escape routes were open to him!—He tried to remember the past day and realized he had forgotten most of it. He began to feel proud that he was still alive. His head drooped and quickly he put out the light. He was asleep before his head touched the pillow.
He awoke soon afterwards at the edge of a precipice, from a dream in which he was about to be murdered. He woke up because it occurred to him at the last moment that he himself was the murderer. He was the intended victim and he was the murderer, who was just coming into the house from the fog outside. Waking didn't mend matters—the only difference was that his horror no longer expressed itself in objects and images. He had awoken stretched out, his arms straight at his sides, one foot on the other, sole on instep. His teeth were clenched, and his eyes had opened as quickly as the eyes of an awakening vampire. He lay speechless,
incapable of moving, infected with the terror of death. Nothing would ever change. There was no possibility of flight, no salvation of any kind. His heart no longer seemed protected by ribs. It pounded as though it had nothing but skin over it.
The room was so impenetrably dark that in his thoughts he groaned with hate, disgust, rage—though he didn't utter a sound. Yet he used to think that here in a foreign country, in a different language, the fits of terror he had had all his life might take on a different meaning, that at least they would not be so utterly abysmal, that, chiefly because thus far he had not learned to speak the foreign language instinctively and in general lived much less instinctively in France than he had in Austria, he would no longer be so helplessly at their mercy as he had been in the land of his birth and childhood … As though these thoughts had given him back his mobility, he began to slap his bed just as in childhood he had slapped some object he had barked his shins on.
Then he remembered with disgust that before putting out the light he had noticed some dried rings the water glass had left on his bedside table. He'd have to wipe them off first thing in the morning. He also thought of the dirty dishes that were still on the dining-room table. What abominable disorder the whole place was in, what a hopeless mess! That half-full can of corn in the icebox, for instance, that should have been emptied into a bowl. The phonograph records that had not been put back into their sleeves … And in the bathroom, all that hair in the brush! You'd have to be mad to conceive of a future under such conditions!
He tried to fall asleep. Maybe something new would
turn up while he slept. I must become a new man! he repeated, and every muscle in his body tensed. That's how I used to pray, he thought with surprise; my prayer consisted in silently wishing for something, with tense muscles.—He went to the window and opened the curtains.
Back in bed, Keuschnig felt that he had finally earned the right to be tired. On one of the upper floors of the house a child coughed, a long cough from deep in the chest. It must have hurt, for the child cried a little, perhaps in its sleep, and panted heavily. Keuschnig pulled up his legs and laid his hands over his face. He had never spoken to anyone in the house except the concierge couple; he didn't even know the other occupants by sight. The clock of the Auteuil church struck the hour. The child coughed again, then called out several times for its mother. Keuschnig noticed that without meaning to he had been counting all along. He knew how often the child had coughed, what hour the clock in the belfry had struck, how often the child had called out
Still curious, he fell asleep.
His next dream was about his mother, who had been coming more and more alive in his dreams. He danced with her, rather close but side by side, avoiding frontal contact. He woke up mulling over the words “guest bed,” “north German area,” “visiting hours,” “quick trip,” “Austria cellar,” “stomach timetable,” “darling daughter,” “ginkgo tree”—all of which had been spoken that evening. Then, at the recollection of Stefanie asking in a Chinese restaurant “How's your chop suey?”, he had to turn over on the other side to keep from vomiting. Next a dead crow fell from the winter sky and landed on a bear. Meanwhile, a big pot of jellied calves' feet was cooking in the kitchen. Then on a
steep slope he came across a dead woman, lying unburied, with black clotted blood in her open mouth, and strewed sand over her. Next he was on a stage and couldn't remember his part, though he himself had written the play. He woke up and saw a satellite blinking in the night-gray sky as it passed the window. It's all over, he thought, I don't love anyone any more. Next he was in someone else's apartment; he had forgotten to pull the chain after taking a shit, and someone else was already on his way to the toilet. Suddenly everyone was against him. All alone he was running across a quiet Alpine plateau traversed by racing cloud shadows, but they hadn't yet started shooting at him. War had broken out again, and the last bus drove away with him, while his child was left standing in the street. When he woke up, he was drooling with fear. Next he was riding on top of a very fat woman and his pubic hair was stained with her menstrual blood. Unable to go home because he'd been involved in a million-dollar holdup, he was starting a new life with a false passport and altered fingerprints. This dream moved so slowly that he mistook it for reality. With a strange joy he found out that his case wasn't covered by the statute of limitations and that he would have to go on living without identity for the rest of his life. An important night, he thought in a half sleep. He was good and sick of empty, incoherent awakeness. Please, one last dream, maybe it will be my salvation!—While in the apartment above him the radio was already blaring wake-up music, Keuschnig in a colorful morning dream was walking through a sunny valley, so immense, so paradisaically alive that he ached with delight. All the houses were inns; in front of them stood wooden tables and benches in softly shimmering grass, the
air was balmy—at last he had found his element. Then the calves' feet were overturned in the kitchen. A peal of thunder, and Keuschnig, forsaken by all his dreams, awoke for good under a dark sky, and he was nothing but a small, contemptible evildoer, who had instantly lost the meaning of his dreams.—So began the day on which his wife left him, on which his child was lost, on which he wanted to stop living, and on which some things nevertheless changed in the end.

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