Crossing the Sierra De Gredos (20 page)
Read Crossing the Sierra De Gredos Online
Authors: Peter Handke
She drives on. Dust flies up. The sun shines in her face. She does not squint. It is possible she will be dead soon. She is wearing a ring. Her belt
is broader. Her mouth is the broadest. I caress her. She does not notice. Maybe she is a man? In her heart a white lily blooms. Her ribs are sharp as a knife. You stink. She turns the wheel. The road is straight. By the side of the road lies a skull. Another over there. The fields are gray and yellow. There stands a tree, full of dried-up leaves. The leaves tinkle. From that tree hung a black boar. It was slit open. The intestines were spilling out. Who will wash them? On a pole sits an owl in the bright sun. My girlfriend has a small mole in the hollow above her collarbone. Now she drives faster. My mother smoked, one cigarette after the other. One time I beat her because of that, in a dream. Another time she had an operation, but thirteen nurses blocked my way to her. Where will she turn in to spend the night? An empty bed is already waiting for her somewhere, or perhaps not. She is hungry. There is a line of dust around her nostrils. She is alone. I have never seen her not alone, except in photos. In the company of others she is unrecognizable. She plays at being sociable. And she does not play very well. She would play better with me. And in the pictures she plays particularly badly when she is in the company of a woman. She looks disfigured to me then, and ugly. Or no, not ugly, worse than that, a beautiful caricature. And her gestures and body language toward the other woman. She seems to be waving five hands in the air, jerking two heads, shifting from one foot to the other, jiggling like a millipede, her hips constantly bent like a tailor's dummy. My father was a tailor, down in New Orleans, and in his deserted shop still hang a couple of suits and garments dropped off for alterations. And nevertheless, nonetheless, despite everything, and even so, I would like to see her in her story with someone else, at long last. Perhaps she just cannot stand being photographed? Even though she was a film star in her youth? Although or precisely for that reason? (This expression I picked up during the time when my parents listened to “Radio New Europe.”) To see her with someone, where she would be more, by a factor of one, by a factor of one hundred, than she is by herself.
is broader. Her mouth is the broadest. I caress her. She does not notice. Maybe she is a man? In her heart a white lily blooms. Her ribs are sharp as a knife. You stink. She turns the wheel. The road is straight. By the side of the road lies a skull. Another over there. The fields are gray and yellow. There stands a tree, full of dried-up leaves. The leaves tinkle. From that tree hung a black boar. It was slit open. The intestines were spilling out. Who will wash them? On a pole sits an owl in the bright sun. My girlfriend has a small mole in the hollow above her collarbone. Now she drives faster. My mother smoked, one cigarette after the other. One time I beat her because of that, in a dream. Another time she had an operation, but thirteen nurses blocked my way to her. Where will she turn in to spend the night? An empty bed is already waiting for her somewhere, or perhaps not. She is hungry. There is a line of dust around her nostrils. She is alone. I have never seen her not alone, except in photos. In the company of others she is unrecognizable. She plays at being sociable. And she does not play very well. She would play better with me. And in the pictures she plays particularly badly when she is in the company of a woman. She looks disfigured to me then, and ugly. Or no, not ugly, worse than that, a beautiful caricature. And her gestures and body language toward the other woman. She seems to be waving five hands in the air, jerking two heads, shifting from one foot to the other, jiggling like a millipede, her hips constantly bent like a tailor's dummy. My father was a tailor, down in New Orleans, and in his deserted shop still hang a couple of suits and garments dropped off for alterations. And nevertheless, nonetheless, despite everything, and even so, I would like to see her in her story with someone else, at long last. Perhaps she just cannot stand being photographed? Even though she was a film star in her youth? Although or precisely for that reason? (This expression I picked up during the time when my parents listened to “Radio New Europe.”) To see her with someone, where she would be more, by a factor of one, by a factor of one hundred, than she is by herself.
She drives on. The dust flies up more and more. The sun shines on the nape of her neck. She pins up her hair. She pulls her shirt up over her shoulder. Her knees are sharp as daggers. She clamps her legs around me and draws me home into herself. There I curl up blissfully. There is a fragrance of lilies. And perhaps she will die this very night.
Toward evening, traffic on the
carretera
swelled. It was not only from both directions that the number of cars increased. Vehicles also came lumbering onto the road from the previously empty fields, steppes, and semideserts, fewer tractors than trucks, many of them with flapping tarpaulins, all grayish yellow like the earth, a sort of camouflage, and now and then convoys of tanks and armored personnel carriers, as if returning from maneuvers, and likewise ordinary automobiles, not only those made for rocky slopes but also many sporty little cars more suited to city traffic, hobbling along oddly from the trackless savannahs.
carretera
swelled. It was not only from both directions that the number of cars increased. Vehicles also came lumbering onto the road from the previously empty fields, steppes, and semideserts, fewer tractors than trucks, many of them with flapping tarpaulins, all grayish yellow like the earth, a sort of camouflage, and now and then convoys of tanks and armored personnel carriers, as if returning from maneuvers, and likewise ordinary automobiles, not only those made for rocky slopes but also many sporty little cars more suited to city traffic, hobbling along oddly from the trackless savannahs.
And all these vehicles, most of them, like her Santana, heading south, merged onto the highway, which continued almost straight as an arrow. And still no village in sight, let alone a city. Beautiful old Segovia at most a felt presence, as a strip of haze above the seemingly infinite mesa, to the east, at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama (not her destination), which was white down to a fairly low altitudeâsuggesting that the considerably higher Sierra de Gredos was even whiter? Or was this whiteness the result in part of the craggy massifs in the distance, lit up by the rays of the sun?
And then, just as abruptly, planes in the sky, flying quite low, not sport or private planes but dark, quite massive wide-bodied four-propeller bombers, zooming in from the south, seemingly springing up out of the ground, flying even lower as they approached and slowing to a speed that almost matched that of the stream of vehicles directly below them, and with their flaps set almost perpendicularly, describing a sort of landing curve, a broad ellipse, heading for which airport? the one at “Nuova Segóvia,” nearby according to the highway sign, yet out of sight, despite the roar of planes landing in quick succession, on the otherwise still apparently
uninhabited mesa; and bombers like these returning to their base, each with its nose almost touching the tail of the one in front of it, each with the same sound, something between droning, rumbling, growling, and clattering, maneuvers inextricable from war, unlike those of tanks.
uninhabited mesa; and bombers like these returning to their base, each with its nose almost touching the tail of the one in front of it, each with the same sound, something between droning, rumbling, growling, and clattering, maneuvers inextricable from war, unlike those of tanks.
And now the shattering of her windshield, as if simply from the sound waves; glass shards in the car, also on her; not a single remnant of glass left in the frame there in front of her. And then the sign “Deviación,” detour. And was this possible: In the middle of the seemingly endless high plateau, almost unvarying except for the occasional rock outcropping, suddenly a “straits”? The road a cut through an outcropping, from a distance hardly distinguishable, yet from close up clearly higher than all the other outcroppings and also infinitely longer, crossing the entire countryside, forming a natural barrier, traversable only at this one notch, which had been carved out deeper for the
carretera
, forming a “straits,” or an
estrecho
, like the straits or
estrecho
of Gibraltar between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
carretera
, forming a “straits,” or an
estrecho
, like the straits or
estrecho
of Gibraltar between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
And there, with walls of rock on both sides, the road did in fact narrow. Two vehicles could barely pass one another. For a truck, the vehicle approaching from the opposite direction had to stop to let it go by. A pedestrian would have had to flatten himself against the cliff (if that was even possible), and not only during the evening rush hour, as now. “Estrecho del Nuevo Bazar”âthat, according to the sign, was the name of this pass. And, again according to a sign, it was more than a thousand meters above sea level. That meant that the
meseta
, to all appearances completely flat since the beginning of her drive, had imperceptibly gained about four hundred meters in altitude.
meseta
, to all appearances completely flat since the beginning of her drive, had imperceptibly gained about four hundred meters in altitude.
Immediately after the straits, after the
cordillere
, came the detour; the
carretera
blocked with steel chevaux-de-frise, a type of barricade now known almost exclusively from early war films and old newsreels, spirals of barbed wire wound through metal spikes. The highway sign, with “ÃvilaâSierra de Gredos” crossed out with a thick line, barely legible, and further obscured by splashes of tar and bullet holes. The names of these places no longer occurring after the detour arrow, except for “Nuevo Bazar,” phosphorescent, and not only from the deep-yellow evening sun.
cordillere
, came the detour; the
carretera
blocked with steel chevaux-de-frise, a type of barricade now known almost exclusively from early war films and old newsreels, spirals of barbed wire wound through metal spikes. The highway sign, with “ÃvilaâSierra de Gredos” crossed out with a thick line, barely legible, and further obscured by splashes of tar and bullet holes. The names of these places no longer occurring after the detour arrow, except for “Nuevo Bazar,” phosphorescent, and not only from the deep-yellow evening sun.
The straits was familiar to her from many previous trips. The settlement known as “El Nuevo Bazar” had also existed for years. She had spent the night there, in one of the many new hotels. And yet she no longer knew where she was, sitting in the line of vehicles, now moving at
a snail's pace, on the turnoff with which she was supposedly familiar. After the straits, had this huge hollow or basin in the landscape been there the last time? Was she on the right road? Was this even a road? With all the cars, bumper-to-bumper and rearview-mirror-in-rearview-mirror, and with the constant rumbling and pounding from the stones underneath, with dust flying at her, as well as thistles, steppe grasses, wild bees, and the occasional hornetâwhat, in the middle of winter?âeven that was soon no longer a certainty.
a snail's pace, on the turnoff with which she was supposedly familiar. After the straits, had this huge hollow or basin in the landscape been there the last time? Was she on the right road? Was this even a road? With all the cars, bumper-to-bumper and rearview-mirror-in-rearview-mirror, and with the constant rumbling and pounding from the stones underneath, with dust flying at her, as well as thistles, steppe grasses, wild bees, and the occasional hornetâwhat, in the middle of winter?âeven that was soon no longer a certainty.
Then the moment when she did not merely wonder, “Where am I?” but also, “Where is this place?” An area such as she had never encountered before. As if, with the passage of time, this familiar countryside had been transformed into something entirely different. As if it had been stood on its head; tipped over; turned upside down. As if this place, including the blueing sky and the greening patches (fields of winter rye dotting the fallow land), were ultimately not “here” anymore, but where? at the antipodes? on a distant star? As if this region, despite the bronze-glittering patches of water and the swaying dog rose bushes here and thereâthe little fruit capsules glowing reddish purple on the canes, arching against the evening skyâcould not even be called “a country”; “a province”? (misleading); “a region”? (even more misleading); “a stretch”? (too innocuous); “an evil star”? (too pretentious).
And yet: as if one were nevertheless being ineluctably drawn in, breathing freely despite the dust, drawn into an atmosphere inimical to life, one that pulled the ground out from under one's feet, now, now; that tipped one over or swallowed one up and let one tumble into a pit called “nowhereland,” into its non-name.
Time and again, often merely as a result of deviating from the beaten path a bit, she had landed in a sort of white hole. And after the initial blow to the head (literally), it had done her good, and now? “Don't know,” she said to herself. “Who knows.” And still no sign of the “Nuevo Bazar,” announced, with each rotation of the wheels, along and above the road, also up in the sky, with banner in tow: no plantation or lone farm, not even a shed out in the fields. Instead billboards, one crowding and blocking the next, and then, out of nowhere, broad, smoothly paved sidewalks, with no one walking on them, accompanying the road, which meanwhile had become a distinctly good one, with electronic temperature displays on every light pole, the degrees differing markedly, not only because of sun and shade, as did the times flashing on the screens. Then floodlights,
from a stadium? Suns infinitely more glaring than our familiar sun; the latter setting.
from a stadium? Suns infinitely more glaring than our familiar sun; the latter setting.
Finally, among the billboardsâon which one often saw not merely a picture of the item offered for sale but the actual object, a house, a yacht, a car, an entire garden, a castle gate, in the original, on poles, suspended, on wheels for taking with one immediately (including the gate and even the garden)âa small, seemingly forgotten sign: a turnoff after all for “ÃvilaâSierra de Gredos,” probably the last one. And this little sign was not crossed out, not blackened, was unharmed; and the road, albeit narrow, led in a curve, shimmering with emptiness, in the direction she wanted. The peak of one of the foothills of the Sierra already visible beyond the curve of the horizon. Yet she stayed in the pack with the others, on the road into Nuevo Bazar.
She shook off the shards of glass. Was that a bullet hole? She closed the roof of the car; when the sun went down, it got cold in this highland hollow. She put on makeup; she could do this while drivingâstill at a snail's pace and hindered further by the traffic lights, increasingly frequent, yet without intersections, without any other sign of a settlement, the land to either side still lying fallow. She piled her hair on her head and wound it into a knot. She took the acacia branch, which had fallen into the Santana when the glass shattered, broke off the thorns one at a time, and stuck it diagonally through the knot of hair. She tied on a gauzy white cloth whose hem partially concealed her eyes. She turned on the car radio and set the dial to the station indicated on other roadside columns, now illuminated for the night, these columns, too, coming up at every rotation of the wheels, and, unlike the temperature and time indicators, always giving the same call numbers for the station.
She had been warned about Nuevo Bazar. From several quarters word had reached her that the place had changed recently (and the warnings had nothing to do with the current rumors of war); it was no longer a good place. The author of the most recent travel guideâwhom, to be sure, one could not trust any more than most of the proliferating advice- and hot-tip-dispensers, assigners of plus or minus points, for all sorts of regions, no matter how out of the wayâwrote: “Nuevo Bazar, a mixture of Andorra, Palermo, and Tirana. Every morning ten truckloads of blood-soaked sawdust to be disposed of. Mounds sprinkled with lime, growing daily, outside the city, which does not deserve the name of âciudad' but has become a death zone, popularly known now simply as âLa Zona,' and no longer Nuevo Bazar.”
But not a word about this on the radio. For a long time, local news briefs, and these dealing only with the weather, the water level, prices at the indoor market, the times of movie showings and church services. Not until almost the end did the word “war” occur, or rather a denial: “no war”; allegedly only scattered skirmishes were taking place, far off in the mountains to the south. And only at the very end, but then for a while, and repeated every few car lengths: “War!”âbut somewhere else entirely, not merely in another countryâin Africa; no rumors of sporadic slaughters of the mountain tribe in the Sierra, or of tribal members among themselves?, no, “the” war was world news: and yet how involved the two announcers on Radio Nuevo Bazar, a man and a woman, both with unmistakably very young voices, seemed to be in this real, universally acknowledged war, as one could hear from their rapid-fire question-and-answer, and also reporting, game. The war over there in Africaâactually not that much farther than the Sierraâ: that was the thing; that was it; that was where things were happening; and what are you people doing here, what are we young folks doing here, in this backwater?
Yet the two announcers were for the most part reporting only what was being reported over there in the African war-torn area. “Reported,” that was a word that occurred in every sentence in their accounts, and when an incident, always having to do with mass death and destruction, was introduced with that word, the incident was considered proven; “reported” meant, as far as the war was concerned: this way and no other way; uncertainty impossible; “confirmed”âthe usual conclusion of the report; “allegedly” or “probably,” as in the case of the “vague rumors” from the Sierra: out of the question.
And the height of unimpeachability was achieved when one also gave the person doing the “reporting” the status of eyewitness (“one”? the reporter? the war itself?): “According to eyewitness reports ⦔âno greater truth was knowable. And such reporting, the definitive evidence, could only go hand in hand with the horrific?; reporting and horror were inseparable, and not solely on the news? also in books? or had this always been the case? reporting without horror was not really reporting? commanded no attention? was not heard? no longer heard? was not taken seriously? reporting-and-war-and-atrocities: only that was taken seriously?
Without turning off the radio, leafing at random through her vanished daughter's Arabic booklet, then even reading bits here and there (that was possible during the stop-and-go drive into Nuevo Bazar): “Al-Halba was a
place in Baghdad ⦔ “in the presence of this sheik one felt as if one were in a garden ⦔ No matter how this New Bazaar might have changed since her last trip, from one moment to the next she suddenly had time for the place, at least for this nightâtime? yes, and not only for the place.
place in Baghdad ⦔ “in the presence of this sheik one felt as if one were in a garden ⦔ No matter how this New Bazaar might have changed since her last trip, from one moment to the next she suddenly had time for the place, at least for this nightâtime? yes, and not only for the place.
And so what if Nuevo Bazar represented a threat or an obstacle, according to the guidebook? That was all right: after all, dangerânot to be confused with “war”âwas her element. And the infamous masses of people in the “Zone”? Even there she caught a whiff of value, and certainly not out of nobility on her part (the very notion of catching a whiff contradicted that), but out of animal instinct: an instinct that did not derive from her profession, her managerial activities, but rather had brought her to them in the first place? Without a whiff of value, no adventures that extended beyond conventional banking and benefited business undertakings, and not only these? One of the few sentences the author underlined in the hundreds of articles he was reading in preparation for his book on her: “The secret of this businesswoman: in almost everything, even unfavorable circumstances, she catches a whiff of value. Not a gambler but an adventurer.”
The story, and she as well, wanted my adventurer to remain unseen on the evening of that drive into Nuevo Bazar. Despite the shattered windshield, not one gaze from all the thousands she encountered came to rest on her. And that had to do not only with her partial disguise and the cloth over her eyes. She simply willed people not to register her presence, and so it was.
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