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Authors: Peter Handke

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BOOK: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel
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Of course the house in front of him had only one story, the shutters were fastened, the roof tiles were covered with moss (another one of those words!), the door was closed, PUBLIC SCHOOL was written above it, in the garden somebody was chopping wood, it had to be the school janitor, of course, and in front of the school naturally there was a hedge; yes, everything was in order, nothing was missing, not even the sponge underneath the blackboard in the dusky classroom and the chalk box next to it, not even the semicircles on the outside walls underneath the windows and the other marks that, in explanation, confirmed that these scratches were made by window hooks; in every respect it was as though everything you saw or heard confirmed to you that it was true to its word.
In the classroom the lid of the coal bucket was open, and in the bucket itself the handle of the coal shovel could be seen (an April fool’s joke), and the floor with the wide boards, the cracks still wet from mopping, not forgetting the map on the wall, the sink next to the blackboard, and the corn husks on the windowsill: one single, cheap imitation. No, he would not let himself be tricked by April fool’s jokes like these.
It was as if he were drawing wider and wider circles. He had forgotten the lightning rod next to the door, and now it seemed to him like a cue. He was supposed to start. He helped himself out by walking around the school back to the yard and talking with the janitor in the woodshed. Woodshed, janitor, yard: cues. He watched while the janitor put a log on the chopping block and lifted up the ax. He said a couple of words from the yard; the janitor stopped, answered, and as he hit the log, it fell to one side before he had struck it, and the ax hit the chopping block so that the pile of unchopped logs in the background collapsed. Another one of those cues. But the only thing that happened was that he called to the janitor in the dim woodshed, asking whether this was the only classroom for the whole school, and the janitor answered that for the whole school there was only this classroom.
No wonder the children hadn’t even learned to read by the time they left school, the janitor said suddenly, slamming the ax into the chopping block and coming out of the shed: they couldn’t manage even to finish a single sentence of their own, they talked to each other almost entirely in single words, and they wouldn’t talk at all unless you asked them to, and what they learned was only memorized stuff that they rattled off by rote; except for that, they
couldn’t use whole sentences. “Actually, all of them, more or less, have a speech defect,” said the janitor.
What was that supposed to mean? What reason did the janitor have for that? What did it have to do with him? Nothing? Yes, but why did the janitor act as if it had something to do with him?
Bloch should have answered, but he did not let himself get involved. Once he got started, he would have to go on talking. So he walked around the yard a while longer, helped the janitor pick up the logs that had been flung out of the shed during the chopping, and then, little by little, wandered unobtrusively back out onto the street and was able to make his getaway with no trouble.
He walked past the athletic field. It was after work, and the soccer team was practicing. The ground was so wet that drops sprayed out from the grass when a player kicked the ball. Bloch watched for a while, but it was getting dark, and he left.
In the restaurant at the railroad station he ate a croquette and drank a couple of glasses of beer. On the platform outside, he sat on a bench. A girl in spike heels walked back and forth in the gravel. A phone rang in the traffic supervisor’s office. A railroad official stood in the door, smoking. Somebody came out of the waiting room and stopped again immediately.
There was more rattling in the office, and loud talking, like somebody talking into a telephone, could be heard. It had grown dark by now.
It was fairly quiet. Here and there someone could be seen drawing on a cigarette. A faucet was turned on sharply and was turned off again at once—as though somebody had been startled. Farther away people were talking in the dark; faint sounds could be heard, as in a half-sleep: ah ee. Somebody shouted: “Ow!” There was no way to tell whether a man or a woman had shouted. Very far away someone could be heard saying, very distinctly, “You look worn out.” Between the railroad tracks, just as distinctly, a railroad worker could be seen standing and scratching his head. Bloch thought he was asleep.
An incoming train could be seen. You could watch a few passengers getting off, looking as if they were undecided whether to get off or not. A drunk got off last of all and slammed the door shut. The official on the platform could be seen as he gave a signal with his flashlight, and then the train was leaving.
In the waiting room Bloch looked at the schedule. No more trains stopped at the station today. Anyway, it was late enough now to go to the movies.
Some people were already in the lobby of the movie house. Bloch sat with them, his ticket in his hand. More and more people came. It was pleasant
to hear so many sounds. Bloch went out in front of the theater, stood out there with some other people, then went back into the movie house.
In the movie somebody shot a rifle at a man who was sitting far away at a campfire with his back turned. Nothing happened; the man did not fall over, just sat there, did not even look to see who had fired. Some time passed. Then the man slowly sank to one side and lay there without moving. That’s the trouble with these old guns, the gunman said to his partner: no impact. But the man had actually been dead all the time he sat there at the campfire.
After the movie he rode out to the border with two men in a car. A stone slammed against the bottom of the car. Bloch, who was in the back seat, became alert again.
Since this had been pay day, he could not find a single empty table at the tavern. He sat down with some other people. The landlady came and put her hand on his shoulder. He understood and ordered drinks for the whole table.
To pay, he put a folded bill on the table. Somebody next to him unfolded the bill and said that another one might be tucked inside it. Bloch said, “So what?” and refolded the bill. The man unfolded the bill again and pushed an ashtray on top of it. Bloch reached into the ashtray and, underhand, threw the butts
into the man’s face. Somebody pulled his chair out from under him, so that he slid under the table.
Bloch jumped up and in a flash slammed his forearm against the chest of the man who had pulled away his chair. The man fell against the wall and groaned loudly because he couldn’t catch his breath. A couple of men twisted Bloch’s arms behind his back and shoved him out the door. He did not fall, just staggered around and ran right back in.
He swung at the man who had unfolded the bill. A kick hit him from behind, and he fell against the table with the man. Even while they were falling, Bloch slugged away at him.
Somebody grabbed him by the legs and hauled him away. Bloch kicked him in the ribs, and he let go. A few others got hold of Bloch and dragged him out. On the street they put a headlock on him and marched him back and forth like that. They stopped in front of the customs shed with him, pushed his head against the doorbell, and went away.
A guard came out, saw Bloch standing there, and went back inside. Bloch ran after the men and tackled one of them from behind. The others rushed him. Bloch stepped to one side and butted his head into somebody’s stomach. A few more people came out from the tavern. Somebody threw a coat over his head. He hit him in the shins, but somebody else
was tying the arms of the coat together. Then they swiftly beat him down and went back into the tavern.
Bloch got loose from the coat and ran after them. One of them stopped but did not turn around. Bloch charged him; the man just walked away, and Bloch sprawled on the ground.
After a while he got up and went into the tavern. He wanted to say something, but when he moved his tongue, the blood in his mouth bubbled. He sat down at one of the tables and pointed with his finger to show that he wanted a drink. The waitress brought him a bottle of beer without the glass. He thought he saw tiny flies running back and forth on the table, but it was just cigarette smoke.
He was too weak to lift the beer bottle with one hand; so he clutched it with both hands and bent over so that it didn’t have to be lifted too high. His ears were so sensitive that at times the cards didn’t fall but were slammed on the next table, and at the bar the sponge didn’t fall but slapped into the sink; and the landlady’s daughter, with clogs on her bare feet, didn’t walk through the barroom but clattered through the barroom; the wine didn’t flow but gurgled into the glasses; and the music didn’t play but boomed from the juke box.
He heard a woman scream in fright, but in a tavern a woman’s scream didn’t mean anything;
therefore, the woman could not have screamed in fright. Nevertheless, he had been jolted by the scream; it was only because of the noise, because the scream had been so shrill.
Little by little the other details lost their significance: the foam in the empty beer bottle meant no more to him than the cigarette box that the man next to him tore open just enough so that he managed to extract a single cigarette with his fingernails. Nor did the used matches lying loose everywhere in the cracks between the floorboards occupy his attention any more, and the fingernail impressions in the putty along the windowframe no longer seemed to have anything to do with him. Everything left him cold now, stood once more in its place; like peacetime, thought Bloch. The stuffed grouse above the juke box no longer forced one to draw conclusions; and the flies sleeping on the ceiling did not suggest anything any more.
You could see a man combing his hair with his fingers, you could see girls walking backward as they danced, you could see men standing up and buttoning their coats, you could hear cards sloshing as they were shuffled, but you didn’t have to dwell on it any more.
Bloch got tired. The tireder he got, the more clearly he took in everything, distinguished one thing from
another. He saw how the door invariably stayed open when somebody went out, and how somebody else always got up and shut the door again. He was so tired that he saw each thing by itself, especially the contours, as though there was nothing to the things but their contours. He saw and heard everything with total immediacy, without first having to translate it into words, as before, or comprehending it only in terms of words or word games. He was in a state where everything seemed natural to him.
Later the landlady sat down with him, and he put his arm around her so naturally that she did not even seem to notice. He dropped a couple of coins into the juke box as though it were nothing and danced effortlessly with the landlady. He noticed that every time she said something she added his name to it.
It wasn’t important any more that he could see the waitress clasping one hand with the other, nor was there anything special about the thick curtains, and it was only natural that more and more people left. They could be heard as they relieved themselves out on the street and then walked away.
It got quieter in the barroom, so that the records in the juke box played very distinctly. In the pause between records people talked more softly or almost held their breath; it was a relief when the next
record came on. It seemed to Bloch that you could talk about these occurrences as things that recurred forever; the course of a single day, he thought; things that you wrote about on picture postcards. “At night we sit in the tavern and listen to records.” He got tireder and tireder, and outside the apples were dropping off the trees.
When nobody but him was left, the landlady went into the kitchen. Bloch sat there and waited until the record was over. He turned off the juke box, so that now only the kitchen light was still on. The landlady sat at the table and did her accounts. Bloch approached her, a coaster in his hand. She looked up when he came out of the barroom and looked at him while he approached her. It was too late when he remembered the coaster; he wanted to hide it quickly, before she saw it, but the landlady looked away from him and at the coaster in his hand and asked him what he was doing with it, if perhaps she had written a bill on it that hadn’t been paid. Bloch dropped the coaster and sat down next to the landlady, not doing one thing smoothly after the other but hesitating at each move. She went on counting, talked with him while she did, then cleared away the money. Bloch said he’d just forgotten about the coaster in his hand; it hadn’t meant anything.
She asked him to have a bite with her. She set a wooden board in front of him. There was no knife, he said, though she had set the knife next to the board. She had to bring the laundry in from the garden, she said, it was just starting to rain. It wasn’t raining, he corrected her, it was only dripping from the trees because there was a little wind. But she had gone out already, and since she left the door open, he could see that it was actually raining. He saw her come back and shouted that she had dropped a shirt, but it turned out that it was only a rag for the floor, which had been lying in the entryway all along. When she lit the candle on the table, he saw the wax dripping on a plate because she had tilted the candle slightly in her hand. She should watch out, he said, wax was dripping onto the clean plate. But she was already setting the candle in the spilled wax, which was still liquid, and pressed it down until it stood by itself. “I didn’t know that you wanted to put the candle on the plate,” Bloch said. She started to sit down where there was no chair, and Bloch shouted, “Watch out!” though she had just squatted to pick up a coin that had fallen under the table while she was counting. When she went into the bedroom to take care of the girl, he immediately asked for her; once when she left the table he even called after her to ask where she was going.
BOOK: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel
8.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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