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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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The next morning he could not imagine any of that any more. The dining room had been straightened up, and a tax official walked around while the innkeeper told him the prices of everything. The innkeeper showed the official the receipt for a coffeemaker and the freezer; the fact that the two men
were discussing prices made his state during the night seem all the more ridiculous to Bloch. He had put the newspapers aside after quickly leafing through them and was now listening only to the tax official, who was arguing with the innkeeper about an ice-cream freezer. The innkeeper’s mother and the girl joined them; all of them talked at once. Bloch broke in to ask what the furnishings for one room in the inn might cost. The innkeeper answered that he had bought the furniture quite cheap from nearby farmers who had either moved away or left the country altogether. He told Bloch a price. Bloch wanted that price broken down item by item. The innkeeper asked the girl for the inventory list for a room and gave the price he had paid for each item as well as the price he thought he could get for a chest or a wardrobe. The tax official, who had been taking notes up to that point, stopped writing and asked the girl for a glass of wine. Bloch, satisfied, was ready to leave. The tax official explained that whenever he saw an item, say a washing machine, he always asked the price immediately, and then when he saw the item again, say a washing machine of the same make, he would recognize it not by its external features, that is, a washing machine by the knobs which regulated the wash cycle, but by what the item, say a washing machine, had cost when he first
saw it, that is, by its price. The price, of course, he remembered precisely, and that way he could recognize almost any item. And what if the item was worthless, asked Bloch. He had nothing to do with items that had no market value, the tax official replied, at least not in his work.
were discussing prices made his state during the night seem all the more ridiculous to Bloch. He had put the newspapers aside after quickly leafing through them and was now listening only to the tax official, who was arguing with the innkeeper about an ice-cream freezer. The innkeeper’s mother and the girl joined them; all of them talked at once. Bloch broke in to ask what the furnishings for one room in the inn might cost. The innkeeper answered that he had bought the furniture quite cheap from nearby farmers who had either moved away or left the country altogether. He told Bloch a price. Bloch wanted that price broken down item by item. The innkeeper asked the girl for the inventory list for a room and gave the price he had paid for each item as well as the price he thought he could get for a chest or a wardrobe. The tax official, who had been taking notes up to that point, stopped writing and asked the girl for a glass of wine. Bloch, satisfied, was ready to leave. The tax official explained that whenever he saw an item, say a washing machine, he always asked the price immediately, and then when he saw the item again, say a washing machine of the same make, he would recognize it not by its external features, that is, a washing machine by the knobs which regulated the wash cycle, but by what the item, say a washing machine, had cost when he first
saw it, that is, by its price. The price, of course, he remembered precisely, and that way he could recognize almost any item. And what if the item was worthless, asked Bloch. He had nothing to do with items that had no market value, the tax official replied, at least not in his work.
The mute schoolboy still had not been found. Though the bicycle had been impounded and the surrounding area was being searched, the shot that might have been the signal that one of the policemen had come across something had not been fired. Anyway, in the barbershop where Bloch had gone, the noise of the hair dryer behind the screen was so loud that he could not hear anything from outside. He asked to have the hair at the back of his neck clipped. While the barber was washing his hands, the girl brushed off Bloch’s collar. Now the hair dryer was turned off and he heard paper rustling behind the screen. There was a bang. But it was only a curler that had fallen into a metal pan behind the screen.
Bloch asked the girl if she went home for lunch. The girl answered that she didn’t live in town, she came every morning by train; for lunch she went to a café or stayed with the other girl here in the shop. Bloch asked whether she bought a round-trip ticket every day. The girl told him that she was commuting
on a weekly ticket. “How much is a weekly ticket?” Bloch asked immediately. But before the girl could answer, he said that it was none of his business. Nevertheless, the girl told him the price. From behind the screen the other girl said, “Why are you asking if it’s none of your business?” Bloch, who was already standing up waiting for his change, read the price list next to the mirror, and went out.
on a weekly ticket. “How much is a weekly ticket?” Bloch asked immediately. But before the girl could answer, he said that it was none of his business. Nevertheless, the girl told him the price. From behind the screen the other girl said, “Why are you asking if it’s none of your business?” Bloch, who was already standing up waiting for his change, read the price list next to the mirror, and went out.
He noticed that he had an odd compulsion to find out the price of everything. He was actually relieved to see the prices of newly arrived goods marked on the window of a grocery store. On a fruit display in front of the store a price tag had fallen over. He set it right. The movement was enough to bring somebody out to ask if he wanted to buy something. At another store a rocking chair had been covered by a long dress. A tag with a pin stuck through it lay on the chair next to the dress. Bloch was long undecided whether the price was for the chair or for the dress; one or the other must not be for sale. He stood so long in front of them that, again, somebody came out and questioned him. He questioned back. He was told that the price tag with the pin must have fallen off the dress; it was clear, wasn’t it, that the tag couldn’t have anything to do with the chair; naturally, that was private property. He had just wanted to ask, said Bloch, moving on. The
other person called after him to tell him where he could buy that kind of rocking chair. In the café Bloch asked the price of the juke box. It didn’t belong to him, said the owner, he just leased it. That’s not what he meant, Bloch answered, he just wanted to know the price. Not until the owner had told him the price was Bloch satisfied. But he wasn’t sure, the owner said. Bloch now began to ask about other things in the café that the owner had to know the prices of because they were his. The owner then talked about the public swimming pool, which had cost much more than the original estimate. “How much more?” Bloch asked. The owner didn’t know. Bloch became impatient. “And what was the estimate?” asked Bloch. Again the owner didn’t have the answer. Anyway, last spring a corpse had been found in one of the changing booths; it must have been lying there all winter. The head was stuck in a plastic shopping bag. The dead man had been a gypsy. Some gypsies had settled in this region; they’d built themselves little huts at the edge of the woods with the reparation money they’d received for being confined in the concentration camps. “It’s supposed to be very clean inside,” the owner said. The policemen who had questioned the inhabitants during their search for the missing boy had been surprised by the freshly scrubbed floors and the general neatness of
the rooms everywhere. But it was just that neatness, the owner went on, that actually fed their suspicions, for the gypsies certainly wouldn’t have scrubbed the floors without good reason. Bloch didn’t let up and asked whether the reparations had been enough to cover the costs of building the huts. The owner couldn’t say what the reparations had amounted to. “Building materials and labor were still cheap in those days,” the owner said. Curiously, Bloch turned over the sales slip that was stuck to the bottom of the beer glass. “Is this worth anything?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and setting a stone on the table. Without picking up the stone, the owner answered that you could find stones like that at every step around here. Bloch said nothing. Then the owner picked up the stone, let it roll around the hollow of his hand, and set it back on the table. Finished! Bloch promptly put the stone away.
other person called after him to tell him where he could buy that kind of rocking chair. In the café Bloch asked the price of the juke box. It didn’t belong to him, said the owner, he just leased it. That’s not what he meant, Bloch answered, he just wanted to know the price. Not until the owner had told him the price was Bloch satisfied. But he wasn’t sure, the owner said. Bloch now began to ask about other things in the café that the owner had to know the prices of because they were his. The owner then talked about the public swimming pool, which had cost much more than the original estimate. “How much more?” Bloch asked. The owner didn’t know. Bloch became impatient. “And what was the estimate?” asked Bloch. Again the owner didn’t have the answer. Anyway, last spring a corpse had been found in one of the changing booths; it must have been lying there all winter. The head was stuck in a plastic shopping bag. The dead man had been a gypsy. Some gypsies had settled in this region; they’d built themselves little huts at the edge of the woods with the reparation money they’d received for being confined in the concentration camps. “It’s supposed to be very clean inside,” the owner said. The policemen who had questioned the inhabitants during their search for the missing boy had been surprised by the freshly scrubbed floors and the general neatness of
the rooms everywhere. But it was just that neatness, the owner went on, that actually fed their suspicions, for the gypsies certainly wouldn’t have scrubbed the floors without good reason. Bloch didn’t let up and asked whether the reparations had been enough to cover the costs of building the huts. The owner couldn’t say what the reparations had amounted to. “Building materials and labor were still cheap in those days,” the owner said. Curiously, Bloch turned over the sales slip that was stuck to the bottom of the beer glass. “Is this worth anything?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and setting a stone on the table. Without picking up the stone, the owner answered that you could find stones like that at every step around here. Bloch said nothing. Then the owner picked up the stone, let it roll around the hollow of his hand, and set it back on the table. Finished! Bloch promptly put the stone away.
In the doorway he met the two girls from the barbershop. He invited them to go with him to the other café. The second girl said that the juke box there didn’t have any records. Bloch asked what she meant. She told him that the records in the juke box were no good. Bloch went ahead and they followed after him. They ordered something to drink and unwrapped their sandwiches. Bloch leaned forward and talked with them. They showed him their I.D. cards.
When he touched the plastic covers, his hands immediately began to sweat. They asked him if he was a soldier. The second one had a date that night with a traveling salesman; but they’d make it a foursome because there was nothing to talk about when there were only two of you. “When there are four of you, somebody will say something, then somebody else. You can tell each other jokes.” Bloch did not know what to answer. In the next room a baby was crawling on the floor. A dog was bounding around the child and licking its face. The telephone on the counter rang; as long as it was ringing, Bloch stopped listening to the conversation. Soldiers mostly didn’t have any money, one of the girls said. Bloch did not answer. When he looked at their hands, they explained that their fingernails were so black because of the hairsetting lotion. “It doesn’t help to polish them, the rims always stay black.” Bloch looked up. “We buy all our dresses ready-made.” “We do each other’s hair.” “In the summer it’s usually getting light by the time we finally get home.” “I prefer the slow dances.” “On the trip home we don’t joke around as much any more, then we forget about talking.” She took everything too seriously, the first girl said. Yesterday on the way to the train station she had even looked in the orchard for the missing schoolboy. Instead of handing back their I.D. cards, Bloch just
put them down on the table, as if it hadn’t been right for him to look at them. He watched the dampness of his fingerprints evaporate from the plastic. When they asked him what he did, he told them that he had been a soccer goalie. He explained that goalkeepers could keep on playing longer than fielders. “Zamora was already quite old,” said Bloch. In answer, they talked about the soccer players they had known personally. When there was a game in their town, they stood behind the visiting team’s goal and heckled the goalie to make him nervous. Most goalies were bowlegged.
When he touched the plastic covers, his hands immediately began to sweat. They asked him if he was a soldier. The second one had a date that night with a traveling salesman; but they’d make it a foursome because there was nothing to talk about when there were only two of you. “When there are four of you, somebody will say something, then somebody else. You can tell each other jokes.” Bloch did not know what to answer. In the next room a baby was crawling on the floor. A dog was bounding around the child and licking its face. The telephone on the counter rang; as long as it was ringing, Bloch stopped listening to the conversation. Soldiers mostly didn’t have any money, one of the girls said. Bloch did not answer. When he looked at their hands, they explained that their fingernails were so black because of the hairsetting lotion. “It doesn’t help to polish them, the rims always stay black.” Bloch looked up. “We buy all our dresses ready-made.” “We do each other’s hair.” “In the summer it’s usually getting light by the time we finally get home.” “I prefer the slow dances.” “On the trip home we don’t joke around as much any more, then we forget about talking.” She took everything too seriously, the first girl said. Yesterday on the way to the train station she had even looked in the orchard for the missing schoolboy. Instead of handing back their I.D. cards, Bloch just
put them down on the table, as if it hadn’t been right for him to look at them. He watched the dampness of his fingerprints evaporate from the plastic. When they asked him what he did, he told them that he had been a soccer goalie. He explained that goalkeepers could keep on playing longer than fielders. “Zamora was already quite old,” said Bloch. In answer, they talked about the soccer players they had known personally. When there was a game in their town, they stood behind the visiting team’s goal and heckled the goalie to make him nervous. Most goalies were bowlegged.
Bloch noticed that each time he mentioned something and talked about it, the two of them countered with a story about their own experiences with the same or a similar thing or with a story they had heard about it. For instance, if Bloch talked about the ribs he had broken while playing, they told him that a few days ago one of the workers at the sawmill had fallen off a lumber pile and broken his ribs; and if Bloch then mentioned that his lips had had to be stitched more than once, they answered by talking about a fight on TV in which a boxer’s eyebrows had been split open; and when Bloch told how once he had slammed into a goalpost during a lunge and split his tongue, they immediately replied that the schoolboy also had a cleft tongue.
Besides, they talked about things and especially about people he couldn’t possibly know as though he did know them, was one of their group. Maria had hit Otto over the head with her alligator bag. Uncle had come down in the cellar, chased Alfred into the yard, and beaten the Italian kitchen maid with a birch rod. Edward had let her out at the intersection, so that she had to walk the rest of the way in the middle of the night; she had to go through the Child Murderer’s Forest, so that Walter and Karl wouldn’t see her on the Foreigners’ Path, and she’d finally taken off the dancing slippers Herr Friedrich had given her. Bloch, on the other hand, explained, whenever he mentioned a name, whom he was talking about. Even when he mentioned an object, he used a description to identify it.
When the name Victor came up, Bloch added, “a friend of mine,” and when he talked about an indirect free kick, he not only described what an indirect free kick was but explained, while the girls waited for the story to go on, the general rules about free kicks. When he mentioned a corner kick that had been awarded by a referee, he even felt he owed them the explanation that he was not talking about the corner of a room. The longer he talked, the less natural what he said seemed to Bloch. Gradually it began to seem that every word needed an explanation.
He had to watch himself so that he didn’t get stuck in the middle of a sentence. A couple of times when he thought out a sentence even while he said it, he made a slip of the tongue; when what the girls were saying ended exactly as he thought it would, he couldn’t answer at first. As long as they had gone on with this familiar talk, he had also forgotten the surroundings more and more; he had even stopped noticing the child and the dog in the next room; but when he began to hesitate and did not know how to go on and finally searched for sentences he might still say, the surroundings became conspicuous again, and he noticed details everywhere. Finally he asked whether Alfred was her boyfriend; whether the birch rod was always kept on top of the wardrobe; whether Herr Friedrich was a traveling salesman; and whether perhaps the Foreigners’ Path was called that because it led past a settlement of foreigners. They answered readily; and gradually, instead of bleached hair with dark roots, instead of the single pin at the neck, instead of a black-rimmed fingernail, instead of the single pimple on the shaved eyebrow, instead of the split lining of the empty café chair, Bloch once again became aware of contours, movements, voices, exclamations, and figures all together. And with a single sure rapid movement he also caught the purse that had suddenly slipped off the
table. The first girl offered him a bite of her sandwich, and when she held it toward him he bit into it as though this was the most natural thing in the world.
He had to watch himself so that he didn’t get stuck in the middle of a sentence. A couple of times when he thought out a sentence even while he said it, he made a slip of the tongue; when what the girls were saying ended exactly as he thought it would, he couldn’t answer at first. As long as they had gone on with this familiar talk, he had also forgotten the surroundings more and more; he had even stopped noticing the child and the dog in the next room; but when he began to hesitate and did not know how to go on and finally searched for sentences he might still say, the surroundings became conspicuous again, and he noticed details everywhere. Finally he asked whether Alfred was her boyfriend; whether the birch rod was always kept on top of the wardrobe; whether Herr Friedrich was a traveling salesman; and whether perhaps the Foreigners’ Path was called that because it led past a settlement of foreigners. They answered readily; and gradually, instead of bleached hair with dark roots, instead of the single pin at the neck, instead of a black-rimmed fingernail, instead of the single pimple on the shaved eyebrow, instead of the split lining of the empty café chair, Bloch once again became aware of contours, movements, voices, exclamations, and figures all together. And with a single sure rapid movement he also caught the purse that had suddenly slipped off the
table. The first girl offered him a bite of her sandwich, and when she held it toward him he bit into it as though this was the most natural thing in the world.
Outside, he heard that the schoolchildren had been given the day off so that they could all look for the boy. But all they found were a couple of things that, except for a broken pocket mirror, had nothing to do with the missing boy. The plastic cover of the mirror had identified it as the property of the mute. Even though the area where the mirror was discovered had been carefully searched, no other clues were found. The policeman who was telling Bloch all this added that the whereabouts of one of the gypsies had remained unknown since the day of the disappearance. Bloch was surprised that the policeman bothered to stop across the street to shout all this information over to him. He called back to ask if the public pool had been searched yet. The policeman answered that the pool was locked; nobody could get in there, not even a gypsy.
Outside town, Bloch noticed that the cornfields had been almost completely trampled down, so that yellow pumpkin blossoms were visible between the bent stalks; in the middle of the cornfield, always in the shade, the pumpkins had only now begun to blossom. Broken corncobs, partially peeled and gnawed by the schoolchildren, were scattered all
over the street; the black silk that had been torn off the cobs lay next to them. Even in town Bloch had watched the children throwing balls of the black fibers at each other while they waited for the bus. The cornsilk was so wet that every time Bloch stepped on it, it squished as though he were walking across marshy ground. He almost fell over a weasel that had been run over; its tongue had been driven quite far out of its mouth. Bloch stopped and touched the long slim tongue, black with blood, with the tip of his shoe; it was hard and rigid. He shoved the weasel to the curb with his foot and walked on.
over the street; the black silk that had been torn off the cobs lay next to them. Even in town Bloch had watched the children throwing balls of the black fibers at each other while they waited for the bus. The cornsilk was so wet that every time Bloch stepped on it, it squished as though he were walking across marshy ground. He almost fell over a weasel that had been run over; its tongue had been driven quite far out of its mouth. Bloch stopped and touched the long slim tongue, black with blood, with the tip of his shoe; it was hard and rigid. He shoved the weasel to the curb with his foot and walked on.
At the bridge he left the street and walked along the brook in the direction of the border. Gradually, the brook seemed to become deeper; anyway, the water flowed more and more slowly. The hazelnut bushes on both sides hung so far over the brook that the surface was barely visible. Quite far away, a scythe was swishing as it mowed. The slower the water flowed, the muddier it seemed to become. Approaching a bend, the brook stopped flowing altogether, and the water became completely opaque. From far away there was the sound of a tractor clattering as though it had nothing to do with any of this. Black bunches of overripe blackberries hung in the thicket. Tiny oil flecks floated on the still surface of the water.
BOOK: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel
13.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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