The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays (22 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

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(HANS
enters during the last sentence and turns on the light.
)

QUITT

(
To
HANS) We don't need any light.

(HANS
turns off the light and leaves.)

PAULA

I can hear my wristwatch ticking.

QUITT

You should be able to afford a noiseless watch. But that probably is an heirloom, not just any old watch. So please try to remember. (
Pause
.) Or don't try to rememberâas you please.

PAULA

If you tell a child who is singing to itself: Very nice, go on singing! it will stop singing. But if you say: Stop! it will go on singing.

QUITT

There are women whoâ

PAULA

Stop it, nothing can come of that.

QUITT

There are women you can't touch because if you did you would be desecrating an heirloom. A necklace, then, has a story which makes every caress of the neck a mere afterthought. Everything about the woman is so complete that every experience you share with her only reminds her of something in her past. Whatever you tell her, she immediately interrupts you with this introverted nodding of the head. She is untouchable, inside and out. She is so full of memories. The most mysterious, delicately stuttering impulse immediately evokes a doppelganger who has already made the impulse crystal-clear to the woman. You begin to understand sex killers: only the slitting open of the belly provides him with the attention every individual deserves. You can't run your hands through a hooker's hairâso that her hairdo won't get messed up.

PAULA

It's just as you say it is. But why is it like that? Who is responsible for that? And who makes sure that it stays that way? And who profits by it? Instead of naming the causes, you make fun of their appearances. And precisely that happens to be one of the causes. To describe pure appearances is a man's kind of joke. Von Wullnow would say that I would say: undialectical impressionism.

QUITT

And you: because you've got so many causes on your mind, you forget to bother with the appearances. Instead of appearances, you see nothing but causes. And when you eliminate
the causes so as to change the appearances, they have already changed so that you have to eliminate entirely different causes. And if you look at me now, please become aware of me for once and not my causes.

PAULA

You have a beautiful tie pin. Your shirt is so new that one can still see the pinholes. Your grinding jaws manifest will power. Your delicate hands might be those of a pianist. One of your earlobes has dried shaving cream on it. And while you behave animalistically, the creases on your pants give you away.

(QUITT
gets up and pulls
PAULA
toward him. She wraps her arms exaggeratedly around him and also puts one leg around his hip, throws back her head, and sighs derisively. He lets go of her at once and walks away. She walks backward. They pursue each other alternately for a short time. Then they walk around by themselves, finally stop
.)

QUITT

Please stop being conceptual. I once gave someone a present, some chocolate for his child. The chocolate was wrapped in small squares, each one with a picture of a different fairy-tale motif. Oh, the father said disappointedly, it's not a puzzle! And then he said: That's it, deprivation of the imagination by the chocolate manufacturers. When he said that, I suddenly stood very distantly beside him and felt radically alone. I looked down at the floor in utter loneliness. So, please stop.

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 watchâit 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 â¦ please don't laugh.

QUITT

I'm not laughing.

PAULA

While exhaling â¦ 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.