The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays (24 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

BOOK: The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays
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(
He stops singing
.) But things are going well for us right now, aren't they? I saw a woman walking in the sun with a full shopping bag and I knew at once: Nothing more can happen to me now! I hear an old lady say: “Parsley on the stalk? I've never eaten that.” And then she says: “Well, and I don't think I'll indulge in it now.” Nothing can happen to me any more! Nothing can happen to me any more! (
He continues to sing.)
 
No dream
could make anything seem stranger
than what I've already experienced
and there's no cure
for the peace and quiet
 
(
He speaks again.
) … with which every morning I let the dingaling out from behind my fly to fidget in the peep show to relieve the pressure which I could no longer imagine during the sleepless night. ( VON WULLNOW, KOERBER-KENT,
and
LUTZ
appear silently.
WIFE
wants to leave.
) Stay here. (
She leaves.
HANS
leaves too. Pause.
) So you still exist. (
Pause
.) Why don't we make ourselves comfortable? (
Pause.
) What can I offer you? Schnapps? Cognac?
 
KOERBER-KENT
No, thank you. It's still too early for that.
 
QUITT
Or juice, freshly squeezed.
 
KOERBER-KENT
That doesn't agree with my stomach. Hyperacidity.
 
QUITT
Then a few breadsticks. Or would you prefer some other snack?
 
LUTZ
Thank you, we really don't want anything. Seriously, don't go to any trouble.
 
QUITT
You've got a frog in your throat. Hans will make you a camomile tea. (LUTZ
shakes his head
.) Camomile which we picked ourselves at the Mediterranean. The blossoms are intact!
 
LUTZ
(
Clears his throat
.) I'm over it already. I don't need anything.
 
QUITT
And you, Monsignore? Perhaps you'd like a mint lozenge? One hundred percent pure peppermint.
 
KOERBER-KENT
I'm perfectly happy too.
 
QUITT
I'd put it on your tongue myself.
 
KOERBER-KENT
I usually enjoy sucking on mint lozenges, but not today.
 
QUITT
Why not today? It isn't Friday, is it?
 
KOERBER-KENT
I simply don't want to. That's all.
 
QUITT
You want to jilt me?
 
KOERBER-KENT
If that's how you take it.
 
QUITT
I'm offended.
 
(
He walks out.
KOERBER-KENT
wants to make a gesture to stop him but
VON WULLNOW
makes a sign not to
.)
 
VON WULLNOW
I know. I could cut off his head with one slash of the whip and let the decapitated chicken slap on the table before you. I was grinding my teeth so fiercely just now, some must have cracked. (
He shows his teeth
.) There! You traitor, you upstart, you Polack! (
Raving
) My hand even trembled briefly, which almost never happens to me. In the meantime, of course, it has become completely steady again. Look! (
He holds out his hand
.) But we have to be rational now, in the most economic sense of the word: at first as rational as necessary and then, when he no longer has any need for our reason, as irrational as possible. I'm already looking forward to my irrationality. (
He makes a pantomime of trampling, torturing, and throttling.
)
 
LUTZ
(
Interrupts him.
) Yes, that's it; we have to let ourselves go for a moment. Like you just now. Perhaps that'll teach us what to do next. Let's say or do whatever comes to mind. That will determine our method. After all, that's the way he does it. So let's dream. (
Pause. They concentrate. Pause
.) Nothing is happening. I only see myself cutting a steak against the grain or playing tennis in such short pants that my testicles are hanging out on one side. (
Pause. They concentrate
.) Do you know what I'm most afraid of about myself? (
They regard him expectantly
.) That one day I will get up in a restaurant so lost in thought that I forget to pay the check.
 
(
Pause.
KOERBER-KENT
scratches his behind and they regard him
.)
 
KOERBER-KENT
I just happened to think of our minority stockholder …
 
(
Pause
.)
 
LUTZ
Don't you ever dream?
 
KOERBER-KENT
Ah! Monstrous dreams!
 
LUTZ
Well! Let's hear.
 
KOERBER-KENT
(
Powerfully
) I … I'm walking in the woods alone …
 
(
Long, embarrassed silence. Pause.
VON WULLNOW
laughs.)
 
LUTZ
You are laughing?
 
VON WULLNOW
I was remembering.
 
LUTZ
Was it that funny?
 
VON WULLNOW
Remembering it was. (
Pause
.) The grain bins in the loft, the trickling grain and the mouse shit inside, the swirl of grain that my memory delved into like a boy's naked foot, the grains between the toes, the vacated wasp nest, still so enlivened by memories, on the underside of the roof tile. (
Pause
.) I've got to stop. Remembering makes me a good person. Otherwise I would make up in a moment. Oh, Quitt. Oh, Quitt, why hast thou forsaken us?
 
LUTZ
Now I know what we are going to do. We have to talk about ourselves, about us as individuals—what we're really like. I for one sometimes feel like hopping up and down on the street and don't do it. Why not? And last summer passed by without my having enjoyed it once while I was sitting in my office with its tinted window. Every so often I do something crazy: I eat the rotten part of an apple, slam a car door before everyone's gotten out … or something like that … and if that doesn't help, there's always … (To KOERBER-KENT) our minority stockholder. (QUITT
returns.)
He'll show him where the moon is rising.
 
QUITT
I do miss you. And perhaps you miss me too.
 
VON WULLNOW
Quitt, today I had a bag of flour in my hand. Do you know how long it has been since I've held flour in my hands? I don't even know myself. The package was so soft and heavy. This weight in my hand and at the same time the gentleness of the pressure—I was transported into delicious unreality. Doesn't the same thing ever happen to you?
 
QUITT
I find the most vicious reality more bearable than the most delicious feeling of unreality.
 
LUTZ
(
Trying to distract
) How is your wife?
 
QUITT
My wife? My wife is fine.
 
LUTZ
She looked well just now. With her cheeks all rosy as though she'd just played tennis. That made me think of my wife, who has to rock the child all day long on the terrace. You know, we have a retarded child who screams as soon as we stop rocking: my wife stands days on end in the garden and pushes the swing, imagine that. But she's gotten to like doing it nowadays. She says that it calms her down too. And she feels it makes her superior to the other women in the neighborhood who can't think of anything to do but tell their cleaning women how to do chores. By the way, excuse me for talking about myself.
 
QUITT
I like women who do nothing but give orders.
VON WULLNOW
I know you like hearing stories, I have one.
 
QUITT
Is it long?
 
VON WULLNOW
Very brief. A child walks into a shop and says, “Six rolls, the
Daily News,
and three salt sticks!”
 
QUITT
Go on.
 
VON WULLNOW
That's the story.
 
(
Pause
.)
 
QUITT
It's beautiful.
 
VON WULLNOW
 
(
Suddenly embraces him vehemently
.) I knew you would like it. I knew it. I'm usually too shy to touch anyone, but this time I simply must. (
He pulls
QUITT's
cuffs out of his jacket, takes his hand.
) I've been looking at this dirty fingernail all the time—now I have to clean it for you. (
He does so, using his own fingernail, steps back
.) I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm blissed out with memories recently. Do you remember that time we dressed up as workers at the opera ball? With red bandanas, T-shirts, high-pegged pants, and muddy boots. The way we stepped on the ladies' toes? The way we scratched our crotches? Staring at everything, our mouths agape? Ordered Crimean champagne and drank out of the bottle? And at the end pushed our caps back and sang the “Internationale”?
 
QUITT
Crimean champagne is an illegal label. It should be called “Sparkling Wine from the Crimea.” (
Pause
.) Yes, we
played the part very expertly, so that we could only play ourselves.
 
VON WULLNOW
And now you're in cahoots with them.
 
QUITT
How so?
 
VON WULLNOW
By thinking only of yourself. The huge share of the market which you control provides the enemies of the free-enterprise system, who are our enemies too, with the welcome opportunity—
 
LUTZ
(
Interrupts him. Quickly
) Not like that. (
To
QUITT) I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Everything I encounter looks like a sign to me. When I read in the papers “Next Wednesday, junk collection,” then I sense at once: “That junk, that's me.” Recently when I entered a tobacco shop somewhere out in the country I saw an obituary pinned up on the wall—and under the obituary lay a filthy, shriveled-up glove: that leather glove, that'll soon be me, my heart fluttered.
 
QUITT
And I recently saw an empty plastic bag in a hallway with the legend “Hams from Poland” on it. Should that have been a sign too? In any event, I suddenly felt incredibly safe when I read that.
 
LUTZ
Don't you ever think of death?
 
QUITT
I can't.
 
VON WULLNOW
(
Strikes his fist against his forehead
.) And I can't any more! I'd like to open a newspaper now and read the word
asshole
in it. This jungle. This slime. This swamp. These will-o'-the-wisps. (LUTZ
has nudged him with his elbow and
VON WULL-NOW
calms down
.) These will-o'-the-wisps above the swamp when we used to walk home in fall after our dancing lessons! Wanda on my arm, I could feel her goose bumps through her blouse, and a pheasant screamed in its sleep as I kissed her—an ugly word actually, kissing—only the cracks of our lips touch each other, as unfeeling as peeled-off bark. (
Pause.
VON WULLNOW
looks at
LUTZ,
who gives him the cue by forming the word
nature
with his lips.
) Why nature? Of course, I was about to talk about nature: it was nature that made me aware—by teaching me how to perceive. Houses, streets, and I were just a daydream at first, dreamer and what he dreamed were in the same bubble where the dreamer—hypnotized by the invariably same, never-changing spot on the buckling house wall, grown together in his sleep with the same street curve day in and day out—also considered himself part of his dream. Dark spots inside me as the only thing undefined. Then the bubble burst and the dark spots
inside
me unfolded like the forests
outside
me. Only then did I begin to define myself as well. Not the civilization of house and street, but
nature
made me aware of myself—by making me aware of nature. So: only in the perception of nature, not in the hallucinatory hodgepodge of the objects of civilization, can we arrive at our own history. But nowadays most people have become so civilized that they simply dismiss rapport with nature as some kind of withdrawal into childhood—although it is children whom one keeps having to make artificially aware of nature—or,
even if they pretend to have rapport with nature, cannot endure this nature without the mirage of civilization: inside the forest they have no feeling for the forest; except from the perspective of the window of their terraced house which they designed and built themselves, and which they would immediately sell to someone—only then would the same forest be an experience of nature for them. You're going to ask me what I mean by all this.

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