The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays (28 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

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KILB

It's logical. You want to go on living.

QUITT

The little man wants to put on airs.

KILB

Why not. What else has the little man left to put on?

QUITT

You're right. Why not? A good cue. I'm still stuck too deep in my role. Spitefully I walk past the spastics in the V.A. hospitals and look away when someone rummages in garbage cans for food. Why do I do it, actually? There's scarcely anyone who looks as if he could still fall out of his role. I once walked on the street and suddenly noticed that I didn't have anything to do with my face any more â¦

KILB

The old story with the masks.

QUITT

Yes, but now someone who experienced it is telling about it. Outside, the muscles clung' to the dead skin, then one dead layer on top of the other, only inside, in the deepest center, where I should have been, there was still a little twitching and something wet. A car would have to crash into me at once!âOnly then would I stop making a face. And not merely show my true face when I can't avoid the onrushing
car any more, I thought. But this dead skin, that already was my true face.

KILB

Nothing but stories. Where's the connection?

QUITT

I don't know anything about myself ahead of time. My experiences only occur to me in the telling. That establishes the connection. I'm now going to tell you what is hell for me: hell for me is the so-called bargain, what's cheap. In a dark hour I happened into a restaurant which had the same menu that people like me usually eat, only half as expensiveâbut this wasn't the same food: the meat deep-frozen, thrown into the pan and fried to death; the potatoes waterlogged; the vegetables something slopped into the pot with the liquid from the can; the paper napkin shredding after one wipe, and tossed in as a freebie, a tablecloth with static electricity, which made the hairs on my fingers stand on end. Pressed to the table because others sat next to and beside me, the only view the frosted windowpane in front of which the potted flowers flapped in the air from the heating vent. Only a luxurious existence isn't a punishment, I thought. Only the greatest luxury is worthy of a human being. What's cheap is inhuman.

KILB

That's why your products are always the cheapest.

QUITT

How much do you want for your answer? For once, couldn't I be the topic? Meâthat's what makes me shy back, that's what I have had enough of, up to here, and what still lies at the tip of my tongue all the timeâsomething as rare and ridiculous as a living mole. I feel watched by all sides like the dead flesh from a wound that has long since healed, and still
I dance on the inside with self-awareness. Yes, inside I'm dancing! I once sat in the sun in actual shock, the sun was shining on me, not that I felt it, and I really felt like the outline of suffocating nothingness in the airy space around me. But even that was still me, me, me. I was in despair, could think neither back nor forwardâhad no sense of history left. Each recollection came in dribs and drabs, unharmoniously, like the recollection of a sex act. This aching lack of feeling, that was myself, and I was not only I but also a quality of the world. Of course, I asked about the terms. Why? Why this condition? These conditionsâwhy no history but only these conditions? But all the conditional requirements were fulfilled. No “whys” helped any more. Only the unconditional requirements remained. “I'm bored,” a child once said. “Then play at something. Paint something. Read something. Do something,” it was told. “But I can't, I'm bored,” it said. (
He keeps taking objects from his pockets, looks at them, and puts them back again
.) The goose step of my soul, you said? I want to speak about (
Laughs
.) myself without using categories. I don't want to mean anything any more, please, not be a character in the story any more. I want to freeze at night in May. Look, these are photos of me: I look happy in all of them and yet I never was. Do you know the feeling when one has put a pair of pants on backward? One time I was happy: when I visited someone in a tenement and during a long pause in the conversation I could hear the toilet flushing in the apartment next door. I became musical with happiness! Oh, my envy of your sleepy afternoons in those tenements with their mysteriously gurgling toilet bowls! Those are the places I long for: the projects at the edge of the city where the telephone booths are lit up at night. To go into airport hotels and simply check oneself in for safekeeping. Why are there no deper-sonification institutes? How beautiful it used to be when you opened a new can of shoe polish! And I could still imagine buying a ham sandwich, looking at cemeteries, having something
in common with someone. Sometimes one thing simply led exhilaratingly to the otherâthat's what it meant to feel alive! Now I'm heavy and sore and bulky with myself. (
He punches
himself
under his chin while talking, kicks his
calf
.) One wrong breath and I disintegrate. Do you know that I hear voices? But not the kind of voices that madmen hear: no religious phrases, or poetry regurgitated from schooldays, or one-shot philosophies, none of the traditional formulasâbut movie titles, pop tunes, advertising slogans. “Raindrops are falling on my head,” it frequently resounds in a whisper in the echo chamber of my head, and in the middle of an embrace a voice interrupts me with “Guess who's coming to dinner?” or “I'd walk a mile for a Camel.” And I am positive that in the future even madmen will hear only voices like thatâno longer “Know thyself” or “Thou shalt honor thy father and mother â¦” the superego voices of our culture. While one set of monsters is being exorcised, the next ones are already burping outside the window. (
He interrupts himself
.) How odd: while I go on talking logically like this, I simultaneously see, for example, a wintry lake at dusk which is just beginning to freeze over, or a small tree with a bottle stuck on its top, and an unshaven Chinese who peers around a doorwayânow he's gone againâand, moreover, during the whole time I keep humming a certain moronic melody inside myself. (
He hums.
KILB
wants to say something.
) No,
I
am speaking now. I am blowing my horn! The goose step of my soul. You should try it too. At least try â¦ Stand still, why don't you! Do I spit when I talk? Yes, I can feel the spit bubbles on my teeth. But my time to speak isn't over yet. At one time I used to think, Let's hope the next world war doesn't start before my new suit is ready. By talking I want to have the transmission of consciousness, now, before you are finished with me. For too long my lips have held themselves joylessly shut. (
He suddenly embraces
KILB
and holds on to him.
) Why am I talking so fluently? Whereas I actually feel the need to stutter. (
He bends over
and therefore presses
KILB
more tightly.
KILB
is writhing
.) I w â¦ want to s â¦ stutter â¦ And why do I see everything so distinctly? I don't want to see the grain in the wood floor so distinctly. I'd like to be nearsighted. I'd like to tremble. Why am I not trembling? Why am I not stuttering?
(He bends over vehemently and
KILB
writhes
.) I once wanted to sleep. But the room was so big. Wherever I lay down I created spots of sleeplessness. The room was too big for me alone. Where is the place to sleep here? Smaller! Smaller!
(He bends over so much that
KILB
groans.
He
bends even more and the groaning ceases.
KILB
falls on the floor and doesn't move.
QUITT
crosses his arms. Pause
.) I can smell the cologne he smelled of. (
Pause.
) How happy I became once when I put on a shirt one of whose buttons had just been sewn on. My shirt is torn. How beautiful! Then I wore it long enough for it to become threadbare.

(
Pause.

A tremendous burping pervades the entire room.

Long pause.

The burping.

QUITT
runs his head against the rock. After some time he gets up and runs against the rock again. He gets up once more and runs against the rock. Then he just lies there. The stage light has been extinguished. Only the trough with the risen dough, the melting block of ice, the shriveled balloon, and the rock are lighted. A fruit crate trundles down, as though down several steps, and comes to rest in front of the rock. A long gray carpet rolls out from behind the rock: snakes writhe on the rolled-out carpet and in the fruit crate.)

Translated
by
MICHAEL ROLOFF
in collaboration with Karl Weber

Also by Peter Handke

KASPAR AND OTHER PLAYS (1969)

THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1972)

SHORT LETTER, LONG FAREWELL (1974)

A SORROW BEYOND DREAMS (1975)

English translation of
Calling for Help
and
My Foot My Tutor
copyright Â© 1970 by Michael Roloff; of
The Ride Across Lake Constance
copyright Â© 1972 by Michael Roloff; of
Quodlibet
copyright Â© 1973 by Michael Roloff; of
They Are Dying
Out copyright Â© 1974 by Michael Roloff and Karl Weber; of
Prophecy
copyright Â© 1976 by Michael Roloff

Amateur or professional performances, public readings, and radio or
television
broadcasts of these plays are forbidden without permission in writing. All inquiries concerning United States performing rights for
Prophecy, Calling for Help,
and
My Foot My Tutor
should be addressed to Kurt Bernheim, 575 Madison Avenue, Suite 502, New York, N.Y.; all inquiries concerning United States performing rights for
Quodlibet, The Ride Across Lake Constance,
and
They Are Dying Out
should be addressed to Toby Cole, 234 West 44th Street, New York, N.Y.

FIRST PRINTING, 1976

Published simultaneously in Canada by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., Toronto

eISBN 9781466807761

First eBook Edition : December 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Handke, Peter.

The ride across Lake Constance and other plays.

CONTENTS: Prophecy.âCalling for Help.âMy foot my tutor. [etc.]

I. Title.

PT2668.A5A274 832'.9'14 76-27655