Absence by Peter Handke Read Free Book Online

well off. One of you was there, too, as a visiting student. He only attended my demonstration because he thought I was the kind of person that moved him. He came because he respected me.”
    Something of hers falls on the floor. The soldier bends down. It is a fountain pen with a mother-of-pearl cap. As he turns it slowly in his hand, the light from outside seems to shine through the cap. A jolt runs through the train, and it pulls out under two trees, the one close to the track, the other by the side of the parallel road. Their branches have become intertwined so as to form an arch, though an irregular one, because the tree beside the track has been
pruned to make room for the wires and the pylon, with the result that the arch has scorched or bare spots that make it look like the tusk of a mammoth. The clouds in the breach are diesel smoke mixed with soot, and the birds swerve to avoid them. The deserted platform glitters for a moment; on a high-rise tower the sign appears: HOTEL EUROPA.

A t first the four in the compartment stop whatever they are doing. The gambler has a cigarette between his lips and his lighter in his hand. The soldier has a finger in his closed book. The old man, his pencil point at the ready but motionless, holds his notebook in such a way as to show the letters CUMBERLAND on the pencil. Pocket mirror in hand, the young woman stops freshening her lipstick. Further speech seems unauthorized for the present. The silence adds to their contentment. Only the woman looks questioningly from one to the other; she is the only one of the four whose face is not turned toward the window. Outside, there has been a quick succession of short tunnels and viaducts. Then, though there has been no noticeable change in the vegetation or the shapes of the houses, the light seems different, perhaps because the view of the sky is less obstructed. The train, which for a time was running at high speed like a transcontinental express, has begun to stop as frequently as a streetcar. The track is no longer running parallel to the road; for a time it skirted fields and woods, but lately it has been running straight through a forest. Hardly anyone has been getting on, but crowds of passengers have been getting out at every stop and invariably forming processions that march off on identical roads, heading for village churches miles away, on identical hilltops. At one station—actually no more than a shelter in the woods—just one person gets off, and vanishes into the woods with his worker’s briefcase. Convinced that this was their last fellow passenger, the woman—who has also turned toward the window by now—reaches for the door handle. The old man restrains her with a quick shake of
his head. A far from empty train, coming in the opposite direction, stops on the other track, and a group of screaming schoolchildren comes trooping down the center aisle. As the train starts up again, the old man raises his surprisingly high voice in a chant, every word of which can be heard above the hubbub: “In the childhood of peoples, unknown countries came into existence beyond the mountains and the oceans. They had names, but nobody knew where they were. Only their direction was more or less certain. The sources of the Nile were south, the Caucasus east, the legendary Atlantis west, and Ultima Thule north. Then came trading ships and wars of conquest, then came history, and then—violently, by leaps and bounds—came the adulthood of the peoples and it exploded the legends of childhood geography. The sources of the Nile were muddied, the peaks of the Caucasus reduced from heavenly heights to their actual dimensions, and Ultima Thule dislodged from its place as the kingdom at the end of the world. No Atlantis will ever again rise out of the sea. But the names remained; in epics and songs they took on a fantastic power that gave life to the realm of legend. Since then Paradise as the source of the Tigris and