Absence by Peter Handke Read Free Book Online Page A

Euphrates and the landing of Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat after the flood have been all the more real, and the infant Moses in his basket will float for all time in the slowly flowing Nile. The name is the guest of reality. In much the same way, we in our childhood gave our few favorite places faraway names; that was how the brook at the edge of the cow pasture, where we roasted potatoes under a tree in the rain, came to be called Lethe or River of Forgetfulness, how a few spindly vines came to be transposed into the Amazonian jungle, how the cliff
behind the house came to be a foothill of the Sierra Nevada, how the wild lilies on top of it took on Indian colors and the hole in the garden hedge became the entrance to our New World. We, too, are grown up now, and all the names from those days, without exception, are null and void. We, too, have a history, and what was then, in those days, cannot be retrieved by any changing of names. I don’t believe that those days could be brought back, even if that brook had broadened into a river, even if those vines had turned into unbreakable lianas, even if a real Apache were standing on top of the cliff where the lilies used to be. But I still believe, in earnest and no longer in play, in the power of places. I believe in places, not the big ones but the small, unknown ones, in other countries as well as our own. I believe in those places without fame or name, best characterized perhaps by the fact that nothing is there, while all around there is something . I believe in the power of those places because nothing happens there anymore and nothing has happened there yet. I believe in the oases of emptiness, not removed from fullness, but in the midst of it. I am certain that those places, even if not physically trodden, become fruitful time and again through our decision to set out and our feeling for the journey. I shall not be rejuvenated there. We shall not drink the water of life there. We shall not be healed there. We shall simply have been there. Over a stretch of rotten plank road, past a wilderness of rusty carpet frames, we shall have gone there. The grass there will have trembled as only grass can tremble, the wind will have blown as only the wind can blow, a procession of ants through the sand will have been a procession of ants, the raindrops in the dust will have taken on the incomparable form of raindrops
in the dust. In that place, on the foundations of emptiness, we shall simply have seen the metamorphosis of things into what they are. Even on the way, merely because we are looking at it, a rigid blade of grass will have begun to sway, and conversely, in the presence of a tree, our innermost being will for the moment have taken on the form of that tree. I need those places and—hear now a word seldom used by an old man—I long for them. And what does my longing want? Only to be appeased.”
    In the course of his speech the weather has changed several times, alternating between sunshine and rain, high wind and calm, as in April. One river crossed by the train, hardly a trickle between gravel banks, is followed by another, a roaring, muddy flood, which is perhaps only the next meander of the first. As so often on branch lines, the stations are farther and farther apart. Once, the train has stopped in open country. The wind was so strong that from time to time the heavy car trembled. Withered leaves, pieces of bark, and branches crashed against the window. When at last the train started up again, the lines of raindrops in motion crossed those of waiting time.
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    Surprisingly for a place so far out in the country, there are many tracks at the station they arrive at. All end at a concrete barrier; with the exception of the rails on either side of the platform, which have been polished smooth, all are brown with rust. The station is in an artificial hollow; a steep stairway leads out of it. The soldier carrying the woman’s suitcase, the four climb it