Moment of True Feeling by Peter Handke Read Free Book Online Page B

person capable of being pleased. One more thing I had never thought of until today. Suddenly he wanted to draw. Moving one finger through the air, he drew the spiked-helmet roof of the Grand Palais, which he was passing on his way down the Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt …
    In Paris one can usually see the sky without raising one’s eyes; even when looking straight ahead, one sees it at the end of many streets. Consequently Keuschnig noticed that clouds had now come into the sky, white immobile stripes high overhead, and under them, rather low and running at an angle to the stripes, other clouds, whose proximity made them seem somewhat darker, moving rapidly just above the rooftops and changing their shapes before he was able to fix them in his mind. Why, he wondered, am I so struck with the sky? It didn’t exactly strike him; he merely looked at it with interest, but thinking nothing in particular. For a few steps it held his attention so exclusively that
afterwards he thought: I wish I could learn to prolong these selfless and yet full moments, when I observe nothing in particular but nothing escapes me. But his very next glance at the clouds soured him. He never wanted to look at anything again. Why couldn’t everything finally disappear—everything! He walked in the middle of the sidewalk with his hands on his hips. He would have liked to shout insults at everyone. Out of my way, you clever clever people! He would shout just one word at a woman, and she would have to think of it as long as she lived. He must find the word to which no one knew the answer!
    At the far end of the Champs-Elysées, there was only one thing to catch the eye, the Arc de Triomphe. Looking through it from down here at the Rond-Point, one saw nothing but the western sky, which was reflected in the surface of the wide avenue. “If I looked through the arch from farther up the avenue, I would see the cranes being used to put up still more buildings in the Defense quarter of suburban Puteaux.”—I observe as if I were doing it for someone else! thought Keuschnig. But that was a brief diversion.
    In turning into Le Drugstore from the sidewalk of the Avenue Matignon, he suddenly felt saved, for the moment at least. The mere act of TURNING IN—of deviating from his depressing rectilinear course—suggested a break in a journey, and as he moved through Le Drugstore along with many others, in a rhythm, determined by others, of stopping, dodging, and starting up again, his only movements now being Drugstore movements, performed in common with others, he was able to see himself leading a totally different life, derived from his Drugstore feeling, in which
all his problems would cease to exist. “That’s it, I’ll start a new life!” he said aloud, on a note of urgency. A memory came to him: Schoolchildren in shorts were standing in a row, in front of them the two team captains, each in turn calling out the names of the boys he wanted on his team. Those named stepped forward. The good players were soon taken, and only the incompetents stood there, squirming with embarrassment: please, please call my name! The next-to-last would still be taken—oh, don’t let me be the last of all, don’t leave me standing here by myself . . And here now, those crumpled paper napkins on ketchup-smeared plates, those young women sitting alone, rereading their love letters over their open handbags—in such confusion a game in which someone had to be last ceased to be possible.—At a bookstand Keuschnig bought three diner’s guides. He would read them from cover to cover. One more thing to go by, he thought.
    He stepped out into the street again … That sordid Drugstore with its trampled pommes frites on the floor and its already dog-eared magazines! Even as he watched it—while waiting to cross the street—the sky clouded over. He tried to remember the new feeling he had had just after turning