The Afternoon of a Writer by Peter Handke

Author:Peter Handke
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

AFTER THAT, it was a pleasure to be surrounded by the crashing and pounding of the traffic. Strange how easily his composure could be shaken after all the years and how, after long, often enthusiastic work that made him glow inwardly, there was still no certainty in his life. And now another of his vows: To change his afternoon occupations until his present work was finished. Until then he wouldn't open a single newspaper and he would avoid this street, the whole city center in fact. Straight out to the periphery, that's the place for me! Or why not stay home in his room, where he belonged and where he experienced neither hunger nor thirst nor any need for human company—where he could still his hunger and thirst and become integrated with the procession of passersby by merely meditating, observing, recording his observations? Wouldn't the last light of day at this very moment be shining on the paper in his typewriter and on the pencils around it, pointing in all directions, while on the hill nearby the signals for the evening planes blinked at regular intervals? The whole house, steps, banister, and all, seemed to have been left high and dry; it was as though the plants in the entrance with their few winter blossoms were asking to be looked at.

The road soon became an arterial highway. At the crossing, back to back, hung two crucified Christs, the one facing into the city, the other toward the periphery. On the bench below, surrounded by plastic bags, sat a gray-haired man, shouting into the traffic noise, haranguing all mankind. In passing, the writer heard something like "You swine, looking for the old city of ruins, aren't you, when you yourselves have destroyed it!" Invigorated by the shrill voice behind him, listening to it as long as possible, the writer strode briskly onward, convinced that he had discovered, in the trunk of a recently pollarded plane tree, the turrets and battlements of the madman's "city of ruins. "

Relieved when the driver of a car that stopped abruptly in front of him merely asked for directions, the writer hoped for more people who didn't know the way; he would gladly have helped them all. A knot of dangerous-looking customers by the side of the road proved to be waiting for the bus. From that point on, there was little to be seen but gas stations and warehouses, with more and more wasteland in between. As he looked back toward the city, the gulls circling high above the roofs gave him a sense of the river, which he could not see. The trees by the roadside were followed by hedges and thickets full of little white snowberries. How varied the summer's green had been and how varied now was the gray of the winter branches—the greens easier to distinguish from a distance, the grays from close at hand.

In a thicket shading from one gray to another, the writer caught sight of a bright-colored form.

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