THEATER
Peter Handke
ABOUT THE VILLAGES
HANS
Here, you see this gentleman, my brother. In the first
year of my life he left the gate inside the house, put there specifically
for me, unlocked and I tumbled downstairs and smacked my head
on the cement floor, so that I, as one used to say, was fit to be noth–
ing but a worker. Sent to do errands, he took me and my sister
along, then sat down at some wayside and read and read, and we
others, who didn't know our way home alone yet, stood around him
and sobbed , wailed and hollered, not that he let this bother him in
his reading even once. When he was supposed to help us with our
lessons later on, he stood there and beat us on our heads, and when
the tears dripped on the ink he tore the sheets out of our notebooks,
one after the other. And by that time no one dared punish him for
that. The entire household, the whole neighborhood was frightened
of him because he was the way he was. He forced us into the woods
to pick berries and refused to understand that we others did not have
his pride in filling jars: mute, we stood in the moss and bushes and
let him curse us as lazy bones. At that time I swore revenge for every
curse and beating. I only rarely felt that he liked us. Not until he was
far away did he become good to us . He not only greeted in his let–
ters, he also partook. Quite late it dawned on me: he wanted us to be
like him. He was alone and took himself as the measure. But we are
not he. I am a worker. I was, I can say , born as a worker. I don't
want to be like him . I am not keen to eat what he eats, to drink what
he drinks. I am often asked whether I envy him, and my reply is that
I am satisfied to be a worker. And yet you can trust him . He's not
some panhandler with a tape recorder who steals your life's story and
your secret. Perhaps he listens to you differently. And he belongs to
us and scratches himself on the same spots. [They all step forward .
Edi tor's Note: Exce rpted from
Ueber die Dorfer. Dramatisches Gedicht
by Peter Handke .
Copyright
<tl
198 1. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt I, West Germany. All rights reserv–
ed . Translation copyright
<tl
1987 by Michael Roloff.
