PETER HANDKE
545
killer with the badge of skull and bones. At public demonstrations
he's the officer in uniform who wishes every civilian for an enemy. In
the midst of peace he lets peanut shells crackle as though he
volunteered for the firing squad . Albin has served time. He knows
the emergency exit in each room. He sits in the porno houses and
stinks. He plants himself right next to you in the otherwise empty
bus and whistles through his stump teeth the entire trip . At night he
mucks around the swamp and emits death yells. He takes a cart
shopping for his crippled mother. His gravestone says: "Vanished."
He is also a woman : you touch him and he squeals : "No tickling." At
soccer games he stands in the goal as the specialist for high shots but
misses everything that comes in low. At wakes he is the only one who
stays with the mourners all night long. In forests he steps from the
crack in the hollow tree trunk. He stands in the old wagon trail
tracks with his divining rod while his dog slobbers stickily allover
your Sunday best. He is the one who crawls into the underbrush , a
dynamite stick between his teeth . He is black and blue. The sacred
bull sits on his tongue and makes him speechless. He lays with you
under one heart and appears to you as a face in the clouds. His last
photo is black and white and oval , and his mangled bicycle lies by
the milestone in the grass . His sign is the atrophied thigh muscle [he
points] from lying in hospitals too long, and here [he points] a stiff
knee courtesy of malpractice-the doctors , they don't stick to us.
Who is he? He is a riddle . [To Gregor.] And woe to you say who he
is . And woe to you who dare decide who we are! A signifying
word - the feast is over. The festivities are to find the riddle . Perhaps
we are the exploited, the downtrodden and insulted, the salt of the
earth . But we , too , often get up at night . We like to piss into the soft
cement. Every so often we see the stars circling in the corners of our
eyes . We shout to the waitress : "Come here or I'll bite ." We brew our
soups from bouillon cubes on hot plates. At night we put on
Medicaid glasses and peruse Holy Scriptures . We kiss past the faces
of unwilling unfamiliar women. We put on our ties as best men at
weddings. We fall from the scaffolding and break both heels. We get
danger, hardship and distance bonuses , and slaughter a pig for
winter. We are godfathers for each other's children and are each
other's pallbearers. But we are not friends . We sleep, each by
himself, face to the wallboard , and sense behind it all night long the
colleague's breathing facing the wallboard , as we do on the other
side . Early, with the first ring of the alarm without "Good morning"
we switch on light and radio, smoke our first cigarette in our shorts,
