PETER HANDKE
547
bers once were even called "the people" : "The Carpenter People ."
Let's leave announcers and procurers out of the play here - do not
the people form of themselves? Let it be right today that all our
bosses, unlike us , live near enough and can go home each evening
from here. Let them push lawnmowers up and down in front of
houses with presumptuous arcades as they pushed them up and
down already yesterday. Behold how this very moment they are wip–
ing mud with rubber gloves off rubber tires outside while at the same
time in the house the rubber-gloved wife is washing mud off rubber
boots .. . . Rub-a-dub-dub. Behold our gentleman , the architect,
just now ascending from the cellar, cradling the bottle in his arms,
and show the visiting gentleman, his counsel , the vintage label,
while Mistress Architect in the next room puts it to Mistress Counsel
how she has flushed out a new butcher or a new baker, of whom the
former lards venison ready-to-roast and the latter's beribboned tarts
unfatten the fattest fatbag . Rub-a-dub-dub. And behold their chil–
dren sitting next to them with lowered eyes, the darlings who have
everything and love nothing, know everything and take nothing ser–
iously, who as of the day they're born can see , hear, touch and read
the beautiful and cannot believe , admire or respect any of it at all,
and later in life tell the novel or drama of their oh so unhappy
childhood, and bemoaning lovelessness pass lovelessness on, evilly
eternalizing it. Rub-a-dub-dub . Behold the noble couple after
watching television or an evening at the theater still put on a record
to let the slavish music warble its lickspittle pipedream of the
humanly possible or even great deeds they might do but none of
which they will ever, ever, ever really get to except to let the dulcet
lackeys blow them as the "as-if-aria" into their ears over and over
again till kingdom come . Rub-a-dub-dub. Then behold master and
mistress walk upstairs like funeral guests who lack both coffin and
grief, and now behold the ladies and gentlemen embrace each other,
as they did yesterday already and the day before , without missing
each other, without tears in their eyes, without being moved,
without passions. Behold how they lie on top of each other without
releasing each other. Behold how they reach their objective without
ever having gotten there . Behold how untroubled their sleep at the
thought that just now it was again forever goodbye. Rub-a-dub-dub.
Yes, they have been recognized. Today the mighty are the
dis~n
chanted. Haven't they lacked all secrets for ages? They are running
with the pack, yet no river runs with them . They believe that they
are walking, yet no cloud goes with them . They play and play, yet
