PETER HANDKE
589
border. - When in last spring's flooding the drowned cow floated down
the river. - At the first snowfall. - Yes? Oh, well. I don't know."
THE SUN ROSE. Not a drop of dew in the garden after the warm, dry
night. But a sparkle from the apple tree: a hardened lump of sap exuded
by a twig there, with a first ray of light shining through it now, a tiny
lamp. The swallows high in the air deep black, as if it were still dawn.
Only when one of them briefly raised its wings straight up as it swooped
was there a flash of light up there, too, the sun gleaming on its feathers;
it was as if the bird were playing with the morning light.
He butted his head against one of the already fat apples hanging at
eye level, as if it were a ball, but more gently; then he walked upstream
on the dike and let the morning and mountain-water air buffet him. No
one else was out and about, and, as they always did in summertime, the
rock-strewn banks of the Saalach took up more space than the actual
shore and water flow; they stretched, bright and bleak, seemingly all the
way to the river's source in the distant limestone mountains .
The pharmacist thought of his dead. His son also came to mind. But
he wasn't really dead, was he? No, he'd thrown him out. Or was that
too strong an expression? Hadn't he simply given him up, lost sight of
him, put him out of mind, forgotten him? "No, 1 threw him out," he
said. "I threw my child out."
HE SWAM
IN
the river, which chilled him to the bone, first fighting the
powerful current, then letting himself drift, almost exactly along the line
in the river where the German border ran. The bushes along the banks
rushed by incredibly fast, in a gallop. He dove so deep into the water
that little pebbles being washed along the river bottom got swept into
his ears, where for quite a while they jostled each other, scraping and
rattling. He felt as if he could stay under water this way forever, with–
out breathing, and as if from now on this would be his life.
Then the pharmacist almost forced himself to head for the bank, just
before the steep drop-off farther down. An early plane was coming in
for a landing, already low over the treetops, and in one of the windows
he made out a child's face. That was how keen his eyesight was, and not
only after his swim in the icy river. And maybe in that respect the name
his brother had given the pharmacy in Taxham was justified.
