The second sword, p.14
The Second Sword, page 14
But how does it happen that I now also see the faces of my children before me, as over the years they would suddenly, unexpectedly, stare at me, though not often—at the least propitious moments, so to speak—but their wide eyes would show such fear and, worse still, growing distrust, a loss of trust and not only in me, their father. Threefold fear and horror: of and at me, for me, and of and at themselves, my children—their horror and fear were legion, never to be made right.
3
Last night I dreamed that I was back in my niche in the old graveyard on the steppe. It had become a shed, or merely one wall made of rough planks. Hanging on the wall was a mirror, a splendid one, looking freshly polished. When I stepped up to it, I wasn’t merely startled; I was overcome with horror: a stranger stared out at me, bearing not the slightest resemblance to me, as unfamiliar as is possible only in a dream. But with my first blink the horror changed to astonishment, and the astonishment gave way to trust. No trace of burning eyes, hair on end, flared nostrils. A man both weary and gentle gazed out at me, from whose lips I read, “Be not afraid.” Behind him in the mirror I saw a glow like that of unknown stellar and planetary systems in the universe.
For a dream interval neither of us spoke, the only sound the wind whistling in a lone tree on the steppe, like whispering. Then came lip-reading, which felt to me like being poked, sentence after sentence, poke after poke, as I had been poked one time, while swimming in a mountain river, by the lips, the mouth of a trout, poked in the backs of my knees, ever so delicately, a project for peace if ever there was one: “A creature of society, that’s all well and good. But aren’t you also a fundamentally different creature, at once poorer and much richer? And well and good, too, your harmoniousness, your harmonies when it comes to ‘snuggling into the curve of being,’ ‘letting existence bubble,’ in ‘being, joy materialized.’ But where’s the oppositional element, what have you done with the resistance that’s integral to your nature, the nonsociable part that resists being socialized and is occasionally even hostile to society? Yes, what’s happened to the resistance that’s not just integral to your nature but forms its very core, and fortunately so, and not for you alone!? It may be that this resistance, the ineradicable oppositional element in you, is a sickness, but that sickness is also healthful and has curative powers, and, also fortunately, not for you alone. Without resistance, without that sickness, and without that good fortune, nothing can take shape. Without them nothing but ordinary being, being there, and eternally soulless existence. Taking shape! Taking shape! Something’s going on with me, with you! Exciting things are happening with you and me—let them happen! Yes, you exist, and fortunately for us again, ‘the two of us,’ and on this foundation, whether we’re chosen or condemned to it, we’ll build our castles in the air. We, you as well as me, will build those castles to the end of our days. We, you as well as me, never wanted to build anything, certainly nothing solid, nothing massive. Nothing that would add mass to our poor planet, already being built up to death! But those castles in the air of ours: they’re different. A mixed-up mess? Yes, back to the mixed-up mess with us. And write that on a slip of paper and sew it into your garment, or stick it up your ass. Maelstrom of beats, caravan route from a different time. Salt sprinkled into the book of our lives, the lives of us all!”
And then the face of the stranger in the mirror revealed something familiar, something with which I was intimately acquainted: amid all the gray, brown, and already white hairs in his beard were two or three that were red and had remained that way, as red as on the first day, red with a touch of hornet’s yellow, sticking out at me from the mirror like quills, dangerous, poisonous ones. But that was deceptive: with those reddish-yellow beard tips, multiplied as if specifically for the dream, what I had before me was a human face, plain and simple.
Involuntarily, as if whisked away from the mirror, I gave myself a hug, wrapped my arms around myself in the far corner of the abandoned graveyard, which felt as though it had sunk beneath the waves. It was a moonlit night, and atop the gravestones, likewise multiplied as if specifically for the dream and rendered much taller, without inscriptions, wiped clean of inscriptions, perched birds, sleeping in migratory thousands and forming a skyline. Rejoicing filled me; and a lust for adventure.
I looked over my shoulder into a blackness to end all blackness, blackness such as occurs only in dreams, and uttered a war cry—not meant as such—or perhaps meant as such after all?—which I heard in my sleep as inarticulate squawking, and then I called into the void, clearly this time: “Are you there, all of you?”
—Summer and fall 2020
ALSO BY PETER HANDKE
Quiet Places: Collected Essays
The Fruit Thief
The Moravian Night
Don Juan
Crossing the Sierra de Gredos
On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House
My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay
Once Again for Thucydides
The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling
Kaspar and Other Plays
Absence
The Afternoon of a Writer
Repetition
Across
Slow Homecoming
The Weight of the World
The Left-Handed Woman
A Moment of True Feeling
The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Short Letter, Long Farewell
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
A Note About the Author
Peter Handke was born in Griffen, Austria, in 1942. His many books include The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, and The Fruit Thief, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Handke is the recipient of many literary awards, including the Georg Büchner and Franz Kafka Prizes; in 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.” He lives outside Paris. You can sign up for email updates here.
A Note About the Translator
Krishna Winston is a professor emerita of German literature and environmental studies at Wesleyan University. She has been translating the work of Peter Handke since 1993. Her many other translations include works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Günter Grass, Christoph Hein, and Werner Herzog. She lives in Connecticut.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
THE SECOND SWORD
I. Belated Revenge
II. The Second Sword
MY DAY IN THE OTHER LAND
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Also by Peter Handke
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
The Second Sword copyright © 2020 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
My Day in the Other Land copyright © 2021 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
Translations copyright © 2024 by Krishna Winston
All rights reserved
The Second Sword was originally published in German in 2020 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany, as Das zweite Schwert
My Day in the Other Land was originally published in German in 2021 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany, as Mein Tag im anderen Land
English translations published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2024
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-60145-4
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Peter Handke, The Second Sword
