Moment of True Feeling by Peter Handke Page B

first thing in the morning. He also thought of the dirty dishes that were still on the dining-room table. What abominable disorder the whole place was in, what a hopeless mess! That half-full can of corn in the icebox, for instance, that should have been emptied into a bowl. The phonograph records that had not been put back into their sleeves … And in the bathroom, all that hair in the brush! You’d have to be mad to conceive of a future under such conditions!
    He tried to fall asleep. Maybe something new would
turn up while he slept. I must become a new man! he repeated, and every muscle in his body tensed. That’s how I used to pray, he thought with surprise; my prayer consisted in silently wishing for something, with tense muscles.—He went to the window and opened the curtains.
    Back in bed, Keuschnig felt that he had finally earned the right to be tired. On one of the upper floors of the house a child coughed, a long cough from deep in the chest. It must have hurt, for the child cried a little, perhaps in its sleep, and panted heavily. Keuschnig pulled up his legs and laid his hands over his face. He had never spoken to anyone in the house except the concierge couple; he didn’t even know the other occupants by sight. The clock of the Auteuil church struck the hour. The child coughed again, then called out several times for its mother. Keuschnig noticed that without meaning to he had been counting all along. He knew how often the child had coughed, what hour the clock in the belfry had struck, how often the child had called out
    Still curious, he fell asleep.
    His next dream was about his mother, who had been coming more and more alive in his dreams. He danced with her, rather close but side by side, avoiding frontal contact. He woke up mulling over the words “guest bed,” “north German area,” “visiting hours,” “quick trip,” “Austria cellar,” “stomach timetable,” “darling daughter,” “ginkgo tree”—all of which had been spoken that evening. Then, at the recollection of Stefanie asking in a Chinese restaurant “How’s your chop suey?”, he had to turn over on the other side to keep from vomiting. Next a dead crow fell from the winter sky and landed on a bear. Meanwhile, a big pot of jellied calves’ feet was cooking in the kitchen. Then on a
steep slope he came across a dead woman, lying unburied, with black clotted blood in her open mouth, and strewed sand over her. Next he was on a stage and couldn’t remember his part, though he himself had written the play. He woke up and saw a satellite blinking in the night-gray sky as it passed the window. It’s all over, he thought, I don’t love anyone any more. Next he was in someone else’s apartment; he had forgotten to pull the chain after taking a shit, and someone else was already on his way to the toilet. Suddenly everyone was against him. All alone he was running across a quiet Alpine plateau traversed by racing cloud shadows, but they hadn’t yet started shooting at him. War had broken out again, and the last bus drove away with him, while his child was left standing in the street. When he woke up, he was drooling with fear. Next he was riding on top of a very fat woman and his pubic hair was stained with her menstrual blood. Unable to go home because he’d been involved in a million-dollar holdup, he was starting a new life with a false passport and altered fingerprints. This dream moved so slowly that he mistook it for reality. With a strange joy he found out that his case wasn’t covered by the statute of limitations and that he would have to go on living without identity for the rest of his life. An important night, he thought in a half sleep. He was good and sick of empty, incoherent awakeness. Please, one last dream, maybe it will be my salvation!—While in the apartment above him the radio was already blaring wake-up