My Year in No Man's Bay by Peter Handke

To keep her respect, I would have had to perish. I would have had to go to hell, and instead I took refuge in my writing. I would have had to go smash at a certain moment. I would not have been allowed to have a wife or child or an everyday life. I was supposed to suffer, or at least not hide my suffering, experience martyrdom many
times over, and die a terrible and at the same time pitiful death. Only thus could I have remained true to myself and to her.
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    D uring the last days of winter I walked and walked in the cold wind through the woods, and pondered whether it was not I after all who had been forgotten by the others, who had been given up for lost by them. Perhaps I am the one who no longer counts for them, who holds no more surprises for them, who appears in neither their daydreams nor their night dreams?
    What, for instance, about the one who of late has been most powerfully present for me in my thoughts as I walked, Filip Kobal from Rinkenberg, the next village over from Rinkolach, whom I once viewed as my successor in writing, more flexible than I, more generous, more warmhearted, more colorful? Yet at one time we often said to each other that it should actually be the other way around, since I came from the village on the sunny side, and he, a few years younger, from the village on the shady side, beyond the hill, which was much steeper there.
    We first met as adults, he a lawyer as well; I already had a book to my name, and he at the time was nowhere near that. He did become my successor, at any rate in the legal affairs bureau of the Southern Railway, as a tenant of the house in Sievering, and in other respects, too. Although he was bigger and broader than I, had a more powerful voice, lighter skin and eyes, many mistook him for me. Then, at a distance, I read his first texts and talked him out of all the guilt and self-flagellation he had put into them: “From the shadow of Rinkenberg into the light of Rinkolach!” He, who had previously groaned at the thought of having to go down to the garden gate, learned from me to go walking. Likewise he, who at one time had to clear his throat before every sentence and even then remained almost impossible to understand, became a sought-after reader and panelist, from the heart of Switzerland to Schleswig-Holstein. When he told me, his confidant, that he secretly felt superior to all those around him, that he spent entire evenings sitting alone as if enthroned, with the lights out and the entire world at his feet, I encouraged him to go ahead and let people see that from time to time; it was appropriate for him and his writing, within limits, and since then, whenever he stands up and reads, out comes a mighty voice that drowns
out any contradiction, a most remarkable contrast to the diffidence, mumbling, and word-swallowing he still displays in everyday situations. Perhaps he has become an authority even more with his voice than with his books, and at the same time a folksy figure; wherever he appears, he is immediately invited to sing along, to play cards, to go bowling, which is probably unique for our Austria and a homegrown writer, especially nowadays. Yet he still dreads the physical work I recommended to him, partly for waking and schooling his imagination; he recoils at the thought of it, as if this were asking too much of him; a quiver of revulsion runs through him if he has to so much as pick up a trash can. True, he has moved from the shade to the sun of Rinkolach, his house is open to all—natives, refugees, readers—but his elder sister does everything for him, from polishing his shoes to chopping wood and mowing the lawn; with her there, he hardly lifts a finger.
    And this Filip Kobal, who could count on being understood by me in a way that a person probably experiences only once in a lifetime, has, I think, turned his back on me forever.
    The last straw was his visit to me here in the bay over a year ago. Since then he has sent me