Finally — all the workmen were gone, but a brigade of sous-chefs and waiters was arriving, and the woman had just turned the key of the rough-terrain vehicle — the chef came running toward her, knife in hand, the point aimed at the ground, handed her a bundle of provisions, wrapped in white linen, through the window, and said (this, too, belonged to the dialogue): “Do not start eating this too soon. One’s first hunger is not real hunger. — In the books it used to say that one could not set out on an adventure without clean shirts and money and, in case of need, salves for the healing of wounds. And a long time ago you said you wished you could walk somewhere with me, out there — not for a hike, simply walking. And then you walked so fast that soon I could not keep up.”—And she: “Look—” What was it she said: “a wood pigeon”? “a flash of lightning”? “a polecat”? it was no longer audible; she was already driving away.
10
There was another recurring passage in the old books: “He” (the hero — why were they almost exclusively men, with a woman rating at most an intermezzo? why, for example, was there no detailed story of a woman to be read, from the sixteenth or seventeenth century?) “traveled on the road for many a mile without encountering anything worthy of telling.” And now, during the drive south toward the Sierra de Gredos, she encountered hardly anything that, according to the more or less established conventions or rules, would have been suitable for her story, which she did want to be thoroughly adventurous.
The sun shone. A still haze hovered over the unvaryingly bare and crumbly tableland. The poplars in the few riverside meadows, or vegas, or lukas, stood ramrod straight and leafless. The olive zone, where a harvest would have been under way, did not begin until the southern foothills of the Sierra. She rolled along, hers almost the only vehicle in her lane. Coming in the opposite direction, at close intervals, however, were mostly trucks, and each time the same model and the same color, bearing the name of one and the same firm, which apparently owned a huge fleet, all with seemingly identical mustachioed men sitting high behind the wheel, all without passengers; yet each accompanied by a dangling, rocking rosary, complete with dagger-shaped cross, in the front windshield, identical to that of the driver in front of him; one after another of these drivers in his cab raised his hand to greet her with the same gesture, each smiling at her with his eyes as a sign of comradeship but also friendly concern, wishing her all the best as he passed: as if she needed that.
And dangling in her windshield was always that same medallion with the white angel pointing rigidly out of the image toward the empty tomb of the resurrected Christ. And no one was walking along the side of the road. And in the sky floated a single cloud that did not change during the entire trip. And no city came into view. And no fire burned in the thousand fields of the meseta, which with time came to represent a single field. And although during those hours nothing worthy of telling occurred, it seemed to my heroine as if one event were following the other, as if the happenings were coming hot on each other’s heels and overlapping harmoniously with one another, as in a traditional story, yet also in a completely different way; as if the narration of her book were moving along all the more emphatically during this interim.
“I experienced spells of faintheartedness, something previously unknown to me,” she told the author later. “This faintheartedness — what a word — urged me to turn around and go home. One time I stopped the car and made a half-turn. And at that very moment I felt: my story was breaking off. And you know how it is with me: feeling myself being narrated — my be-all and end-all, my one and only standard. And I must endure that, I must. Not that I am addicted to danger: but danger is part of it, without danger, no story; without my story: I have not lived, I will not have lived. And so there was only one thing to do: press on. And then came the moment when I accepted the idea of never returning home. It was even all right with me. Inwardly I crossed a line and was ready.”—The author: “Ready for what?”—She: “Ready.” And for the time being she wanted to be alone as she continued her journey.
The only thing that occurred on this stretch: she filled her tank. Where a male hero seeking adventure would perhaps have grown grouchy and impatient, under the same circumstances she drew patience and lightheartedness from the absence of particular happenings; patience she would need for what lay ahead, of that she was certain.
Usually practically a race-car driver, she drove in a leisurely and steady fashion, and at the filling station — this, too, far from any city, along the deserted highway — she inserted a pause after each self-service operation. It suited her fine that the station owner, actually just a shopkeeper, came from his field behind the building, where he was plowing under the previous year’s cornstalks with his tractor, and engaged her in a lengthy exchange about nothing of significance. She even dragged out the conversation, with if possible even more meaningless comments, such as, “Yes, and almost three months till Easter,” or: “Right: the cans of motor oil are heavy,” or: “Yes, soon summer will be here.”
And the conversation ended more or less this way — The station owner: “Your husband back safe and sound from Africa?”—She: “Without a scratch on him.”—The station owner: “Your mother released from the hospital?”—She: “A week ago, still looking very pale.”—The station owner: “Your children still doing well in school?”—She: “The boy’s been slacking off a bit lately.”—The station owner: “I remember how much I enjoyed watching you dance, Mahabba. And then your voice. No one in the whole area sang like you. You should not have given up your singing. Why did you give all that up after your wedding? stop dancing? stop singing? The softer the song, the more your voice went through and through me.”—She: “I will take it up again, perhaps not the dancing but the singing. What I need is a new song. I can feel it coming on. All that’s there now are a few notes, a few words. What’s missing is something to pull it together. Perhaps on the other side of the Sierra?”
She wished the station owner would go on speaking to her as this woman for whom he obviously mistook her. Or was he merely pretending to be confused? — All the better: she would drive off feeling easier in her mind. To let him go on and on about her in the role of that stranger; and if adding anything, doing so without asking questions of her own, or asking why, with no intention other than to get him to digress, again and again, every digression having as its focus the unknown woman, who in the meantime could equally well be her. As she left the filling station, the owner or farmer suddenly took her hand and kissed it. The benefit of an interlude, in which one allegedly wasted only one’s own time, and time in general, and gained so much time. A rich interval. Bright trumpet blasts across the entire barren meseta.
Then nothing at all happened, and for a considerable length of time, once she was alone again with the road and the tableland. That for a while nothing at all happened: what an event these days — what a special circumstance. Nothing but repeated flashing of lightning. The flashes did not come out of the consistently clear blue sky; they came out of or lit up inside her. A flashing of images began inside her such as had never before erupted in such variety and such quick succession; like meteor showers, coming so thick and fast, yet often at distant points in a firmament which for that very reason seems impossible to encompass; the eye cannot keep up, yet does not want to let a single falling star go unnoticed. And again a curious phenomenon: that these image flashes were generated by patience, and almost happiness — yet always pointed instead to something disheartening or even grievously sad.