Moment of True Feeling by Peter Handke

in. Turning in where? All at once he couldn’t remember anything at all, neither that nor anything else. He could list all sorts of things but remember nothing. He retained the facts, but not the feelings. When some years ago the nurse at the maternity hospital had shown him the child for the first time through the glass partition, something in him had undoubtedly stirred at the sight of that face, which the child itself had badly scratched. He had known a feeling of happiness, of that he was sure—but what
had it really been like? He couldn’t remember the feeling, what he remembered was the fact of having been happy. He had been moved, no doubt of it, but even with closed eyes he couldn’t bring back the feeling. “Try inhaling slowly.” He tried … but his breath went down the wrong way and he gagged.—He saw an empty bus going by; the low-lying sun shone on it from the side, lighting up the serried nose prints on the windows. An animal, thought Keuschnig unremembering. The only way he could keep on walking was to count his steps out loud: one … and two … and three, as though he had to trick himself into moving.
    As he crossed the playground in the Carré Marigny, which now, at the end of July, was deserted, the whole sky was overcast. A strong cold wind was blowing and the rustling of the chestnut trees was so loud he couldn’t hear the traffic on the Champs-Elysées. Little dead twigs crunched underfoot. The horses of the merry-go-round had been covered with sacking and plastic for the summer and tied with heavy twine. It was beginning to get dark; Keuschnig was alone in the Carré, dust was blowing up his nose. By then the wind was so strong that he was suddenly seized with uncontrollable panic. He ran to the bus-stop phone on the Avenue Gabriel and called home. Agnes was there—it was she who picked up the phone. Pleased with herself for answering, she bit into a piece of candy …
    As he walked on, he remembered that he had just been afraid. A feeling;—remember it. What had it been like? His muscles and sinews had suddenly frozen into a structure of their own … a kind of second skeleton. Yes, that’s what fear had been like. I’ll have to rediscover all these feelings! he thought.

Although the Avenue Marigny, on which the Elysée Palace is situated, is in the very center of Paris, there isn’t a single shop on it. The windows of an inhabited house are a rarity, all one sees is chestnut trees and high park walls until one comes to the restaurant and newsstand at the corner of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. For an approach to so prestigious a residence the Avenue Marigny is neither very long nor very wide, but it is straight and open. Few cars park on it, not even on the sidewalks, which are blocked off by rows of concrete posts.—Pedestrians, too, are rare; only policemen stride back and forth outside the high walls, their hands behind their backs. Involuntarily, as he turned into the avenue, Keuschnig reached for his passport, as if it were forbidden to enter such a thoroughfare without one’s papers … At the corner a policeman was standing in a sentry box, twirling a whistle attached to a long string. Luckily Keuschnig had to sneeze. Wasn’t that a proof of innocence? Even so, he felt that with the face he had on him that day no one could forget him. Any attempt to seem natural would only make him more conspicuous. He saw a mosquito bite on the policeman’s neck, and simultaneously another image from
his dream came back to him: the upper part of his body spotted with mosquito bites. He had been naked, he recalled; that often happened in his dreams—but in this dream there was a difference, he had wanted to be naked. For the first time it had given him pleasure to show his nakedness, not just to one person but to a whole group of people; and instead of merely running past, he had stood still in front of