...of obscuration

In those days I never thought of becoming a teacher myself - I wanted to remain a pupil forever, the pupil for instance, of such a teacher, who was at the same time his pupil’s pupil. Of course, this was possible only while distance was kept, and we forfeited this necessary distance. I perhaps in the exuberance of waking, he perhaps in the exuberance of a discovery which up until then he had only let himseltxf dream of. Or perhaps the trouble was that I couldn’t bear for long to think of myself as chosen. Something drove me to shatter the image he had formed of me, much as it resembled my own. I wanted to remove myself from his field of vision. I longed to live in obscurity as I had for the last sixteen years, hidden in the big blue cavern that was my desk, where no one could have any opinion, high or low, of me - yes, after becoming even better known to someone than to the Doppelganger who had often haunted me in the past, I really and truly longed for obscurity. To be regarded for any length of time as a model, if not a marvel, was intolerable, not because of what my classmates might think, but in my own eyes, and I longed to vanish behind a wall of contradictions. So it came about that after asking a question proving that my thought had kept pace with his, and being buffeted by a look expressing an emotion deeper than joy, I made a hideous face, which was intended only to divert attention from myself but which - I could feel it the moment he did - wounded the young teacher to the quick. He went rigid, left the room, and stayed away till the end of that period. No one else knew what was wrong with him. He thought he had seen my true face in that moment; he thought my earnestness, my love of the subjects studied, my affection for him, who put his whole self into his teaching, was a pretense; he thought I was a cheat, a hypocrite, and a traitor. While the other students talked excitedly, I looked calmly out of the window. The teacher was standing in the yard with his back to the building. When he turned around, I saw not his eyes but his pursed lips, as hard as a bird’s beak. That hurt me, but I didn’t mind. I was actually glad that at last I had no one but myself.
In the days that followed, the beak became even sharper. This however, was not an enemy who hated me but a cold judge whose verdict, once arrived at, was irrevocable. And the cavern of my desk did not prove to be the refuge I had imagined. It was all up with my studying. Every day, the teacher proved to me that I knew nothing, or that what I knew was not what was “wanted”. My so-called knowledge was some sort of foolishness; it had nothing to do with the subject but was entirely of my invention, and in this form, without a certified formula, was no good to anybody. I stared at the cavern where once, as I warmed my forehead, the luminous world of signs, distinctions, transitions, connections, and common denominators had dawned for me, and I was alone with the black cloud inside me. Unthinkable that it would ever break up; it grew thicker, it spread, rose to my mouth, my eyes, took away my voice, my eyesight. This of course no one noticed. During common prayer in church, I had only moved my lips, and in school, since this was our principal teacher, it wasn’t long before I ceased to be questioned or even taken notice of. It was then I discovered what it is to lose one’s voice - not only to fall silent in the presence of others but to be incapable of saying a word to oneself, or of making a sound or a gesture when alone. Such muteness cried out for violence; acquiescence was inconceivable. And this violence could not, as was my little enemy, be directed outward; my big enemy was a weight inside me, on my abdomen, my diaphragm, my lungs, my windpipe, my larynx, my palate, blocking my nostrils and ears, and the heart at the centre of all that ceased to beat, pound, throb, spurt, and bleed, and just ticked sharply, angrily.

[Repetition, Handke, P.]