I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch Page B

skittles. There was only one thing for it: Rip must wake up!...The sun was already sinking into the brown haze of evening as Rip sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was time to go home, high time. But he whistled in vain for his dog. For a while, still half in a dream, Rip looked around for the ravine and the skittle-players with their Dutch hats and old-fashioned frills, but none of that existed! Beyond the forest the broad Hudson gleamed as always and if the dog had just come along faithfully wagging his tail, Rip would have thought no more about the dream. On his way home he would have turned over in his mind what he was going to tell them in the village. To be sure, these stories of his seemed to him a bit like the wobbly skittles that he had to keep putting up so the others could knock them down. Not a sign of Bauz! Finally, Rip picked up his gun from the grass, but just look, it was overgrown by junipers. Not only that, it was also rusty, the most miserable-looking gun in the world. The wooden butt was mouldy. Rip shook his head, turned the thing over in his hand a few times, then threw it away and rose to his feet. For the sun was already sinking. Rip just wouldn't believe that the bleached bones lying beside his knapsack were the last remains of his faithful dog Bauz. But what else could they be? It was all real, he wasn't dreaming, he rubbed his chin and tugged at a beard that reached down to his chest, an old man's beard. Years had passed. How many? Anyhow it was late. Driven by hunger, and nodoubt by curiosity as to how many people he knew were still alive after that stupid game of skittles, Rip van Winkle came to his familiar village, whose streets and houses he didn't recognize. Nothing but strangers! Only his own house was still standing, as dilapidated as ever, empty and with no window panes, inhabited only by the wind. And where was Hannah, his wife? Gradually horror took possession of him. The old tavern, where you could always find out what you wanted to know, was nowhere to be found. Lost and lonely, bewildered, fearful and encircled by unknown children, he asked after his old companions. People pointed to the cemetery or shrugged their shoulders. Finally (in a low voice) he also asked about himself. Wasn't there anyone left who knew Rip van Winkle? They laughed. They knew all about Rip van Winkle, the squirrel hunter, and he heard really droll stories about the man who, as every child knew, had fallen down a ravine or been taken prisoner by the Indians twenty years ago. What could he do? He asked shyly after Hannah, the squirrel hunter's wife, and when they told him, yes, she died long ago of grief, he wept and tried to walk away. Who was he? they asked him and he thought it over. God knows, he said, God knows, yesterday I thought I knew, but today, now that I'm awake, how should I know? The bystanders tapped their foreheads with their fingers and all in vain he told them the extraordinary story of the skittles, the brief story of how he had slept away his life. They didn't know what he was talking about. But he couldn't tell the story any other way and soon the people walked off, only a young and rather pretty woman remained. Rip van Winkle was my father, she said. What do you know about him? For a while he looked into her eyes and no doubt he felt tempted to tell her he was her father, but was he the one they all expected, the squirrel hunter with the stories that always wobbled a bit and fell over when they laughed? In the end he said, Your father is dead. And so the young woman left him too, which hurt him, but no doubt it had to be. So had he woken up for nothing? He lived on in the village for a few more years, a stranger in a strange world, and he didn't ask them to believe him when he told them about Hendrik Hudson, the discoverer of the river and the country, and about his ship's crew that gathered from time to time in the ravines and played skittles, and when he said that was where they should look for