Brother of Sleep: A Novel Page 10

  THE WOMAN IN THE MOONLIGHT

  HE was a goodhearted teacher to the children. They began to feel an almost tender affection for him, although they could never quite conquer their fear of his yellow eyes. (Seldom did a child dare to look him in the eye.) He sang with them every day, taught them to understand his musical images at the organ, explained the Holy Scriptures as if they were a fairy tale, and persistently inculcated the notion that it was not man alone who had a soul but also the animals, the flowers, and the stones. If their attention waned, he opened their tired lids by imitating voices of Eschberg, which they then had to guess. If one child could not pay his weekly dues because hunger reigned at home, he did not beat the child but secretly took eggs, bread, and cheese from the allowances of the others, and gave it to the little one on the way home. If, in winter, one of them forgot the obligatory firewood for the school stove, he did not chastise the child, for he could see it did not even have stockings on its little legs. He was an attentive teacher, ever alert to discover a talent for music. He discovered voices he could train. But he did not find a musician, apart from Philipp, who was always in attendance. But Philipp was an idiot, and so his talent had to go to waste.

  But his restless quest for Elsbeth, who by now was of marriageable age, gnawed at him like a perfidious illness. Its initial symptoms took the form of apparent bagatelles. If a door opened unexpectedly, he gave an excessively nervous start. If he saw a woman approaching the farm from a distance, his pulse raced. If he heard women laughing by the village well at night, he always imagined he could hear Elsbeth’s laughter among them. Music, which had always been easy for him, soon became an effort, and he had to acknowl­edge that he no longer found consolation in it. When he had taken up his office as an organist, he had practiced daily on the instrument, looked after it, and kept all the registers in tune. But this now became too difficult, for the school and the farm kept him busy at all times. When Eastertide came around again, his musical ardor seemed to rekindle. The Passion of Christ had always been a musical matter for him. We might almost say it actually stimulated him to composition. As did that misty season around All Souls, when he tried to set to music the November weather, mingled with the scent of incense and black vestments. He was a child of his time. He loved everything that could be associated with death.

  In the years of silent waiting for Elsbeth, the theology of his faith underwent a change. From being a sober Christian but one who was strong in faith, he now seethed with doubts. Why would God not listen to his prayers at night? Was it really His will to see a man suffering? Was it His will to lead a man into error? Had He not miraculously shown him who he was destined for? Had God finally turned from him?

  At this time Elias developed a strangely intense Marian devotion. He began to collect images of Mary, rosaries and statuettes. He did this with an almost fanatical fury, even asking the schoolchildren to give him any devotional object they no longer needed at home. He then hoarded all these objects in his room, as his most precious treasure. The walls filled with pictures, rosaries hung at the head and foot of his bed like corncobs hanging up to dry, and his table was crammed full of little figures of wood and plaster. Painted and unpainted Marys with and without heads, mourning and transfigured Marys–Marys everywhere.

  When he walked into the church he no longer genuflected before the Holy of Holies but went straight to the altar of the Mother of God, fell–if no one else was there–to his knees, bowed down to the seam of the altar cloth, and kissed it fervently. He stayed like that for a long time, and the eternally fresh bouquet that Nulf’s wife put out every week gave him new hope. He did not know what the bouquet meant, but he knew it was Nulf’s wife who put it there. He sought out everything that could be connected with Elsbeth.

  This alarming spiritual state brought Peter into play. He alone knew how much Elias loved Elsbeth.

  By the time of the following events the friends had reached their twenty-first year. Peter’s life, like that of his friend, was mapped out, and he could never hope to escape the unbearable boredom of peasant life. On Peter’s twentieth birthday, Nulf took him to see a lawyer in Feldberg, to transfer the farm, the forest, and the pastures to his son. People in Eschberg were very surprised at Nulf, wondering how he could give his son such unbounded trust, when sons only inherited upon the death of their fathers. But Nulf soon came to see he had been wrong about Peter. Two weeks after the inheritance came into effect, Peter moved his parents into his room, and henceforward they could not enter the living room without his permission. After this misfortune Nulf was seen going piously to church again, which only made him the subject of greater mockery in the village.

  Peter’s inclinations at this time, and their frank manifestation, were apparent in the way he treated his cattle. Under the pretext of good economics he carried out an experiment on a number of bullocks, to see how long they could go without water. One day he hacked a calf’s tail off, simply because it had given a cheerful buck. When a sow that had just littered bit two of its piglets to death, he put out its eyes. When he had seen enough obvious cruelty, he thought about ways and methods of torturing animals so they did not lose their trust in their master. And when he had succeeded in this, he gazed open-mouthed and with lustful eyes into the eyes of the crazed animals.

  Peter was not a man. He had no beard and he was small in stature, with a pockmarked face, a wiry body, and curly hair. His unmistakable mark was his atro­phied forearm. His eyes had a nut-brown glow. They were beautiful, when the light of the abyss did not flicker in them.

  We cannot understand why our Elias should have chosen to associate with this individual who tortured animals as if they were to blame for his boredom with life. He was certainly well aware of Peter’s temperament. He often begged him to change his ways, to leave the beasts in peace, especially when Elsbeth had come weeping to him to tell him of some cruelty or another. However, feelings of gratitude and loyalty seemed to gain the upper hand in Elias. He never forgot that Peter had once waited beneath his window and had stood by him. This loyalty now made him an involuntary accomplice in Peter’s wicked ways. He knew this. And he did nothing about it, for it would have cost him the most important friendship of his life.

  It happened on a mild November night, when the moon was full. Those are the nights when summer revolts against autumn, unsettling the hearts of men, who try to find a questing spirit to match their own. The village lay slumbering at that hour just before midnight; the forests cast massive shadows on the meadows, glowing blue in the moonlight. The previous evening Peter had mysteriously told Elias to go to the deer pond at the foot of St. Peter’s Rock. He would wait for him there, and then he would show him what he had always dreamed of. He would show him love.

  Elias, spurred on by such talk, went without delay to the agreed place. There was a clearing there, and the ground was an ankle-deep swamp. The red deer came to wallow in such places. When Elias stepped into the glade he smelled tobacco smoke. He was astonished. Then he saw Peter, leaning against a tree drawing hastily on a tobacco pipe. Peter greeted him with an overexcited voice in which Elias could already sense villainy.

  At the same hour a single woman was preparing for a nocturnal walk. It was Burga Lamparter, of whom we have said that she loved life and people and had for that reason been made the village whore. Her house had gone up in flames in the Great Fire, and she had had to enter service as a maid with her cousin Walther in the hamlet of Altig. There she conceived an immortal passion for her cousin’s brother, a tall, emaciated man who had suffered from epilepsy since childhood. The whole story was known to the village, and it was also known to the village that the man in question had lost his testicles in an accident in the forest. Burga loved him no less for that. When, on Sunday after lunch, he smoked his little pipe, she sniffed happily at the to­bacco smoke, sat silently on the windowsill, looked at her Gottfried, and was content.

  Burga was a full-formed, blossoming woman with a robust face and blond hair that hung in t
hick plaits. Charcoalburner Michel had given her a sealed letter–he would do anything that might bring him some money–and on finely made paper it said that Gottfried would meet her at midnight by the deer pond. He had things of great importance to tell her. Burga did not doubt the authenticity of the letter for a moment. She was convinced beyond a doubt that Gottfried’s hand had written the missive in question. Peter’s plan was highly intricate.

  As she came down through the gleaming blue pastures, she stopped again and again for joy, drew the little letter from her apron, and covered it with dry kisses. Then she smelled tobacco, and her whole body shuddered.

  “Gottfried?” she breathed expectantly into the moonlit clearing. “Gottfried, are you there?” Although Burga was not afraid of the dark–she usually worked at night–she was afraid now. She waited and listened and heard not a sound. “Gottfried!” she began, to embolden herself. “It’s me! Your Burga! I’m here! Come out wherever you are!”

  Then Gottfried’s voice rose out of the darkness. “Step into the light, Burga! I want to see you!”

  Burga’s heart was beating when she stepped into the clearing. “It’s damp here!” She smiled nervously. “Couldn’t we find a better place?” And she turned her head in all directions to find the source of the voice. “Come out now!” she demanded, with a hint of irritation. “I know you’re standing behind the pine tree!”

  “What a beautiful woman you are,” said the voice in the darkness. “Do you know that I’ve wanted you ever since you first came to our farm?”

  “What are you talking about?” Burga answered, wading up to her ankles in the pond.

  “Stay in the light!” called Gottfried, and the voice broke in such a characteristic manner that the woman’s last doubts vanished.

  “I’m staying here,” she said, putting on a girlish voice and folding her arms across her chest.

  “Have you ever loved me?” asked the voice sadly. Burga was surprised. The voice asked, in an even darker tone; “Tell me, have you ever loved me?”

  This question touched the loving woman to the core, and she began to divulge her most intimate se­crets without the slightest restraint. “When I stroke my pallet at night, I wish it was your head, Gottfried. You mustn’t laugh at me or tell anyone else, but when you leave your plate I secretly finish your leftovers. And I often go to your pipes and smell them. Then I think to myself, It would be a great joy to me if the good Lord–”

  “I don’t believe a word of it!” cried Gottfried angrily. “You go and lie with others, you sin with them! How can you claim you love me?”

  Burga said nothing. She still couldn’t understand this weird charade, but she should have understood it by now, for the real Gottfried would never have talked to her in that way. She put his sudden eloquence down to the strange effects of the moonlit night. And in Eschberg there was an old saying, which she believed with childish innocence: When there was a full moon, they said, an angel united two people and separated two others by death.

  “If you really want to be mine,” the voice from the darkness continued, “then show yourself to me. Bare your beautiful body and I will believe you.”

  At this point Elias, who was lying with Peter behind a holly bush, began to stammer. Peter put his hand tightly around his neck lest Elias spoil the game.

  “I’ll do what you demand if you promise to be my husband before the year is out,” Burga answered calmly.

  And Elias swore in Gottfried’s voice; he swore by the saints, the apostles, and the souls of all the departed Lamparters. He seemed to obey Peter blindly, repeat­ing his words as though under hypnosis.

  Burga set about undressing. My body is the least thing I can show him, she thought, and was not afraid of her nakedness. She took the shawl from her shoulders and placed it, with delicate gestures, on a twisted branch. She undid her bodice just as delicately, for she wanted to please her Gottfried in every way. A warm gust of wind arose, sweeping the tips of the trees and making a quiet, muted sound. Burga opened her bod­ice wide, and the two men saw her large, even, silky-soft breasts swelling forth. Then she bent over to seize her skirts, and her breasts fell forward, forming two full ripe pears. The moonlight danced in her plaited hair, making it shine like Christmas garlands. And the light streamed over her broad white shoulders and caressed the smooth skin of her back, and a fleeting shadow appeared in the soft furrow at the base of her spine. She gripped the first skirt and stripped it as calmly from her body as though she were quite alone. Elias saw her breasts rising as she pulled the skirt over her head, and saw her nipples hardening. His mouth dried, and he barely dared to breathe. Then the woman gripped the last of her skirts, pulled it over her head, and was naked. She stood there motionless, her legs pressed together, her arms dangling. Strong veins ran down her arms, and the triangle of her fertile belly swelled as she breathed, and grew firm, and grew soft.

  Elias stared at the woman’s broad pelvis and could not take his eyes off the rich hair of her private parts. He could not hear what was being breathed, hot-lipped, into his ear. He only returned to his senses when Peter pinched his arm.

  “I still don’t believe you!” cried Gottfried from the holly bush. “You must undergo two more tests, and if you pass those tests, we will be man and wife this very month.”

  Burga waited in patient silence.

  “A woman should,” said Gottfried with long pauses, “submit to her husband in all things. Prove to me that you can obey me!”

  “Whatever you command, I shall do!” said Burga trustfully.

  “Undo your plait!” commanded Gottfried in his broken voice. And while Burga untwined her plait, something flashing flew to her feet. “Take the knife and cut off your hair!” Burga did not hesitate for a moment; she felt for the knife and cut off her hair, so great was her love of Gottfried. “And now,” said the trembling voice, “lie down in the mud! Roll around in it as the deer roll around!”

  “Why do you demand such things of me?” stammered Burga, humiliated. “Is this not enough?”

  “Do what I say or you will never be mine!” cried Gottfried.

  And the naked woman fell to her knees, plunged her hands in the morass, threw herself in on her belly, rolled around in it, and began to sob, loudly and sorrowfully. Then she suddenly heard hidden laughter. She stopped and cast a horrified look in all directions. The laughter became so loud that an echo rang out against the walls of the rock. Burga tore herself from the mud and cried, in a desperate voice, “You dogs! You dogs!” but she could only make out the shadows of two people hurrying into the valley. Burga set after them but soon had to give up because she had torn her feet to pieces in the holly.

  There she stood, her hair shorn, howling and naked. And all she had done was trust the saying that the full moon brings two lovers together.

  “That’s woman for you!” Peter bellowed triumphantly, when he was sure they had escaped their pursuer. “Woman is stupid and simple. She is soft and cowardly. And for love,” he added theatrically, “she will do anything!” Then he stepped close to the impressionist, who was trembling with exhaustion. “Why are you trembling?” he asked angrily. “That woman deserved to be treated like that! She’s a whore, you saw it with your own eyes!”

  “Holy Mother of God, what have I done?” stammered Elias, and began to weep unrestrainedly. Peter took the weeping man’s head in his hands, held it tight, and began to kiss his dry lips. And he ran his hands tenderly over his shoulders and his chest and felt for Elias’s sex. “It would be good,” Peter murmured darkly, “if we could die here, on this spot.” Then he pushed Elias from him with a loud cry and fled into the dark­ness of the forest.

  The crime perpetrated on the innocent woman unleashed bitter feelings of guilt in Elias. He sought refuge and salvation in prayer and deprived himself, with litanies and Hail Marys, of the few hours of sleep remaining to him. But the image of the naked woman beneath the moon’s rays, her full pear-shaped breasts, her silvery tuft, would not leave him in peace. He
inflicted the most terrible tortures upon himself to chase them away, but the woman returned every night. He sought forgiveness in organ playing and was fearful on his own behalf when he realized he had turned into someone else. He began to take pleasure in composing in defiance of the laws of the ear. He knew intuitively that unresolved dissonances are something sinful and forbidden. And because he could not instill order in himself or in his life, his playing became all the more rich in dissonances. He had discovered sin, and he began to savor it. Hitherto naive, his playing now had the force of the demonic.

  And Burga? She knew there was only one person in the village who could imitate the voices of Eschberg. She also suspected that the second shadow had been Peter’s shadow. But she did not say a word about it to anyone and did not even give them accusing looks. She lied to her cousin, saying she had cropped her hair because it was sick. Then she patiently returned to her everyday life. That was her way.

  When he smoked his little pipe after lunch on Sundays, she sniffed happily at the tobacco smoke, considered her Gottfried, and was content. She loved people and life. No one could spoil that love for her.

  THE LIGHTS OF HOPE

  FOR the second time that Laetare Sunday, Seff Alder opened the door to the children’s room, where Elias lay in a fever with sweat-drenched hair and wide, staring eyes. Seff held his breath. The air was a brownish-yellow haze of incense and the smoke of the many tallow candles that the lovesick man was burning to ease his suffering. Seff went to the bedside table, pushed the plaster Marys aside, and put four peeled cooked po­tatoes there. And a bit of cheese from which he had cut the rind. That seemed to be the only consolation he was able to give his still-beloved son. He was not a talker.