Brother of Sleep: A Novel Page 6

  An image of summer suddenly glowed before his eyes. Once when he had lain dreaming in the grass, he had watched the paths of two yellow butterflies flutter­ing happily back and forth. Now he began to add a new melody to the old one. But he wanted the lines to match each other, as the paths of the butterflies did. He set the voice in his right hand fluttering first. Then came his left hand. Where his right hand ascended, his left hand fell moodily downward, and yet the two voices followed a harmonious trajectory. Elias composed some miniatures for two voices: miniatures because the air ran out very quickly, and he had to keep pumping the bellows. Elias had, to put it in academic terms, discovered the law of imitation. If anyone had told him this, he would immediately have fallen silent, thinking he had done something wrong.

  So it was that he spent the whole night at the organ. When dawn came he grew dissatisfied. However filled he was with his preludes, the longing of his ears for perfect sound could not be stilled. He knew it had something to do with the instrument itself. It was tired. It was ill. Elias climbed down from the stool, took the candle stump and looked at the instrument, studied the pipes made from the same material as his toe caps, opened another pipe chest, peered in, touched one wooden pipe after another, crept into the box itself, and tested the sound of the individual wood pipes. He now noticed that they were even more out of tune. The organ needed healing, and Elias decided to ensure that the organ would soon be healthy. He would not rest, he whispered to himself, until he had found her soul again.

  When the tower clock struck for the eighth time, the beadle opened the portals for the Rorate Mass. By this time Elias had already cleared away all traces of his nocturnal work, cleanly removed the clump of wax, locked the loft, and given the key back to St. Wolfgang. Then he crept home.

  In the stable, Seff was amazed that the boy had already milked all the cows, strewn fresh straw, and even strained the milk. Seff gave him a sleepy Christ-be-praised, and Elias answered with a proud Forever-Amen. Then he inquired into the health of his mother, for Seff’s wife was–despite the loveless union between the Alder parents–again awaiting a happy event, and the day of her third confinement was not far off. Seff nodded, and at the same time they both begged the Lord to give them a child healthy in mind in body. Seff and the boy loved each other, that is true. And Elias could have embraced his father with joy, and smelled his hair, as he had smelled the stable hat on bad nights. That is true too.

  SO JOYFUL IS THE DAY

  THE Föhn is roaring in the village, dancing like Satan, bending apple trees, breaking windows, plucking shingles from the roofs, burrowing in the haystacks and raising dust, furiously banging the shutters closed. To­ward midday, it knocks over a Lamparter’s salt cart along with his two oxen, and the Lamparter has to kill the animals, for their hooves are ruined. Two days before Nativity nothing would make one think of Christmas. It smells of rain, and the sky is already turning blue again. The Föhn constantly sends the clouds whirling. The pastures have dried up; the Em­mer is a mere trickle. The forest animals are thirsty. And strangely, here and there the willows already bear catkins.

  On the day of 24 December 1815 the Föhn seems to be subsiding. The wind turns northerly, the squalls grow calm. Sometimes a gust of wind shakes the girders of the stables and the farms. It is dry and tepid. People walk around without jackets, in their shirtsleeves. Dur­ing these days and nights no one in Eschberg dares to light a fire, not even a candle for prayer. Everyone knows–the children know from the menacing tales and the suddenly frightened eyes of the old people–what an open flame can do when the Föhn is blowing. Early on Christmas Eve one Lamparter goes from farm to farm, to prevent everyone, by force if need be, from lighting their Christmas tree candles. He creeps around, peering into rooms and stables, and sees not even the palest glow. He sniffs for chimneys and does not smell the merest hint of cold smoke. Then he walks more peacefully and dons his Sunday clothes, ready for Midnight Mass.

  At the top of the gorge called St. Peter’s Rock, in the dusty twilight, is the figure of Peter Alder. Sitting there for who knows how long, sitting like a toad, glaring at the tinderbox, and his hand fingers his dangling arm. Beside him purrs the marmalade cat, his sister Elsbeth’s favorite animal. Peter always takes the cat with him when something is wrong. Again he looks at the swelling of his little arm and bites back the pain. No, he will never go crawling, not even if his mouth is dry with hunger. Has he not sat for five nights and more in damp ditches, without a bite in his belly? No, he will not beg his father’s forgiveness, he will not fall on his knees and repent the theft, even if it costs him his Holy Mass. His plan is irrevocable. Today he will kill his father. He must perish tonight. Peter looks at the swelling, bites shreds from his lips, and imagines how his father will die. Then he grows miserable with pain. Why should he bear this suffering alone? He takes the stone, reaches for a paw, and breaks the purring cat’s leg. He listens to the animal’s cries. He is touched and breaks its second leg.

  Midnight Mass in Eschberg was always a moving testimony to the Christmas spirit of the peasant folk. Everyone in the region knew that, up and down the country. Nowhere else was the feast of Our Lord’s birth celebrated with such depth of feeling and life. For this reason the curious would throng there every year from the Rhine Valley, and the little church was full to bursting two hours before mass was due to begin. People pushed and jostled in the pews, craning their necks impatiently toward the apse, and the nave was like a wasp’s nest. Nulf Alder turned up late, battled his way through the crowd with his fists, and a commotion followed. He would not calm down until he had thrashed his way to his usual seat. Everyone who was able to walk had turned up. Almost the whole village had gathered with shiny noses, red-scrubbed necks, freshly starched collars, airily rustling skirts, and haugh­tily arranged tresses. Even in the fallen women’s pew they knelt knee to knee, and hard though it is to believe, Burga smelled of rosewater.

  The mass began with a nativity play. The verses came from the pen of Charcoalburner Michel, and we might mention in passing that the pursuit of his calling as a religious poet had left him gaunt with hunger.

  The poem was represented on stage by the village schoolchildren. The part of Mary had to be played by a woman who, at the time in question, was heavily pregnant, which also explains the large numbers of people from the Rhine Valley. This custom, which is curious to our eyes, dated back to Curate Benzer, and it is said that a woman did give birth one day, right in the middle of the adoration of the shepherds. Now the women of Eschberg hoped to bring countless blessings on the heads of their coming babies in this way, and some even planned the day of conception with the twenty-fourth of December in mind. We would have spared the reader this tasteless detail, had it not been Seff’s wife lying in the straw. We should say that, to her credit, she had for a long time refused to display her belly in this way. Once again it was her friend, Haintz’s wife, who had persuaded her not to pass up this exceptional blessing. By the prophet Elijah! Who could guarantee that the child would be sound in mind and body?

  Things worked out quite differently. Perhaps the heavy, incense-laden air hinted at what was to come. Sometimes narrow-chested children would fall in a faint under the pews, everyone had “Föhn sickness,” and the old people had for days been complaining of diabolical headaches. Nothing would have made one think of Christmas.

  Even the long-nosed curate, Friedolin Beuerlein, had been sleeping badly. And when he slept badly the spirit of the Lord left him and senility took over. Even In the sacristy, he asked the beadle at length about which liturgy he should be following, Easter or Christ­mas. They failed to reach an agreement, and in the middle of the nativity play the curate suddenly wan­dered out of the sacristy and intoned the Easter Hal­lelujah. Thankfully, a quick-witted member of the congregation tugged at the curate’s chasuble and whispered excitedly that it was Christmas Eve. But everything still went wrong. The curate interrupted the adoration of the shepherds to intone the Gloria in a festive vibrato, but Os
kar Alder rushed to his keyboard to conceal the disaster from the Rhine Valley visitors. When the curate launched into the Gloria for a second and even a third time–he kept forgetting what had gone before–the organist pulled out all the organ stops and played a prelude based on the melody of the Christmas carol that our Elias had set so artfully in the night. In the midst of the general nervousness Oskar Alder could not find his way back to the tonic key, but the peasants understood what he was trying to do, raised their voices, and praised the miracle of that night.

  What a spectacle! While their voices grew fuller, a Christmas glow came into their eyes. Their blood seethed and rose into their elongated skulls. Every where the antiphony fell from thick-lipped mouths, and rough hands grew damp and soft, like costly velvet.

  So joyful is the day

  For everything on earth;

  The Son of God from heaven

  Has blessed us with his birth–

  An icy cry pierced the canticle. At first everyone thought it was a woman, but the cry came from the throat of the organ blower, Elias Alder. “Fire!” The cry froze the very marrow. The bellows thundered back into its place, Elias’s ashen face appeared at the bal­ustrade, and he shouted, with the glass voice of his childhood, “Elsbeth, Elsbeth is on fire!” He knew the girl was in bed with scarlet fever.

  Then everyone saw the glimmer of the first flames. The colors of the windows in the east choir began to glow. The angel of fire passed through the village and roused the Föhn, which had finally subsided, back to eager life, to take his horn, swell his cheeks, and blow into the cracks of the threshing floor where the humiliated child had set the haystack alight. And the angel bade the Föhn to rage until the whole northern flank of the village was destroyed, until the last ears of maize and the grass in the highest pasture were consumed. For he wanted to make the inhabitants of Eschberg understand that God had never wanted peo­ple there.

  For a long time the twelve-hinged doors refused to open. The bodies of the screaming congregation pressed and wedged against each other, pushing against the doors with brute force. When a massive hand found the handle, the door suddenly burst open. But the man whose hand it was bellowed with pain, for it was shattered, and blood spurted from beneath the nails. Every­one kicked, punched, fought, and screamed into the open. Only one mother remained behind, whose child’s jaw had been crushed into the sandstone. And the woman’s eyes rolled and she was laughing, for the child’s brain spilled from its skull. And the woman picked the little teeth from the floor and kissed them as if they were more precious than the most precious pearls in the world.

  The suffering of that memorable night is inex­pressible. We must follow the tracks of our hero; we cannot go with the mass and ease their sorrow with vague hopes as they stand watching their farms and stables, their cattle and furniture, burning.

  The howling flames were devouring Nulf Alder’s property. The fire licked at the boughs of the fruit trees, bent by the Föhn; even the grass was burning in dips in the earth. It looked impossible to reach the side of the house where the windows were, because the heat was so intense it would have suffocated anyone at the gar­den gate. Elias listened for the girl’s cries of pain and could not hear the faintest moaning. While Nulf, swear­ing and cursing God the while, tried to tear some boards from the eastern side of the stable so that he could save at least some of his animals, his wife tore at his hair and begged him for God’s sake to rescue the girl from the flames. Nulf knocked his wife to the floor, broke another board from the wall, looked into the stable, and vomited on the spot, for out came the ghostly smell of carbonized flesh.

  Elias, meanwhile, had leaned the ladder against the southern wall, dashed to the top of the wall, which was still intact, and was now tearing the shingles from the lathing, scratching his fingers bloody on the rusty nails but feeling not the slightest pain. He kicked in the wooden lathing, made a hole, slid down, and fell trium­phantly among the ears of maize drying in the attic. Suddenly he heard a faint coughing. He screwed up his eyes and listened. He was able to decipher the course of the fire from the crackling and roaring of the wood, and in a short time he knew which parts of the house were burning. He found the girl in the smoke-filled room. She was lying wide-eyed under the bedstead, her teeth biting deep into her stuffed doll. He grabbed an arm and pulled little Elsbeth out, shoved his arm beneath her hip, picked her from the floor, pressed her body tight against his chest.…

  Elsbeth’s heart lay against Elias’s heart, and Els­beth’s heartbeat mingled with Elias’s heartbeat. Then Johannes Elias Alder cried that terrible wretched cry of someone who knows he is going to die. That cry took Elsbeth’s consciousness away, and she sank in a faint into the body of the young lover. This accomplished the revelation that the five-year-old child had had in the bed of the Emmer when he had heard the beating of an unborn child’s heart. In that night of universal terror, Johannes Elias Alder fell in love with his cousin Elsbeth Alder. An inevitable love, for God was by no means finished with him.

  And at the top of the gorge called St. Peter’s Rock, in a wind gap, the figure of Peter, the injured child. The reflections of the fire shimmer in his greasy hair. The burning northern flank of the village is reflected in his astonished eyes. His mouth hangs open, his lips are dry. He is holding the tinderbox tight in his hand; he will not let go of it. Peter counts the farms: five, six, Daniel Lamparter’s too, and Matthew Alder’s, the whore’s house as well, and more and more are burning. This is the hour of his revenge. No, he has not fallen to his knees, he has not repented of the theft. In his eyes there gleams the burning village, and his eyes grow moist with feeling, and he wipes away the tears with his crippled arm and begins to pray, and he prays warmly that his father will perish. And he sings in a broken voice, getting louder as he goes, “My father, you will perish!”

  For one night and half a day the Great Fire raged. Around noon on Christmas Day the pastures were still glowing. A huge low bank of clouds passed over Es­chberg, and then came a light unlike anything ever seen. The earth reddened the sky. Columns of smoke rose to the clouds, tree trunks glowed and rekindled. Fifteen farms had burned to ashes. Two bedridden old men had died and four little children, if we include the child trampled to death in the church. About a hundred head of cattle and smaller animals were burned. Many had tried to escape and had been consumed by the flames. Half the village, the northern side, was devastated. In the forest and the countryside, the damage was indescribable. Everything that could burn had burned.

  Desolation of desolations, for everyone who had watched the disaster. The crashing, crackling, and raging of miles of fire was not enough. The laments of people everywhere were not enough. No, they had to watch their helpless beasts suffocating, burning and falling to their deaths. Because all the deer had made for the ridges, they had no way out. A whole herd, their instincts failing them, hurled themselves into the gorge. The smaller animals whimpered and whistled as they ran in circles, their skins on fire. Birds crashed into the flames with burning feathers, for the heat rose to the sky and the wind-whipped tongues of flame climbed higher than a mile.

  Then, in the January snow, when Elias called to the animals of the forest in inaudible sounds, noises, and trills, none of them appeared from the gray hori­zon scattered with tree trunks: not Resi the doe or Wunibald the badger. Not Lips the little red fox, not Sebald the polecat, not the one-legged bullfinch.

  Only one little house on the northern flank of the village was spared. Alas, we must add, for it was the little farm of the wood-carver Roman Lamparter– Mostly.

  But the buildings on the southern side of Eschberg still stood as before. Neither church nor farm, not the tiniest shingle, had been touched. This intensified the fury of the people in the north of the village, and upon seeing the injustice some of them collapsed uncon­scious, in infernal screaming fits.

  On Christmas Day eight families bundled together the little they had and, weeping, left their beloved Eschberg. They followed the Emmer down to t
he Rhine Valley, where in the course of time they either perished in poverty or else spent the rest of their days working other people’s land. These included Haintz and Haintz’s wife, as well as the family of the Alder gossip. We shall lose sight of these people, and the stories connected to them.

  But the Alder gossip seemed able to go only after putting an insane calumny about the village, the cruel consequences of which were seen on St. Stephen’s Day. She claimed, if we are to believe her testimony, to have seen–from a safe distance–Mostly, walking up and down behind closed shutters until dawn. He had been speaking to his shadow, his hair wild and his mouth foaming; he had rolled on the ground like an epileptic; then he had written something on a piece of paper, where the word burn was clearly visible. In the blackest darkness of his cellar he had indulged in sacri­legious practices, reciting the Hail Mary backward, after the manner of the Moslems, and had even finished by urinating on the crucifix: this was what the Alder gossip claimed to have seen, in the dark of night, and from a safe distance, if we are to believe her.

  Not even the most dangerous idiots of Eschberg lent credence to this testimony, and yet it was taken as read that the carver Roman Lamparter had started the fire. For too long the peasants of Eschberg had had to endure this short-legged man, with his bushy eyebrows and the thousand laughter wrinkles around his mouth, insolently mocking their faith, their life, and their work, day in and day out. For on workdays he would walk around in Sunday clothes, and if he saw someone raking a slope in the July heat, he would go up to him, take his eyeglasses off, blow pollen from the lenses, draw a circle in the air with his carved walking stick, and speak, as the greatest authority on the subject, of the trials of the mountain peasant’s life. He explained that it was not worth it, that their laborious toils were mostly not enough to fill their bellies, and that it therefore made more sense to twiddle one’s thumbs and sit in the shade contemplating the aesthetic blue of the skies, like the birds in the trees. These were the sentiments inflicted on them by someone who could not afford so much as a hundredweight of hay. And the sweating men would have spat on the ground in rage, had their dusty mouths not been dry.