Brother of Sleep: A Novel Page 7

  But what most infuriated the peasants was the appearance of his house. He, who never attended a church service, not even Midnight Mass, had hit on the idea of building a home based on the exterior of the Eschberg tabernacle. Mostly had spent more than four years sculpting his little house, and when it was finished it resembled the Holy of Holies down to the last details, the last pinnacles and crockets. If we try to enter the heart of an Eschberg peasant, we will easily understand why Mostly was held in suspicion and even hated. For who would not have wished to live in the tabernacle? And that it was he of all people–a maker of debts, an Antichrist–who shared this habitation with Jesus was an injustice crying out for reparation. Mostly was unworthy to have the Lord beneath his roof. He of all people!

  Last of all, he added one further crime to this one. His own milk cow–a haggard beast with a gray muzzle and bloodshot eyes–he christened St. Elizabeth, be­cause the cow had borne him a calf at a great age. It would take too long to relate all the infuriating episodes from Mostly’s life, unless we were to write a little book dedicated entirely to him.

  On the morning of St. Stephen’s Day they kicked down his door with their boots, thundered up to his room, beat him out of his deepest dreams, and would have rammed the wooden stake into his face had not one of them shouted “Stop!” and cried that the blasted cur should burn alive. Two of the people who had come tore his nightshirt off, beat him from his bed, and tore off one of his ears, while the third, like the devil, demolished all the decorations in his room, all the carvings and furniture. The eyes of the third fell upon a tin can, and on the can was written the words lamp oil. Then they threw him naked down the stairs, but he was lucky enough not to hurt himself and got away. They hurled themselves after him: they were faster, for they had the strength of murderers. He zigzagged and escaped them again, he stumbled and found his feet and burrowed into the branches of the undergrowth, climbing to the top of the gorge called St. Peter’s Rock. But there was an abyss, and there was only a single route to take: running into the smoke, through the charred and often still glowing branches of the burned forest. He had only the strength that comes from the fear of death, and it is crazed and directionless. For a while he managed to disappear into the cloud. He had burned his feet, but he felt neither cold nor hot and penetrated ever deeper into the smoke. Then he heard their voices close in front of him, turned back, ran in all directions, bumped suddenly into a tree trunk and gave a piercing cry; a sooty fist shot from the cloud, and he was captured.

  Where had he left his blasted Sunday best today? came the mocking laugh. He didn’t know whether he should hold his hand to his bloody jaw or cover his privates. And where had he put his eyeglasses today? Let him talk to them now, like a great authority, about the life of the mountain peasant and so on, and clutch his stiff collar, and swan about the place like a woman, as he mostly liked to do. They humiliated him and tormented him for more than two hours. Then they bound him with hempen rope to a tree stump, col­lected half-charred wood, piled it around his body, poured petrol over him, bellowed with satisfaction, and set him on fire. The murderers knew that the fire had not been his doing, so they bellowed all the louder until their bellows overcame their consciences.

  It happened that at the same time Elias was ex­ploring the area around St. Peter’s Rock in search of his vanished friend, for he knew Peter’s hiding place. But he could not find him in the fault, only Elsbeth’s cat in its death rattle and a tinderbox. When he was on his way home a loud cry practically burst his eardrums. At first the cry sounded like a terrible laughter, but then Elias knew that somewhere in the cloud of smoke a man was being killed. And Elias heard the voices of the murderers, and the man who was driving the others on was Seff Alder. Seff Alder, his father. His father, whom he loved and who loved him.

  There he stood, the man-child. His fingers twisted, his lips turned blue. But from his lips there came, tenderly and endlessly, “Father, Father, Father?”

  WINTER 1815

  THE dead were buried the day after New Year’s Day, nine days after the catastrophe, because Eduard Lam­parter’s body had not been found. However thoroughly they searched through the rubble of his farm, not so much as a little charred bone could they find. All that came to light was the porcelain bowl of a tobacco pipe, which made Eduard’s wife cry out with sorrow. Five coffins stood in the choir of the little church, and beneath them four little wooden boxes that had been cobbled together for the children who had died. But beside the fifth coffin stood a chair, and on it, on a damask cushion, sat Eduard Lamparter’s pipe bowl.

  The pain of the mourners was aggravated by the fact that Curate Beuerlein ended the requiem with the tuba mirum, squinted with confusion into the congregation, and then suddenly remembered, with a great deal of self-assurance, that it was time for the christening. So the curate walked down to the coffins and received their baptismal promise. Two lads then trotted staccato fashion to Götzberg and told the priest there that they could no longer stand the reverend curate in Eschberg. The priest in Götzberg was thunderstruck when told of the disturbed state of his dear brother. He listened to the lads’ descriptions with red cheeks and a quiet “What the devil!” and promised help, promised to come to Eschberg in person, promised to bring the matter before the vicar-general. When he blessed the lads for the first time–he too was advanced in years– they understood, and tramped grumpily back to Esch­berg with an even louder staccato.

  Those who had not left for the Rhine Valley remained stubbornly in Eschberg. By Epiphany they began to rebuild their farms. The landlord of the Hunts­man’s Inn gave their families lodging. During the win­ter months more than seventy people lived and slept head to toe in the little taproom.

  And Seff’s wife, the poor, pitiable woman, had to suffer her third birth there–in front of everyone. They ignored her request to screen off her bed with a sheet. Men stared at her open vagina; children secretly clenched their fists and then clenched them even more tightly, as if to help the child to push. Some women gazed open-mouthed at the scar on the woman’s face. Then a rumor ran through the taproom. An idiot had come into the world–a Mongoloid, they meant. Poor Agathe Alder, poor Agathe.

  While everyone was lodged in the taproom, the inside of Elias’s head was like a deep and dangerous abyss. All his thoughts fell into a bottomless pit and echoed without reply. He had a high fever, he suffered from sudden bursts of perspiration, and when he woke in the morning involuntary tears flowed from his sleep-encrusted eyes. Then he would crouch in one place without moving. He did not even sniff up the drip at the end of his nose. They often had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him violently until some vague sound finally issued from his mouth. He no longer seemed to be able to hear or to speak. No one knew that he was in shock.

  When, on the night of the crime, the murderers had come into the inn, his body had begun to tremble violently as though he were being thrown back and forth by invisible hands. However much he desperately sought to control himself–he would never have be­trayed his father–it did no good. Involuntary guttural sounds escaped him, and he stuffed half his fist in his mouth, sank his teeth in his flesh so it would fi­nally pass. It did no good. Everyone was staring at Elias. Finally he made himself faint by pressing his arms against his rib cage so he could not breathe. The scene looked very strange, and people assumed that what they were seeing was an epileptic attack and told Seff, who had just come in, to take his boy out of the room. Seff did so and carried him out. The boy’s limp body awoke in his arms. But when Seff saw the boy’s eyes, two ghostly holes, he sensed that Elias knew everything. Seff weakened, and Elias slid from his arms. Then he saw black water spraying from the corners of the boy’s mouth. He could not look and stumbled back into the inn.

  There he did something that no one would have thought possible. He, who barely uttered two words in the course of a day, suddenly spoke as hastily and as much as if he were the most talkative man in Esch­berg. He spoke in ragged sentences, ended them with ha
cking hand gestures, stammered and bellowed, and didn’t pause for breath. While he was talking like this, the other men who had come in with him gathered closer and closer around him, and they too began to boom and thunder into the astonished, silent faces of the others.

  They had looked everywhere for the blasted cur, for they knew from witnesses that it had been Mostly who had set fire to the village. For more than six hours they had scoured the gorge, but it seemed that the earth had swallowed him up. Nulf Alder, in the midst of this, thundered that the Antichrist had now vanished forever. So everyone who could walk had the right to plunder the carver’s house. As mayor of Eschberg, he granted them permission. And the murderers hypocritically threatened that Mostly, if he dared to show his face anywhere near their beloved village, would imme­diately get a freshly sharpened ax in his head.

  Elias stumbled along the wainscoting until he got outside. He wanted to dive into the darkness and die. Then a little hand touched his shoulder, and a hushed, broken voice said, “You won’t betray me, will you? You won’t do that. Because then something else will happen.”

  Elias turned around. They both stood calmly. Then, we don’t know why, they ran their hands through each other’s hair and smelled each other’s breath. Peter pointed to his crippled arm, as if to apologize for it. Elias wiped his mouth, moved his lips, and tried to speak. They said nothing. And again Elias’s lips trembled; he had to speak, he had to say at least one word, one word. They said nothing. But Peter felt certain that his friend would never betray him.

  After Nulf Alder had delivered Mostly’s little house over to plunder, a great crowd set off, and within half an hour they had stripped the farm down to a skeleton, like caterpillars with a leaf. All the wood carvings, the beautiful decorations, the many knives and chisels, the wing collars, the eyeglasses, the ceiling work, the shutters, the bedstead, the beams in the floor–everything was stolen. Matthew Alder and Char­coalburner Michel charged their way into the stable at the same time, untied St. Elizabeth, and argued who the cow now belonged to. Matthew was stronger; he pushed Michel into the gutter and dragged the ancient cow outside. Then Michel grew angry, chased after Matthew, and furiously planted his boot in St. Eliz­abeth’s rump. The cow lost her balance, slipped, tumbled down the slope like a heavy sack of flour, broke her neck, and died. Charcoalburner Michel laughed broadly, wiped the dung from his face as though it were honey, and triumphantly yelled in Matthew’s face; “Goddamned whoring shit! She belongs to me anyway!”

  In the weeks that followed the Great Fire, snow fell thigh-high. Then came the cold, then hunger. But the peasants of Eschberg stood together. Those whom the fire had spared shared their milk with those who had been impoverished overnight, baked bread, gave out clothing, spoke encouraging words, and even gave free wood from their own stretches of forest to rebuild their farms. In the January snow those victims who had been encouraged in this way went around uncovering the walls of their farms. Children and wives piled the snow up into great piles, and if anyone suddenly found a piece of furniture that had remained intact, they would show it, shining-eyed, to everyone else. On the south side of the village new tracks were cut into the forest, and those who owned the land did not skimp but let the fattest fir trees fall, harnessed their horses, oxen, and bullocks, and pulled the wood along deep grooves cut in the snow to the northern edge of the district. As winter days are short, they drove their animals on with furious shouts, and the animals steamed in the glitter­ing January air.

  A mysterious generosity seemed to have entered their hearts. Those who had been plunged into misery could not understand why the others were helping them so selflessly. They convinced themselves it was out of gratitude to God for sparing their houses on the southern side. Never had a Lamparter voluntarily gone to the help of an Alder, let alone an Alder to the help of an Alder. Formerly, if someone had stood sweating, baling his curling hay beneath ugly storm clouds, his neighbor would stand behind the window and hope the clouds would break and great sheets of rain would rot his bales. Only when the rain thundered down would he finally run to lend a hand.

  By summer of the same year these suspicions were shown to have had had some justification. It turned out that the generous helpers had kept secret lists, carefully recording every plank of wood, every pound of trout, every loaf of bread, every egg, and every mouthful of cherry wine. Even the pinches of tobacco that had been offered so often and so instantly to the poor had been added up. The day of reckoning came and the creditors demanded every last penny, even if it took years to pay it back.

  In the unhappy Christmastime of 1815 we see Elias wandering aimlessly through the village. He stamps nervously through snowy pastures. His only clothing, his Sunday suit, is torn and ragged. Anyone meeting him grows heavy of heart. He stands there like a young cherry tree whose buds have frozen before they could blossom. Anyone who sees his eyes falls silent, and some think the child’s mind has died. When he wakes up in the inn in the morning, tears run down his cheeks. Then he sits motionlessly counting the slats in the dark, faded wainscoting. He makes up ideas, from one slat to the next. Sometimes it is his idiot brother, when he hears him breathing at his mother’s breast. Some­times it is Seff, whom he is beginning to hate. When the pastures grow again he secretly swears he will not bring in the grass for his father, he will not groom the cows, he will not push the newborn calf’s muzzle into the milk pail, he will not collect the fallen leaves in the autumn. But the nights, the nights when everyone in the inn breathes, clears their throat, murmurs, coughs, whis­tles, and snores, the nights belong to Elsbeth, his beloved, whose life he saved. Then he lies awake and listens to her thin breath passing through her lips. In his thoughts he smells the leaf-yellow hair, he plays with her ears, and he screws his eyes up and tries to count the beats of her heart. His thoughts grow calm. Some­times a twitch in the girl’s body brings perfect peace. Elsbeth’s dreams are filled with nighttime firestorms and pictures in which she looks for her marmalade cat and cannot find it. Then Elias would like to stand up and steal over the sleeping bodies to Nulf’s wife, at whose feet the girl lies. He would like to put Elsbeth’s sweat-cold hand in his warm armpit, he would like to fan her brow, but his courage fails him. So in his thoughts he hums the girl a lullaby. And he is the one who falls asleep.

  ELSBETH AND THE SPRING

  SOON nature decided to invade the mountain pastures with its most sumptuous colors. The burns and scorches healed, and the ash, nature’s favorite tree, grew again, strong and plentiful. Soon the new farms proudly pointed their roofs toward the Rhine Valley, and the dazzling white of their sprucewood fronts could be seen glinting from Appenzell. Those people who had been impoverished by the catastrophe were less given to anger, and from the first thaw the unhappy widow of Eduard Lamparter started paying eager visits to Kun­rich Alder. By the end of the year they were married, and by the end of the year Eduard’s grave was in a shameful state of neglect. Soon the weeping and griev­ing was forgotten. The spring emboldened people’s spirits; at the fair they laughed over their past misfortunes, and on stormy nights they told their families of the wretched ways in which they had seen a bullock or a little child consumed, howling with the child’s voice or outdoing themselves in agonized mooing. However much they indulged themselves in the pleasures of oblivion, the mere trace of the catastrophe burrowed inexorably into their souls and led them for years into the black abysses of countless nightmares.

  The peasants of Eschberg had understood what God had been trying to show them with the Great Fire. So they grew even more stubborn and ceased to conceal their hostility to God and the Holy Church. Nulf Alder in particular, refused a blessing on his gleaming new farm. Where once the household altar had stood he built an alcove, and from now on Nulf Alder himself slept in the Lord’s corner.

  And Johannes Elias Alder had grown into a man. At fifteen his limbs suddenly sprouted, at nineteen he had the figure of a man of forty. He had grown tall, had two well-worked but mature hands, and when the sun bu
rned his face at haymaking time he was covered all over with freckles. The painful task of carrying bales of hay had damaged his spine, and the skin on his body was rough and calloused.

  Elias broke the oath he had sworn against his father. At the first harvest, he helped with the mowing, raked the shaggy pastures, milked the cow, and pushed the muzzles of the newborn calves into the milk pail, and in the autumn he collected the leaves on the slopes and refused to let anyone help him. But he avoided the once-beloved Seff, Mostly’s murderer. Elias had basically broken with his family. His brother Fritz had never meant anything to him, his mother’s misery had never really touched his heart, and he would not have given so much as a sniff if she had lain cold in her bed one day. The only one he loved was his little idiot brother, Philipp. He spent time with him whenever he could, brought him to his room, taught him to walk, showed him a language of sounds and notes that only the two of them understood. And when Elias discovered a fine gift for music in the boy, their love grew all the greater and they were brothers to the depth of their souls.

  But Elias Alder’s face retained all the nervous traits of his early youth. Not a trace of reconciliation had come to his mouth, although he had beautiful, even lips; it was surrounded by wrinkles, and his wide-nostriled, calm nose accentuated the uneasy expres­sion of his face. Although his head was well-proportioned–a rare and striking thing in the village–the bright color of his irises immediately marred the harmony of his face. Compared to the grotesque physiognomies of Eschberg’s human specimens, however, we must describe Elias as a handsome man, and an Esch­berg gossip observed quite accurately that the young gentleman was the very image of Curate Benzer.