Brother of Sleep: A Novel Read online

  Elsbeth looked at him, horror-struck, and did not know whether she should be more frightened of him than of the bright yellow of his irises, which she had not seen so close up before.

  “What are you afraid of? I’ve known your voice for ages. It’s a fine voice and a kind one.” And to distract the girl he turned actor and gave her some samples of his talent for imitation. He captured the metallic voice of Charcoalburner Michel so accurately that Elsbeth was soon laughing. And when he gave a precise impression of the curate’s nasal whimpering, she cried out with astonishment.

  “How did you learn that?” she asked, having grown calmer.

  “It’s all a matter of hearing,” he answered proudly. “You too, if you wanted to, could imitate the voices of many women.” And she made him promise that he would soon initiate her in the mysteries of vocal imitation.

  The forest began to thin out. Young reeds grew here and there on the sunlit shores. The Emmer reflected the lush green of the mixed forest, and the water smelled of snow from the Kugelberg, where the source of the Emmer lay. In the course of the year the moun­tain stream had developed various new curves. Elias studied its new course with visible sadness. Where he had sat the previous summer, on a particular patch of the bank, he would never be able to sit again in his life, because the stream no longer flowed past it. The ceaseless transformation in the course of the stream gave him a sense of transience, a sense of his own mortality.

  “You see that big flat stone over there?” he asked Elsbeth, who was looking for a good place to cross the stream.

  “Where?” she asked, rather inattentively, jumping unsuccessfully and ending up with one shoe in the water. She uttered a short vulgar curse, clutched at some willow roots, and managed to return to shore. Elias had put Philipp on his shoulders and crossed the Emmer purposefully and safely.

  “My place is up there!” he cried, as if singing a song of praise. On his shoulders, Philipp emitted a quiet, guttural yelp, for he could sense the joy in his brother’s heart.

  The water-polished stone lay motionless and majestic as always. It looked like the giant fossilized sole of a foot, as if God himself, in time immemorial, had stepped into the world at that spot. Elias advised the girl to rest for a while, brought the child down from his shoulders, opened his frock coat, and spread it out on the rock. They sat down a respectable distance apart, while Philipp cheerfully crept hither and thither between them. For a long time Elias gazed steadfastly at the deep green of the little pond beneath his feet, and for a moment it seemed to Elsbeth that his eyes had assumed a grayish-green color. But it was only the reflection of the stream.

  “So what’s so strange about this stone?” she asked, still out of breath.

  He looked at her, and his eyes slid to her dry lips and down to her bodice, with its crisscross lacing, where her little breasts were outlined. Elias was ashamed of his unseemly gaze and tried to cast his eyes down, but they would not obey him. When he looked at the bare hands that lay impatiently in her lap, his eyes slid farther down to her bare knee, revealed by the open seam of her skirt, and as they glided along the white fluff of her shins, he almost lost his senses. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil! thundered in his head. “It is sinful to gaze upon a woman with lust for her!” he heard the curate preaching in the distance. Oh, he wanted to be a good and honorable husband to Elsbeth! And if God and the saints gave him strength, he would not lust after her as long as he lived. He wanted to show her that true love does not seek after the flesh but devotes itself entirely to the soul.

  “What’s special about this stone?” asked Elsbeth for the second time, tapping him on the shoulder. And Elias woke up and began to tell her.

  “A strange power emanates from this place and always has. Even when I was a child this stone called to me. I listened, rose from my bed, and came here. I knew for certain that this stone is alive. And whenever I was sad it comforted me. You will think me quite mad, dear Elsbeth,” he said uncertainly, “but I think it is from this spot that one reaches heaven. That all the people in our village, when they have died, must come down here and wait until the Lord opens the clouds for them.”

  While he was speaking, a curious silence fell around them. Philipp had grown quiet and gazed milky-eyed at his brother. Elsbeth, too, was staring motionlessly at Elias’s emaciated face. When Elias saw the girl looking at him like that, he felt once more the certainty he had felt in the mountains, when he had had to hold on to the nighttime grass for sheer joy. Only someone who loves can look like that, he thought with happiness. But Elsbeth was looking at him with eyes of admiration and great astonishment. He had cast his spell over her, for she had never heard a man utter such a speech, so skillful, each word sounding like music. Elsbeth was astonished, and Elias thought she had fallen in love with him at that moment. Only someone who really loves can be so cruelly mistaken.

  A cool wind came down the Emmer valley and made Elsbeth shiver. Elias decided to take the path homeward. He gave her his frock coat, and she slipped into it with a smile of gratitude. Philipp, seeing that the coat was far too long for her, picked up its train with his clumsy hands and trotted proudly behind his princess.

  “What do you think, Elias?” Elsbeth wanted to know. “Are there goblins and demons here?” And she hurried to add a story that the schoolmaster had told them in class, to the effect that witches held their Sabbaths on St. Peter’s Rock at midnight. The teacher had told them that an evil woman who lived in Eschberg had been a hair’s breadth away from being burned.

  “I have often come up to St. Peter’s Rock, even at night,” said Elias calmly, “but I’ve never met a witch. It is probably the calls and cries of the animals in the forest that make people frightened.” And then he ad­ded thoughtfully, “Or is it conscience that torments the lonely wanderer, the crime that he committed one day and which may now resound in him with a hundred questions?” And at these words Seff’s face appeared before his eyes.

  Elsbeth did not understand what he meant and said stoutly that God did not allow more evil than one deserved or than one could bear. She was sure that demons existed, but the Holy Virgin Mary had the power to banish them. Her mother had assured her of this.

  They went on talking, weighing the pros and cons of a belief in demons, unaware that a living demon was following them: Peter, with velvet steps. He could not understand what they were saying, but his wretched face was filled with remorse. Could it really be that his sister had fallen in love with Piss-yellow? Again he gazed at Elias’s slim figure, considered his shoulder-length hair, stared longingly down at his loins. On Easter Sunday, he decided, he would bring Lukas Alder to the house. And he thought of how things might turn out for the best.

  The two new friends discussed many things be­fore they returned to their farms in the early evening. Elias was amazed at the girl’s intelligence, and Elsbeth was astonished no less often. On the long way home he sang a song from the Passion, and Elsbeth now joined in fearlessly; indeed, she could not hear enough of the infinite invention of the melodies that he wreathed above and below her line. When he accompanied the girl to the garden fence he revealed to her that he hoped one day to become the organist in Eschberg–later, if work on the farm allowed this and if the schoolmaster Oskar Alder would teach him how to play. In fact, not two days would pass before a happy accident would allow him to display his art to the people of Eschberg.

  In the middle of the night Elias woke from his sleep. He had dreamed that Elsbeth had appeared to him. Her breasts were bare, and she pressed them into his open hands. His hand, which usually rested on his sex when he slept, was now covered with moisture. Elias reached for the tinderbox and lit the candle. Distraught, he looked at the little pool on the sheet. He could make no sense of it. After he had put out the candle, he went to sleep with a calm heart and a great sense of peace.

  Now we must relate what happened during the night of Holy Saturday and the subsequent Easter morning. In so doing, we shall open what was prob
ably the happiest chapter in our hero’s life.

  As everywhere else in the Christian world, the people of Eschberg celebrated the miracle of Christ’s resurrection at midnight. Following the old custom, the curate and the choir processed into the completely dark nave, lit the paschal candle, and passed it carefully from little candle to little candle until the whole nave was brightly lit. To anyone who remembers Curate Elias Benzer at the beginning of our book it would be super­fluous to point out that the burning of candles was naturally the most important part of the ceremony. Indeed, Curate Benzer enjoyed this act right up to its dangerous conclusion, for the candle singed the hair of many a tired young girl or old man. Curate Beuerlein, on the other hand, was happy to rush through the whole business and wanted to get to the sermon hot on the heels of the second Lumen Christi. But he was pre­vented from doing this by Charcoalburner Michel, who had, in the meantime, been made beadle of Eschberg. As we know, the curate was no longer in a position to begin a mass, let alone to end one. What is more, Charcoalburner Michel abused his office as server in a very puerile fashion, slipping into the curate’s missal verses and little poems that were indeed religious but had nothing to do with the liturgical canon. Char­coalburner Michel thus cut short the sermon and intoned the Gloria in his metallic voice. At this point the organ was supposed to enter with the chorale of the Resurrection, with all stops out, but it remained mute. Elias, who was standing on the epistle side, gave a start. For when Oskar Alder embarked on one of his fat-fingered preludes, the young man liked to amuse himself by making up a prelude of his own and comparing the two creations. For him it was the only way to bear the desperate playing of the organist. But now there was silence and a tense feeling of expectation.

  In the meantime the prelude playing in Elias’s head was quite fantastic. He thought of introducing the chorale in the following manner: First the sorrow of the three Marys by the empty tomb would be portrayed in deep gedecht chords. Then the bass would enter with a chaconnelike line, building in a series of seconds to illustrate the effort involved in rolling away the stone. The third part, in jubilantly soaring passages and fanfare chords, brought the certainty that Christ was risen indeed. The melody of the chorale mingled with the intoxication of victory, and the chorale became a broad stream of incredibly audacious harmonies. This harmonic audacity, giving form to the unexpected, to the unbelievable, was supposed to show the doubting Christian that Christ had done the inexpressible: He had risen from the dead. Music of genius!

  But the peasants heard nothing of all this. They began to clear their throats impatiently and to squint up at the loft. Finally, Michel took his courage in his hands and attacked the chorale. So they celebrated Easter Mass a cappella. In vain did Peter pinch Elias repeat­edly in the side and whisper to him that he should finally climb up into the loft. At the very idea, night fell before Elias’s eyes. Was it possible that his hour had come? No, it was impossible!

  Even before the Easter hallelujah, a Lamparter gossip crept out of the church, stalked over to Oskar Alder’s farm, and peered into his sitting room, where a faint little light flickered. There she saw the giant lying on his stomach on the floor; black blood ran from his nose, forming a big pool. Around the giant lay six brandy bottles. Oskar Alder had drunk himself unconscious.

  We have previously described the schoolmaster as an envious man who felt himself to be an important musician. But on one point we must respect this man: he had a profoundly musical soul. He never recovered from the fact that the retuned organ made even the most unmusical ears smart at his errors. A sensitive heart pulsed in his ungainly fist. Oskar Alder perished of this, and we will allow ourselves to anticipate his fate: Fifteen days after Easter his wife found him dead in the barn. He had hanged himself with a calf’s chain. At his feet lay a letter, which, in desperately scrawled letters, stated that he had always wanted to be the perfect minstrel of the Lord, but he and his art had been spurned and so he was now bound for the devil–for the grace of God.

  On Easter morning the whole village knew why the organ had been silent that night. Elias sensed his hour coming. So he sat with Peter in the familiar backmost pew with the ancient tobacco chewers. From there it was but a jump to the organ loft. He waited anxiously–perhaps the schoolmaster might yet appear. But the schoolmaster did not appear, and there was a miserable a cappella rendition of the Kyrie. Then he and Peter ventured up to the organ.

  The faithful were highly astonished when, at the Gloria, the organ burst forth and showed, with jubilant fingerwork, how a Christian might enjoy this day. Elias played a powerful, striding toccata which ended in a five-voice fugato based on the melody of the hymn. But when he came to the chorale itself, no one would sing, so gripped by fear was the congregation. So Elias himself raised his voice and began to sing the Gloria in a powerful bass. Once the moment of fear was over, some voices dared to join in the hymn. But they soon had to stop, for this kind of music made extreme demands on their ears. And giving everything one had at a church service was not the custom in Eschberg.

  Elias was jubilant. He composed an adagio of such delicacy that the cold and clammy hands of the peas­ants grew suddenly warm. He illustrated the chorale Christ lag in Todesbanden in martial motifs and ended with a massive postlude that he had constructed over the sound of Elsbeth’s heartbeat. The peasants left the little church with their souls uplifted. The organist’s music had filled their stubborn hearts with lamblike devotion; uniquely, no one wanted to leave the church before the end. Nor was there the usual crush at the font. Some people suddenly began to behave with unusual propriety, elegantly gesturing with sausagelike fingers to indicate that people could pass, and including in their greetings–hard though it is to believe–words that sounded like French.

  Elsbeth was already waiting at the door, and when she heard the organist coming out of the nave she ran happily up to him. She saw that his face was covered with sweat.

  “What a man you are! I’ve never heard such beautiful music!” Her autumn hair hung gaily around the nape of her neck. Elias leaned forward, dipped two fingers in the font, turned to the tabernacle, and crossed himself.

  “I played the postlude for you alone. Do you know that our hearts beat in the same rhythm? Do you know that we are of the same species?”

  Elsbeth continued to look at him with immensely astonished eyes and could not understand what he had just said.

  “May I accompany the young lady to her father’s house?” Elias asked hastily, for he was frightened by his own words. He offered her his arm, she curtsied with a rustle, and they strutted like that all the way to Nulf Alder’s farm.

  Peter’s eyes peered sharply from the dark nave. He was happy that Lukas Alder was coming back today. And Lukas did come to the house in the afternoon, but Elsbeth had no eyes for him. She could speak only of Elias: How it could be that this man was able to play with such diabolical brilliance? She had no eyes for Lukas. Not yet.

  Our musician’s powerful organ playing made two different people blossom in quite different ways. Cur­ate Beuerlein was one. When he had stepped out of the sacristy, he suddenly had a moment of supreme spiritual clarity. He looked eastward and thought about the miracle of this day. What magnificent sermon had he delivered, for the congregation to fall so silent? How had he managed it?

  And Seff’s wife blossomed, the poor woman gray before her years. She stood at the cemetery wall, craning her head after the couple walking off arm in arm, and her eyelids grew moist. “Is that really my boy? My boy?” she whispered to herself. Then she began to cry and forgot about time. Only when Philipp drummed against her belly with his little fists did she collect herself. She grabbed the idiot child by the hand and hurried homeward. In the evening Seff heard his wife singing in the stable. She was singing the songs of her girlhood again.

  Only one person could not be of cheer. His heart was filled with melancholy, and the resolve to die ripened in him like a dark red apple. It was the village schoolmaster, Oskar Alder, whose fate we h
ave already outlined. He sat motionless by the stove, smoked huge quantities of tobacco, and could not torment himself enough with the tales of the Lamparter gossip, who had immediately returned to the schoolmaster’s house after the new organist’s wonderful performance. And the gossip sang the praises of the Easter miracle with an endless hallelujah. Eschberg had produced a great organist. One day people would come from far away, they would tear shavings from the shutters of the Alder farm and say, ‘See? I have a wood shaving from the home of the father of the great Elias Alder!’ It was things of this kind that the gossip said, and the gossip would not have stopped showing her delight, had Oskar’s wife not finally, furiously, shown her the door.

  So much might be said about this time, which was a time of supreme happiness for Elias Alder. How the village held him in the highest esteem, and the peasants gave him not only the office of organist but also that of school headmaster. How he dazzled one and all every Sunday with his art. How he entered into a lifelong friendship with Elsbeth. How he began to love her more and more passionately as the days passed, with­out ever telling her of this passion.

  But envy never sleeps, and soon loud voices were trying to disparage the organist’s powerful playing. He played too long and too loudly and his music was pointlessly complicated, they said in the Huntsman’s Inn. This bad feeling reached a peak on the Day of the Dead, when Elias came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the piece to illustrate the suddenness of death. An icy shiver ran down the peasants’ backs, for they understood what he meant. They didn’t do things like that in Eschberg, frightening good people that way, one of them grumbled. Sicket erat in principus in nunk and semper!

  But Elias was jubilant. He was happy as anything, and when he awoke in the morning, tears of joy flowed from his sleep-encrusted eyes. He loved the springs, he defended the winters, and the autumn was no longer a sign of death. He was sure he had found the heartbeat of his predestined beloved. And one day he said to Peter, “Why must poor humans seek and wander? They dash from one beloved to another, unaware that God has assigned them only one for the whole of eternity. A human being with the same heartbeat as their own! Children! They have no trust and lack the patience to wait until God shows them the place and the time!”