by Paul Busson
“Heiner Fessl has refused to listen to the pastor,” whispered a voice near us. “He says the rich and great will surely exercise their injustice in heaven above as well as down here, so that he has no wish to go there. …”
My father suddenly turned round. The voice fell silent.
“The damned rabble,” muttered my father to himself. “It’s a good thing they get an example like this.”
Someone was reading something aloud in a stolid voice, nasal and perfectly indifferent. In accordance with the ceremonial of the period, two chips of wood flew on to the scaffold, fragments of the staff that the judge had broken a second time. Master Hans now stepped across to the condemned man and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. Fessl, hitherto defiant, seemed suddenly to give in.
Straining upward, I saw that he wore a coarse shirt, with black stripes. Often had I seen the man working in his smithy. And I remembered his wife: she had been very young and pretty. Glistening drops of sweat stood out under Fessl’s ill-kempt grey hair. He opened his mouth as though he would say something, and fell trembling on his knees.
“III” he said, but we heard nothing else.
Dum-dum-dum went the drums of the soldiers standing round the scaffold. Then the condemned man staggered back to his feet, passed his hand over his moist and glistening forehead, and stared about him, bewildered. Instantly the attendants threw themselves on him, bore him down and busied themselves with ropes and straps. I saw a leg kick out; then would strong hands pinion it, and it disappeared again. I could hardly breathe for my terror. A woman screamed in a shrill voice. My father snorted heavily. The executioner stepped forward, and in both hands he raised up a wheel with a piece of iron fixed in it, lifted it high above his head, and struck with all the might of his sinewy arms. A shriek,a scream, followed a wail.
“Oh, my God! Oh-oh-oh…!”
The wheel rose again.
“Butchers! damned butchers!” cried an angry voice in the crowd.
Soldiers pushed forward, picked someone out and dragged him away. Screams… screams... I vomited.
“Off with you,” barked out my father.
I pushed and thrust my way through the crowd and then away, away, as fast as I could run.
Chapter Eight
Evenings I had to sit at the long table in the dining hall with my father and wait until he had drunk his measure of spiced wine and smoked two pipes of tobacco. I had to drink the wine, too, although I disliked it and it disagreed with me. Then I would have to proceed along the passageway in which the clock with the skeleton stood, and would hold my hand before my lighted candle, lest the draft blow it out and the old woman spring out of the cupboard in the dark.
If my father had known of my fear, he would have struck up a bed for me right in front of the cupboard, and I would have had to spend my nights there. At the other end of the passageway a steep stairway led to the maids’ quarters.
One night, as I came along, I saw that someone was sitting at the foot of the stairs, asleep. It was Gudel, a dark-haired young girl with bold eyes and pigtails that hung to her knees. When she carried her waterjug on her head, her pointed nipples showed clearly through her dress. Whenever I looked longingly at her, she would laugh, showing white teeth, and posture all the more. There she sat, asleep, clad only in a short red underskirt and a shirt, which left half her shoulder bare. I could see the hair in her armpits. At my step she gave a start, lifted her head, and passed her hand before her eyes. I grasped her arm, which was firm and cool.
“Take me to your room, Gudel,” I whispered hotly.
She smiled and slowly climbed the stairs, swinging her hips. I saw the secret shadows of her legs under the red skirt and a strong aroma as of fresh hay and sweat enchanted me. She slipped into her room, and closed the door on me, but she did not resist very much when I pushed the door open.
“The young master is eager …” she laughed.
I reached for her, and she giggled softly. I lost control of myself, seized her, threw her on the blue bed spread, and wrestled with her.
“If the young master could put out the light,” she murmured.
I released her and with an unnecessarily strong puff blew the light out. There was a rustling in the dark; the bedstead groaned. The bed smelled mouldy, and the smell of onions came warmly to meet me. I forced my knees between hers…
“The Junker is still unskilled,” she laughed again, and pulled me to her.
Her arms were firmly around my neck.
“But we won’t tell anyone,” she said later.
With her work-coarsened hand she stroked my back. Then the door opened. My heart stood still. It was Balthes, the cowherd, with a great horn lantern. Dumbly he looked at us on the bed. Gudel took a corner of the sheet in her mouth. Her whole firm body shook with suppressed laughter. Balthes started an outlandish peasant curse. But then his mouth remained open. Gudel leaped out of the bed and whispered something to him. Balthes’s head sank, he pulled a sour mouth, and scratched himself behind his ear. I remembered that he was said to be Gudel’s sweetheart, and that they were to be married.
“Go, go. You know it doesn’t matter,” she said, pushing him out of the door.
His strong shoulders had something tragic about them, the back of a beaten man. It was dark again and Gudel slid with a soft rustle back into the bed and turned to me. But my desire for her was gone, and I lay still. She kissed me tenderly and sang softly:
“Ey, my brave little knight, Your little horse is snorting; You can trot with it, An hour or two.”
But I pushed her hand away, and said, “What did you whisper to Balthes?”
She laughed. “Curious!”
And she threw herself atop me so that her hair tickled my face. I became angry and pushed her away. She lay silent and motionless.
“What did you say to him?” She shrugged her shoulders and turned away from me in the darkness.
“Gudel, I’ll give you a goldpiece.”
“Yes?” she said in a hard voice.
“Only if it comes as a wedding present. Otherwise, no.”
I did not understand.
“What do you mean about a wedding present?”
“The Gracious Lord made me for it, and I’ve done it, and I’ll do it again, whenever the Master Junker wants a woman. For this Balthes and I will get house and hold of Wildermann’s place.”
Now I understood.
“For this I had to go into the city, to the hospital doctor, where free women lie in, and be examined inside and out to see if my blood was pure. I got a ticket and the Master read it and ordered me to give Master Junker his first ride on the horse with its legs in the air. That is what he said, the Master.”
I sat up in the bed. Suddenly it stank in the narrow room. The air was hardly breathable, and I felt as if I were choking.
“Gudel! Don’t you have any shame?”
I felt as if I had to cry.
“Why should I be ashamed,” she cried angrily. “I’ve had to do the will of His Grace and warm the bed for Herr von Heist at the great hunt. I do what I’m made to do.”
Suddenly she seized me by the shoulders and shook me with surprising strength.
“Spit at me! Hit me! You make dogs out of us, you damned, proud devils. You don’t think a poor woman is any better than a chamberpot for you to ease yourself in when you want to!”
Horrified I sprang out of the bed and hurried to the door. She ran after me, threw herself on the floor and seized my knees.
“Mercy! Mercy! Don’t listen to my chattering, gracious Junker. Forgive me! I’ll make up for it. Stamp on me. But for God’s sake don’t say anything about it to the Master. It would go bad with me. Do you hear, Herr Junker? I made love to you tonight, most gracious Junker …”
“Don’t be afraid, Gudel,” I said.
I couldn’t say any more. She pressed her hot, wet mouth to my hand, but I tore loose and ran quietly and rapidly down the stairs. As I went along the passageway the Dutch clock st
ruck midnight. The closet creaked. I stood still.
“Come on out!” I yelled, and beat my fist against the cupboard.
But everything remained quiet. From above, however, there came a soft throbbing, as if someone were weeping into a cushion.
Chapter Nine
On a Good Friday morning, several years later, I loitered outside the Catholic Church in the town and watched carefully to see whether Lorle was coming. I saw the people going into churchmen, women and children, and every time the door was opened the solemn sounds of the service floated from within. Lorle was the daughter of Holbrich the saddler. She was young, and I had met her in our park, whither she had gone, she said, to see the tame deer and the fallow-buck.
It had happened in the gamekeeper’s hut. I had learnt much of late; I could drink wine like water, ride to hounds, and tumble a girl in the grass. Some of the girls had wept bitterly. But Lorle had only laughed and said:
“It had to happen some day.”
While I waited outside the church a small and tattered urchin came up. Looking at me slyly he asked:
“Are you Baron Dronte?”
And when I answered that I was Baron Dronte, he pulled out from his shirt a little piece of violet-coloured note-paper, handed it to me, and scampered away. By that time I was very angry with Lorle for making me wait so long, and my jealous thoughts caused me to remember that she had cast eyes at my friend Thilo one day when he visited her father’s workshop. I did not care to be seen reading her note in the street, so I entered the church.
Twilight was there, and a number of candles were burning. I noticed that one of the many candles standing on a great triangular candlestick was quenched just as I walked in. The congregation began singing in Latin to a mournful tune.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” they sang, “turn thee to the Lord, thy God.”
I recognised the words. They were part of the Lamentation of the Prophet Jeremiah, which I knew from my Bible. The choirmasters sat motionless in their carved stools on either side of the violet-draped altar. I recognised one of them, Sassen’s cousin, and was surprised to see how gaunt and severe his face looked in the uncertain glimmer of the wax candles and the reflection of the golden ornaments on the walls.
I heard a twittering sound like mice. Two little old women were praying in whispers, bowed down to the ground. The choir began to sing again, beginning with the Hebrew letter gimel, or the camel. The sweet melancholy of the supplicating chant went to my heart. Suddenly I felt myself opening to God. I thought how abandoned I must seem in the eyes of our Saviour, who had suffered the bitter death for my sake, and been scourged, spat upon, crowned with thorns, bereft of His poor raiment and, naked, nailed to the cross. And what was I?
The frivolous letter of a girl I had led astray was rustling in my pocket, and in my mouth was the sour taste of yesterday’s wine. I felt I was becoming more and more evil. I could lash a defenceless valet with a whip and deliberately send old, tired servants up and down stairs for no purpose. Then a vision of Lorle’s face, a laughing face with a snub nose, intruded upon my contrite thoughts, and the memory of her voice made me forget the solemn sounds that came from above. A wanton song hummed in my ear:
“Phyllis has two little white doves And a golden nest.”
But the girl’s pert face faded as another face emerged, pale and pure, surrounded by a nimbus of golden hair like a saint’s halo. It was the face of my dead cousin Aglaia, and I was overcome with a piercing, unfamiliar yearning. Self-contempt assailed me. I had been so unfaithful to her memory that any wench was now good enough for me.
Dark rays seemed suddenly to strike my eyes... And then it seemed to me that among the piously praying crowd that filled the nave a man came slowly forward. Something flashed through me; it was as if burning drops ran from the crown of my head through my whole body. He came nearer and nearer toward me. He looked at me fixedly.
Smooth, dark and handsome was his face; deep and dark, unutterably kind, were his eyes. Between his eyebrows showed a fine red vertical scar, such as I bore in the same place. A small black moustache shaded the upper lip of his soft, nobly-cut mouth. A wide, reddish-brown mantle fell in heavy folds about his gracious figure. His head was bound with a black cloth, and a chain of amber beads hung from his neck. No one in the church seemed to look at him, but everybody made room for him, as if everybody saw him.
“The Lord Jesus,” I stammered, and I clutched at my heart, which was as if it would stop beating.
I felt as if I must throw myself weeping on that man’s breast, deliver myself up to Him, to Him who knew all that tortured and tormented me, that He might save me. He knew the way. His feet had trodden it. But he moved past me with a glance in which I read only sadness. He moved past me. For a moment I stood still, I could not stir. Far away, somewhere in space, sounded the singing and the thunderous notes of the organ. Then I pulled myself together and turned, and ran after him, greatly angering the congregation, which was disturbed and distracted from its pious meditations by my hasty departure.
But when I reached the outside world the square was empty. There was no one to be seen. A tradesman stood at his shop door, and he stared at me in great surprise. I asked him hurriedly about the man in a flowing, reddish-brown mantle. But he only made a grimace, and ventured the opinion that the smell of incense in church must have affected me. I was not accustomed to such nice Catholic smells, he said sarcastically. Those who worshipped the pure Gospel ought to be on guard against all this gold, candle and blue vapour fascination which the priests of Baal were so cleverly able to invoke. A man must take care not to stumble in such a matter, be his birth ever so gentle. Angrily he tossed away his clay pipe against the pavement, smashing it to pieces, then he turned his back on me and disappeared into his shop.
I hastened through every street that opened out of the square, inquiring over and over again about the man I had seen in the church. None could tell me anything about him. Suddenly a thought flashed through me. I remembered the waxen effigy that had saved me in my earliest childhood by beckoning me out of danger when the falling ceiling buried my bed under its ruins. The waxen effigy that we called the Man from the East, Evli. I took Lorle’s letter out of my pocket and tore it into a thousand pieces.
Chapter Ten
I ran around with Phöbus Merentheim and Thilo Sassen, chasing girls and seeking adventures. They both mocked my scruples and laughed at my confidences about the “brown monk,” as they called the Man from the East, and soon I had relapsed into my former life and felt ashamed of myself whenever they teased me. Again I went with them everywhere. We hunted ardently for our love-affairs, we sought all kinds of adventure.
I remember a day when black Diana, the dog, had come running after me as I left my home to join my companions. She barked joyfully, and do what I might I could not get rid of her. For the dog loved me better than anyone else in spite of my harsh treatment of her.
We set out for a house above the vineyards, where lived an old woodcutter who was feared for his rudeness. He had two pretty young daughters, and it was said they knew how to get the money for their fine frocks and shoes from rich but dissolute young gentlemen. Indeed the ragamuffins of the village had often put up a straw man on the woodcutter’s roof, and the other girls drew their skirts aside when they happened to meet the woodcutter’s daughters, so that by no chance would they be contaminated.
It was also said, to the old man’s credit, that when he had time to look after the baggages he would drive their gallants away with a stout stick. Fritz, the burgomaster’s son, an accomplished lecher and womaniser, for example, had been caught by the woodcutter with the pair of them in the woodshed, and had been given such a thrashing that the young gentleman ached all over for days, being obliged to take to his bed and have all kinds of ointments applied to him. Others, however, declared that it was not the woodcutter’s thrashing that had made this treatment necessary, but a well-known illness that Fritz had picked up from an actress whose trav
elling coach he had shared.
We three young men naturally had no desire to meet the unpleasant woodcutter, especially as the house lay outside my father’s jurisdiction, and the Archbishop in whose territory the vineyards lay had a high opinion of the old man, and was only too delighted to hear of his exploits. Therefore we sought to approach the house unnoticed, like a secret patrol, to take stock of the situation. But I found that the dog was very much in our way.
The joy of being with me caused Diana to jump in big, excited leaps around us, and when I forgot to pay attention to her she forced herself on my attention by barking loudly. This annoyed Thilo and Phöbus beyond all measure. Through the dog’s presence our reconnoitre failed completely. When we were quite near the house, and were looking up towards the windows, the dog barked. This attracted the attention of the girls, but, alas, of the old man also. At once he guessed what sort of weasels were prying about his hens. He called us whoremongers and rascals, day-thieves, idle rogues and vagabonds, and promised to pepper us with sufficient burning charcoal to give our lackeys and chamberpot carriers a week’s work with us. So off we skulked down the hill again, full of disappointment and anger.
“Next time we’ll try without you and your stupid bitch, Melchior,” said Thilo.
“The nursery is the place for anyone incapable of mastering such a lousy, four-footed beast,” added Phöbus.
I gave no answer, but was consumed with rage against the unwitting animal. At that moment she jumped at my hand and playfully caught it with her teeth, as though in sorrow. This was always her habit if I scolded her, or when I appeared to be in bad temper. I lost control of my feelings, and bent down to pick up a stone. The dog thought I was starting to play our favourite game of fetch-and-carry, and she made ready to leap, wriggling with joy. I threw the heavy, sharp stone at her with all my strength, and it caught her in the side with a dull thud. The dog fell over, yelping in a voice that was piercing and shrill; and then she cried in barking tones, unable to rise, and staring at me with miserable, horrified eyes.