The Man Who Was Born Again

by Paul Busson

  “Nothing,” I said, sternly. “Drive on.”

  “Someone whistled in the wood, or I’ll be damned,” he whispered between chattering teeth.

  But nothing happened. The whistle must have been imagined, or it may have been a bird’s.

  A little further on, as we reached a marshy heathland, he told me about the inn at which we were to stay that night, and which was called the “Bullet Mill.”

  “There are said to be many without clothes or goods, standing with heavy stones tied to their feet, down in the black bog-water among the crayfish, waterbugs and eels,” he babbled, with panic-twisted tongue.

  “Sir, wouldn’t it be as well if we turned the horses’ heads the way we came from?”

  I sternly ignored him. The man heaved a great sigh as he drove on. The country was gloomy and melancholy; we passed many glittering, scowling pools, and countless hoary and knotty old trees covered with unhealthy sproutings. Dead, lightning-stricken tree-trunks extended their wounded serpent-arms as in despair. Crippled willows grew in slimy sloughs, and hungry crows perched on them. Now and again a wild duck flew out of the rushes with a noisy whirring of wings. Sounds as of mournful flutes came sighing on the wind from great distances, and grey misty skies dragged their streaming, ghostly gowns over the tree-tops.

  “This is what men call the Devil’s Gap,” began the peasant again.

  “And that road over yonder, through the young birch-wood, goes to the ‘Bullet Mill’ where we put up for the night.”

  It was a long time before we reached the dark-grey, sullen-looking house. Large stone boulders, overgrown with moss and corroded by rain and snow, lay in pyramids before the doors, and a crumbling and rusty tank still indicated the place where the dammed-up waters of the heath-springs used to work the mill which had long since become an inn.

  The peasant climbed stiffly down from the box, and called out,

  “Hullo! Landlord!” Several times he shouted, but there was no reply.

  All the same, we believed we could hear a wild singing somewhere inside the building, through the windows with strong square bars.

  Only after a last despairing shout did the landlord appear. He was accompanied by a gigantic black and white dog, whose blunt, rough maw was not unlike its master’s. He was a broad-shouldered man, and an enormously long knife stuck out from his greasy leather breeches.

  He stared at us in an unfriendly way and growled to himself.

  “Hullo, Rehwang,” he said, “who are the fine gentry you bring us this time?”

  “The gentleman has a long way to go,” the peasant explained. “And he wants to be put up for the night.”

  “Don’t you know this house yet, you living cow-dung?” the churl shouted. “Why, if the Emperor himself, and the Pope, and all the Electors, and, so far as I am concerned, my Lady Empress and the Archbishop s mistress, were to come here on horseback or in carriages they would find nothing else in the ‘Bullet Mill’ than a bundle of straw in the hall. So let the gentleman do as he likes.” He looked at me malignantly as he finished.

  But suddenly the landlady appeared behind him, as surprisingly as if she had grown out of the ground. She was very frowsy, and as lean and dishevelled as the forest crows that perched on the dustheaps in front of the house. She smiled horribly.

  “Will the gentleman please walk in?” she wheezed, to my surprise. “We have only bedding for a poor man but there is good wine in the house, and plenty of company making as merry as can be.”

  “That is so,” said the landlord, in a somewhat more friendly manner. “But I should like to warn the fine gentleman not to expect anything genteel at this house, and not to drive off in disgust if he sees and hears anything he isn’t used to from his sleeping companions.”

  I gave no answer to the insolent fellow’s coarse speech and walked in. When I opened the door into the drinking-room I stepped into a babel of thundering laughter and screaming, and dense clouds of tobacco-smoke.

  Above the long table hung a finely made, wooden mail-coach and six from the ceiling, with all its appurtenances, but only the size of a toy; six or seven lighted candles in brass candlesticks were fixed on it. Three students were sitting at the table, with swords at their hips and their sleeves rolled up; they were drinking and singing in chorus. The fourth of the carousers was a lank, lean fellow whose head was bald and his hooked nose as red as fire; he wore a threadbare black coat. Sitting on his lap was a dark, bold-looking wench, waving a yellow breast cloth in the air. The black-eyed wench was laughing so hard that her naked breasts struck the old gallant on his drunkard’s nose, and he let out a yelp, and let her go.

  Our appearance attracted a noisy attention. George, the driver, was dragged to the table and given a cup composed of beer, wine, spittle and tobacco, which he had to empty at one draught to the health of the Four Faculties. I was mockingly addressed by the red-nosed fellow as “your honour,” and asked whether I was not aware that when one entered into the presence of illustrious company one must make three bows and a curtsey, or whether I was anxious for a few turns with the rapier. This I might have as well.

  “So you are still going on in this wild way, Bavarian Haymon?” I said, and smiled sadly, as I recognised my former companion in the order of Amicists.

  He sat suddenly with his mouth open, as if he had been struck by apoplexy.

  “I know you well,” I said, approaching him, “though many a long year has passed since I saw you.”

  “Pinch me, Hoibusch, pinch me!” he stammered, drawing one of the students towards him. “It is a ghost - ”

  “Ghost indeed!” I said. “No, it is Mahomet, and no one else.”

  I felt a sort of miserable pleasure in seeing him once again, though the years had altered him pitiably.

  On the sleeve-band of his wretched coat he still wore the initials of our secret motto, cleverly woven in threads of silver: Vivat circulus fratrum Amicitiae - “Long live the circle of the Brothers of Friendship!” I pointed to it with a smile and said: “Vivat.”

  At that he sprang to his feet, crying out to his companions: “Murder - hail - bombs and elements! Kneel down, you stinking foxes! You see an old Amicist before you - Mahomet, who has wiped more blood from his sword-blade than there is in all your vinegary veins! O Brother of my heart! What a race has come to succeed us! Drinking out of little glasses, crying for their mammies when their calf's skill gets scratched, and running with pen and copybook to the lecture hall! Alas for old times, O Amicitia!”

  He threw his long arms round my neck and kissed me noisily on both cheeks, the tears running down from his dim eyes.

  “And now sit by my side, Sir Brother,” he went on, “and let no one open his stinking mouth until Mahomet has told me his glorious life-story. - Hey, landlord, hey, Bärbel, jump up and run and get as much wine as the table will hold. And the driver can drink with us!”

  But George the driver had disappeared.

  The landlord came up quite politely this time, and inquired what would we like.

  I glanced at him with some apprehension as he stood awaiting our orders. In one eye there was a false glitter, the other stood out like a white, blind ball of glass between the half-shut lids. A red scar, formed like an S, crossed from the crown of his bald head forward to his eye and then his cheek, down to his heavy chin I remembered that it was the custom of incendiaries to brand-mark their traitors in this cruel fashion.

  Huge dishes of venison and tankards of wine were soon on the table. Then began a wild carouse. But I drank carefully My heart was full of emotions that had nothing in common with those of my boon companions, and it was rather difficult for me to answer Haymon’s persistent questionings. The three students listened quietly, and the girl stared at me like a cow at a new gate.

  Only when the candles were guttering, and Haymon’s tongue got heavier and heavier, could I persuade him to tell me how his life had turned out. After he had squandered his inheritance he was fortunate to eke out a poor existence as
a town clerk. But continuous drinking had made his hand so shaky that his scrawls became undecipherable, and he eventually lost even this miserable livelihood. He then decided to pay a visit to a former tenant who had become rich. He hoped to get something out of him, be it ever so little; while he was making his way there he had fallen in with the three students whom I had found in his company, and they were now continuing the journey together.

  After wandering for a long time through the savage forest they had come upon the solitary “Bullet Mill” about two hours before my arrival. They were delighted to find a roof to pass the night under, especially as a howling west wind was lashing the earth with growing fury, and everything smelt of rain.

  By the time he had finished his narrative Haymon’s heart was melted by wine, and with much sobbing and weeping he recalled again and again that wild time of youthful folly and extravagance, casting over it the false magic of memory. He thought of it, in the way that men have, as all that was good and pleasant, forgetting its troubles and bitter care. After every few choking words he poured a glass of wine down his lean throat. The three young students spoke only in a whisper during the conversation of their elders. I felt extremely sad. Friendship and youth had departed.

  “Thunder and pox, brother!” Haymon exclaimed again and again, “what fellows we were then! Think of that night when the lanky Heilsbronner gave up his soul in the dirty street. Or how for a wager that brave Montanus emptied the glass boot into his thirsty belly for the last time! O Brother! Fink is also gone, drowned in the Murg, and the Portuguee rotted alive in the hospital at Erlangen. He got such a bad dose from Tagliese, whom he was living with. And Weckler - I don’t remember whether you knew him - is now a prebendary, and has let me know pretty plainly that he won’t have anything to do with me any more. Vanitas, vanitas vanitatum! All gone - vows and brotherly love alike! Hey, Barbel!... Where is the lousy bitch? Bring lights! Must we be thrust into the darkness of hell before our time? The three foxes have money enough to pay for a bundle of candles!”

  At that moment the landlord stepped out from behind the stove, where he had evidently been concealed. He informed us in a rude and peremptory tone that it was time for bed and that there were no candles left in the inn. Only a candle-end was at hand, just enough to light us to bed.

  One of the young students made as if he would say something, but a quiet, nice lad who had taken very little wine and was quite sober nudged him and said in a whisper, but so that I could hear: “Keep quiet, Hans! We may yet want your candles.״

  The churlish landlord took the only remaining candle from the table without more ado. It was scarcely sufficient to last a quarter of an hour. Then he growled: “Who is going to sleep can follow me. Who isn’t, may stay here in the dark.' Nothing more will he served tonight.”

  Haymon was about to show anger, but I took him quietly by the arm and we went out to our places of rest, the landlord, accompanied by his dog, showing the way. We followed him down a long passage whose windows were so dark that they had either been stopped up with planks, or were covered with thick layers of dust.

  Haymon’s drunkenness now began to take effect on him, and I heard him mutter something about a damned town-piper he had wished to kill. I noticed incidentally that my peasant driver was not with us.

  “Where has my coachman been put up?” I asked the landlord whose gigantic shadow moved along the wall by our side.

  “Rehwang?” he growled. “He’s gone home a long time ago with his rag.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I got angry. “How shall I go on with my journey to-morrow?”

  The uncouth fellow halted at the door, shrugging his shoulders. “If the gentlemen had drunk less and looked more after George Rehwang,”he retorted, “he would have stayed with you It’s no duty of mine to bother about such things. And who knows,” he added, squinting at me with his one eye, “you may not be in a hurry to get away tomorrow.”

  I was silent. Then he kicked open the door, and we stepped in and found ourselves in a large empty hall, which at one time must have been a granary. Standing in the middle of the room, strangely enough, was a thick, round column, its broad capital supporting the beams of the ceiling. Five beddings had been placed star-wise on the floor round the column. They were better than we had expected - rough, but with white sheets spread on clean fresh straw, and five red woollen blankets, with a pillow for each of us.

  “We have nothing better than this at the ‘Bullet Mill,’ ” said the landlord, with a show of embarrassment. “The gentlemen must put up with what they get.”

  We assured him that we were content. With ugly smiles and bows he placed the flickering, guttering candle on a stool, pointed to where our scanty luggage had been placed, and bade us all good-night, while his dog growled. We heard him shuffle down the passage; and then we heard him shut the heavy doors with clashing of bars and grating or keys.

  The two students who had been helping the intoxicated Haymon to walk now let him recline gently on one of the beddings. Before two minutes had passed he was fast asleep and snoring, occasionally mumbling meaningless words that were inspired by the wine. As for me, however, I felt an anxious restlessness and a sense of presentiment that kept me awake.

  I took the light and looked around. Dusty cobwebs hung like mourning banners from the old beams of the ceiling. There were three little windows, small leaded glass opaque with dust; they could not be opened. A smell of mould arose from the floor around the pillar. The broad ring on the top of the pillar had been freshly whitewashed, so that it stood out from the smoke-darkened ceiling.

  I saw that my uneasy feeling was shared by the three students. None of them seemed in a hurry to lie down on the inviting bed, or to put aside their swords.

  “This room reeks of old blood,” grumbled the fair-eyed Hoibusch, whom I had liked at table for his soberness and calm. Hans Garnitter, the student who had candles in his bag, agreed, and added: “Only the devil could pass a night here comfortably!” The third, young Herr von Sollengau, who was gradually becoming sober, only nodded thoughtfully.

  The candle was about to go out, so I suggested to Garnitter that he should get a new one from his supply. He obeyed and soon a new candle was burning in the candlestick.

  Cover the window with something, so that nobody can see our light from outside, I advised them, and they did so immediately. Meanwhile I inspected the door. There was a strong bar on the outer side, but it was not possible to fasten from inside. The hinges seemed to me quite newly oiled, and I pointed out the fact to the students.

  “That cur of a landlord has something in store for us,” exclaimed young Sollengau. “There are four of us, though; we cannot count on the drunkard. Still, we’ve got to be on the look-out, for the fellow might easily be working in with Spillermax’s band or the Blue Piper.”

  I said nothing, and went on with my exploration. The floor was of well-beaten clay, the walls were of stone and strong timber, and very old. There was no visible opening in the roof; it consisted of heavy beams, dark with age and exceptionally long and strong.

  Suddenly Hoibusch gave a low whistle, and beckoned to me hurriedly. He was surveying the column. We stepped on to the rustling straw and followed his movements as he groped with the candle. Then we detected something that made us realise all in a flash what Satanical trick was played at the “Bullet Mill.”

  All down me rough stone column smoothly polished stripes were to be seen, as if something heavy had often slid up and down it, and left polished grooves at the places of friction. The students and I made similar deductions from this and we all looked up to the disproportionately large capital at the top. It Stood out brilliantly against the candlelight in its fresh coating of whitewash, and between the capital and the round surface of the column was a narrow space, thus allowing the heavy weight of the capital to slide down the column as soon as it was loosened.

  Our pillows lay round the column within the radius of this heavy weight...

  Haymon h
alf raised himself in his drunken sleep at that moment, opening his eyes and muttering: “Leave me alone, Montanus, can't you leave me alone? I can’t give you back your Maria ducats, brother - so let go, take away your blue hand--------”and then he vomited food and wine and befouled himself.

  “Let’s drag him away from this place of death,” I cried. And we took him by his legs and pulled him away from the dangerous bed. He crawled back while we were taking counsel, and we dragged him away again. Now he seemed willing to stay where he was.

  “Hush!” whispered Gamitter. who was listening at the door. Hastily we put out the light and stayed quiet as mice.

  Light footsteps came along the passage.

  “Bärbel! the treacherous bitch... ”

  “Hush!”

  Someone else was listening at the door on the outside, leaning against it. The wood cracked slightly. Haymon muttered something in his sleep:

  "...pox on you, brother, what a poisonous stench you've got!... No, I won’t shake hands with you; why, you’re as black as hell, you’re a dish for the devil!”

  Someone flitted noiselessly away from the door along the passage.

  Haymon continued to rustle in the straw, kicking at the floor, and stretching himself out with groans.

  Steps were outside again. The students drew their swords noiselessly, and I cocked my pistol. A. cough at the door, a scratching, and again someone slipped away.

  “Now they are sure of it. the murderous dogs.” said Hoibusch.

  Then, without warning, we heard a rustling above our heads and a slight rattle. A hollow, inaudible voice said something. A whirr, a slide, and a whizzing fall---

  Boom!

  It fell down with a tremendous shock, the released capital, fell muffled on the straw!...

  For a moment we heard a convulsive stamping of feet against the earthen floor - here, in the darkness.

  “Light, Hoibusch!” called out the Junker. Ping, ping, went the tinder as it glowed forth; the sulphur-string blazed blue with a corroding smell, and then the candle lit.