Gargoyles
Page 6
A weekend was too short a time for me to be home from Leoben, my father said. We never got around to having a real talk. He himself, he said, could not have a good influence upon my sister, but possibly I could. Quite independently from one another, both of us had been thinking about my sister.
He used to watch her when she felt herself unobserved, my father said—when, for example, she stood musing in the garden, always at the same spot, staring fixedly at the wall of the shed. If he called her, she started and went to her room without a word. In his consulting room she was no help to him at all. She had the greatest dislike for everything medical. “In her I see my helplessness most plainly,” he said.
His science had failed him worst of all in the case of his child, he often thought; the most it had ever given him were faulty predications. Sometimes he took my sister along to visit relatives, but she felt ill at ease in any kind of society.
I shifted his attention to a herd of sheep that briefly appeared on the ridge above the gorge.
As we drove deeper into the gorge, it seemed to me that hundreds and thousands of images were crowding into my memory, and I saw nothing more.
He had to visit the mill owner once a week to drain the pus from the man’s ulcerated leg and change the dressing. It might amuse me, he said, while he was attending to this, to look at the aviary of exotic birds behind the mill. Now, as he mentioned the aviary, I remembered an association I had had with the Fochler mill. A funeral procession had passed by the Fochler mill on its way out of the gorge—I think it had probably come down from Saurau Castle—and the birds, hurling themselves in fright against the bars of the cage and disturbed by the intoned prayers of the people, had continually screeched at the funeral procession.
That had also been a Saturday. I reflected that most funerals are on Saturday. Baptisms, weddings, and funerals are almost always on Saturday.
But how different the mood was when we arrived at the mill this time. Two young workmen (“The sons,” my father said) were loading a wagon with sacks of flour. The turbines were making so much noise that we could not hear ourselves speak. I could not understand what my father said to me before he entered the mill.
The shutters were of black iron. There were no flowers to be seen.
Above the front door the Saurau coat of arms could still be distinguished. This whole land must once have belonged to the Sauraus, I think. Castles like Hochgobernitz always owned mills and breweries.
My father had said that Hochgobernitz was situated on the height overlooking the gorge, but I could not see it.
The men carrying and loading the flour sacks had not noticed our arrival.
The river is so noisy here that you can hear nothing else in the whole gorge.
On the wagon stood a third young man, younger than the two others; he looked like one of the Turks, so many of whom are employed in our country nowadays, and in fact he was a Turk. He took the sacks from the shoulders of the miller’s sons and piled them in regular order on the wagon. He was about my age, but not strong enough for the heavy mill work, which they do in the gorge today exactly as they did it centuries ago. But they produce their own electricity from the water of the river. Built adjacent to the mill, rising halfway above the surface of the water, is a power generator.
It occurred to me that the Turk had probably been in the gorge only for a few days. No doubt the miller’s sons have spent most of their time making fun of him, I thought. I felt sorry for him. But at the moment Turks provide the cheapest labor in our country. That was the only sort they could have hired to work in this gorge. The Turks do the hardest work and put up with everything. He’ll always have a rough time among these people, I thought; unless he promptly leaves, he’s in for years of slavery. They did not give the impression of wanting to make the least thing easier for him. But you’re only imagining that you are the Turk and ascribing your own thoughts to him, I reminded myself. Immediately, I also began relating the Turk to many people in whose field of tension he must exist—it’s always my unfortunate way never to see just one person, the one I am looking at, but everyone with whom he may possibly be connected. Just as it’s my way to look at each thing in conjunction with everything imaginable. I can’t help myself. How destitute the Turk’s life at home must have been for him to end up in this gorge in Central Europe, I thought. The gorge is a cruel betrayal of him.
But probably all this is quite different from the way I am conceiving it, I thought, and unnoticed by any of the three men working I walked around behind the mill, where I imagined the aviary would be.
The cage was even bigger than I remembered it. But it was completely uncared for and held not even half the number of birds I had seen that first time. Have so many of them died? I wondered. The few that were still in the cage, perhaps fifty or so, had fluttered in panic to the rear wall as soon as I appeared. They had no feed and were thirsty. The water bowl by the wall was empty. Everything inside the cage indicated that the person who had cared for the birds was no longer around. Two parrots were shrieking the same words in unison. I could not manage to make out what they were shrieking. I discovered a hose attached to the fountain in front of the birdcage and filled the bowl with water. The birds all rushed to drink. But everything about them was hostile; their plumage was constantly changing color from their nervousness. A madman must have been raising these birds and been destroyed by it, I thought. For a moment I had the impression that a person was standing behind me, and I turned around, but there was no one. I walked rapidly away from the aviary to the front of the mill where the three young men, though the Turk was more boy than man, were finished loading the sacks of flour. The Turk had just jumped down from the wagon; surprised by my presence, he halted for a moment at the wall of the house, looked searchingly at me, then ran like a flash into the mill.
I wanted to get away from the mill and walked along the river a bit, along the deafening stream of water that rushed ruthlessly out of the gorge and toward the mill. But then I told myself that my melancholy mood would only worsen if I walked any deeper into the gorge, and I turned back.
But didn’t mills, of whatever kind, always send me into a pleasant, in fact a happy mood? I thought.
When I looked at the mill, I saw the funeral procession that had passed by here six or seven years before, one of the most pompous I had ever seen.
If I had to stay in this gorge I would suffocate in no time, I thought. And to think that anyone here could hit on the idea of raising exotic birds.
Now I felt the need to be with my father.
Approaching the mill, I mused that it was associated to this day with counterfeiters and murderers, though all that lay more than a century in the past. The most evil deeds could be conceived and carried out easily in a place of this sort, I thought; and all at once I felt how uncanny the two miller’s sons were, as well as the young Turk. Why had these people brought this young Turk into the gorge? What crime were they nurturing?
After I had studied the Saurau coat of arms over the entrance, I quickly entered the vestibule. The voices I heard in the house promptly gave me my bearings. I paused at the right-hand stairway when one of the two miller’s sons suddenly called me from behind. He asked me to come with him, and I went out again.
The gorge was now even darker than before, although its atmosphere is always as lowering as before a thunderstorm. These people live continually in this thunderstorm atmosphere, I thought, following the miller’s younger son to an outbuilding. Too rapidly, I crossed a rotten plank over the river behind the miller’s son, fearing at every step that I would lose my balance.
At first I saw nothing in the outbuilding. But then, when I had become adjusted to the darkness and the curious smell, a smell of flesh, I saw lying on a long board across a pair of sawhorses a heap of dead birds. They were from the aviary, I saw at once, the finest exotic birds. The beautiful colors nauseated me. These slaughtered birds were in fact the most beautiful specimens from the cage, and I turned around to t
he miller’s son with a questioning look.
All three of them, he said, he himself, his brother, and the new young Turk who had been working in the mill only for a few days, had gone to the cage first thing in the morning, even before sunrise (But a sunrise in this gorge is impossible! I thought). They’d taken half of the birds, the finest first, and killed them with as little damage as possible to their precious plumage. How? They had wound the birds’ necks rapidly around their index fingers several times and squeezed the heads. I counted forty-two birds all together. After they were through with the day’s work, they were going to finish off the rest, the miller’s son said. His uncle, he said, had started raising birds about twenty years ago and lived only for those birds. He had died three weeks ago, and the birds had begun raising a terrible racket. It was driving them half crazy. At first they thought that the birds’ screeching over the death of their protector would let up after a while, or stop entirely, but they had been mistaken. It had only grown more and more unbearable. “You have to realize,” he said, “that that sort of noise sounds a hundred times louder in this gorge.” It was nothing you could get accustomed to, and you couldn’t ask a person to endure it. So yesterday their father had told them they could finish off the birds to shut them up. They had done a lot of thinking about the mode of execution, and finally had hit on the idea of not chopping off their heads like chickens, but doing it so there would be no sign of outward damage. That way they wouldn’t have to part with the birds, the miller’s son said. They’d all grown used to those marvelous birds, even though they weren’t completely daft about them the way their uncle had been. They intended to stuff the birds themselves and fill a whole room, their dead uncle’s room, with them.
He’d had the idea of setting up a bird museum at the mill, the miller’s son said. It hadn’t been easy to get at the birds. When they started taking the first birds out and twisting their necks, the shrieking had increased, of course, but then it had gradually come to a stop. By the time they were done killing this batch, the rest had fallen totally silent.
Now I understood why the birds had been so frightened when I approached the cage, for from the very first moment I had thought that the birds were reacting unnaturally.
Their faces were all scratched up from capturing the birds, the miller’s son said. But now, with their experience, they would be able to process the remainder much faster and more easily that evening, and by tonight they would have perfect peace.… At first his father had thought of selling the birds alive to a collector, he said, but to find such a collector would have taken too much time and in the meanwhile they would probably have gone out of their minds. It was hard to get to a taxidermist, too; that was why they wanted to stuff the birds themselves in their leisure time. His uncle, the miller’s son said, had had nothing in his head but those birds. He had left a vast number of notes about his birds; undoubtedly they’d be valuable for a bird specialist. (“We’re all fond of making notes!” the miller’s son said.) The miller’s son picked up one of the handsome birds and held it high, so that we could see it well, and described its fine points. The young man apparently knew a good deal about exotic birds, I thought. Possibly all the inhabitants of the mill had concentrated on those birds. He was able to identify them all correctly. Some, he said, came from Asiatic countries, others from the Americas, and still others from Africa. Most of them, however, were Far Eastern island birds, with not a single one from Europe, he said. His uncle had often sat in the aviary for hours, but none of the birds had ever attacked him. They all had names like Kalahari, Malemba, Mitwaba, Ching-tou, Koejijang, Amoy, Druro, Drirari, Cochabamba, Carrizal, and so on. He said he knew the most remarkable facts about birds from the hundreds of ornithology books piled up in his uncle’s room.
But I could stand it no longer in the outbuilding where those dead birds lay on the board as on a bier. Above all the smell made it impossible for me to stay any longer, and I went out. I distracted the miller’s son, and thus myself, from the dead birds by starting to talk about life in the gorge. Did he know Prince Saurau? I asked. Yes, of course. Sometimes the prince unexpectedly came down into the gorge and visited the mill. He would sit down and say “incredible things.” He always came on foot. When there were parties in the castle, they could be heard down in the gorge, the laughter and music and the shouts of drunken people. But of late there had no longer been any parties at Hochgobernitz, the miller’s son said. The prince was keeping more and more to himself. They had received the mill as a gift from a Saurau who died in the last century. One evening at the castle the prince had made a wager that he would give the mill away directly if he could not shoot a certain twelve-pointer next day in the gorge. He had not shot the twelve-pointer and had forthwith given the mill to the Fochlers, who had been working it for two hundred years. “When the Sauraus make a promise, they keep it,” the miller’s son said. I remembered that my father had said the prince was as crazy as he was rich. My father came out as I approached the front door again with the miller’s son. The miller’s son laughed. Seeing him laughing that way, I also saw him making pseudo-geometric movements with his hands, the movements of twisting birds’ necks.
We now drove deep into the gorge. At its end, where it was darkest, my father said, we would leave the car and walk up to the castle. It was a rather dangerous path, hugging the left wall of the cliff, but he was used to it and I was young and athletic enough to walk it without fear. The prince expects my father every other Saturday. From the castle you could look down over the whole beautiful countryside, my father said. There was no other point like it in all of Styria for seeing the lay of the land. You could see all the adjacent provinces of Austria from Hochgobernitz, and toward the southeast you could look as far as Hungary. There was a good road leading up to the castle from the other side, but to reach it we would have had to make a detour of more than fifty miles by way of Planhütte.
As we approached the end of the gorge, we talked about the Fochler mill. My father described the miller as a heavy-set man of sixty who was simply rotting beneath the skin; he lay on the old sofa all the time, could no longer walk; and his wife, who to judge by the smell of her mouth was undergoing rapid degeneration of the lobes of her lungs, had water on the legs. A fat old wolfhound ran back and forth between the two, from her sofa to his and back again. Were it not that fresh apples were kept heaped in all the rooms, the smell of the two old people and the wolfhound would be unendurable. The miller’s right leg was decaying faster than his left; he would never stand again. “When a funeral procession moves through the gorge,” my father said, “it’s uncanny.” So he too had once witnessed a funeral in the gorge. The miller’s wife could stand on her legs only for a few moments at a time. The two of them lay in their room almost all the time and occupied themselves with their dog. The animal, because it never went out of the room, was absolutely dangerous in its derangement. One of the two, the wife or the husband, had to hold it whenever my father entered their room. Because of the screeching of the birds in the last few weeks the dog had gone racing back and forth between the two people “like mad.”
By disposing of the birds the people at the mill hoped above all to calm the dog, and thus the calm themselves. The miller had told my father that he had ordered the birds killed off chiefly because of the dog’s condition. Both of them, the miller and his wife, had alternately been holding the dog’s leash day and night. Since they had been condemned to their room for months by their illnesses, they had gradually lost control over their sons. The elder, whom the miller described as prone to violence—he had often hit his mother and threatened to kill both of them—had once attacked his father with a hoe and severely injured him. The boy who had shown me the dead birds in the outbuilding was a weakling, completely at the mercy of his older brother. All the people in the Fochler mill were feeble-minded, not insane, my father said.
At present one of the miller’s wife’s sisters was running the household. She was in Knittelfeld today.
I said that the “weak son” had shown me the dead birds in the outbuilding. It was curious, I remarked, that we should have come to the mill on the very day the birds had been killed, or rather were being killed.
All the while we were there, I said, I had been reminded of the funeral I had seen on my former visit to the mill.
Even the Fochlers had heard about the killing of the woman in Gradenberg—the murder, they kept saying. But my father had deliberately refrained from saying that he had been involved in the case.
A notary from Köflach wanted to buy their mill, my father said. To make a summer resort (!) out of it. The miller and his wife had mentioned the matter, but they had no intention of selling.
That was good spring water they had at the Fochler mill, my father said. Then he added: “There is an oil painting in the old Fochlers’ room.” He would guess it to be between three hundred and fifty and four hundred years old. It was not a painting of saints, he said. On the contrary, it represented two naked men standing with their backs to each other but their heads “completely twisted, face to face.” He had long admired the painting, he said, and had always associated a great variety of “rather gruesome” ideas with it. “If you take it down from the wall where it must have been hanging for hundreds of years and get it out of that horrible room and put it against a clean white wall, all its beauty would come out.” The painting was absolutely ugly and at the same time absolutely beautiful, he explained. “It’s beautiful because it’s true,” my father said.
In many Styrian houses, he went on, especially places steeped in darkness, as in that gorge, valuable works of art had been discovered and brought to light in the recent past. They were all gone by now. Gripped by a mania for antiques, city people had systematically robbed the whole country of its art treasures in recent years, and left behind a proletarian wasteland.