Rivers

by Martin Michael Driessen

  Konrad had never experienced anything like this before.

  “The bottom one has to be pried loose!” Julius shouted, and waded into the creek, his pike poised for action. He underestimated the force of the water. Of course there was no getting the tangle of timber to budge; one would have to wait for the reservoir to run dry before unraveling this mess, which meant hard and needless work, only to wait till the next opportunity to run the logs.

  Just then, Benning came down the hill, a lanky, knock-kneed figure in a floppy felt hat. He had light-gray eyes—so pale that they were nearly colorless—large reddish sideburns, and a devious face. Benning owned less woodland than Durlacher, but earned more from it. He had already been fined by the Landgericht in Schweinfurt for bribing a weirmaster to give his timber priority in being floated to the sawmills.

  “Problem here?” he asked blithely. “Can I help?”

  “Help?” Julius screamed. “This is all your doing. These trunks are more than seven meters long. Four meters eighty is the maximum, according to the rules.”

  “Aha, so Herr Gymnasiast has done his homework. Now, my boy, no Bavarian bureaucrat tells me what to do. Longer logs are more lucrative, plain and simple. And I thought: With a fellow like Konrad manning the gorge, everything’ll be fine.”

  “So you think you can use men in my father’s employ to drive your illegal timber?”

  “Who says it’s mine?”

  Konrad and Julius turned their attention to a long pine that spun like a barrel without moving from its spot. There was no visible timber mark.

  “In that case,” Julius said, “they belong to no one. I’ll just hammer in my father’s mark.” He took the stamping hammer from his belt and with a forceful blow, set Durlacher’s mark, a D with antlers above it, into the log.

  “Get your paws off my timber!” Benning bellowed.

  But Julius ignored him and continued hammering.

  Benning knocked his cap off.

  Julius hammered his father’s stamp into the next tree trunk.

  Benning waded after him, grabbed him by the neck, and threw him into the water.

  “Mr. Benning!” Konrad called.

  “Stay out of it, boy,” Benning replied without looking up. The tails of his long gray coat floated on the surface. “This is a matter between Durlacher and me.”

  Julius resurfaced, his blond hair stuck to his head. Benning took the hammer and threw it onto the bank.

  “Had enough? Is it clear who’s the boss around here?”

  Julius was utterly shocked, nearer to tears than laughter, but he did not capitulate. Benning shoved his head underwater, as if drowning a cat.

  Konrad picked up the hammer and said, “Let go.”

  Benning ignored him and maintained his grip.

  Konrad swung with all his might, as though chopping down a tree, and struck Benning just above the knee.

  On the sixteenth of May, all the men had assembled in the Wallreuth tavern following the annual procession in which the statue of Saint John of Nepomuk, the patron saint of skippers and rafters, was carried through the village. To be chosen to carry the statue was an honor and afforded the bearer a certain status. Nepomuk was made of sandstone and was hefty indeed. The bearers wore white shirts and wreaths of silvered oak leaves. Konrad wore that garland this year for the first time. Not so Julius.

  Hinzpeter, who could not seem to get his beer stein replenished, despite him having laid it on its side in the customary manner, said, “If you lads order me a Weizen, then I’ll tell you something most interesting. I heard it from the housemaid of the doctor who amputated Benning’s leg. But I’m dying of thirst.”

  “I’ll pay,” Julius said, and gestured to the innkeeper.

  Hinzpeter drank and took his time.

  “Well, what did she say?” Julius asked impatiently.

  “She said . . . that the doctor said . . . that on Benning’s leg . . .”

  “What?”

  “That on Benning’s broken leg, just above the knee, there was an enormous bruise. And that bruise had a very remarkable shape. It was a timber mark. The letter D with antlers above it.”

  The company fell silent. Hinzpeter lay his beer stein back on its side. All eyes were fixed deferentially on Julius.

  Julius and Konrad glanced at one another.

  Julius’s eyes glided over Konrad’s as lightly as water glides over stones, and he said to the others, “Yes. That’s so. I had no choice. Anyone who tampers with our timber will have me to deal with. I felled him with my father’s hammer.”

  It was March and the Wilde Rodach, running high from rainfall and thaw, did its name justice. Whereas for the rest of the year it was no more than a creek, and at times had so little water that the cattle had to go all the way down the banks to drink and a child could jump over it, it was now at its prime, a broad and mighty river. It stormed through the Franconian countryside like a regiment in gleaming armor, eager to be united with the larger division of the Rodach and then that of the Main; it picked up the hastening troops of the Thiemitz and the Lamitz, and carried them along in a triumphant march to the Rhine and, finally, the open sea.

  As soon as the water began to rise, the number of women praying at the sandstone statue of Nepomuk increased. But having watched her eldest son drown on his very first turn as a raftsman, still in town, near the weir beyond the bridge, Konrad’s old mother no longer prayed to Saint Nepomuk, but only to the Virgin Mary herself.

  The water continued to rise. These were stormy spring days, and dark clouds followed the water’s westward path. The largest trunks, intended for Würzburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Holland, began their journey.

  Durlacher’s logs waited three miles upstream, on the open spot on the bank where the horses had dragged them.

  The men waded in the calm, ice-cold brown water in between the soggy grass and the rushing current, lashing the huge trunks together into rafts. These consisted of seven, nine, or eleven trunks—the longest, called “the king,” in the middle, and the rest in descending lengths on either side. Even though he did not have hip boots, Konrad waded into the water to help.

  By afternoon the rafts were assembled.

  Durlacher climbed onto his horse, a dappled white mare that had been dozing in the bushes all morning. “Schramm, you’ll go first. Then Hinzpeter. Then the Halders. We’ll come back for the rest tomorrow.”

  “Gotts Noma,” said Schramm—this was Franconian for “in God’s name”—as they pushed his raft into the current. The silver-crested stream pulled it along; old Schramm with his long peavey seemed hardly fit enough for the task, but he had done it for more than forty years without a single accident.

  “Gotts Noma!” cried Hinzpeter and, as always, steered his raft downriver with nothing but his feet, like a circus acrobat on the back of a dark-colored horse, his pike nonchalantly in one hand, the other hand holding his cap high against his side, as he full-throatedly sang, “Ich bin der Fürst der Wälder.”

  “Go on, Georg and Michael. And mind, you’re standing atop a fortune. Watch out for the rapids just beyond the ruins—it’s a nasty spot and things have gone badly there before.”

  “Yes, sir,” the brothers answered, as though from a single beard. “Gotts Noma.”

  “Konrad,” said Durlacher, “you bring the equipment down. I don’t trust Benning’s men. I’ll see you in the village.”

  “Yes, sir,” Konrad said.

  Durlacher’s mare cautiously began the descent. Her rider attentively followed every swing of her bony haunches.

  Konrad ran down the path to the ruins, at the most dangerous bend in the river. He threw down his bundle and pushed his way through the thicket. The water glinted through the dark pine branches. He was just in time to observe how Hinzpeter took the rapids: maneuvering almost nonchalantly, he stepped from one trunk to the other, steering with his weight. The raft shot into the mass of churning water, the back end fanned up out of the foam like the tailfin of a huge fish, and
for a moment it appeared as though Hinzpeter, submerged up to his hips and his peavey raised level above his head, traveled upright through the water as if by magic. The raft resurfaced, water ran off the timbers as if from the flanks of the Nautilus that had braved the depths. Hinzpeter waved briefly with his cap, then put it back on, as though to acknowledge the applause of an unseen audience.

  Konrad slung his gear over one shoulder and ran further down the path to follow Hinzpeter’s journey. He panted and was dripping with sweat. In front of him, on the narrow wooded path, Durlacher descended slowly on his horse.

  It wouldn’t do to overtake his boss. He slowed his pace and followed the rider and horse. He noticed that the mare was missing a horseshoe. Her yellowish tail swept back and forth, right in front of his face. Durlacher had stuck his feet deep into the stirrups and was smoking a cigar. Their descent was torturously slow. Konrad adjusted his pack. Meanwhile, Schramm, Hinzpeter, and the Halder brothers sailed down the river, out of sight.

  “You all right?” Durlacher asked, half turning back, a hand on the cantle. “Cora can carry some of it, if you need her to.”

  “No, thank you, sir,” Konrad replied, “I’m fine.”

  As soon as the path widened, he asked, “Mr. Durlacher, may I pass? I’d like to watch them sail into town.”

  “Oh?” Durlacher said, kicking Cora’s flank with his boot until she moved off to the right.

  Konrad sidled past them.

  “I’ve got a pair of hip boots for you,” Durlacher said. “You can sail with Schramm until Hallstadt.”

  Konrad couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Actually, I’ve got enough rafters already,” Durlacher added gruffly. “This is Julius’s doing.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Konrad said.

  “Let’s see if you’re up to the job. Schramm will fill me in later. There’s no room for you on the wagon, so you’ll have to walk back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Konrad said. No distance that he’d be allowed to raft was too great to walk home.

  “I don’t know if the boots will even fit you. Might be far too big.”

  “No problem, sir. I can pack them with wool. Thank you ever so much.”

  Konrad burst into a run, the hammers and axes dancing on his back and the saws swinging in his hands.

  Just as he emerged from the woods, the Halder brothers were mooring their rafts.

  Although Konrad was, according to his mother, the handsomest boy in all of Wallreuth, the girls would not give him the time of day.

  Who would marry whom was a foregone conclusion. The May festival, where the village youth swung around the linden tree to the sound of the drum, violin, and bugle, was simply a public confirmation of what had already been settled upon. The prettiest girls married up, and the others had to settle for any man they could get. And Konrad was destined to be one of those men, even though he danced as well as Julius.

  Julius was now enrolled at university, the first young man from Wallreuth to have made the grade. He wore an elegant gray suit with a white carnation in the buttonhole, and took turns dancing with all the girls in the village. He played the “man of the world” with consummate charm; the tittering girls swooned in his arms and allowed him to lead the dances, even though they knew full well that the Durlacher heir was destined for someone above their station.

  There was even talk of an aristocratic fiancée, and someone said that they’d heard he was to go to America.

  Konrad reckoned that, if nothing else, he would probably end up marrying Evchen. She was blind in one eye and tended the geese. He didn’t even know if she could cook or was capable of carrying on a conversation.

  They released Schramm’s raft, which was still tethered to the shore, and it plunged sideways into the current, like a playing card being flicked into play.

  “Only do anything if I tell you to, boy,” old Schramm said over his shoulder. He undid the ropes and pushed off. “I’ll be happy if you just don’t fall overboard. Can you swim?”

  “Never tried,” Konrad replied.

  He stood, legs apart, at the center of the raft. The pike he held flat in his hands was as wide as the river.

  Schramm took his time lighting his pipe, the smoke wafting in Konrad’s face. The raft glided down the middle of the river, as stable as a floating house. The girls on the shore waved to them. His mother had stayed home. They approached the bridge. The stone vault arched above them, dark and moss-covered; the sounds changed, the rush of the river was reduced to an echo, and Schramm used his pike for the first time, guiding the raft’s tip away from the brickwork. The raft leaned forward, righted itself, and glided further. They were now past the spot where his brother had drowned. It had gone by so quickly that Konrad didn’t even have time to check whether there were onlookers on the bridge.

  Schramm glanced back and said, “You all right?”

  Konrad stuck up his hand jovially, as if to say: “Of course I’m all right, what did you expect?”

  They came to a spot where the river widened and flowed with apparent calm between high, wooded shores, like a frothy-mouthed horse champing at the bit but holding back for the time being. The horse’s strides became longer as the valley opened up and the woods made way for meadowland. Far ahead of them, the Halder brothers sailed on an even larger raft, and, with no need to steer for the time being, they had sat down.

  The clouds spread across the sky, as though they, too, wanted to make the most of the open space. On the horizon Konrad saw the steeple of a church he’d never seen before, and thought: I’m further from home than I’ve ever been. But it might just be the way the river meandered. They couldn’t be that far from Wallreuth yet, because just then he spotted Evchen, the girl who tended the geese. She sat leaning against an alder, or rather, she lay there, probably asleep, her skirts hitched up to her waist and her legs spread. Her geese were more watchful than she—they scuttled about, necks extended, issuing cautionary honks. Evchen sat up, a twig in her hand. She looked their way but did not appear to see them. Maybe she was even blinder than he thought.

  “Hardly sees a thing anymore,” Schramm said, and whistled with his fingers.

  Evchen walked to the shore and stood up to her bare ankles in the mud, surrounded by squawking and hissing geese, twisting their heads in unison to keep an eye on the raft. She, too, looked to one side, but with her blind eye toward them. She was distracted because Hinzpeter, who drifted about a hundred meters behind, had also whistled and made an obscene up-and-down gesture with his hand on his pike.

  “Evchen! It’s me, Konrad!” he called. “I’m sailing to Hallstadt!”

  Now she looked in his direction and raised her hand in a curious gesture, as though blessing something without quite knowing what it was.

  “She can talk, you know,” Schramm said, “but she almost never does.”

  “I’m sailing to Hallstadt!” Konrad shouted again.

  Evchen turned toward him, unresponsive and motionless in the mud. The raft moved swiftly onward, and her face became like an illegible sign in the distance.

  They arrived in Kronach that same evening. There was a bridge with three arches, much bigger and higher than Wallreuth’s, but the passersby did not lean over the parapet to watch the rafts pass. Schramm said that this was an everyday sight for the townsfolk. The houses were like palaces, their endless rows of gray roofs obscuring the hills on which they were built. Konrad thought there couldn’t possibly be another city in the world to equal this one.

  “Is that the gymnasium?” he asked, pointing to a building far up on the highest hilltop.

  “No, blockhead,” Schramm laughed. “That’s Rosenberg Fortress.”

  The rafts were moored in a long row along a towpath just outside town. They had brought blankets and provisions and would sleep on their rafts. Twilight fell, the first stars already visible. They were the same ones he had seen the night before, so they couldn’t be all that far from home. The row of trees along the towpath blocked the vie
w of the city. The other men headed into town and instructed Konrad to keep a close eye on things. Hinzpeter tied on a red kerchief, and the Halder brothers wore hats that looked ridiculously small on their large heads.

  “And remember,” old Schramm called out, “don’t go dozing off. There are gypsies about!”

  Konrad sat down on a crate, and to kill time he started whittling a figurine out of a piece of wood. First he thought it would be a Madonna, but the more he whittled, the more it began to resemble a goose. That would be tricky. The neck had to be long and slender, and the wood was not very strong.

  He was alert, should gypsies turn up, even though he had no idea what they might look like. Sounds wafted over from the city, but they were too far away to distinguish, although he thought he heard music now and then. The gurgling of the water that flowed between the logs, the plash of a carp: this, for now, was all he heard of the wider world.

  It took Konrad four days to hike the distance they had traveled by raft in as many days. If he lost sight of the river, he asked for directions to Wallenfels, because of course no one had ever heard of the hamlet of Wallreuth. He had slung the hip boots that Julius had arranged for him around his neck. It was the longest journey he had ever made on foot, but he wasn’t proud. He was headed in the wrong direction. The Rodach flowed toward him on its way to the faraway lands on which he now unwillingly turned his back. More rafts sailed downriver; he watched them with regret, like a pilgrim who sees others on their way to the destination he failed to reach himself. Each step was a step toward the past. The river left the somber Franconian forests behind, but he would be heading back to them.

  Konrad was a strapping young man, long-legged and broad-shouldered; he cut such a fine figure in the high hip boots and the dark vest with the double row of shining buttons—the typical dress of a rafter—that a painter from Bayreuth once asked him to sit as a model. Like Hinzpeter and Schramm, he wore an earring. Rafters believed that wearing it kept the eyes sharp—and, of course, it also distinguished them from the other Franconians. Once on the water, as soon as he’d left his birthplace behind him, he would tie a red kerchief around his neck.