by Sam Apple
To overcome the absence of fences, the shepherds of the time devised a technique that Hans calls “near herding.” The common English term is “tending,” but it is also sometimes called the “living fence” technique, because the dogs’ obsessive patrolling of the flock's borders cages the sheep in just like a fence. Shepherds had already been using dogs for driving and gathering their flocks for centuries, but the living fence technique transformed shepherding from a lifestyle into a science. Never before had the dogs been able to maintain a large flock with such precision; never before could a sheep be expected to behave itself while standing just a few feet from a field of turnips. This shepherding revolution never caught on in most of the world because there was no need to bring the sheep so close to forbidden fields, and now very few people outside of Germany know how to make a fence come to life.
I discovered the effectiveness of living fences later that afternoon as I attempted to make my way to Hans along the side of the flock. Before I was halfway to Hans, a car appeared on the horizon, and I found myself standing along the border between the sheep and the car lane with Mohrle, the very same Mohrle who had attacked a sheep the previous day, racing toward me with bloodlust in her eyes. With no other option, I skirted into the middle of the pack.
To my surprise, the sheep seemed unfazed by my presence, and when I looked up at Hans, he too appeared un-bothered by the sudden turn of events. And so I walked along with the others, the denim of my jeans brushing against the wool of their coats with each step. Despite my discovery that swarming flies are an integral part of flock culture, I enjoyed being part of the gang. Wherever we were headed, we were headed there together. After several minutes of internal debate, I let out a soft, self-conscious baaah and looked around to see if the sheep had taken notice. They hadn't.
Then, standing in a sea of wool, my imagination took off. I envisioned the sheep as European Jews being led to the slaughter. Indeed, for the lambs, I thought, it was a genuine death march. And as I watched Mohrle harass and bite the sheep on their hind legs, I couldn't help but think of her as the Nazi guard. This wasn't entirely my craziness. The comparison of Europe's Jews to sheep walking to the slaughter is well known, the preferred metaphor of some Zionists who saw the unwillingness of most of the Nazis’ victims to fight back as a sign of weakness. I find the comparison offensive, but the image didn't fade quickly. For those next few minutes the sheep were Jews.
I grew so lost in thought that I became oblivious to the hundreds of sheep and flies around me. When the traffic cleared, the sheep spread out across the road like a stream opening into a river, and I made my way to Hans, the bottom of my stick scraping the pavement.
Eight
Vienna, 1968
In the spring of 1969, Hans decided he could no longer live at home. He threw a few shirts into his rucksack, grabbed his toothbrush, and headed out. His father stood blocking the door.
“Get out of my way,” Hans said. He was fifteen. He had hair down to his shoulders and black-framed glasses and a jacket with a white peace symbol painted on the back. Georg didn't move.
“This isn't a jail,” Hans shouted. “You can't keep me here.”
Georg didn't move.
Hans took a step toward his father. Georg was thin and wiry but strong. He looked down at his son. “You're not going anywhere,” he said.
It wasn't the first standoff between Hans and his parents. A month before, Hans's mother, Rosa, had blocked him, not with her body, but with a pleading voice. She asked Hans to go with her to see a psychologist before he moved out, and Hans agreed because he had never been able to disobey his mother. The doctor asked Hans to solve simple puzzles. Hans sat with his arms crossed; Rosa stood behind him.
“If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?” the doctor asked. The room had the institutional feel of a hospital. The doctor had thick owlish eyebrows.
“I'd be a fly so I wouldn't have to live in this corrupt world for another day,” Hans said.
The doctor took Rosa aside and told her she should let Hans go. “You can't hold a child like him,” the doctor said.
But Georg wasn't ready to let go, wasn't ready to accept what he already knew: that he had lost Hans to the older teenagers in his Communist Youth group—the Viennese ’68ers.
The 1968 movement in Austria was relatively small, but the youth revolts that shook Paris and Berlin and Berkeley also took place among the New Left in Vienna, and Hans and his friends in Section 6 of the Communist Youth were the most radical members of the scene. Like the New Left around the world, the Viennese ’68ers were convinced that fascism and Nazism had never gone away, only put on a disguise and found new victims. As the journalist Paul Berman explains in A Tale of Two Utopias, the new fascists were the capitalists and imperialists; the victims, whomever they oppressed: the Algerians, the Vietcong, the Palestinians.
But there was one crucial difference between the Viennese ’68ers and their counterparts. For most young leftists to look at western European social democracies and see Nazism in disguise took an act of political imagination, layers of often convoluted philosophy that a series of radical French thinkers were more than ready to supply. But Hans and his friends didn't need the French ideologues to see Nazis in every sphere of society. They understood that their government was rife with former Nazis. They understood that all the postwar trials of Austrian Nazis had come to nothing and that the “former” Nazis were the judges, lawyers, doctors, and teachers they encountered every day.
What they couldn't understand was how their parents, the same Communist parents who had gone underground to fight the Nazis when they were teenagers, didn't want them to go to battle for the cause. “We were criticizing very hard the Austrian Communists,” Hans said. “They were engaged in strong arguments: pro-Czechoslovakia and contra, who is Stalinist, who is not. We were against this. We said this is not important. We cannot use all our force in ideological discussions. We must fight here in Austria and set up concrete things.”
Near the end of 1968, Section 6 of the Communist Youth cut its ties to the party and changed its name to Spar-takus Kampfbund der Jugend (Spartacus Youth Action Group). A dozen of the most active members of the group moved into a large apartment in the Sixth District of Vienna and turned it into a commune. They slept on the floor, often all in one room, and ate noodles. Whatever money they scraped together from shoveling snow or hitting up their parents was immediately turned over to the collective. In their spare time they trained in hand-to-hand combat and campaigned against Austria's youth reformatories—known to Hans and his friends as “youth concentration camps.” They hid escapees from the reformatories and chained themselves to landmarks around Vienna. Once the group broke into a popular live television show with a young escapee who shouted out his story to all of Austria.
Hans continued to live at home until 1969, but he spent as much time as he could with Spartakus. “I thought to be a part of this group was the only useful thing to do in this country,” Hans told me. “The logical consequence of all these teachings I got from my parents could only lead to a more radical point of view, but my father was against this radicalism and so we had big conflict.”
And so Hans had decided to move out. He took another step toward his father until they were face-to-face “I'm not going to fight you,” he said. Georg didn't answer and he didn't move.
“Please, Hansie,” Rosa said, “stop this.” She was watching the standoff from the kitchen table. Without releasing his gaze from his father's eyes, Hans walked backward to the first-floor window, then jumped out into a new life.
Nine
Jew City
“Som, you must come,” Wolfi called.
I jolted up from my nap. Downstairs the whole shepherding gang was assembled, and we were off for an early-evening ice-cream trip to the nearby town where we had picked up Christine from the train station. I hadn't known the night before that the name of this town was Judenburg, or “Jews’ Castle.”
&nb
sp; Judenburg, population 10,000, is one of the oldest cities in Austria. An important commercial center in the Middle Ages, the city lies on a series of descending plateaus and is now known for its happening winter sports scene. “Jews’ Castle” was not a city name I had expected to encounter in the Austrian countryside, or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, there are a handful of old villages in Austria with “Juden” in the name. These “Juden” towns began to appear in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Italian Jewish merchants set up trading posts across the Alps. Jews at the time played an important role in long-distance commerce largely because they were banned from almost all other professions. In the following centuries the privilege of trading was also taken away, and most Jews turned to moneylending, the remaining work available to them.
Not much is known about the early history of Judenburg. The first mention of Jewish traders in Austria is from a document of C.E. 906, signed by forty merchants, among them a “Ysac” and a “Salaman.” The first mention of the city is found in a document from 1075. Although Burg means “castle” in German, the name comes from Burgus, which at the time meant a trading place near or in front of a castle. Judenburg was founded near the castle of Eppenstein, which still lies some ten kilometers from the old city center and trading area.
The Jews of Judenburg suffered the same fate as other Styrian Jews during the Middle Ages. They were sometimes protected by the local authorities who valued their role as financiers and sometimes attacked and murdered by raging mobs. At the turn of the fifteenth century bands of Juden-hauer (Jew beaters) began attacking Jews across Styria, threatening to burn down the city of any ruler who tried to stop them. One of the worst anti-Semitic riots in Judenburg took place in 1312, when word spread that the Jews were planning to murder all the Christians in town on the night of Christmas—a Jewish girl who had fallen in love with a Christian boy had supposedly revealed the plan. In response, the Christians set about murdering those Jews of Judenburg who hadn't already fled for their lives. Legend has it that when a Jewish massacre took place in Judenburg, the last Jew caught was strangled with a chain at the city gate, known asjuden-thörl, or “Jews’ gate.”
This gate still exists, and we sat at an outdoor table not far from it and ordered double-scoop ice-cream cones. Across from us a round fountain sprayed water in small arcs. Wolfi continued to rap his “Sugarfly Baby” song, Andi and I played chess on a small magnetic board, and Hans and Christine made eyes at each other.
Judenburg was quaint, with well-kept plazas, lightly colored two-story buildings, and windowsill flower beds to spare. At some point during my trip I realized that almost all Austrian towns feel like a collection of life-sized dollhouses, albeit ones in which the dolls eat an enormous amount of schnitzel.
“So how do the people here feel about living in a town named after the Jews?” I asked Hans while Andi pondered his next chess move. I was surprised that with all the anti-Semitism in the area over the centuries, no one had gotten around to changing the name of the city.
“They make up stories,” Hans said. “It's incredible. Watch, you will see.”
When our ice creams arrived, Hans turned to the waiter. “Do you know why this city is called Judenburg?” Hans asked. The waiter, a young man with moussed blond hair, looked at him, startled.
“It's a long story,” he said, setting our order on the table.
“Ja?” Hans said, eyebrows raised.
“There is an old castle, and the duke who lived there, his named was similar to ‘Juden,’ and when you change the name a little bit…”
Hans nodded politely. “So it doesn't come from Jews?”
“I don't think so,” the waiter said. “I don't know.” His eyes twitched. He was clearly uncomfortable, and I felt sorry for him.
Hans spent the next few minutes telling the waiter about the Jewish traders who had founded his city.
The waiter listened patiently, nodding along to Hans's history lesson. When he left, Hans turned to me. “We will bring the sheep through Judenburg in the next weeks,” he said. “We will ask the people about their city.”
Hans then continued his lecture for a bit, noting that the Jews were involved in the trade of lavender plants, which grow in the mountains. He also mentioned that the city's official symbol, or coat of arms, is the head of a Jew.
I found this last detail hard to believe, but Hans pointed to a city sign a few yards away, and sure enough, there was what appeared to be a profile of a bearded Jew wearing the large lampshade-style hat that Jews were often forced to don in medieval Europe so that they wouldn't be mistaken for Christians. (The hats were often worn together with yellow badges similar to those the Nazis would later force Jews to pin to their sleeves.) The Jew's head appears on the city's buses and on its official webpage, even on the local soccer team's logo.
“It's really creepy,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the Jew's head.
“It's incredible,” Hans said, his arm now around Christine. Hans told me that he had given a concert in Judenburg but that it took him more than a year of haggling and a call from a local music teacher to convince city officials to let him perform. The cultural expert from the city council specifically told Hans he shouldn't make a link between his songs and the city's name.
“This is typical,” Hans said. “Not just here, but all over Austria. Before my performances I always ask that the person from the city who introduces me should say why I sing in Yiddish, and out of twenty, maybe one agrees. They don't say no. They say, ‘This is not my function. It's better you do it yourself.’ ”
The waiter bravely returned and asked if we would like anything else. I feared Hans would go after him again.
“Kaffee, bitte,” I said.
The waiter looked at me confused, and Christine instructed me to order a Melange—half coffee, half milk with a frothy top. In the following weeks I was to drink dozens of Melanges because it was the only item I knew how to order.
When the waiter brought my drink, Hans returned to his lecture on the medieval lavender trade. I caught Christine's eyes with a “Here we go again” look, and she burst out laughing.
“What?” Hans said. “I can sometimes talk too much?”
We all laughed, and then Hans, smiling, turned to Christine. “Why do you laugh at me?” he asked.
“Because I love you,” Christine said, then she leaned forward and kissed Hans on the mouth, leaving her lips against his for several seconds.
When we made it back to the scyther's house, Fritz was standing by the front door eating gummy worms. He dangled gled one in front of me, and I tried to fend him off without success. I went upstairs to go to sleep. Hans popped his head into my attic bedroom and said, “Shlof gezunt, shtey uf gezunt.”
The next day we hardly moved the sheep at all. Gottfried was happy to have them clear some of the grass he would otherwise have had to scythe, and the flock spent the day as a 625-headed lawn mower. The world is their salad bar, I thought. Hans, wearing an uncharacteristically nice sweater-vest over a button-down shirt, looked on and sang, his stick propped under his armpit for support.
Christine and Andi had gone ahead to set up the fence for the night. I milled around, watching the sheep and listening to Hans. Eventually I found a shit-free patch of grass and lay down and looked at the countryside and listened. The Austrian hills were alive with the sounds of bleating sheep and Yiddish music, and for at least a few minutes I felt at peace. I pictured a Hasidic Jew spinning atop a green hill, arms spread, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. I couldn't understand most of the songs, but I got the important words: the mamas and the tatis, the oy veys, the chosens (grooms) and the kalahs (brides). I liked thinking about those medieval Jewish traders walking these same hills and speaking these same words. Yiddish had long ago disappeared from this part of the world, but it was there for a day, and I was a part of it.
I dozed off, but when I opened my eyes a few minutes later, nothing had changed. Hans was still leaning on his
stick, Churka was still eyeing the sheep as though they were terrorist suspects getting ready to board a plane.
A few feet to my right a lamb cried out for its mother.
“You want to hear a little Yiddish song I've written?” Hans asked.
“Of course,” I said, somewhat surprised that Hans, who didn't speak very good Yiddish, was writing songs in the language.
Hans sang four melodic lines in the anguished voice of a cantor on Yom Kippur, then translated for me:
Play klezmer a tango, good without end
Play klezmer a tango, oy vey iz mir.
Play klezmer a tango, my heart is tired
Play klezmer a tango, play this song.
Tango? I said.
“Yes, in Canada I learned klezmer tango music is very warm now.”
“Warm?”
“Yes, it is very popular.”
“You mean hot?”
“Yes, hot.”
I looked over at the flock. Several dozen sheep had gathered together in front of the dog.
“They are on strike,” Hans said. “They would like very much to keep moving because they have already finished the best grass here. Some of them are eating, but the strong ones are saying, ‘Oh, we can wait. We can wait.’ ” Hans used a ridiculous, cartoonish voice for the sheep, and I wondered if that was how he really imagined their personalities.
An hour later Hans said, “The strike is over. I am defeated.” He called to Churka and walked to the front of the flock.
In the distance I saw Fritz scything near the house and went over for a firsthand look. Fritz wore an oversized baseball cap with a cow on it. He acknowledged my arrival with a nod and continued to work. I had imagined scything involving golflike swings at the grass, which is why, I suppose, it had struck me as so dangerous. Instead, Fritz bent over at the waist and dragged the scythe horizontally across the ground in swooping arcs.