Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

‘You can,’ said the officer. The traveller noticed with some trepidation that the officer balled his fists. ‘You can indeed,’ the officer repeated with all the more urgency. ‘I have a plan that’s bound to succeed. You think your influence does not suffice. I know that it does. But supposing you’re right, is it not imperative to try everything possible, even the possibly superfluous, to preserve the procedure? Please listen to my plan. Its realization depends above all on your withholding judgment today in conversations in the colony. If not asked directly you must express no opinion; what you do let slip, however, should be short and vague; it should be apparent that you find it difficult to talk about, that you are sullen, that should you speak openly, you break out in imprecations. I am not asking you to lie; not at all; you should merely keep it short, something to the effect that: “Yes, I witnessed the execution,” or “Yes, I listened to all they had to say.” Just that, nothing more. It’s enough that they should sense your sullen response, albeit not in the commandant’s favour. He will, of course, completely misconstrue your response in support of his position. That is the basis of my plan. Tomorrow there will be an important meeting of all high-ranking administrative personnel in the commandant’s headquarters under his direction. The commandant naturally managed to turn all such meetings into showcases for his cause. A gallery was built, which is invariably full of spectators. I am compelled to take part, even if seething with disgust. You will undoubtedly be invited to attend; if you comport yourself today true to my plan, the invitation will become an urgent request. But if for some inconceivable reason you should not be invited you absolutely must request the invitation; there is no doubt that it will then be forthcoming. Then you will be seated tomorrow with the ladies in the loge. He will confirm with frequent upward glances that you are there. After running through several anodyne, ridiculous subjects of discussion solely of interest to those in the gallery – usually relating to harbour improvements, always harbour improvements – he finally comes to the matter of judicial proceedings. If the commandant doesn’t get to it, or takes too long to get to it, I will take it upon myself to do so. I will stand up and report on today’s execution. Very briefly, just for the record. Such reports are not the norm here, but I nevertheless go through the motions. The commandant will thank me, as always, with a cheerful smile, and then, unable to resist, he will seize the moment. “We have just heard,” or with some such words he will begin, “the report concerning the execution. I would like to add to this report that the great investigator, by whose visit, as you all know, the colony is so extraordinarily honoured, was present at this particular execution. The significance of today’s session is likewise enhanced by his presence. Should we not then ask this great investigator for his assessment of the old-fashioned execution and the legal proceedings that led up to it?” His words will naturally elicit a burst of applause indicating unanimous agreement, my own being the loudest. The commandant will nod respectfully in your direction and say: “Then, on behalf of all of us in the colony, I ask you to respond to the question.” Whereupon you will step to the balustrade. You will lay your hands on it for all to see, lest the women seize hold of them and play with your fingers. And now at last it is your turn to speak. I don’t know how I will endure the hours of tense anticipation until then. You need not mince your words, just let the truth ring out, lean over the railing, go ahead and shout out your reply, assail the commandant with your opinion, your unflinching position. Or perhaps you’d rather not be so strident, it’s not your way, or not the way things are done in your country in such situations; that’s quite all right, do as you see fit, don’t even get up, just say a few words, mumble them just loud enough so that the officials below you can hear, that’s fine, you don’t even have to touch upon the meagre attendance at the execution, the screeching cog, the torn strap, the filthy wad – you can leave all that to me, and believe me, if my words don’t make him leave the room, they will bring him to his knees, compel him to admit: old commandant, I bow to you. That is my plan; will you help me carry it out? But of course you will, indeed you must.’ And the officer grabbed the traveller by both arms and, taking deep breaths, looked him in the eye. The last lines he howled so loudly that even the soldier and the condemned man looked up; and even though they could not possibly understand, they stopped eating and peered, mid-chew, at the traveller.

  The answer he had to give was clear to the traveller from the start; he had seen too much in his life to waver now; fundamentally honest, he was fearless. Nevertheless he hesitated for a heartbeat at the sight of the soldier and the condemned man. But finally he said what he had to say: ‘No.’ The officer blinked several times but never took his eyes off him. ‘Would you like an explanation?’ the traveller asked. The officer nodded in silence. ‘I am an opponent of this procedure,’ the traveller said. ‘Even before you took me into your confidence – which, needless to say, I will always respect – I already asked myself if I had the right to oppose the procedure and if my opposition had the slightest chance of succeeding. It was clear to me to whom I had to address myself: to the commandant, of course. You made my course all the clearer to me without, however, affecting my decision; quite the contrary, your honest conviction moved me deeply, though it did not alter my position.’

  Struck dumb, the officer turned to the device and picked up a brass bar, whereupon he peered upwards at the inscriber, as if to check that everything was running smoothly. The soldier and the condemned man appeared to have established a bond; as difficult as it was, given his bondage, the condemned man signalled the soldier; the soldier bent forward; the condemned man whispered something, and the soldier nodded.

  The traveller followed the officer and said: ‘You don’t yet know my intentions. I will indeed present my position regarding the procedure to the commandant, though not at an official gathering, but rather in private; but I won’t stick around here long enough to have to attend a meeting; I plan to sail off tomorrow morning, or at least book my passage.’

  It did not appear as if the officer had paid attention to his words. ‘So the procedure did not convince you,’ he said, as if to himself, and smiled the way a grown-up smiles at the foolishness of a child, hiding his own thoughts in the shroud of the smile. ‘Then it’s time,’ he said at last, and looked the traveller full in the face with a resolve that precluded any summons to action, any call for response.

  ‘Time for what?’ the traveller asked, somewhat alarmed, but received no answer.

  ‘You are free,’ the officer said to the condemned man in his native tongue. The latter could not at first believe it. ‘Free you are,’ said the officer. For the first time the face of the condemned became truly animated. Could it be true? Or was it just a whim that would pass? Had the foreign traveller arranged for a pardon? What was it? This is what his facial expression seemed to be saying. But not for long. Whatever the case may be, he wanted, if permitted, to be really truly free and he began to twist and turn, as much as the harrow permitted.

  ‘You’re going to tear my straps,’ cried the officer, ‘be still! We’ll undo them.’ And he and the soldier, whom he signalled, got to it. The condemned man gave off a quiet wordless laugh, first turning his face to the left to smile at the officer, then to the right, grinning at the soldier, nor did he forget the traveller.

  ‘Pull him out!’ the officer ordered the soldier. Certain precautions had to be taken on account of the harrow. In his haste the condemned man had already fetched himself a few laceration wounds on his back.

  But from now on the officer hardly paid him any attention. He approached the traveller, once again pulled out the small leather étui, leafed through its contents, finally found the page he was looking for and held it up for the traveller to see. ‘Read it,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t,’ said the traveller, ‘I already told you I couldn’t decipher these pages.’

  ‘Just take a closer look,’ said the officer and stepped beside the traveller to read along with him. And when that didn’t hel
p he raised his little finger in the air over the paper, as if the page were too precious to be touched, so as thereby to facilitate the traveller’s reading. Whereupon the traveller took pains to try and read it, at the very least to please the officer, but his efforts proved to no avail. Now the officer began to spell out the title and then read it aloud again in context. ‘ “Be just!” it says,’ the officer said, ‘now you can read it for yourself.’ The traveller bent so low over the paper that the officer, fearing he might touch it, pulled it away; to which the traveller said nothing, but it was clear that he was not able to decipher it. ‘ “Be just!” it says,’ the officer repeated.

  ‘No doubt,’ said the traveller, ‘I believe you that that’s what it says.’

  ‘Very well then,’ said the officer, at least somewhat satisfied, and, with the paper in hand, climbed the ladder; he carefully rested the sheet on the inscriber, and seemed to completely alter the setting; it was a very laborious task, probably involving minuscule cogs; sometimes the officer’s head disappeared altogether inside the inscriber, that’s how closely he had to inspect the clockwork.

  Following his progress from below, the traveller’s neck grew stiff and his eyes hurt from peering into the sun-drenched sky. The soldier and the condemned man paid them no heed, completely wrapped up in each other as they were. With the tip of a bayonet, the soldier plucked up the condemned man’s shirt and trousers from the pit where they lay. The shirt was filthy, and the condemned man rinsed it in the water bucket. And when then he pulled on shirt and trousers, the soldier had to laugh along with him, as the pieces of clothing were both torn in two. Perhaps the condemned man felt duty-bound to amuse the soldier; he spun around before him in his torn clothes, while the latter crouched on the ground and, laughing, slapped his knees. Even so they took pains to comport themselves properly in the presence of the two gentlemen.

  When the officer was finally done up there, smiling, he surveyed the machine with all its parts, shut the cover of the inscriber which had hitherto been open, climbed down, peered into the pit and then at the condemned man, seemed satisfied that the latter had fished out his clothing, and then went to the water bucket to wash his hands, realized too late how awfully filthy the water was, seemed disappointed at not being able to wash his hands, finally did dip them – this ersatz did not satisfy him, but he had no other recourse – in the sand, then he stood up and began to unbutton the jacket of his uniform. In the process the two ladies’ handkerchiefs that he had pressed behind the collar fell out. ‘Here, take your handkerchiefs,’ he said and flung them at the condemned man. ‘Gifts from the ladies,’ he explained, addressing the traveller.

  Despite the obvious haste with which he removed his uniform jacket and subsequently stripped himself naked, he nevertheless handled each piece of clothing with great care, going so far as to stroke the silver aiguillette on his tunic to straighten out a tassel. In striking contrast to this painstaking care, as soon as he was done with a particular piece of clothing he immediately flung it with an involuntary shrug into the pit. The last thing left was his short dagger with the strap. He pulled the dagger out of the sheath, broke it in two, then gathered everything together, the dagger halves, the sheath and the strap and flung them with such force into the pit that the parts rattled below.

  Then he stood there stark naked. The traveller bit his lip and said nothing. He full well knew what would follow, but he had no right to stand in the officer’s way. If the legal proceedings to which the officer was so attached were indeed so close to being annulled – possibly as a consequence of the traveller’s intercession, for which the latter, in turn, felt responsible – then the officer was now doing precisely what he had to do; the traveller, in his place, would have done no differently.

  The soldier and the condemned man initially understood nothing; at first they did not even pay attention. The condemned man was delighted to have retrieved the handkerchiefs, but he wasn’t able to enjoy them for long as the soldier swiped them away with a swift, unforeseeable grab. Whereupon the condemned man attempted to slip them out of the back of the soldier’s belt, where the latter had tucked them, but the soldier was vigilant. So they jostled, half in jest. It was only when the officer stood there stark naked that they took notice. The condemned man, in particular, seemed to have been struck by the presentiment of some momentous swing of the pendulum of justice. What happened to him would now happen to the officer. Maybe it would swing all the way. It was probably the foreign traveller who gave the order. So he perceived it as getting even. Without having suffered to the bitter end he would nevertheless enjoy complete retribution. A broad, silent laugh spread across his face and stayed there.

  But the officer meanwhile turned to the machine. If before it had already been perfectly apparent how well he understood its modus operandi, one was now practically struck dumb by the bond between man and machine, and how blindly it obeyed. He only had to near the harrow with his hand and it already rose and fell several times before arriving at the right height to receive him; he only grazed the rim of the bed and it already began vibrating; the cotton wad swung towards his mouth – one could tell that the officer, in fact, didn’t want it, but his hesitation only lasted a moment before he obeyed and took it into his mouth. All was ready; only the straps still hung open on either side, but they were obviously unnecessary, the officer did not need to be strapped down. The condemned man noticed the hanging straps – in his view the execution could not be complete if the straps were unfastened; he gestured excitedly to the soldier and the two leapt forward to strap the officer in. The latter had already stretched out one foot to hit the handle to set the inscriber in motion; then he saw them coming; so he pulled his foot back and let himself be strapped in. But now he could no longer reach the handle; neither the soldier nor the condemned man would find it, and the traveller resolved not to budge. It was not necessary; no sooner were the straps fastened than the machine kicked in; the bed vibrated, the needles danced over his skin, the harrow swayed back and forth. The traveller had already been watching a while before he remembered that a cog in the inscriber should have screeched; but everything was silent, not the slightest hum could be heard.

  Its silent operation practically made the device elude notice. The traveller glanced over at the soldier and the condemned man. The latter was the livelier of the two; every aspect of the machine intrigued him, as he alternately bent down and stood on tiptoe, with his index finger all the while outstretched, pointing out something to the soldier. The traveller found it hard to take. He was determined to stay to the bitter end, but the sight of the two carrying on as they did was intolerable. ‘Go home,’ he said. The soldier might well have been inclined to do so, but the condemned man took the order as a kind of punishment. He pleaded with folded hands to be allowed to stay, and when, shaking his head, the traveller still refused, the condemned man went down on his knees. Fathoming that orders were of no avail, the traveller wanted to go over and chase them away. Whereupon he heard a strange sound coming from the inscriber and looked up. Was that faulty cog acting up after all? No, it was something else altogether. Slowly the inscriber lid lifted and then opened completely. The teeth of a cogwheel reared up and revealed its metallic intent. Soon the entire trundle emerged, and it was as if some powerful force pressed down on the inscriber so that there was no room left for this orphaned wheel that whirled out to the rim of the inscriber, dropped down and rolled upright in the sand, before falling over. But already another cogwheel flashed its teeth, and others followed, big wheels, small wheels, the one largely indistinguishable from the other, and the same thing happened to each; and time and again, when it seemed as if the inscriber had spat out its last, yet another particularly profuse series of parts reared up, dropped down, rolled and fell flat in the sand. This spectacle made the condemned man completely forget the traveller’s order; so entranced was he that he wanted to touch every expelled part, at the same time egging the soldier on to help, but always pulling back his hand
in initial terror when yet another cog came flying after it.

  The traveller, on the other hand, was deeply disturbed; the machine was clearly self-destructing, its smooth functioning being an illusion; it seemed to him as if he had to act on behalf of the officer, as the latter could no longer call the shots. But since the fall of the cogwheels had consumed his entire attention, he had failed to pay attention to the rest of the machine; and now that the inscriber had spat out the last cogwheel and he finally bent over the harrow, the traveller had another, more worrisome surprise. The harrow did not write, but simply pricked, and the bed failed to roll the body, but, merely vibrating, lifted it into the path of the needles. The traveller wanted to intercede, if possible to bring the entire mechanism to a halt – this was no instructive torture as the officer conceived it, but plain ordinary murder. He stretched out his hand. But the harrow had already lifted the skewered body to the side, as it was only supposed to do at the twelfth hour. The blood flowed in a hundred streams (undiluted with water, since the water spigots had once again failed to function). And now the last part malfunctioned too: though bleeding profusely, the body would not disengage from the long needles, and just hung over the pit without falling. The harrow sought to return to its original position, but since the mechanism registered that it was not yet relieved of its load it remained hanging over the pit. ‘For heaven’s sake, help!’ the traveller cried out to the soldier and the condemned man, himself grabbing hold of the officer’s feet. He wanted to tug at the feet, have the two grab the officer’s head on the other side, and so to lift him slowly from the needles. But the two could not get it together to act; the condemned man went so far as to turn his back; the traveller had to go over and nudge them towards the officer’s head. Whereupon, almost against his will, he saw the face of the corpse. It was as it had been in life (with no sign of the promised salvation); what all the others were supposed to have found in the machine the officer did not find; his lips were pressed tightly together, his eyes were open with the expression of life, his look was quiet and determined, the tip of the great iron spike pierced his forehead.