‘Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she absolutely beautiful? The way she’s holding the Baby Jesus? If you look really carefully you can see him smiling.’
And I look carefully but all I can see is a tiny line that’s supposed to be his mouth, and I say, ‘Yes, beautiful.’
He puts the figurine carefully in the breast pocket of his jacket, smiling again or still smiling. I see his yellow teeth when he smiles. He’s smoking again or still smoking. ‘You ought to visit Father Yahweh in the churches of your town.’
I want to tell him about the huge chimneys with the flames coming out of them but suddenly I’m very tired and I drink and all I say is, ‘Who knows … my town.’
‘Father Yahweh,’ he starts again, even though I’ve passed him the bottle, but suddenly I think of something and I interrupt him and his smile, which I can’t stand any longer, and I ask, ‘Who, my friend, who has He punished apart from you?’
He puts the bottle down. He looks at me for a long time, and I can’t hold his gaze so I lower my head, as if his gaze had hit something right in my eyes, and I look at the floor and hear him whispering very quietly, ‘My wife.’
‘Dear passengers, we’ll shortly be arriving in Nuremberg, where the rear section of the train with carriage numbers …’
The bottles in my bag clink together as we walk along the train. Outside I see all the lights of Nuremberg station, but I have to hurry because the man with the long, thin neck is almost running ahead of me; I see his back, the opened bottle of wine held next to his hip. I’m surprised we’ve reached Nuremberg already; it seemed like we’d only been sitting in the compartment a few minutes, talking and drinking and smoking. ‘Come to the front with me, I’m sitting in a large compartment, there was a space free next to me before.’ I’m quite glad he didn’t say Father Yahweh saved the seat next to him, and I walk along behind him but I know there’s something else, something I have to find out about why I feel compelled to follow him. And as I hurry along the train with him the wines are in my head again – it’s as if I needed them so I don’t come to a stop and maybe so I can jump out of the train, Nuremberg station, despite the ticket to Bitterfeld – I’m scared as I walk along behind him, maybe of the memories, maybe of the pictures he’s going to bring me. ‘Herrenberg, Künstler, 2003 vintage; Hupfeld, Winkeler Hasensprung, Riesling Kabinett, 2005 vintage; Georg Müller, 2005 vintage, Hattenheimer Schützenhaus; Rüdesheimer Berg Roseneck, Spätlese, 2004 vintage.’ Riesling, it’s always Riesling, and I think of the good vintages and the not so good ones, of the good vineyards and the not so good ones, and my white van was full of bottles, wine samples and catalogues and lies.
And suddenly we’ve slowed down to a crawl. Or he’s slowed down. He’s walking very slowly and he turns around and puts a finger to his lips. ‘We’ll be there in a minute,’ he whispers. ‘Most of them are asleep.’
And they are asleep. Only a couple of little lamps are on above the aisle and they’re sitting in the dingy light, in bucket seats with the backs leant back, no one moving a muscle, like space travellers frozen in their sleep between the stars, I think.
‘Here we are,’ he says, and then I’m sitting next to him and we’re drinking in silence, in among the silent spacemen, and then we’re moving off. And as if he’d just been waiting for us to move again, he whispers, ‘I’m to blame. If I’d recognised Father Yahweh in His mercy and goodness He wouldn’t have punished me.’
But I don’t reply. I want to ask him, ‘Who are you? Where do you come from? How did Father Yahweh punish you?’ but it’s as if I couldn’t talk any more, even though I do want to find out our secret, even though I know there’s something between us, something I sense but that he doesn’t seem to know, or doesn’t want to know. And he talks and talks, and because I don’t reply he gets louder and louder, never mind that he told me before that we have to be quiet in here. ‘He gave me His light by showing me darkness. You must find the right path before a scourge befalls you too, like it did me. You have to reach your hand out to Father Yahweh so that He gives you His light!’ He talks all kind of nonsense, and I stare out of the window into the darkness. We must be passing through a forest or something; there’s no light to be seen outside, not even a tiny one, nor out of the opposite window either. And I stare into the darkness; what’s behind the darkness? And suddenly the man with the long, thin neck calls out loudly, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ I turn to him and see his contorted face next to me in the semi-darkness. Movements to be felt in front and behind us, I hear the whispering of voices, the astronauts awakening although we’re not yet at our destination, and he calls out again next to me, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ and then, as if nothing had happened, he whispers in my ear, ‘That means: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And that’s what I called out, out loud and over and over again, when He took my wife from me, I called it out although I didn’t even know Father Yahweh back then, you see.’ I want to ask him how he knew the words then, but I don’t reply because I’m afraid of his insane explanation. He gives me a zealous nod; it doesn’t seem to bother him that someone behind us just called out, ‘Shut up will you, you madman, there’s people trying to sleep here!’ I see that I’m holding an almost full bottle in my hand; I can’t remember opening it, and I drink in great gulps, and he whispers on next to me; it’s almost as if I’d only imagined his terribly loud ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,’ but he made the astronauts angry too, on their paths between the stars. ‘On your paths, on your paths you’ll need Father Yahweh. Without Him, death and damnation await you! Death and damnation, do you hear, you have to turn to Him to escape the punishment for your sins.’
‘Sins?’ I ask, feeling my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth even though I’ve just taken a drink, and I drink again in great gulps.
‘Sins, oh yes, sins!’ He’s got louder again suddenly, bending over to me, and suddenly I can’t bear to be near him any more; I turn aside and twist away, ‘Guilt and punishment,’ he calls right in my ear; I drop the bottle; it falls on the open bag at my feet with the other bottles in it, there’s a clinking and smashing, clinking and smashing, it can’t just be the bottles hitting each other, ‘sins, oh yes, sins,’ and then I see suddenly, pressing my hands to my temples and my ears, suddenly I see through the crashing and splintering that’s getting louder and louder, I see the small blue car at the edge of the road, I see my van, the wine running onto the asphalt, red and white mixing to rosé, I see the man with the long, thin neck stumbling out of the car, a woman caught in the windscreen, not wearing her seat-belt I guess, and she’s red, all red, her hair, her face, her clothes. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I call out and throw the bottle away, just a few sips of Schloss Reinhartshausen, Hattenheimer Wisselbrunnen during the drive, I hear the bottle shattering somewhere, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ and the man with the long, thin neck kneeling in front of the car, it’s smashed beyond recognition on a slant in the ditch by the side of the road, and it looks as if he’s praying.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ I say over and over and I want to lean over to him and ask him why he’s on the same train as me, why he didn’t recognise me, but the man’s disappeared, only broken glass on the seat and a large crack in the window pane, and I look out into the night, and there are all these people standing around me, ‘Just went crazy … threw it right at the window …’
I’m bleeding, or is it just wine? I want to get up, the broken glass crunching beneath my feet – where’s the man? – but someone’s holding onto me. I’m a wine rep.
THE OLD MAN BURIES HIS BEASTS
He fills his pipe. He chooses his favourite pipe with the straight mouthpiece. He fills the bowl slowly with the tobacco, pressing it down with his thumb. Then he sits down by the window and smokes. A hen runs across the yard. He has to catch it but that’ll be hard; it can smell the others lying in the shed. No one wanted to take his chickens. The few people still living in the village have enough hens of their own. And the really old ones don’t have
any animals any more, only cats and dogs. What’s he to do with his dog? Call the vet from the next village to put him down? No. He’s had that dog for twelve years, for twelve years Kurt’s been sitting in his kennel by the gate, keeping an eye out. Kurt can sense something’s not right; he won’t stop howling and whimpering. The hen races past the window again and he gets up, his pipe between his teeth, and goes to the door.
There’s a willow basket on the bench. He picks it up and walks to the shed. He hears the dog howling and collects the hens’ bodies and heads in the basket. The sawdust and the sand by the chopping block are dark with blood. His pipe’s gone out, and he taps it out against the axe handle and shoves it in his breast pocket. The bowl of the pipe is still warm. His apron’s lying in the corner like a clump of black and red. What a crying shame, he thinks; all those lovely chickens. He could have asked around in the neighbouring villages but he didn’t want that – they’d only have asked him why he wanted to give his hens away. And they’re his animals; he doesn’t want them to end up somewhere else. He has to take two trips to lay all the hens in the little pit he’s dug in the garden. He looks over at the fields behind the garden; he’d leased them until two years ago. But he’s glad enough that he hasn’t got the cows any more; what would he have done with the cows? Behind the fields and the meadows he sees the dilapidated halls and barns that once belonged to the agricultural cooperative. He shovels earth onto the chickens, a few white feathers left next to the pit, and then he goes back to the house.
The hen’s still running around the yard. It’s slowed down now but the old man’s tired and he doesn’t want to catch it. He walks over to the kennel. Kurt’s disappeared inside, not howling any more, and the old man knocks on the roof. ‘Kurt,’ he says, ‘my boy, my old boy.’ The dog pokes his head out and the old man strokes his grey muzzle. He doesn’t want to look at him and he strokes him and looks out at the road and the houses, most of them empty. ‘Kurt,’ he says, ‘it’s going to be a long day for the two of us.’ It’s only midday and the sky’s blue and the sun’s shining after a whole week of rain, and the old man asks himself if he ought to wait until it gets dark, or go for a walk with Kurt in the evening sun. It’s not far to the woods, but perhaps it’s better to stay by the house. He thinks of the sea, which isn’t far either, twenty minutes in the car – but what does he want with the sea? He never used to go to the sea often; that was for holidaymakers. They just used to go for a meal in the old harbour tavern in town every couple of years. What was it called again – The Dancing Sailor? No, that was somewhere else; wasn’t it the Seaman’s Heart? He’s not sure any more.
And he’s still thinking about it as he walks down the road to the village. He stops at the old Konsum cooperative shop and looks in the window at the empty room. The shop’s been closed for years now, and there’s nowhere to shop in the next village any more either. He doesn’t like the big supermarket in the middle of the fields just outside town. They used to meet here outside the Konsum when they came home from work, from the cooperative or the fields. They used to drink beer and talk, sometimes they drank beer and didn’t talk, before they went back to their farms and into their houses. Fred, Wee Henry, Walfried, Jochen Schuster and Jochen Meyer – all long gone now or dead.
He wants to remember their faces and their voices, here outside the shop, but there’s nothing, and he starts walking again.
‘What was that tavern called again?’ he asks, fetching the little tree stump he keeps next to the watering cans and the rakes. ‘In town, I mean, on the harbour front. You always used to like it there. Maybe we should have gone more often. You should have said something.’ He carries the tree stump over to her, his back aching slightly, and then he sits down. He takes the pipe out of his breast pocket and then he realises he’s left the tobacco at home, but he clamps it between his teeth anyway. The mouthpiece fits exactly into the gap. The other old villagers envied him his good teeth; there’s just that double gap at the top left. He looks at the empty gravesite next to her. He wants to say something to her, like he always does, he wants to tell her about the last few days, what he’s been up to and who he’s met, but the old man just chews on the mouthpiece of his pipe and blinks at the sun. He knows most of the people buried round here, he’s been to most of the funerals in the last few years, scattered earth and flowers on coffins and urns, and every time he couldn’t help thinking of his wife, who he’d buried more than ten years ago. The Konsum was still open back then, and afterwards they stood outside the shop window in their suits and drank beer before they went to the village pub, for the ‘funeral meats’, as he called it. The tree stump he’s sitting on has been exposed to the weather and is riddled with woodworm, but it’s soft to sit on, as if there were a cushion on top of it. He sits in the sun for a while, closing his eyes. A dog barks somewhere but it’s not Kurt. Kurt only knew his wife for two years; they chose him together when old Schultze’s Alsatian bitch had a litter. The old man thinks of how his wife trained the dog – Kurt was the fourth dog she’d trained – he thinks of how she sometimes let him in the house at night, when the winter was cold. She got sick that winter but it wasn’t the cold to blame. Kurt howled and whimpered for days when she died. It was quick enough. The thing in her head, that’s what she called it, and Kurt howled and whimpered so much that he let him in the house, and he ran around looking for her in the house, and then he went quiet. Once, she’d not been gone long, he took the dog along to the graveyard one night. The small iron gate’s always open. Do you think he can smell her, down there under the earth, he thought. He let him off the lead but Kurt just ran aimlessly to and fro between the gravestones while he stood by his wife.
The old man wants to think of something good, of the wedding more than forty years ago, but he can hardly remember it any more; all he can see is him dancing with her – was that in the Seaman’s Heart? No, they married here in the village, at the Farmer’s Inn. How could he have forgotten that, even for a moment? But he forgets a lot and he knows it’ll get worse. They celebrated their thirtieth anniversary at the Seaman’s Heart, just him and his wife and no guests, and that’s the dance – he knows that now – that he remembers. All on their own between the tables.
He carries the tree stump back to the watering cans and the rakes. It’s his tree stump but he’s not the only one who uses it. He saw old Schultze sitting on it once; he’s so old he’s buried two wives here.
He walks along the empty village road. It’s Friday and he has his appointment at the Farmer’s Inn. Once a month he gets his hair cut. Hardly anyone goes to the Farmer’s Inn any more, since the last young people left the village and the old ones have been disappearing one by one, but Gerhild doesn’t want to shut the place down; she owns the house and she lives above the pub. ‘You’re pretty much my only customer,’ Gerhild always says. The bar room’s cleared out, only the round table with the large ‘Regulars’ sign in the middle’s left now.
‘Haircut and a beer as usual?’ Gerhild’s behind the bar doing something with glasses. She doesn’t look up; she knows it’s him. His footsteps echo in the empty room and he stops still. ‘I’ll have a Korn with it. And bring me the whole bottle.’
The glasses stop clinking; Gerhild looks at him. ‘Something to celebrate, Albrecht?’
‘Nice weather today. It’s stopped raining.’
She nods. ‘You take a seat. I’ll bring it over and then I’ll get the scissors.’
He goes over to the table, pushing one of the chairs out into the room. He hears her opening a beer bottle; the pumps aren’t in use any more. Werner, the landlord, died six years ago – or was it seven? He was fifteen years older than her and she’s been on her own ever since. She was fifty-nine back then, the best catch in the village, they’d joked outside the Konsum, and they’d thought she’d sell the pub and move to town, but she stayed.
She comes over with the beer and a shot glass. The bottle’s in her apron pocket, and she puts everything down on the table behind him.
‘How are your lads, Albrecht?’
‘They want to come and visit again soon. Maybe in September.’
‘They should be ashamed of themselves. If I …’
‘Don’t, Gerhild.’
‘Sorry. I’ll get my scissors.’
‘It’s all right. You have a glass of wine with me.’ She turns around to him and smiles. ‘You want me to cut your ears off or something? No, no, you drink on your own, Albrecht.’ She walks across the bar room, his eyes following her. He drinks his schnapps and washes it down with beer.
He’s drunk three shots by the time she gets back with the scissors and the towel. She spreads the towel over his shoulders. He looks at the tiny white tips of hair falling on the towel and the floor. He doesn’t really need to come every month; he’s been coming for eight years and it’s only a few millimetres of hair every time. He hears the sound of the scissors, feels her fingers on his head. His wife used to cut his hair, before. When she died he left his hair to grow, for over a year. He’d almost gone to seed, like some of the men he knew from the village or the neighbouring villages, who didn’t take care of their farms and themselves once they were on their own, until they went too, not long afterwards. But Schultze and Gerhild and her husband the landlord helped him. It took him nearly two years to get back on his feet, more or less. He’d been so tired back then, as tired as he was again now. ‘There we are, you’re done. Your hair’s not growing any faster either.’ She laughs. She shakes the hair off the towel and goes to the counter. The old man watches her go, stroking his shoulders and his chest. A few tiny hairs sparkle on his shirt. He fills the glass again and drinks, washing the schnapps down with the remaining beer. He puts a twenty under the bottle and gets up. ‘Are you off already?’ She’s holding a broom and a dustpan.
All the Lights Page 19