Durden wanted to put up an enclosure for his chickens. Ditzsche offered to help him, and warned him about the fox. Then it must be secure, said Durden. Ditzsche told him about keeping chickens, told him about the fox. Durden drew a plan. Ditzsche improved the plan and got hold of the materials. They built the enclosure together. Two days later the chickens were delivered. Three of them were killed the following night.
When Durden discovered the massacre in the morning, he summoned Ditzsche and demanded an explanation. Ditzsche examined the scene of the crime. The chickens had been killed in their henhouse. The fence was intact, there were no holes in the ground. Then Ditzsche noticed the goat. She was grazing close to the fence; Durden had tied her up to its corner post overnight. Ditzsche studied the animal. He found reddish hairs on her back. He showed them to Durden.
What the hell did that mean, Durden asked.
Ditzsche smelled his fingers. “Fox. The goat is too close to the fence. The fox used her as a springboard.”
Durden, lost in thought, repeated the word “springboard” several times. In an even voice, rather too even a voice, he then asked why Ditzsche, with his alleged knowledge of the subject, hadn’t taken this eventuality into account.
Ditzsche had no answer. A surviving hen clucked quietly. Durden compressed his lips; his chin was shaking. “How are they ever going to trust their home now?” he whispered, as if he didn’t want the hen to hear him. “They’ll always be thinking they hear a beast of prey outside. Instead of the hand that feeds them they’ll expect the jaws that eat them. Those chickens,” said Durden, clutching the wire netting of the fence, “can never be happy again.”
Once your chicken run is up, let two roosters fight for the hens. The winner will protect his hens all the better the harder he had to fight for them. He will warn them when danger threatens, and the hens will take refuge in the henhouse. If a fox threatens the hens, the rooster will sometimes save their lives, but often he will not.
Durden refused to pay Ditzsche even for the materials. In the village he told everyone how that idiot had cost him three pedigree fowls, and blamed it on a goat. He didn’t tell the story himself, of course. He had other people do that for him.
The gossip did not win out. Foxes eat chickens, full stop. If I were a fox, said the village, I guess I’d find pedigree fowls particularly delicious. Instead of talking about Ditzsche, people discussed possible ways of fox-proofing a chicken run. The ferryman said, “Ditzsche is above suspicion when it comes to chickens,” and the ferryman’s word had always carried more weight than anything the top brass of the village said. The matter was forgotten. Except by Ditzsche.
Once your chicken run is up, sprinkle plenty of pepper round the fence. Put human hairs in the netting at close intervals, rub your sweat on the fence. Urinate regularly near the enclosure.
Durden once joined us when we were drinking at Blissau’s. It was late, some of the customers were falling asleep at their tables. Durden began talking about his chickens. He could hear them clucking all the time, he said, even now. They complain, he said, they’re feeling sorry for themselves. They’re not happy.
The little man was remorseful. He ran his hand through his hair, ordered a beer and didn’t drink it. We comforted him, because everyone deserves comfort after midnight. We said the chickens aren’t sensitive to feelings. They don’t regret anything. They ask only for the necessities. Durden either listened or he didn’t. He lay down to sleep at home, and in his mayoral dreams he heard the Dwarf Game Fowl clucking.
The fox came back. Durden watched him. The fox slunk round the enclosure in broad daylight, provocatively slowly. The rooster led his hens into the henhouse. One of them stayed outside it. The fox put his nose up against the fence here and there. Scraped the ground a little with his paws. Then went away without success. The goat was standing somewhere else now.
Would the Mayor have intervened if the fox had got in? We’ll refrain from making assumptions. Next day Durden gave the chickens away to the others in the Small Animal Breeders’ Association, keeping only the hen who had stood her ground.
Ditzsche said: if a chicken is fearless, that doesn’t make it brave.
After the fall of the Wall, Durden wanted to join the Free Democratic Party and stand for Mayor again. When Ditzsche heard about that, he went to Blissau’s and told people there about Heinrich Durden’s letter to Hans Modrow. Ditzsche was landing himself in the soup. Because how did he know about that? And then again: it surely wouldn’t have been the only letter he had opened. The informer’s revenge on the local politician. Some of them at Blissau’s sounded almost flattered to think an informer could have been spying on them. Ditzsche said he wasn’t an informer. He didn’t say he hadn’t read the letter.
In his letter, Durden had fulminated against the Church and argued for the continuation of the Stasi in another form. He was saying all that, he claimed, on behalf of the village. Although the village didn’t know the first thing about it. What else was in the letter hardly mattered. No one writes letters in our name. Durden never stood as candidate for any post in Fürstenfelde again.
Ditzsche lost his job. To this day we don’t know whether it was only Durden’s post that he read, or everyone else’s too.
When you have put up your chicken run, prepare the chickens for battle. Arm them with iron spurs overnight.
Heini “Tiny” Durden died in 2005. The inscription on his gravestone says: His Star Is Extinguished. The Schliebenhöners have come back and are living in the big house again. The chicken run is also inhabited. Not by pedigree fowl, by good healthy chickens with golden plumage. The vixen prowls round the cherry tree. And beside the chicken run, a wheelbarrow stands.
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1618, UPON THE NINETEENTH day of May, six suns were seen in the sky here.
JOHANN IS KEEPING HIS COOL AGAIN. BUT SERIOUSLY, who wouldn’t have screamed (briefly, anyway), on finding himself locked up in the cellar? A few minutes later Ma turned up. Again, he should say; Ma turned up again. When he heard her voice, of course he was relieved at first. And then she didn’t let him out.
Ma. Honestly.
Ma misunderstood everything that Johann said, or ignored it, and asked him questions that he couldn’t answer through the door. Who was behind the break-in, where were the others? In the end she threatened to take Johann’s top hat away if he wouldn’t cooperate. Johann thought that was almost funny.
So then she went away, and he shouted after her, but the leather skins swallowed up the sound of his voice.
Ma called him Jochim. Johann knows who Jochim is: a character out of those folk tales. Ma read him the story of Jochim when he was little. And he read it to her when she was depressed.
Johann runs his finger over the booklets on one of the shelves, pulls one out, leafs through it. The Tinker’s Ring. Jochim turns invisible, people are scared, he decides against invisibility in spite of its terrific plus points, The End. Hmm. Ma tells it differently. Jochim stays invisible and annoys the people who always used to make fun of him.
Ma scared Johann more than being locked up here.
But Johann is keeping his cool again. He climbs on the chest and reaches his arm, with his phone at the end of it, up to the ceiling. No network. He clears books away and pushes the chest over to the opposite wall. Still no network.
Johann is keeping his cool again. He has time. There’s light here, there are books, and under the table is a can of Cola Light, still half full. Johann starts reading.
AFTER PRACTICING INIQUITY MANY A TIME IN THE Uckermark with their Attacks, Robberies and rascally Conduct, doing heinous Deeds against God, the Law and all that is Meet, Right and our bounden Duty with evil Intent, causing Uproar and manifold Violence, and last of all, in the village of Lychen, turning a Church into a Stable, keeping Beasts therein, moving the Altar and the sacred Vessels into that same Stable and forcing the Priest to preach there, those notorious Thieves, Deceivers, Agitators, Smugglers and Footpads Hinnerk Lievenmaul and K
unibert Schivelbein, the latter being otherwise known as Long-Legged Kuno, were taken and deliver’d up to the Uckermark High Court in Prenzlow, on Saint Andrew’s Day in the year of Our Lord, 1599.
The presiding Judge was His Worship Justice Joachim von Halvensleben.
Lievenmaul and Schivelbein spoke in their own Defense.
Besides the well-known Case that had come before the Chamber not long since, concerning the Matter of whether the Flight of the aforesaid Rapscallions were an unpunished Crime or no, on this Occasion a new Plaintiff, Count Poppo von Blankenburg, accused the Defendants of stealing nine Thalers from him in a false Game while attempting to abstract a Barrel of Beer from his Cellar.
Lievenmaul and Schivelbein let it be known, firstly, that there had been no False Game, Blankenburg himself being False through and through, more particularly his Hair, which much resembled a Besom Broom—but by all that was holy, the Count play’d a very poor Game.
The Defendants were reprov’d by His Worship for such scurrilous Talk.
Secondly, the Defendants could not, said they, have stolen the Thalers from the aforesaid noble Lord, as they did not belong to him. Rather, the Thalers were the property of the town of Fürstenfelde, as laid down by Law in the Ruling of 1514 whereby one Thaler per Cartload of Crayfish—nine in all this Year—was to be paid into the Town Coffers, and not therefore into the Coffers of Herr v. Blankenburg, albeit that Noble Lord took the money Year after Year. A second Verdict had indeed been given, but by a Court so influenced by Herr von Blankenburg that the Trial had turned out in such a way that not just the Plaintiff, but also the Judge, all seven Jurors and every other Person attending the Courtroom were involv’d. The People of Fürstenfelde had to accept this outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, they being threaten’d with Guns and other Engines of Murder, and not wishing to end like the Mayor of Göhren, who defended himself and was beat to Death in Unexplain’d Circumstances. They—Schivelbein and Lievenmaul—swore before God and the Court that they had returned the Thalers and the Beer, save perchance for two Pitchers of the latter, to the folk of Fürstenfelde.
And as for all the other noxious Deeds with which they were charg’d before the Court, they would plead guilty to only one, namely running away from the Tower in Prenzlow after they were condemned to Death the previous Year, but this could credibly be seen as the Work of two Desperate Men.
All their Talk, however, was in Vain, likewise Schivelbein’s plea that they had never hurt any Person corporeally. Sentence of Death was therefore pass’d on these incorrigible and habitual Offenders.
His Honor acceded to their request to determine the Place of Execution themselves, intending no doubt to placate the Common Folk, with whom the Condemn’d Men stood in High Regard, since they reliev’d only those who, they thought, deserv’d it of their Possessions. So the Condemn’d Men chose to die in their Birthplace of Fürstenfelde.
AND THE VIXEN LEAPS, TAKING OFF FROM AN OLD idea, on such a night as this the chickens are making a noise in the henhouse, her first leap is not enough, again, again, and again, she does it but she lands hard and clumsily, limps, the vixen limps to the henhouse, the chickens inside are scraping the ground with their claws, there is no gap in the wood of the henhouse, the vixen scents that a human was at work on it, she scratches at a little metal thing with her left paw, the wood opens, gets inside, a tunnel, her right paw hurts, it’s cramped, she can hardly get round the corners, the warmth of the chicken, droppings, little feathers, blood, the walls are closing in on the vixen, it’s so tight she can’t turn round, zigzag, can’t manage the corners, this will give her nightmares, and the vixen sneezes. The vixen sneezes, and somewhere inside the nightmare labyrinth a chicken sneezes too.
On, and now the chickens at last, beating their wings violently, singing, scratching, just a moment, just a moment, the eggs, there, there and there, the first breaks, it isn’t easy in the confusion, just a moment, there’s a lot of noise, she kills one chicken, tears its head off to make it a little quieter, the second egg, careful now, she takes it behind her teeth between her tongue and her gums, it’s all right! There it is, it breaks, yolk, lovely yolk, with yolk in her mouth she kills another chicken, impatient now, the last egg, the last egg gets trodden underfoot, who, the vixen looks round, the chickens are wagging their heads, and then—then the rooster wants to fight, the rooster pecks the back of her neck hard, deep, and blood, her own blood, runs, stings, the vixen has dust in her eye, keep calm, out of here, her right paw hurts, the back of her neck, but most of all her eye, it isn’t dust, the large fowl is pecking at her, out, out, zigzag, she’s in flight now, this is the vixen in flight, her eye hurts, bothers her, she climbs on the wooden henhouse, heaves herself over the woven metal, lands on her injured paw again, her mouth full of feathers, yolk, and the night is full of blood, on such a night as this, the night is blind in one eye.
ANNA IS SHIVERING ON TOP OF THE WALL. THE rain has slackened off, but the wind is stronger. The trick of it, Herr Schramm explains, is to squint slightly, like with those colored 3-D pictures, and in the end you can make out a heart or a rocket in them. Anna doesn’t know about 3-D pictures, she knows about 3-D films and 3-D printers, and Herr Schramm is surprised that she doesn’t know about 3-D pictures, it’s not really a question of different generations.
But squinting doesn’t help—Anna still can’t make out the Güldenstein. “I thought,” she says, “it was only a fairy tale. A farmer, a donkey and a stone shining like gold. I think someone drowns in the end. The farmer?”
Herr Schramm is an upright military man with poor posture. Herr Schramm is so thirsty for a cigarette, so thirsty, and every second without one is a second in a hot desert of salt.
A bat swoops over the promenade.
The stone exists. Herr Schramm knows that, Herr Schramm doesn’t need to explain what he knows to the girl now. It lies in the water just off the little island with the barn on it. As children they used to go out to it on a wooden sledge, when there was thick ice over the lake. It was best at night, because they weren’t allowed to go out then.
“I didn’t know you came from here.”
It was best at night, because then the Güldenstein shone. And Herr Schramm, Lieutenant-Colonel, forester, pensioner, points out into the black dark as if there were something to be seen there.
Anna can’t see anything.
All the gold we’ll ever have touched in our lives, says Herr Schramm, was made in an exploding star. The Güldenstein shines like gold. Not by day, not in the sunlight. By day it looks like any other stone. But on starless nights. Herr Schramm looks at the clouds. Ologists of some kind came to see it. Geologists, biologists or suchlike.
“And what did they say?”
What would you expect? Algae, moss, parasites, fungi. At least: a ferryman once lived on the island with the barn on it. Not much is known about him today. He was just a ferryman. It’s known that he once didn’t want to work on the day of the Anna Feast. Day of rest. The times were hard enough, you wanted to drink and sing and not spend three hours going round the lake on foot and back by night. Half of them would never have arrived. Well, so they gave the ferryman a barrel of beer, and then he did it.
“Super story.”
Not the one that Herr Schramm wanted to tell. He wanted to tell the story of the light that the ferryman always carried with him, even by day. And after he had brought his last passenger ashore, he went back to his hut on the island and left a lonely little light burning all through the night.
“A lonely little light?” Anna giggles.
A lantern or some such thing. Listen, will you? People asked: why are you doing that? Who is that light going to guide? Why don’t you save your oil? They knew he wasn’t a rich man.
I always have a light to spare, the ferryman said. Without a light you’re nothing and no one. Only the light makes you human. Of course that’s just some sort of saying, but think about it.
Anna and Herr Schramm do think about it.
Anna says, “But it’s still not as great as all that.”
As a child Herr Schramm went out to the Güldenstein on the wooden sledge when the lake had a thick layer of ice on it. Preferably by night. He wasn’t supposed to, but he did all the same. Preferably with Imboden, with Hanno, with Eddie, and Anna’s grandpa was with them too.
Yes, so now you see. Now his granddaughter is suggesting to Herr Schramm that they could go over there together when the lake freezes.
Herr Schramm clears his throat. Turns to Anna. She has switched that stupid headlight on. For goodness’ sake, switch that thing off for a moment. No wonder Anna can’t see anything.
Anna does as he says.
Herr Schramm turns back to the lake. All those things that the Güldenstein is supposed to have been. A huge lump of gold. A treasure. A star in the sky of the black lake. A lighthouse for anyone in need of warning and guidance. Algae and moss. The downfall of the greedy farmer in the folk tale. A story of which Schramm knew, back then, that he would tell it to someone one day. Anna, listen: there’s no story. Once upon a time there was a ferryman who always had a light with him. And when he was dead a stone began to shine.
Once upon a time there was young Wilfried Schramm. He sat on a shining stone and smoked his first cigarette. Wasn’t very good at it. Shivered with cold and excitement. Bats rose from the islet and flew over the lake. At the time he thought, bats meandered. Not the right word for a bat, much too slow. And from the stone, Fürstenfelde and its lights, on a slant and long-drawn-out, looked like a huge ship that had run aground sometime and couldn’t float itself again. Generations of idiots on it who wouldn’t give up, and new idiots keep getting born and dying there too. Some do all right, some don’t.
Anna says nothing. Anna squints. Above the ash trees over there?
On average, the suicide rate is higher in countries with a good standard of living than in poorer countries. More men than women kill themselves everywhere. Except in China. On average the rate in the GDR was one and a half times higher than in the West. Herr Schramm can’t believe that was just to do with the GDR. More a question of tradition; look at the Rhineland where everyone is Catholic and hardly any of them kill themselves.
Before the Feast Page 15