Before the Feast

by Sasa Stanisic

  On the fifth night, a terrible thing occurred. The girl freed herself from her bonds, and gnawed the flesh from her own hand and arm, so that much blood was shed, and the bare bones were exposed. Before God, that was the worst sight I ever beheld.

  In spite of all her bleeding, the girl was still alive. She demanded an apple, which was surprising, for she had not cared what she ate before. Her loving father hurried out and came back with apples. The girl took a bite out of each and then said, in her fever, that these were the wrong apples. The fruit that she desired was to be found in a fallow field run wild, under a solitary oak tree. Once again the father set out, so he was not obliged to see his little daughter die in convulsions and pain. He did not, however, find an apple where he had thought to do so.

  I left that poor, sad village not without a troubled mind myself, in fear of God, and thanking Him that He does not show that same countenance to all His flock.

  HOW’S THINGS?

  Can’t complain.

  JOHANN’S LIST OF TOP CANDIDATES FOR HIS FIRST time ever:

  1. Wiebke, daughter of Herr Krone. Unfortunately her father is always sarcastic, and a butcher too (dangerous mixture).

  2. Andrea from the eco-café in Parmen. Tricky, because eco people have to keep so many rules.

  3. New on the list: Anna riding her bike in her dress with spaghetti straps.

  After two hours of solitary confinement, Johann is beginning to feel bored. He opens the chest that he pushed to the side of the room earlier. There is a single book in it, wrapped in cloth, old and thick. Instead of a title it has a cross on the cover.

  Johann sits on the table, takes a sip of Cola. It is a church register, or maybe a chronicle. The first entry dates from 1587.

  Johann leafs on through it.

  In the year of Our Lord 1615, in the Month of June, the Following took place. After Konrad Köhler wasted away, losing his Hair and his Power of Speech, and then perish’d of his Sickness and lay Dead, his Mother suspected a young Maidservant, Anna Meier, whom he was said to have reprov’d once, and so the Meier Girl was taken Prisoner, and confess’d under Torture that she was to blame. According to the Sentence pronounc’d on her as a Witch in Brandenburg, she was torn to Pieces with Six pairs of hot Pincers, and then burn’d at the Stake. This Execution took Place on the Eve of the Anna Feast, and was of unusually long Duration, for a violent Storm was raging over the Village, with much Thunder and Lightning.

  4. Or maybe Jessie from the Landshop supermarket would be a better choice? MILF. Experienced, an older woman, wears those Crocs shoes with holes in them. Lada says women over thirty who wear Crocs are particularly randy. Jessie is married. Married women, says Lada, are even randier. Lada says they’re like war veterans who still want to prove their worth on the battlefield.

  THE FERRYMAN ONCE SAID THAT THERE IS SOMEONE in the village who has more memories of other people than memories of his own. The village immediately felt sure that he meant Ditzsche. But we think he could have meant other people.

  Ditzsche checks the egg box. There is still music playing in his apartment. He takes the coins out of the box, counts the eggs. Eight euros, and Piazzolla’s Argentinian music playing indoors. Ditzsche: a thin man, sinewy. He closes the lid of the box, taps out the rhythm of a few bars on it.

  We don’t know what to make of Ditzsche. What is it that the night finds interesting about him? The fact that he’s always a loner? The loneliness of an old man? But we have Herr Schramm for that. Ditzsche never seems seriously bothered by being alone. Not with his chickens, not with his music, not with our letters. Maybe that’s it? The postman as an informer. On the other hand: nothing was ever proved against him, and he himself has denied acting on anyone’s instructions. And certainly he denied reading our letters.

  Dietmar Dietz is like an earworm, a catchy phrase from a song you hardly know. A song of which you remember just that one memorable line from the refrain, and very likely you get that wrong (betraying the village, passionately keen on dancing, clucking chickens, shy with other people). The tune won’t let go of you, you hum and whistle along with it, you don’t even know whose song it is.

  Ditzsche disappears into the yard and checks up on his poultry. The vixen is lurking in the darkness outside, the limping vixen, blind in one eye now. She has probably caught the scent of the eggs. She crosses the road and gets up on her hind legs, forepaws propped against the table, nose against the box. With one leap she is on top of it.

  The song is the song of those whose aim doesn’t go wrong. The song of the driven and unforgiven. Even hurt, even in a spin, we and the fox both want to win. The song is unorthodox, the song of a fox, the song of a fox who opens a box.

  FRAU REIFF LETS HER CAT OUT AND WAITS WITH her hand on the door, out of curiosity or civility, for Anna, Herr Schramm and Frau Schwermuth to be within hearing distance so that she can wish them a good evening. “Still out and about so late?”

  The trio, as if in chorus: “Yes.”

  A few years ago Frau Reiff bought the old smithy, renovated it with the help of friends and the village, and now has a pottery workshop there. We think it’s the most beautiful house in all Fürstenfelde.

  What do we mean by beautiful? Nicer than the neighboring houses. The sun comes in, the house stores up the warmth, it has a history, that kind of thing. One very important point is that Frau Reiff did much of the renovation herself. It has its own garden, another plus point. For instance, think of all the extra vegetables that can be given away to neighbors who don’t have any garden! Or her family in the city, who can be persuaded of the advantages of a country life by having their mouths literally stuffed with those vegetables to silence them. Something else that matters is what kind of a person you are. If you have a nasty character, the facade of your house is nasty too, that’s what we say here. Who’s going to praise someone’s hedge if they don’t like the hedge’s owner? We also think Frau Reiff’s house is beautiful because Frau Reiff is not to blame for anything. Or not so far as we know, anyway.

  Beyond the front gate there is a spacious interior courtyard. Beyond that you go through the former barn with its hayloft (which can be hired for events, hay and all) and you reach the apple orchard. Among the trees there is an old kayak, there’s a swing for the children of the wind, and the cat is now exploring among the trees.

  The dwelling house is on two floors. The rooms are bright and warm, the walls plastered with loam and love, as the saying goes. All the materials were local. Nothing artificial, instead you catch a glimpse of pine cones, pebbles and other natural things that have made their way into the materials, some ideology as well. Visitors like to pass their hands over the walls, and Frau Reiff likes to see that.

  Frau Reiff has three children. Three girls or three boys?

  A broad staircase leads up to the first floor. The steps are paler and lower in the middle than on the outside; that comes of the weight of time. Halfway up the staircase there’s a circular window looking out on the interior courtyard where Frau Reiff entertains the participants in her raku workshop. Depending on the group dynamic and the air temperature, they sometimes sit out here until late at night, and sometimes someone points at the circular window after noticing movement on the stairs.

  Those are the children. They climb up the outside of the steps, because the old wood complains more loudly in the middle. That’s on account of the weight of time. The calm and restless children of the exiles who found shelter here. The strong and restless daughters of the last smith to work here before the war. The thin and restless sons of the Fahrin and Besekow farming families who owned and cultivated their own fields. Before them others; we don’t know about them any more. At night all children are thirsty.

  If a guest asks whether Frau Reiff has any children, Frau Reiff says either: yes, three sons, Janek, Karol and Izydor; or: yes, three daughters, Martha, Anna, Elisabeth; or: yes, three sons, Albert, Georg, Lennart. She has become used to it, it makes conversation so much easier, and she does
n’t have to explain what she can’t explain. It’s true, as well: in a way they are all Frau Reiff’s children, they live under the same roof. Frau Reiff leaves a glass of water out for them at the foot of the stairs in the evening.

  You can deny only what exists.

  Frau Reiff’s workshop is in what used to be the servants’ room of the smithy. The smell of clay and smoke clings persistently to everything. The unfinished pottery and the ceramic dust remind most women visitors in their fifties of a film with Patrick Swayze—we can’t remember the title at the moment—in which Swayze and his great love make a vase before she dies. Or after she has died?

  A visit to the workshop also increases the likelihood that the following remark will be uttered: I’d have loved to learn how to do something with my hands like that. Or: I’d love to learn, etc. Or: one of these days I’ll learn, etc. Frau Reiff’s pottery courses are booked up well in advance, anyway. People come from all over the German Republic north of Kassel. When the students stop for a break, they like riding on the swing in the apple orchard when there’s a couple taking the course, or when two of them have come a little closer to each other in the workshop. Someone always asks about the kayak. Frau Reiff doesn’t know the answer. The kayak has always been there, she says, and she likes having a kayak in an apple orchard.

  Others like the dry-stone wall round the garden. Frau Reiff tells them that whenever something worries her, she goes out into the fields until she finds a stone, it must be roughly the same size as her worry, and then she brings it here, puts it on the wall, and her worry immediately gets less. The lady who is the archivist here, she says, has told her that a smith did the same thing hundreds of years ago. She likes to think that her own worries are stacked on top of the worries of a man who lived in this place so many years before her.

  Frau Reiff has made the stable into a showroom. Pale blue vases, pale blue dishes, pale blue mugs standing on small pedestals, monuments to the skill of her fingers. Sometimes there’s a price on them, sometimes there isn’t. Much of what she makes is not for sale. We could claim that those are the most filigree pieces. But what do we know? Perhaps Frau Reiff just likes them, and it’s a good thing not to let what you like go.

  Sometimes Frau Reiff sits at the foot of the stairs, and the children come down to drink water. Their fingers slide through the glass and close in a gesture of drinking, with nothing in their hands. Frau Reiff offers them bread as well, but they all leave the bread alone, except for a girl with greedy hands that can’t catch hold of anything. Finger by finger, then her arm, then her foot, the girl eats herself instead.

  Frau Reiff’s apple cake tastes all right. If mankind were on the brink of annihilation and had to rely on homemade dishes, the people of Fürstenfelde would all survive, you’d be surprised, but you wouldn’t be surprised for very long because we’d survive you.

  Frau Reiff comes from Düsseldorf, which of course is a very long way off geographically, but in other respects as well she’s not one of us. We may distinguish between those who come here from outside and the old inhabitants, as people do everywhere; the difference is that we make no secret of it. Those from outside have to take part in the life of the village, must commit themselves, must make their mark, although not with too much enthusiasm, because that in turn makes us skeptical. They must show concern and not just want to live their own nice, comfortable lives.

  Frau Reiff did nothing at the old smithy without letting the village know. She sits on the parish council, and is in favor of street lighting and movement sensors. That could save us a good deal of money. Like us, she thinks windmills are beautiful, and like us she thinks wind turbines are ugly. Frau Reiff has made her mark all right.

  Among other entertainments at the Feast, there will be African harp music at Frau Reiff’s. Everyone will be there, apart from Rico and Luise. If she wasn’t one of us, only casual customers would come to hear the harp music.

  On the other hand, if you think about it for any length of time, those children can’t be the children of exiles. None of them stayed in the village and died here, and if one thing is obvious about the subject of ghosts, then it’s that they are not necessarily known for haunting places where they spent a few months once as children.

  There’s a plow stuck deep in the ground among the apple trees, as if it had fallen from a great height. The steel roller attached to the plow is a little rusty. The village asked what the plow was for. Frau Reiff said everything was staying put.

  There were mud floors in the house in the old days, heating was by means of a ceramic stove. Polish forced laborers slept on the floor in front of the stove, and later on German refugees. All of them caught and cooked pigeons. They were put in the same camp in Fünfeichen, not far from here, but at different times. They slept under the same roof, separated only by a little time and history.

  Frau Reiff doesn’t know the life story of the plow.

  She has a long day ahead of her. After the children have had their drink of water, she sees to the cat. He scurries out of the garden and into the house. Frau Reiff takes the last apple cake out of the oven; she has made six for the Feast. She drinks tap water from the hollow of her hand. The cat winds round her legs, purring.

  A characteristic of raku pottery is the fine cracks that form at random as the glaze cools. They never run the same way. Like breaks and cuts in our life stories that become a part of them. The glaze of raku pottery melts at 800 °C to 1,000 °C. Frau Reiff is experimenting with mixed colors, but pale blue predominates.

  ON THIS NIGHT THERE ARE MISDEEDS ON THE roads but no injustice. Error but no mistakes. A court of law but no verdict. A wind still blowing but no rain falling now.

  It is Anna who asks questions once she has calmed down a little. Nothing surprises Herr Schramm any more. Frau Schwermuth is sniffling, her pale forehead furrowed with anxiety. She has wedged the spiked helmet under her arm. Her answer to the first question was that she wants to get back to the Homeland House as quickly as possible; she’s afraid she has locked her son up in there. And to the second she replied that of course she knew what the matter with her was, but she couldn’t explain why it was so bad tonight of all times. It was the stories’ fault. They kept her awake when her medication made her tired and fat. But the medication kept the lid on the stories. The stories and the characters populating them.

  Anna stares at Frau Schwermuth as hard as she has been staring at Herr Schramm all night. She thinks of the field on Geher’s Farm. Of the characters populating it. Of those she imagined in the field as a child when she couldn’t sleep. Anna says she can imagine how Frau Schwermuth feels. Frau Schwermuth says that’s nice of her, but no one can imagine what she can imagine, no one. Then Frau Schwermuth says: I am empowered to call the night by its name.

  Anna asks no more questions. Herr Schramm thinks about that “I am empowered.” And how he has never said a sentence beginning “I am empowered.”

  The name of this night is tide, flood tide, now it is ebbing, let’s see what has been washed up. We will go walking among the flotsam and jetsam, taking care not to step on anything! Frau Schwermuth has such long, beautiful eyelashes, and when she blinks waves of darkness break.

  Frau Schwermuth goes into the cellar first. She quickly taps in the code and opens the door. Faint light. Books, notebooks, paper, on the shelves and in stacks. Thick folio volumes, loose pieces of parchment, the leather skins.

  “Aha,” says Herr Schramm. Herr Schramm is not all that fond of reading.

  There is a little light up near the ceiling, the machine beeps, regulating the temperature. It’s cold. The leather on the walls shimmers and moves. It’s a skin of stories growing on us.

  Johann is sitting on the table with his feet on the chair, a fat book on his lap. Beside him is his bell-ringer’s top hat. Johann is freezing. Frau Schwermuth drops the helmet, swerves neatly round the mountains of paper, clasps Johann’s legs, sobs. Johann puts his hand on his mother’s back.

  “Come on, Ma.” H
e doesn’t sound cross. It does no good when Ma is in this state. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

  So much paper, and not a handkerchief anywhere. Frau Schwermuth touches Johann’s cheek. Is everything really all right? No, but it will be. And how about her? No, and it probably never will be.

  The pages of the book on Johann’s lap are finely decorated, the print is like the print on the label of the Unforgiving energy drink. Johann closes the book.

  Frau Schwermuth utters a short, sharp scream. “Johann! Haven’t you been wearing gloves?” She has her voice back. “Heavens, don’t you see what that book is?” She conjures a pair of white gloves out of the air, takes the book away from Johann and puts it carefully on the desk. The cover is charred at the edges. She opens it, her pupils wander from left to right, thunder rumbles in the pages.

  On the 23rd Day of September 1613, the Spire of the Church here was struck by a Thunderbolt with a most dire and dreadful Noyse, so that a Bell in the said Tower was split in Twain, and two Houses and a Barn full of Grain caught Fire and were Burn’t to the Ground.

  Frau Schwermuth closes her eyes, breathes in and out. She has sat here hundreds of times, reading and digging under what once was for signs of today, indicating plans that the past has made with us, with her.

  Johann takes her hand. Frau Schwermuth opens her eyes. She looks round at the visitors: Schramm and the girl—both deep in the leather. They are searching too. Herr Schramm is caught up in the 1970s, Anna in the more recent past. Frau Schwermuth wipes away her tears. She wants to go home.

  Herr Schramm speaks first when the quartet are back in the fresh air. “Listen, Johann, got any cigarettes?”

  And Johann might even have some if Ma wasn’t here. She is standing by the broken window that she has covered up with newspaper. And naturally there is something that we can only hope Frau Schwermuth doesn’t notice: almost all the broken glass is lying outside, almost none of it inside.