Tyll, Page 3

  Then you’re on the village square with the church, the old village linden, and the well. Next to the church is the priest’s house, next to the priest’s house the house where the steward lives, Paul Steger, Peter Steger’s cousin, who twice a year walks the fields and every third month brings the taxes to the lord.

  On the far end of the village square is a fence. After you open the gate and cross the large field, which also belongs to Steger, you’re in the forest again, and if you’re not too afraid of the Cold Woman and keep going, in three hours you will be in the next village, which is not much bigger.

  There, however, the boy has never been. He has never been elsewhere. And although several people who have been elsewhere before have told him that it’s exactly the same there as here, he can’t stop wondering where you would end up if you just kept going on and on, not merely to the next village, but farther and farther still.

  * * *

  —

  At the head of the table the miller is speaking about the stars. His wife and his son and the mill hands are pretending to listen. There are groats. There were groats yesterday too, and there will be groats again tomorrow, boiled now in more and now in less water; there are groats every day, except on worse days when instead of groats there’s nothing. In the window a thick pane keeps the wind out. Under the stove, which doesn’t emit enough warmth, two cats are scuffling. In the corner of the room lies a goat, which should actually be over in the stable, but no one wants to throw it out, because they’re all tired, and its horns are sharp. Next to the door and around the window pentagrams are carved, to ward off evil spirits.

  The miller is describing how, exactly ten thousand seven hundred and three years, five months, and nine days ago, the maelstrom in the heart of the world caught fire. And now the thing that is the world is spinning like a spindle and eternally giving birth to stars, for since time has no beginning it has no end either.

  “No end,” he repeats and stops short, having realized that he said something unclear. “No end,” he says softly, “no end.”

  Claus Ulenspiegel is from Mölln, up in the Lutheran north. A decade ago, even then no longer young, he arrived in this place, and because he wasn’t from here, he could only be a mill hand. The miller’s trade is not dishonorable like that of the renderer, who disposes of animal remains, or that of the night watchman or even the hangman, but it’s also no better than day labor and far worse than the trade of the craftsmen in their guilds or that of the farmers, who wouldn’t have offered someone like him so much as a handshake. But then the miller’s daughter married him, and soon the miller died, and now he is the miller himself. On the side he heals the farmers, who still won’t shake his hand, for what is not proper is not proper; but when they’re suffering, they come to his door.

  No end. Claus can’t go on speaking, it preoccupies him too much. How could time cease? On the other hand…He rubs his head. It must have begun. For if it had never begun, how would we have reached this moment? He looks around. An infinite amount of time cannot be over. Therefore it simply must have begun. But before that? A before before time? It makes you dizzy. Just like in the mountains when you look into a ravine.

  Once, he now says, he looked into one, in Switzerland. A herdsman had taken him along on the cattle drive up to the alpine pastures. The cows had worn large bells, and the name of the herdsman had been Ruedi. Claus pauses. Then he remembers what he actually wanted to say. So he looked into the ravine, and it was so deep that you couldn’t see the ground. He asked the herdsman, who by the way was named Ruedi—a strange name—well, he asked Ruedi: “How deep is it, then?” In a voice of the greatest weariness, Ruedi replied: “It has no bottom!”

  Claus sighs. The spoons scrape in the silence. At first, he continues, he thought it wasn’t possible and the herdsman must be a liar. Then he wondered whether the gorge was perhaps the entrance to hell. But suddenly he realized that it didn’t matter at all: Even if this gorge happened to have a bottom, there was a bottomless gorge overhead, you only had to look up. With a heavy hand he scratches his head. A gorge, he murmurs, that just keeps going, farther and farther still, perpetually farther, in which, therefore, all the things in the world fit without filling even the tiniest fraction of its depth, a depth that nullifies everything…He eats a spoonful of groats. This makes you very queasy, he says, just as you also feel ill as soon as you realize that numbers never end! The fact that to every number you can add another, as if there were no God to stem such a tide. Always another! Counting without end, depth without bottom, time before time. Claus shakes his head. And if—

  At this moment Sepp cries out. He presses his hands over his mouth. Everyone looks at him, baffled, but above all grateful for the interruption.

  Sepp spits out a few brown pebbles that look exactly like the lumps of dough in the groats. It wasn’t easy to smuggle them into his bowl unnoticed. For something like that you have to wait for the right moment, and if necessary, you have to create a diversion yourself: That was why the boy a short while ago kicked Rosa, the female mill hand, in the shin, and when she cried out and told him that he was a stinking rat and he told her she was an ugly cow, and she in turn told him that he was filthier than filth, and his mother told both of them to hush, for God’s sake, or there wouldn’t be any food today, he quickly leaned forward and at the precise moment when everyone was looking at Agneta plopped the stones into Sepp’s bowl. The right moment is quickly missed, but if you’re attentive, you can sense it. Then a unicorn could run through the room without the others noticing.

  Sepp feels around in his mouth with his finger, spits a tooth onto the table, lifts his head, and looks at the boy.

  That’s not good. The boy was fairly certain that Sepp wouldn’t see through it, but apparently he’s not so stupid after all.

  The boy jumps up and runs to the door. Unfortunately, Sepp is not only big but also fast, and he gets hold of him. The boy wants to break free, but he can’t. Sepp draws back his arm and punches him in the face. The blow absorbs all other noises.

  He squints. Agneta has jumped up. Rosa is laughing; she likes it when there are beatings. Claus is sitting there with a furrowed brow, caught up in his thoughts. The other two mill hands are wide-eyed with curiosity. The boy hears nothing. The room is spinning. The ceiling is under him. Sepp has thrown him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Then he carries him out, and the boy sees grass above him. Down below arches the sky, streaked with the evening strands of clouds. Now he hears something again: A high tone hangs trembling in the air.

  Sepp holds him by the upper arms and stares into his face from up close. The boy can see the red in the mill hand’s beard. Where the tooth is missing it’s bleeding. He could punch the mill hand in the face with all his strength. Sepp would probably drop him, and if he could get to his feet again quickly enough, he could put some distance between them and reach the forest.

  But what would be the point? They live in the same mill. If Sepp doesn’t catch him today, he’ll catch him tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after. It would be better to get it over with now, while everyone’s watching. Before the eyes of the others Sepp probably won’t kill him.

  They’ve all come out of the house: Rosa is standing on tiptoe to be able to see better, she’s still laughing, and the two mill hands next to her are laughing too. Agneta is shouting something; the boy sees her opening her mouth wide and waving her hands, but he can’t hear her. Next to her Claus still looks as if he were thinking about something else.

  Now the mill hand has lifted him high over his head. Afraid that Sepp will hurl him onto the hard ground, the boy raises his hands protectively over his forehead. But Sepp takes a step forward, then another and a third, and suddenly the boy’s heart begins to race. His blood throbbing in his ears, he begins to scream. He can’t hear his voice. He screams louder, but he still doesn’t hear it. He knows what
Sepp is planning. Do the others know too? They could still intervene, but—not anymore. Sepp has done it. The boy is falling.

  He’s still falling. Time seems to be slowing down, he can look around, he feels the plunge, the gliding through the air, and he can even think that the very thing is happening against which he has been warned all his life: Do not step into the stream in front of the wheel, never go in front of it, don’t go in front of the mill wheel, under no circumstances, never go, never, never, never go into the stream in front of the mill wheel! And now, after this has been thought, the plunge still isn’t over, and he’s still falling and falling and still falling, but just as he is forming another thought, namely, that possibly nothing at all will happen and the plunge will last forever, he hits the water with a slap and sinks, and again it takes a moment before the icy cold bites. His chest constricts. Everything goes black.

  He feels a fish brush his cheek. He feels the current, feels it flowing faster and faster, feels the suction between his fingers. He knows that he has to hold on to something, but what? Everything is in motion, nothing solid anywhere. Then he feels a movement above him, and he can’t help thinking that he has imagined this all his life, with horror and curiosity, the question of what he should do if he ever really did fall into the stream in front of the mill wheel. Now everything is different, and he can’t do anything at all, and he knows that he will soon be dead, crushed, ground, mashed, but he does remember that he must not come to the surface, there’s no escape up there, up there is the wheel. He has to go down.

  But where is that, down?

  With all his strength, he makes swimming strokes. Dying is nothing, he understands that. It happens so quickly, it’s no big thing: take one false step, one leap, make one movement, and you’re no longer alive. A blade of grass snaps, a bug is stepped on, a flame goes out, a person dies—it’s nothing! His hands dig into the mud; he made it to the bottom.

  And suddenly he knows that he won’t die today. Threads of long grass caressing him, dirt getting in his nose, he feels a cold grasp on the nape of his neck, hears a crunching sound, feels something on his back, then on his heels; he has passed under the mill wheel.

  He pushes off from the bottom. As he rises, he briefly sees a pale face. The eyes large and empty, the mouth open, it glows faintly in the darkness of the water, probably the ghost of a child who was at some point less fortunate than he. He makes swimming strokes. Now he has reached the surface. He breathes in and spits mud and coughs and claws at the grass and crawls, gasping, onto the bank.

  A dot is moving on thin little legs in front of his right eye. He squints. The dot comes closer. It tickles his eyebrow. He presses his hand against his face, and the dot disappears. Up above, roundly shimmering, hovers a cloud. Someone bends down over him. It’s Claus. He kneels, reaches out his hand and touches his chest, murmurs something that the boy doesn’t understand because the high tone is still hanging in the air and drowning out everything else. But as his father speaks, the tone grows softer and softer. Claus stands up. The tone has gone silent.

  Now Agneta’s there too. And Rosa next to her. Every time someone reappears, it takes the boy a moment to recognize the face; something in his head slowed down and is not yet working again. His father is making circles with his hands. He feels his strength returning. He tries to speak, but all that comes out of his throat is croaking.

  Agneta strokes his cheek. “Twice,” she says. “You’ve now been baptized twice.”

  He doesn’t understand what she means. That’s probably due to the pain in his head, a pain so intense that it fills not only him but also the world itself—all visible things, the earth, the people around him, even the cloud up there, which is still as white as fresh snow.

  “Well, come into the house,” says Claus. His voice sounds reproving, as if he had caught him doing something forbidden.

  The boy sits up, leans forward, and vomits. Agneta kneels beside him and holds his head.

  Then he sees his father draw his arm far back and slap Sepp’s face. Sepp’s upper body pitches forward. He holds his cheek and straightens up again, when the next blow hits him. And then a third, another big swing, the force almost hurling him to the ground. Claus rubs his sore hands together as Sepp staggers. It’s clear to the boy that he’s only pretending: it didn’t hurt him very much; he is substantially stronger than the miller. But even he knows that you have to be punished when you almost kill the child of your employer, just as the miller and everyone else know that they can’t just chase him off, for Claus needs three mill hands, fewer won’t do, and when one of them is missing, it can take weeks before a new wandering mill hand turns up—the farmhands don’t want to work in the mill, it’s too far away from the village, and the trade is not quite honorable, only the desperate are willing to do it.

  “Come into the house,” Agneta now says too.

  It’s almost dark. Everyone is in a hurry, because no one wants to be outside any longer. Everyone knows what roams the forests at night.

  “Baptized twice,” Agneta says again.

  He is about to ask her what she means when he realizes that she’s no longer with him. The stream is murmuring behind him. Some light leaks out through the thick curtain of the mill window. Claus must have already lit the tallow candle. Apparently no one took the trouble to drag him inside.

  Freezing, the boy stands up. Survived. He survived. The mill wheel. He survived the mill wheel. He feels indescribably light. He takes a leap, but when he lands, his leg gives way, and he falls to his knees with a groan.

  A whisper is coming from the forest. He holds his breath and listens. Now it’s a growl, now a hiss, then it stops for a moment, then it begins again. He feels that if only he listened closer, he would make out words. But that’s the last thing he wants. He hobbles hastily to the mill.

  * * *

  —

  Weeks pass before his leg allows him to get back on the rope. On the very first day, one of the baker’s daughters appears and sits down in the grass. He knows her by sight; her father often comes to the mill, because ever since Hanna Krell cursed him after a quarrel he has been plagued by rheumatism. The pain won’t let him sleep, which is why he needs Claus’s protective magic.

  The boy considers whether to chase her away. But first of all it wouldn’t be nice, and secondly he hasn’t forgotten that she won the stone-throwing contest at the last village festival. She must be very strong, whereas his whole body aches. So he tolerates her presence. Although he sees her only out of the corner of his eye, he notices that she has freckles on her arms and face and that in the sun her eyes are as blue as water.

  “Your father,” she says, “told my father there’s no hell.”

  “He did not.” He manages four whole steps before he falls.

  “Did so.”

  “Never,” he says firmly. “I swear.”

  He’s fairly certain that she’s right. Although his father could also have said the opposite: we are in hell, forever, and will never get out. Or he could have said that we’re in heaven. He has heard his father say everything that can be said.

  “Have you heard?” she asks. “Peter Steger slaughtered a calf at the old tree. The smith said so. It was the three of them. Peter Steger, the smith, and old Heinerling. They went to the willow at night and left the calf there, for the Cold Woman.”

  “I was there once too,” he says.

  She laughs. She doesn’t believe him, of course, and she’s right, of course, he wasn’t there; no one goes to the willow if he doesn’t have to.

  “I swear!” he says. “Believe me, Nele!”

  He climbs onto the rope again and stands there without holding on. He can do it now. To strengthen the oath he has sworn he places two fingers of his right hand on his heart. But then he takes the hand away again quickly, because he remembers that little Käthe Lese
r swore falsely to her parents last year, and two nights later she died. To escape the embarrassment, he pretends to lose his balance and lets himself fall flat on his face in the grass.

  “Keep doing it,” she says calmly.

  “What?” His face contorted with pain, he stands up.

  “The rope. Being able to do something no one else can. That’s good.”

  He shrugs. He can’t tell whether she’s mocking him.

  “Have to go,” she says, jumps up, and runs off.

  As he watches her leave, he rubs his sore shoulder. Then he climbs back onto the rope.

  * * *

  —

  The next week they have to bring a cart of flour to the Reutter farm. Martin Reutter brought the grain three days ago, but he can’t fetch the flour because his drawbar broke. His farmhand Heiner came yesterday to let them know.

  The situation is complicated. They can’t just send the farmhand with the flour, because he could abscond with it, never to be seen again; you cannot trust a farmhand an inch. But Claus can’t leave the mill, because there’s too much work, so Agneta has to go with Heiner, and because she shouldn’t be alone with him in the forest, since farmhands are capable of anything, the boy comes too.