This year the ferryman said yes, because it was the truth.
FRAU KRANZ IS STANDING KNEE-DEEP IN WATER. She props her easel up so that it is at a slanting angle, switches on the light, moves its feet until it is standing firmly on the muddy bed of the lake. Eddie fitted an umbrella to the front of the easel years ago to protect it from all weathers. Frau Kranz is well equipped. We know that the water is cold.
Roughly here one of the six young women could have turned. Turned to the bank, to the ash trees, to the village. Perhaps she also looked at the ferry boathouse. Ana Kranz, at the boathouse window, did not move.
On that or on some other day, a Red Army soldier, an infantryman from Belorussia, is trying to throttle a piglet under the ash trees. His comrades, shaving each other in the sunlight, egg him on. He’s not the most drunk of them, he’s the youngest, his skin still spotty, his beard still downy. The piglet is squealing. The soldier stands there upright. His cap has fallen off his head. His pale hair, his red cheeks, the piglet in his hands. Its snout is level with the soldier’s face. It all takes some time. The men shouting encouragement get tired. Only the infantryman can still be heard, gasping. His legs look like slender young trees taking root in his boots. He groans as if he were the one being throttled. The louder he groans the less noise the piglet makes, quietly putting up with this human joke.
Ana Kranz, under the boat, didn’t move. She heard the squealing piglet, looking through a crack she saw the soldier’s legs. She stayed hidden under the boat for a day and a night. The people had run away from the fear that was advancing with the Russians, or had hanged themselves, or had been found. Ana hadn’t wanted to run away again. She spent another two days under the boat. She drank from the lake. Was found. By the ferryman, who came back. He took her in, hid her in the space under the floorboards, behind the paddles, ropes and other gear. Gave her food. Told her, from the boathouse above, about low-flying aircraft and marauding soldiers, corpses by the roadside. Down below, she heard him through the floorboards. He warned her: don’t show yourself, girl. And once she heard Russian voices. The ferryman didn’t understand them. Ana understood the boots on the floorboards. They searched the cupboard, the chest. There was nothing to be found in the sparse furnishings. They opened the hatch. The space inside was dark and full of things. Ana held her breath. They took the ferryman away with them. Only after days did she venture up from below the floorboards. Stood at the window, peering out, didn’t move. If people came to fish from the landing stage she climbed down under the boards again. The ferryman was gone for days, they had locked him up, or worse. Bells rang. Shots were fired. And then he came back after all, his face bruised and swollen. He had brought some bread, and charcoal for Ana to draw with. Ana looked out at the lake. At the promenade beside it. At spring. She drew, Ana Kranz drew all over the walls, the ferryman didn’t mind. She drew the people coming back, almost all of them old men and children, they washed in the lake. She drew the soldiers going for walks along the lakeside like lovers. She spent a lot of time alone. She ate the bread slowly, she drank from the lake, she drew. A small sketch beside the window, six figures hand in hand, on the banks of the lake. It was April, perhaps May. The soldiers were turning up less frequently. Ana stayed in the boathouse of the ferry for a month and a half. Six years later she would transfer the six women to canvas, clothe them and comb their hair, give them morning colors, and now, on such a night as this, the six take their first step, and one of them looks round.
Frau Kranz is plagued by an almost physical desire for old stories. It comes of this place, the boathouse of the ferry, it comes of the night. It’s a thirst for the answer to her question: what could she have prevented. . could I have prevented them from doing it?
The rain is falling harder. The bank, the ash trees, home. Frau Kranz makes her first brush stroke. The paper is wet. She tears it off, places it on the water. Begins again. The paper drifts slowly away.
A CARTER EXCHANGES A FEW WORDS WITH THE ferryman, the ferryman asks about his journey here. The carter describes the street fighting in Dresden. Then the ferryman gives him some of his home-distilled spirits. They look at the water, at the sky.
Well, here we go, says the ferryman.
The landing stage, the moorings, the ferryman’s bell.
Rubber tires, ferry, boat.
Boots, doormat, plant pot without any plant in it.
Wood, woodworm, better days.
A low bed, one window looking out on the bank, one looking out on the water, the ferryman saw the lakes even in his dreams.
A table on which he ate from a plate with a fork, a knife and a spoon.
A cupboard, a towel, a razor blade.
A chest, massive, with a lock to it and a domed lid.
Damp, mold, mice.
Hatch, space under it, stuff in the space.
A ticket window for selling ferry tickets, a pencil fixed to the wall with a little chain, a visitors’ book. The ferryman lets only passengers who have deserved it during the trip write their names in the book. Just seven in seventy years. Angela Merkel is among them.
There are no drawings left on the walls now.
Even after the ferryman’s death a light burns, an electric bulb outside above the door, forgotten or left to burn for ever. A sheet of paper floats in its reflection on the water.
ANNA WALKS PAST THE NEW BUILDINGS AND THE Gölow property, down to the promenade. Or rather drags herself, bending over, finding it hard to breathe out. She stops when she comes to the ferry boathouse, with her hands on her knees. It’s not the strain, it’s stupidity. She forgot to bring her asthma spray.
Someone is standing in the water not far from the bank, faintly visible in some source of light. Rain is falling on the lake.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
It is Ana Kranz. Anna tries to breathe calmly, but the air wheezes in her throat.
“Are you a ghost? That’s funny. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Frau Kranz, it’s me, Anna.” Anna gasps for air, coughs, crouches down. “Are you all right?”
“Are you all right?”
“Come along, I’ll help. . help you out.”
“Keep away. Can’t a person even paint here in peace?”
Somewhere a car engine roars. After a pause it roars again. The wind is rising. Raindrops flash in the beam of Anna’s headlight. “It’s raining,” says Anna, and would like to go on, but she doesn’t have the breath for it.
“Excellent!” cries Frau Kranz. Anna straightens up, turns away. She can’t help the old woman now, she must help herself.
Rain beats on the umbrella above the easel, on the lake, the drops sound like the chiming of small bells, and the lake rumbles, the lake moves.
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1589, IN THE MONTH of July, Kuene Gantzkow, Maidservant to our good Mayor, bore an infant Child, a Girl, which said Infant the Mayor’s Wife took from her, giving it instant Baptism for the Sake of its Immortal Soul, thereafter strangling the Babe and casting it over the Fence and into the Ditch, where we found the Carcase several Weeks later. The Mayor’s Wife told her Son, which Same had had carnal Knowledge of the Maidservant, to strike the young Woman dead, as he duly did. For her Crime, the Babe’s Grandmother was drown’d in the Deep Lake.
HOME. SHE JUST HAS TO GET HOME. ANNA TAKES the longer way through the village; she would rather not be visible in the light of the streetlamps any more. Her coughing wakes German Shepherd dogs. When she reaches the Homeland House she can’t go any farther. She crouches down. Around Anna: dreams among buildings made of sprayed concrete. She presses her lips together and breathes against them, but it doesn’t help. She gasps, and can’t breathe any air out.