But on the Night when the Inn-Keeper broached his new, good Brew, the Woman was gone, leaving a Besom Broom in the Bed where she had lain. Soon Ramelow his true Wife came home, and right glad she was of it. She said, that two Men had taken her away by Force to a Cavern in the Kiecker Forest, and oblig’d her to stay there with them. The Aforesaid Men were wicked Scoundrels, Thieves and Sorry Deceivers, yet they did not molest her. They had given her good Nourishment, and she had both grave and amusing Talk with them. Many a time the Couple were Away, leaving her with a Fox to bear her company. This Fox was a very tame Beast, and they lov’d it greatly. When they return’d they brought all Manner of Fine Wares, good Cloth, fine Gowns of Damask, Atlas and even Silk with them, together with Jewelery and such Stuff.
She once tried to run Away, but the Fox had followed like a Dog, and being afeared that the Animal might betray her, she gave up the Attempt.
The Wife of the Inn-Keeper could describe those Men and tell their Names. One was tall of Stature, t’other short and round as a Carp. The first was called Kuno, his Companion’s Name was Hinnerk. They were Native to Fürstenfelde, which Disclosure serv’d to account for many a Robbery and grievous Assault. The noble Lord Poppo von Blankenburg led ten Horsemen into the Kiecker Forest to bring the Rogues to Justice. The Cavern was found, but there was Nought therein.
One Day the Congregation did see the Inn-Keeper’s Wife in the House of God, adorn’d with a very fine Girdle, stitch’d as it seem’d with Pearls. There was some Gossip concerning that Girdle, which she never again wore thereafter.
ANNA IS BREATHING MORE EASILY. THE PRESSURE in her chest hasn’t been so bad since she got into the van. The driver is keeping to 50 k.p.h., no faster. A small, stylized fox’s brush hangs from the rearview mirror, along with a pennant with a lightning flash on it, like the one on the driver’s football shirt. Something like German rap is coming from the loudspeakers. “We Are Legends.”
Anna points to the pennant. “What’s that for?”
“All for the best. We just like lightning,” says the smaller youth.
“It’s our team’s crest, not really frightening,” adds Q, shaking his head.
There they go again. Anna tries to find some indication that the whole thing is a game, maybe a bet: who will fail to find a rhyme first?
Q hoots his horn. Right in the middle of the carriageway, no lights on, a car is racing toward them. In films you often see a duel like that. Usually one vehicle ends up in the ditch or against a wall. Q simply brakes and steers to the side of the road. The other car slides off the road, scraping past a birch tree, and drives on into the meadow.
Anna says, “He must be really tight.”
“Soon be out like a light,” Q agrees.
The car is a white Golf, and it makes straight for a tree. Anna gets out. The Golf slithers over an uneven spot on the ground, but hardly seems to slacken speed. Anna runs.
When she looks back, once, she sees no van on the road.
The car stops not five meters from the tree. Anna must go more slowly; the ground is uneven and wet, her breathing isn’t steady yet. She is maybe fifty meters away. Someone is sitting motionless inside the car with his head on the steering wheel.
II
IT’S IN OUR NATURE TO TAKE A HISTORICAL INTEREST. And anyone who takes a historical interest in us can go to the Homeland House. Exhibitions take place there, Leitz file folders full of potential research materials wait for researchers on a chest of drawers adorned with decorative film bearing a pattern of grapes, and there’s a copying machine that also works as a fax. A senior citizen from California has said he is coming for the Feast, and he wants to explore his family tree a bit. On the phone he told Frau Schwermuth that he’s heard this place is at its best in late summer. Visitors can use the telephone, the coffee machine and the visitors’ toilet, and can also admire Frau Kranz’s charcoal drawing Mayor Heinz Durden after Shooting Duck, which shows a duck flying through the air. Frau Schwermuth asked the senior citizen what place isn’t at its best in late summer.
Opening Times: strictly observed.
The Leitz file folders contain documents on:
People and personalities
History I (1740–1939) and History II (1945–1989)
Present events I (1990–onward, in progress)
Trade, arts and crafts over the ages
Festivals, customs, clubs
Faith, the church (bells), war
Tales and legends (I, II, III)
We don’t take any historical interest in the contents of the Leitz file folders.
Above the folders hangs a cork pinboard. Pinned to it are index cards with accounts of milestones in local history. The first is about a giant:
It was not men who divided the waters at Fürstenfelde in such a way that we have two lakes; a giant did it. Long, long ago he broke the peak off a mountain in the Dinaric Alps in Dalmatia, and threw it so that it landed here and divided the waters for ever. History does not relate whether the giant threw the mountain peak on purpose.
They tell this story in the Dinaric Alps too. A mountain peak, as they tell it there, was blocking a giant’s view of the Adriatic Sea, so he got rid of it. That version doesn’t say that the rock traveled all the way to the Uckermark. Anyway, there are huge fingerprints to be seen on it, and a worn inscription in Old Church Slavonic which could mean, “The love of God is our salvation,” or alternatively it may say, “Bogoljub (= Theophilus) is a stalk of asparagus.”
We don’t take any historical interest in giants.
We don’t take any interest in milestones of local history.
Anyone who takes a historical interest in us had better talk to Frau Schwermuth. Frau Schwermuth knows things. She knows where to find the dramatic story of our Singing Club in the Leitz file folders, with the tale of its rise and fall at the beginning of the war, and she knows where to find the equally dramatic story of our Marksmen’s Association and its rise and fall after the end of the war.
Farewell, brother marksmen, think of your old comrades sometimes, and we send you greetings: shoot well, and good luck!
Those are the words of Paul Wiese. Wiese was our chronicler until the 1950s. Frau Schwermuth has been his successor since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In between those years, the office of chronicler was neglected. Historically and in relation to Fürstenfelde, Frau Schwermuth knows everything, or she knows how to find it out.
We don’t take any historical interest in the Marksmen’s Association.
We don’t take any historical interest in knowledge.
The Homeland House sells secondhand books out of banana crates. We take no historical interest in them, but they’re El Dorado for dust mites. They cost between fifty cents and four euros. The journal Our Fürstenfelde, published by the Fürstenfelde Historical Society, costs five euros to local people and eight to tourists on cycling trips. The poster Fürstenfelde, Seen from a Helicopter (1996) cost fourteen D-Marks when it was published. The latest CD made by our Firefighters’ Choral Society, Sound and Smoke, We Didn’t Start the Fire, costs 7.89 euros. They were rehearsing Beethoven’s “Hymn to the Night” in the evening, for the Feast. It sounded good, very good. And assorted maps of the area can be bought at the Homeland House: walking and cycling maps, maps of the lakes, and four different picture postcards.