But the fact is that many people were hanged from that oak tree over the centuries, and we sometimes feel so angry that we’d like to have the whole field covered with cement, not because we’re angry with the field and the oak tree, but because apart from Frau Schwermuth no one’s interested. There isn’t even a plaque about it anywhere.
But we digress.
On such a night as this.
AT WHITSUNTIDE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1619, a farm worker by the name of Drewes was stabbed. The Murderer ran away, and did not return for Eight Years, but in the end came back of his own Accord, believing that the Crime would have been Forgot. He was taken, kept close confin’d, and met his well-deserv’d End hanging from a Rope.
SO HERR SCHRAMM, FORMERLY LIEUTENANT-Colonel, forester, pensioner, takes the pistol away from his temple and unlocks the car door for the girl. Anna turns the beam of her headlight on him.
“What are you doing with that pistol?”
She dazzles him; it’s like being interrogated.
“Hmm, well.”
“Put it away.”
Herr Schramm puts the pistol away in his tracksuit trousers.
Anna gets into the passenger seat.
“Schramm. Pleased to meet you.”
“I know who you are.” Anna switches the interior light of the car on and her headlight off.
“Mhm,” says Herr Schramm. He rubs his eyes. He feels sad to realize that he is rubbing his eyes, so he asks, “What are you doing out here?”
“Running.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“I’m also getting into cars with crazy guys carrying guns in a field in the middle of the night.”
Herr Schramm turns away. There is the night, there is the tree, and there is the field. Anna is looking steadfastly at him. He has bags under his eyes, broken veins on his nose, little hairs in his ears. Herr Schramm looks like someone who doesn’t have ambitious plans for his body these days.
“I’m not crazy,” says Herr Schramm.
Unshaven, greasy hair. Herr Schramm looks like someone who goes to sleep on the toilet with his toothbrush in his mouth. Who wakes up, screaming, and doesn’t know when or where he is. If that were so, at least Schramm would say, honestly, why the nightmare? But what good does that do?
The vest and tracksuit trousers, his unshaven face and general look of decrepitude are deceptive. Over the last few days Herr Schramm hasn’t done much, that’s all. He washes with a mild, cream soap, without overdoing it. He regularly cleans his house, except for on top of the cupboards, because why bother? He even looks after his little garden the way others might look after a family member — reluctantly and with a sense of duty. All those tiresome little jobs to be done: turning over the soil, weeding, bush tomatoes, birthdays, shopping, visits to old people’s homes. His father the drunk had the same little broken veins, it’s hereditary. Statistically. Herr Schramm also knows that regularly washing the hair weakens it. It can’t cope so well with the artificial effect of the shampoo. That’s what happens to a man in general when he lets things go.
Anna takes a deep breath. It works okay. She says, “You were going to kill yourself.”
Herr Schramm says, “Right.”
Anna says, “What do I do now?”
Herr Schramm tries to start the car, but the engine won’t catch.
“When you go running,” says Herr Schramm, “I suppose you don’t take cigarettes with you?”
“I don’t smoke at all.”
“Do you have your ID on you?”
“What for?”
“I don’t have mine on me. No driving license, nothing. You could get me some cigarettes. Or if not you could fetch your ID and then get me some cigarettes.”
“Why don’t you go and fetch yours?”
“I won’t have the time before I commit suicide.”
Anna doesn’t want to laugh, but she does, briefly. Her breath immediately comes with difficulty.
“I want to smoke another cigarette,” says Herr Schramm. “The tank’s empty, and I live out there toward Parmen, while you live here only just beyond the rise in the ground. You’re the toymaker Geher’s granddaughter, aren’t you? We can do it within ten minutes, and then we each go our own way.”
Anna shakes her head. No, she is not leaving him alone. If need be she’ll take him somewhere. Home, to his family. Does he have a family? Is he married?
Herr Schramm has a family, but you know how it is. And women? He thought about women one last time in the summer, weighing up the pros and cons. Looked around. But at his age, and with his history? And in our village, where few of us say what we feel. Difficult. Widows at the outside. But widows make you think of loneliness in old age. Difficult.
The ferryman told him about the dating agency, where you can pinpoint the pros and rule out the cons. The same as in the army. Herr Schramm liked that idea. And he had instinctively liked Frau Mahlke. How wrong can you be? She simply never got in touch again. He had phoned, asking if he’d done anything wrong. She could tell him, he said. He’d spent a lifetime making either no mistakes or a lot of them, depending who you ask. Today, however, he’d admit to his mistakes, and making another didn’t matter now.
Frau Mahlke had sounded funny on the phone. Funny wasn’t all right. Herr Schramm couldn’t think of any reason for her to sound funny. If she’d told him a reason, that would have been all right. Had he said something? Was he just too old?
Delays in the course of events, she said. She had been beating about the bush. And beating about the bush — maybe that is the only matter in which Herr Schramm is still a soldier. Either you have an order to obey or you don’t. Herr Schramm is a critical man when it comes to standing to attention and not standing to attention. Not standing to attention isn’t the result of beating about the bush. Wilfried Schramm has never beaten about the bush. Just as he has never bowed to anyone or praised himself, or told lies to hurt someone else. Do right and fear no one. Not standing to attention comes from the fact that he went on his knees to his own mistakes for a long time. Comes from the fact that he told the truth to the disadvantage of others, and the truth weighed heavily. In concrete terms, it comes from the fact that now, in his old age, Herr Schramm stands bending over the engines of agricultural machines all day, if he isn’t crawling under them.
Maybe because it is so long before Schramm says anything, Anna remarks, “It smells funny in here.”
“That’s the little tree.” Herr Schramm points to the dangling tree-shaped air freshener. And, “Family doesn’t mean anything. That wouldn’t do for me or for them now. I just need—” Herr Schramm turns to her again, bags under his eyes, broken veins, he scratches under his collar and leaves his sentence unfinished.
“Okay.” Anna is breathing freely again. “We’ll do it the way I say. Give me the pistol and come with me. We’ll fetch my ID and buy some cigarettes, and then we’ll see.”
Herr Schramm taps the steering wheel. On average men in Western Europe find themselves in mortal danger once every 13.4 years, women once every 15.1 years. Anna must be about eighteen. He gives her the pistol. The old man and the young woman climb out of the car. “Just a moment,” says the old man, and he gets an umbrella out of the boot. The old man and the young woman go over the fields and meadows, down the roads and on into the night.
THE VILLAGE HAS NO WORK TO DO ON THE ROADS by night. The night offers no jobs for anyone. There’s no late shift, no hotel, no nightwatchman, no radio DJ, no nocturnal work on a building site. In the village, so the village thinks, no one works for erotic hotlines.
On the roads, the heavenly tree of the stars is hung with moist fruit as blue as night.