The slats of the Venetian blind clatter. Frau Zieschke’s calves, apron, bosom and friendly round face come into view. The doorbell jingles generously. The baker’s wife looks confused by the small assembly outside. The Adidas man smooths down his hair, as if all the fall had done was disarrange it.
Frau Zieschke hesitates. He can come in if he likes, she says, but it will be a little while before the baked goods are ready to serve.
Cornflowers, Adidas stripes, we don’t know his name, we don’t know what he can do. The Adidas man goes into the shop. With blood on his lip, he goes straight to the corner table and stands there. Frau Zieschke puts a packet of paper napkins in front of him.
A paper napkin is dabbed on a wound.
Frau Zieschke nods to her son outside. The boys move away. She puts coffee on. The Adidas man has dabbed his split lip dry and presses his fist into his other hand so hard that the knuckles show white.
The baker’s wife gives him a cup of coffee. With a biscuit on the saucer.
He breaks the biscuit in his fingers.
He closes his eyes as he munches.
We don’t know where he comes from. We don’t know where he is going. A stranger is eating and drinking in our bakery.
UNDER A BEECH TREE ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE ancient forest, the injured vixen lies on damp leaves. Mist glows above the fields, enveloping the human earths. The vixen takes short, fast breaths. The little container is lying in front of her nose; she scents eggs, eggshells but no yolk yet. She gets up, limps farther into the forest with the container in her mouth.
The badger catches the vixen’s scent and follows her, enquiringly; she has something that he likes, so he follows her. The vixen knows about the badger. Knows about his speed and agility and his bite. But he won’t dare. The badger scents blood on the vixen, scents chicken, scents the eggs. It would be better for him if he could also scent her determination. She isn’t going to let him have her catch without a fight. The badger overtakes the vixen and stops. The vixen trots toward the badger. The vixen is calm.
There is movement in the mist: the wind carries an aroma out of the forest, an aroma that displeases both the vixen and the badger. It surprises her, almost frightens her. The badger forgets about the eggs and strolls away, but the vixen calls a single clear, long-drawn-out warning, and runs on as fast as she can. Bitter and over-sweet: carrion and droppings, a member of her own family never before scented in the ancient forest. Wolf.
Reaching her earth, the vixen lets the egg container drop. It opens and an egg rolls out. She ought to have many more eggs here for her cubs. She barks softly, calls several times in quick succession. They don’t come to her. She whines, she scents blood, scents wolf, snarls, she scents beech, ash, moss, blood, blood, worm, human, she scents the eggs, herself, the cubs, she scents the earthy honey of her coat, crawls into the earth, scents roots, scents play, scents cubs, can’t find them anywhere, picks up their tracks, scents wolf, here, here, here, she scents stars, night, time, death, the vixen freezes rigid with her jaws wide open, snarling, calling, whining, it’s over.
The vixen eats the eggs. Devours the eggs. The vixen barks. The vixen curls up in her earth. Licks her injured paw.
BATS SWIRL THROUGH THE AIR RETURNING TO their caves. Wild boar, full-fed, grunt. The screech owl lands softly, sings tu-whit tu-whoo.
LADA WOULD LIKE TO APPEAR ON THE TV PROGRAM You Bet! With this particular bet: he bets he could tell, from the way a streetlamp is made, where exactly he must kick it hard to make the light go out. He bets he could get it right with nineteen out of twenty streetlamps, although only those made in Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.
Silent Suzi is trying to tell Lada something. “Was strange man say me something.”
“He’s nuts,” says Lada.
Suzi shakes his head, nudges Lada impatiently, repeats his gestures.
“Hey, Suzi, what are you getting at?”
Suzi points to his trainers.
Lada doesn’t look at them, he is too agitated. He would have liked to wait for that punk to come out of the bakery again “so as to show him that he couldn’t cross the line.” Now he says, “Tell you what, Suzi, people think that guy is done for. Ex-druggie or some such, like Hirtentäschel, only done for. But he isn’t. Because did you see how he landed? If you’re done for, you don’t catch yourself up like that. If you’re done for you just fall down.”
Suzi shakes his head and rolls his eyes. Indicates that he wants Lada to watch his mouth, forms the words with his lips and repeats the gestures.
“There that strange man say me something.”
“The guy told you something?”
Suzi nods.
He crouches down and touches the road. They have reached Eddie’s workshop.
“Road?”
Suzi shakes his head.
“Ground? What is it, man? Suzi? Asphalt?”
Suzi nods. Asphalt. With his lips and his hands, fingers spread, he mouths the words “something” and “under.”
“There’s something lying under the asphalt?”
Suzi nods.
AND A FLINT AX WAS FOUND IN A STONE GRAVE.
And a pair of tweezers was found in a tumulus grave; the tweezers were decorated at the broad end and were probably for plucking out the hairs of a beard, so it is assumed that the dead man had a well-groomed one.
And in a Slav grave a meerschaum hand spindle was found, and a coin in the dead man’s mouth to pay the ferryman who would take him over to the next world.
And in another grave, the grave of a dead child, there was a hammer and a ceramic rattle. The hammer head was inside the rattle. If you shake a ceramic rattle, it makes a sound.
And when the promenade was flooded in 2004, they found the grave of a warrior who had been buried with a whetstone and a bone ax, so that he could face his enemies with a sharp blade for all eternity.
And in the year 1739 an edict was issued against Gypsies, Vagabonds and other such Traveling Folk, who were a thorn in the flesh of the local aristocracy, since any Person who knowingly gives them an Abode was threatened with a fine of 1,000 thalers. The village communities were also charged with taking travelers into custody. Once a Rabble of Gypsies came to Fürstenfelde. The men claimed to be horse-dealers and musicians, the women to be soothsayers. Their children moved fast. Their tools were the horsewhip and the crystal ball. The Gypsy gallows of Fürstenfelde stood on the ground of a field lying fallow.
And Maria Wegener once protested against the exclusion of joiners and carpenters from the local guilds. She had been unable to prove that they were rightfully born of four grandparents from Fürstenfelde, and were thus worthy to work in our workshops and guilds. Frau Wegener was a wood-carver. She had done carvings for the door of our church, but they had gone up in flames, so no one knows if they looked good. Count Poppo von Blankenburg had commissioned Frau Wegener to carve him a yew-wood spoon. It was beautiful, a fine spoon with a broad bowl and an elegantly curving handle set in silver. Yew is slightly poisonous, but probably no one died of using the spoon, in fact you would have had to eat the spoon itself. A valuable spoon like that was left as a bequest when the owner died; as he passed away, it passed on. Von Blankenburg, our agricultural machinery mogul, keeps the yew-wood spoon that he inherited in a glass display case. Magdalene sometimes eats her muesli with it.
Maria Wegener’s favorite tool was a knife with a carved box-wood handle and a bone ferrule.
And broken shards of Germanic and Slav origin were found in a rubbish tip, in the same stratum, with fragments of a comb made from deer’s antlers under them.