“Terrific,” says Anna.
“There,” says Herr Schramm, switching the indicator on.
We don’t know how to tell the next bit. At the moment when Herr Schramm switches off the engine, there is a curse from the upper floor of the boarding house opposite, and someone says, “I don’t believe it,” and at the boarding-house window appears the sleepy head of — we don’t believe it either, we can’t say her name—
“Frau. . Mahlke?” cries Herr Schramm incredulously, and if there is one thing that for decades Herr Schramm has not been, and never will be again after tonight, it is incredulous.
“Wilfried?” says Frau Mahlke at first hesitantly, and then, reasonably enough, sounding annoyed. “Wilfried, what are you doing there?”
Of course that is not a very good question, thinks Herr Schramm, because it is fairly obvious what he is doing, and he says so too. “Well, getting some cigarettes.”
And in the first faint light of dawn Herr Schramm, former Lieutenant-Colonel in the National People’s Army, then a forester, now a pensioner and also, because the pension doesn’t go far enough, moonlighting as a mechanic, a driver and a cleaner for Von Blankenburg Agricultural Machinery, sees the color and light of Frau Mahlke’s eyes (green and glowing), which remind him of the meatballs, the hot summer’s day, the best day of the whole summer, and he sees the color and light of the Mammoth 6800 (sky-blue and shiny), which remind him of the journey from Schwerin, the best spring day of the spring, a day when he did something he could do, did something he wanted to do, and this girl stayed with him, wanted to save his life without knowing what his life was like, yes, thinks Schramm, it’s all right after all. And from upstairs Frau Mahlke calls, “Come on up and I’ll roll you one,” and it is so improbable that she is calling that, so improbably improbable that she is there at all, that Herr Schramm can only shake hands with Anna, give the Mammoth a pat, and then run to the door of the boarding house, although it will stay closed until Frau Mahlke comes down with the key.
IV
WE ARE TOUCHED. JUST AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR the Feast, one of those who have moved to the village, namely Frau Reiff, has tracked down our four oldest postcards and had them reprinted on good cardboard. The Homeland House can sell them and keep the money. Frau Reiff has given us the originals for the auction.
1. The War Memorial in the Friedhofshain: the year is 1913. It is an eagle on top of a rectangular column tapering toward the top. You can see the gravestones indistinctly behind it. It records the names of the dead in three wars: 1864, 1866, 1870. In the corner it says Greetings from Fürstenfelde.
It has survived the World Wars. The list of names from those two wars, as you might expect, is longer, and stands on extra stones beside the column.
2. The Shooting Range shows Fritz Blissau’s beer garden. The year is 1935, the village is celebrating the Anna Feast. The village has put on its Sunday best and is wearing a hat. Except for Gustav. Gustav is eight. But Gustav’s pudding-bowl haircut looks like a hat, so it fits in. A young woman is coming up from the left in the postcard, carrying a tray laden with drinks, although everyone has a drink already apart from Gustav.
Those are good years. There are 400 more of us than today. We leave the village from two railway stations and drive around in fifteen motor cars. Optimism procreates children. Gustav’s parents can afford a proper haircut for Gustav. His father is the pastor, his mother is a secretary at the telegraph office. The country people nearby regard us as townies. We believe in work and the Fatherland, we have work and the Fatherland, we wear bows in our hats. We are living in a condition of blissful ignorance. After the war we’ll be going around barefoot.
There’s a canopy of chestnut leaves above the shooting range. Gustav is sitting at his table alone. His father wanted him to be in the photo, and had to persuade Blissau, who doesn’t like to see children running round among his guests and his jugs. Gustav likes running round. He wants to be a geographer, like Hans Steffen. The Nuremberg Laws are six days old. The tablecloths are white.
The village looks at the camera. Only the young woman stares at her tray of drinks: please don’t let there be an accident now. It does us good to see you all looking so tense because of the photographs, while at the same time we can tell that you really feel relaxed.
Herr Schliebenhöner releases the shutter.
A bee settles beside Gustav’s hand. Bells ring. The sun seems to be shining above the chestnut leaves.
3. The Windmill: a beautiful tower with wide sails. Two cows are grazing in front of the mill. In the viewer’s imagination, the wind is blowing and the sails are going round. No one is indifferent to windmills. In the course of his life, every fifth male Federal German citizen will try to understand exactly how a windmill works.
Nothing is left of the mill today. The people in the new buildings hang out their washing to dry where it used to be. Silent Suzi’s mother hangs out her bed linen. The Bunny logo flutters in the wind and rain.
Windmills are windmills, washing lines are washing lines. The village doesn’t say: oh, if only the windmill were still standing. The people from the new buildings are glad to have washing lines outdoors; their apartments are small.
But we’d like to talk about mills. There were four of them here. One was demolished in 1930, only the lower part of another still stands and is used as a second home at weekends by a married couple from Hamburg. The third dates from the sixteenth century. The feudal lord, Count Poppo von Blankenburg, was not at all happy about the flour it produced, and sent miller after miller packing. Finally he decided to try his luck as a miller himself. He took on three young miller’s men to help him, gave the priest living quarters in the mill to protect it from the Devil, and also hired a wise woman who promised to drive away mealworms and any ghosts haunting the mill (§ 109 of the Procedure for the Judgment of Capital Crimes, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s statute introduced in 1532, made it easy to distinguish between harmless and harmful magic). Finally he gave orders for three virgins to be brought to him. History does not relate what they were meant for.
The result was disastrous.
The priest and the wise woman went for each other first metaphysically, then physically. The miller’s men seduced the virgins, or vice versa, and when the village had no flour left at all, not even bad flour, its people assembled outside the mill to ask what was going on. The Count appeared at a window, shivering and shouting. How, he asked, was a man to get anywhere with a mill that felt like a human being and just didn’t fancy grinding flour?
“Talk to it kindly,” called a small voice from down below through his ranting. “Be nice to it.” The speaker was a girl with blue-gray eyes and short blonde hair. The nobleman fell silent, and the farmers, the laborers with their pitchforks, and a fox who had come to see what there was to be seen here were surprised too. But then the people agreed with the girl. Perhaps they really thought it would help, but more likely they just wanted to hear how their Count went about beguiling the mill.
And he did it, too. He immediately turned to the mill’s shutters and began praising them lavishly. What beautiful shutters over its windows, whether they were open or closed! And its sails! So large and useful. And so on, although here we must point out that no one would know the story today if Frau Schwermuth hadn’t discovered it.