I took Amelia in my arms and held her tight. I told her that I was going away, I was going away and never coming back. Above all, I told her that I had come for her, that I wanted to take her with me to my home, to my village in the mountains. It was another world there, I said, we’d be protected from everything; that land of crests and pastures and forests would be for us the safest of bulwarks. And I told her I wanted her to be my wife.
I felt her shivering against me, and it was as though I held a trembling bird in my arms. Her tremors seemed to reach into the deepest part of my body and make it more vibrant and alive. She turned her beautiful face to me, smiled, and gave me a long kiss.
An hour later, we left the city. We walked quickly, hand in hand. We weren’t alone. Men, women, children, old people, entire families were fleeing, too, bringing with them a great deal of baggage. Some carried suitcases crammed to overflowing and impossible to close, so that the linen and crockery they contained were visible. Others pushed carts loaded with trunks and badly tied bundles. Everyone looked serious, fearful, uncertain. Nobody spoke. We all marched along in great haste, as if compelled to put as much distance as possible between us and what we were leaving behind.
But what was actually driving us away? Other men, or the course of events? I’m still a young man, still in my prime, and yet, when I think about my life, it’s like a bottle too small to hold everything that’s been poured into it. Is this the case with every human life, or was I born into a time that has abolished all limits, that shuffles human lives like cards in a great game of chance?
I didn’t ask for very much. I would have liked to remain in the village and never leave. The mountains, the forests, our rivers — all that would have been enough for me. I would have liked to stay far from the noise of the world, but people in these parts have killed one another in large numbers throughout History. Many nations have died and are now only names in books. Some countries have devoured others, eviscerated them, violated them, defiled them. And justice hasn’t always triumphed over nastiness.
Why did I, like thousands of others, have to carry a cross I hadn’t chosen, a cross which was not made for my shoulders and which didn’t concern me? Who decided to come rummaging around in my obscure existence, invade my gray anonymity, my meager tranquillity, and bowl me like a little ball in a great game of skittles? God? Well, in that case, if He exists, if He really exists, let Him hide His face. Let Him put His two hands on His head, and let Him bow down. It may be, as Peiper used to teach us, that many men are unworthy of Him, but now I know that He, too, is unworthy of most of us, and that if the creature is capable of producing horror, it’s solely because his Creator has slipped him the recipe for it.
XXVIII
—
’ve just read over my account from the beginning. I’m not talking about the official Report; I mean this whole long confession. It lacks order. I go off in all directions. But I don’t have to justify myself. The words come to my mind like iron shavings to a magnet, and I shake them onto the page without worrying too much about emending them. If my tale looks deformed or monstrous, that’s because it’s made in the image of my life, which I’ve been unable to contain, and which is in disarray.
On June 10, the day of the Schoppessenwass in honor of the Anderer, everyone in the village and quite a few people from outside gathered in the market square and waited in front of the little platform Zungfrost had built. As I’ve said, it had been a long time since I’d gazed upon such a dense concentration of humanity in so restricted a space. I saw only merry, laughing, peaceful folk, but I couldn’t help thinking about the crowds I’d seen back in the days when the Capital was seized by madness, right before Pürische Nacht, and with that thought in mind, I perceived the tranquil countenances around me as masks hiding bloody faces, constantly open mouths, demented eyes.
Viktor Heidekirch’s accordion was playing every tune we knew, and in the warm, soft air of that late afternoon, various strong aromas — of fried food, of grilled sausages, of doughnuts, of waffles, of Wärmspeck—mingled with the more delicate perfumes given off by the hay drying in the fields around the village. Poupchette inhaled them all with delight and clapped her hands at every old song that came out of Heidekirch’s squeezebox. Amelia and Fedorine had stayed home. The sun was in no hurry to disappear behind the crests of the Hörni. It seemed to be taking its time, extending the day a little so as not to miss the party.
All at once, you could tell that the ceremony was about to begin. Something like a wave ran through the crowd, gently moving it like the leaves of an ash tree stirred by a breeze. Viktor Heidekirch, perhaps at a signal arranged in advance, silenced his instrument. You could still hear a few voices, a few laughs, a few shouts, but they gradually died down, fading into a great silence. That was when I smelled the henhouse odor. I turned around and saw Göbbler standing two steps away. He greeted me by raising his odd beret, which was made of woven straw. “Going to the show, neighbor?”
“What show?” I asked.
With a slight wave of his hand, Göbbler indicated everything around us. He sniggered. I made no reply. Poupchette pulled my hair: “Black curls, Daddy, black curls!” Suddenly, about ten meters away on my right, there was movement, the sounds of shoes scraping the ground and shuffling as people stepped aside. We could see Orschwir’s great bulk cleaving the crowd, and behind him, following in his wake, a hat, a hat we’d come to know over the course of the previous two weeks: a sort of black, shiny bowler outside of age and time, unconnected to places or people, for it seemed to float freely in the air, as if there were no head beneath it. The mayor reached the platform and mounted it without a moment’s hesitation; then, as it were from on high, he made a ceremonious gesture, inviting the person under the hat, which was all we could see, to join him.
Very cautiously, accompanied by cracking sounds from the green wood, the Anderer climbed up and stood at Orschwir’s side. The platform was only a few meters high — less than three, in fact — and the stair that Zungfrost had nailed together comprised only six steps, but as you watched the Anderer hoist himself from one to the next, you might have thought he was scaling the highest peak of the Hörni mountains, so slow and effortful was his progress. When he finally reached the mayor’s side, the crowd uttered a murmur of surprise, because it must be said that many of those present were seeing for the first time the person they’d heard so much about — seeing him in flesh and blood and clothes. The platform was neither very wide nor very deep. Zungfrost, who was as thin as a lath, had made a guess as to the appropriate dimensions, probably basing his estimates on his own body. But Orschwir was something of a giant, tall and broad, and the Anderer was as round as a barrel.
The mayor was wearing his fanciest getup, which he generally put on three times a year for the grandest occasions — the village festival, St. Matthew’s Fair, All Souls’ Day. The only feature that distinguished this outfit from his everyday attire was a green braided jacket fastened by six frogged buttons. In order to survive where we live, it’s better to blend in, to not let anything stand out too far, to be as simple and crude as a block of granite emerging from a stubble field. This is a truth which Orschwir has long since understood. He keeps the pomp to a minimum.
The Anderer’s attitude was obviously different. He’d dropped in from the moon or somewhere even farther away; he knew nothing about our ways or what went on inside our heads. Maybe if he’d worn less perfume and pomade, and fewer ribbons, we would have found him less distressing. Maybe if he’d been dressed in coarse cloth and corduroy and an old woolen overcoat, he would have blended in more with our walls, and then, little by little, the village would have — not accepted him; acceptance requires at least five generations — at least tolerated him, as one tolerates certain cats or dogs that arrive out of nowhere, from the depths of the forest, most likely, and enliven our streets with their silent movements and their measured cries.