On the night of the Ereigniës, Diodemus wasn’t in Schloss’s inn. Along with Alfred Wurtzwiller, our harelipped postmaster, Diodemus had gone to S., where Orschwir had sent him with some important papers. I think the mayor gave Diodemus that mission on purpose, to get him out of the way. When he came back to the village three days later, I tried to tell him what had happened, but he quickly cut me off: “I don’t want to hear it, Brodeck. You can keep all that to yourself. Besides, you don’t know anything for sure. Maybe he left without saying anything to anyone. Maybe he tipped his hat and made a bow and went off the way he came. You didn’t see anything, you said so yourself! Did he even exist, this Anderer of yours?”
His words took my breath away. I said, “But Diodemus, you can’t possibly—”
“Shut up, Brodeck. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. Leave me alone! There’s enough trouble in this village!”
Then he rushed away, leaving me at the corner of Silke Lane. I think it was that very evening when Diodemus started writing his letter to me. The Anderer’s death had stirred up too many things, more things than he could bear.
I repaired the desk and the broken drawer. I did a good job, I think. Then I rubbed the desk with beeswax, which makes it smell good and gleam in the candlelight. And here I am, sitting at the desk and writing again. It’s cold in the shed, but the pages hold the heat from Amelia’s belly for a long time. I hide all these words I’ve written against Amelia’s belly. Every morning, I wash and dress Amelia, and every evening, I undress her. Every morning, after writing almost all night long, I slip the pages into a finely woven linen pouch and tie it around her stomach, under her shirt. Every night, when I put her to bed, I remove the pouch, which is warm and impregnated with her scent.
I tell myself that Poupchette grew in Amelia’s belly, and that in a way, the story I’m writing comes out of it, too. I like this encouraging analogy.
I’ve almost finished the Report that Orschwir and the others are waiting for. I have just a few more things to say, and then it’s done. But I don’t want to give it to them before I finish my own story. I still have certain paths to go down. I still have several pieces to put together. I still have a few doors to open. So they won’t be getting their Report yet, not right away. First I have to continue describing the days that led up to the Ereigniës. Imagine a bowstring being pulled tauter and tauter, every hour a little more. Such an image gives a good idea of the weeks that preceded the Ereigniës because the whole village was drawn like a bow; but no one knew what arrow it would let fly, nor what its true target would be.
The summer heat was baking us like an oven. Old folks declared that they couldn’t remember such sweltering temperatures. Even in the heart of the forest, among the rocks where in mid-August the cool breath of buried glaciers usually rises up from the depths, the only breezes were searing hot. Insects whirled around madly above the dry mosses, rubbing their elytra together with an unnerving sound like an orchestra of out-of-tune violins and filling woodcutters’ brains with steadily mounting irritation. Springs dried up. The wells were at their lowest level. The Staubi turned into a narrow, feeble stream in which brown trout, brook trout, and char died by the score. Cows panted for air, and their withered teats yielded a small amount of clear, bitter milk. The animals were brought back to their stables and only let out again at nightfall. They lay on their sides, lowering their big eyelids over their shiny eyes and lolling their tongues, which were as white as plaster. Anyone in search of a cool spot had to climb up to the high stubble fields, and the happiest creatures of all were undoubtedly the flocks of sheep and goats, the shepherds, and the goatherds on the heights, heartily drinking the fresh wind. Down below, in the village streets and in the houses, all conversations revolved around the blazing sun, which we watched in despair as it rose every morning and quickly climbed to its zenith in a blue and absolutely empty sky that stayed that way the whole day long. We moved very little. We ruminated. The smallest glasses of wine went to men’s heads, and their owners needed no pretext to fly off the handle. No one’s to blame for a drought. No one can be condemned for it. And so anger builds and must be taken out on something, or someone.
Let the reader make no mistake. I’m not saying that the Ereigniës occurred because we had scorching weather in the weeks preceding it and heads were on the boil like potatoes in a pot. I think it would have taken place even at the end of a rainy summer. In that case, of course, it would have required more time. There would not have been the haste, the tensed bow I mentioned earlier. The thing would have happened differently, but it would have happened.
People are afraid of someone who keeps quiet. Someone who says nothing. Someone who looks and says nothing. If he stays mute, how can we know what he’s thinking? No one was pleased about the Anderer’s scant, two-word reply to the mayor’s speech. The next day, once the joy of the celebration — the free wine, the dancing — was past, people talked about the stranger’s attitude, about his smile, his outfits, and the pink cream on his cheeks, about his donkey and his horse, about the various nicknames he’d been given, about why he’d come to our village and why he was still here.
And it can’t be said that the Anderer made up any lost ground over the course of the following days. I have no doubt that I’m the person he talked to most — apart from Father Peiper, but in that regard I’ve never been able to find out which of them talked more than the other, and about what — and one may judge the Anderer’s verbosity from the fact that I’ve already recorded in these pages every word he ever said to me. A total of about ten lines, hardly more. It’s not that he ignored people. When he passed someone, he raised his hat, inclined his large head (upon which the remaining hair was sparse, but very long and frizzy), and smiled, but he never opened his lips.
And then, of course, there was his black notebook and all the notes people saw him taking, all the sketches and drawings he made. That conversation I overheard, when Dorcha, Pfimling, Vogel, and Hausorn were talking at the end of a market day — I didn’t make that up! And those four weren’t the only ones aggravated by that notebook! Why was he doing all that scribbling and scratching? What was the purpose of all that? What was it going to lead to?
We would eventually learn the answers to those questions. On August 24.
And that day, for him, was really the beginning of the end.
XXXIV
—
n the morning of August 24, everyone found a little card under his door. The card was fragrant with the essence of roses, and written on it, very elegantly and in violet ink, were the following words:
This evening, at seven o’clock,
in Schloss’s Inn,
portraits and landscapes
More than one villager examined his card from every angle, turning it over and over, sniffing it, reading and rereading the brief text. By seven in the morning, the inn was already thick with people. With men. Only men, obviously, but some of them had been sent by their wives to see what they could find out. There were so many extended arms and empty glasses that Schloss had trouble keeping everyone served.
“So, Schloss, tell us what this foolishness is about!”
Elbow to elbow, they were all knocking back wine, schorick, or beer. Outside, the sun was already beating down hard. Schloss’s customers pressed against one another and pricked up their ears.