“Did your lodger fall and hit his head?”
“What’s he up to?”
“It’s Scheitekliche, right? Or what?”
“Come on, Schloss, say something! Tell us!”
“How long is this queer duck going to hang around here?”
“Where does he think he is, with his smelly little card?”
“Does he take us for neophytes?”
“What’s a neophyte?”
“How should I know? I didn’t say it!”
“Damn it, Schloss, answer! Tell us something!”
There was a steady barrage of questions, which Schloss received as if they were inoffensive pellets. His only perceptible response to the general curiosity was the malicious little smile on his thick face. He let the tension mount. It was good for his business, all of it. Talking about it made people thirsty.
“Come on, Schloss, out with it! Hell, you’re not going to keep quiet until this evening, are you?”
“Is he upstairs?”
“Can’t you move over a little?”
“Well, Schloss?”
“All right, all right, shut up! Schloss is going to speak!”
Everyone held his breath. The two or three who hadn’t noticed anything and were continuing their private conversation were quickly called to order. All eyes — some of them already a bit out of focus — converged on the innkeeper, who was enjoying his little show and taking his time. Finally, he said, “Since you insist, I’m going to tell you …”
A collective sound of happiness and relief greeted these first words.
“I’m going to tell you everything I know,” Schloss continued.
Necks were screwed around and stretched as far as possible in his direction. He slapped his towel on the bar, put both hands flat on top of the towel, and stared at the ceiling for a long time, amid absolute silence. Everyone imitated him, and had someone entered the inn at that moment, he would surely have wondered why approximately forty men were standing there mute, their heads tilted back and their eyes fixed on the ceiling, staring feverishly at the filthy, sooty, blackened beams as though asking them an important question.
“This is what I know,” Schloss went on in a confidential tone. His voice was very low, and everyone drank his words as if they were the finest eau-de-vie. “What I know is — well — it’s that I don’t know very much!”
A big sound rose from the gathering again, but this time it was full of disappointment and a touch of anger, accompanied by the crash of fists striking the bar, several choice insults, and so forth. Schloss raised his arms in an attempt to calm everyone down, but he had to shout in order to be heard: “He simply asked me for permission to have the whole room to himself, starting at six o’clock, so he can make his preparations.”
“Preparations for what?”
“I have no idea! One thing I can tell you is he’s going to pay for everyone’s drinks.”
The crowd recovered their good humor. The prospect of quenching their thirst at little or no expense sufficed to sweep away all their questions. Slowly but surely, the inn emptied out. I myself was on the point of leaving when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Schloss.
“Brodeck, you didn’t say anything.”
“I let the others talk—”
“But how about you? You have no questions to ask? If you don’t have any questions, maybe that’s because you have the answers. Maybe you’re in on the secret.”
“Why would I be?”
“I saw you go up to his room the other day and stay in there for hours. So, obviously, you must have found some things to talk about during all that time, right?”
Schloss’s face was very close to mine. It was already so hot that his skin was perspiring everywhere, like fat bacon in a hot skillet.
“Leave me alone, Schloss. I’ve got things to do.”
“You shouldn’t talk to me like that, Brodeck. You shouldn’t!”
At the time, I considered his words a threat. But after the other day, when he sat at my table and got weepy talking about his dead infant son, I don’t know anymore. Some men are so maladroit that you take them for the opposite of what they really are.
The only thing I’d learned at Schloss’s inn that morning was that the Anderer’s little perfumed cards had succeeded in focusing everyone’s attention on him even more closely. Now it wasn’t yet seven o’clock, and the last breath of air was already gone. The swallows in the sky looked exhausted and flew slowly. High aloft, one very small, nearly transparent cloud in the shape of a holly leaf drifted alone. Even the animals were quiet. The cocks hadn’t crowed. Silent and unmoving, trying to stay cool, hens languished in holes dug in the dusty earth of farmyards. Cats dozed in the shadows of carriage entrances, lying on their sides with their limbs outstretched and their pointy tongues lolling out of their half-open mouths.
When I passed Gott’s forge, I heard a great commotion inside. The diabolical racket was being made by Gott himself, who was tidying up the place a little. He noticed me, gave me a sign to stop, and walked over to me. His forge was at rest. No fire burned in it, and the blacksmith was freshly bathed, clean-shaven, and combed. He wasn’t wearing his eternal leather apron, nor were his shoulders bare; he had on a clean shirt, high-waisted pants, and a pair of suspenders.
“So what do you think about this, Brodeck?”
Not taking any chances, I shrugged my shoulders, as I really didn’t know what he was talking about: the heat, the Anderer, his little rosewater-scented card, or something else.
“I say it’s going to blow up, all at once, and it’s going to be violent, believe you me!”
As he spoke, Gott clenched his fists and his jaws. His cleft lip moved like a muscle, and his red beard made me think of a burning bush. He was three heads taller than I was and had to stoop to speak in my ear.
“This can’t last, and I’m not the only one who thinks so! You’re educated, you know more about such things than we do. How’s it going to end?”
“I don’t know, Gott. We just have to wait until this evening. Then we’ll see.”
“Why this evening?”
“You got a card like everyone else. We’re all invited at seven o’clock.”
Gott stepped back and scrutinized me as if I’d gone mad. “Why are you talking to me about a card? I mean this fucking sun! It’s been grilling our skulls for three weeks! I’m practically suffocating, I can’t even work anymore, and you want to talk to me about a card!”
A moan from the depths of the forge made us turn our heads. It was Ohnmeist, skinnier than a nail, stretching and yawning.
“He’s still the happiest,” I said to Gott.
“I don’t know if he’s the happiest, but in any case, he’s surely the idlest!”
And as if wishing to demonstrate that the blacksmith with whom he’d temporarily chosen to dwell had the correct view of the matter, the dog lay his head on his forepaws and calmly went back to sleep.
The day was another in an unbroken series of scorchers, yet it seemed peculiar, hollowed out inside, as if its center and its hours were unimportant and only the evening worth thinking about, waiting for, yearning toward. As I recall, after I returned from the inn that day, I didn’t leave the house again. I worked at putting the notes I’d taken for the past several months in order. My scribblings covered a variety of subjects: the exploitation of our forests; sections already cut and scheduled to be cut; assessments for all the parcels of land; replanting; sowing; timberland most in need of cleaning up next year; distribution of firewood-cutting privileges; reversals of debt. Hoping to find relief from the heat, I’d chosen the cellar for my workplace, but even there, where an icy perspiration usually dampens the walls, I found nothing but heavy, dusty air, barely cooler than in the other rooms in the house. From time to time, I heard the sound of Poupchette’s laughter above my head. Fedorine had placed her naked in a big wooden basin filled with fresh water. She could stay in there for hours, tirelessly playing the little fish while Amelia sat at the window near her, hands flat on her knees, staring out at nothing and intoning her melancholy refrain.