“That can only have been the wind, or the blood climbing to our ears,” Mr. Hiff and Mr. Huff explained.
Then God whispered down from the stone cross: “Thou shalt not kill. .!”
The three were once again struck with terror and stepped back a good twenty steps from the stone cross; things are bad when you can’t even feel safe here! And before they could say another word, they found themselves bounding home with giant steps. It was only after the familiar smoke of their rooftops curled round the bushes, and the village dogs barked and children’s voices shot through the air like the chirp of sparrows that their legs stopped shaking. They stood still on them, feeling warm and safe. “Everybody’s got to die of something,” sighed Mr. Haff, who according to the hare’s prophecy had the longest to live; he knew damn well why he’d said what he said, though all of a sudden he grew troubled by the suspicion that his pals might also know why, and he was ashamed to ask them.
But Mr. Hiff replied in kind: “If I weren’t allowed to kill, well then I wouldn’t be allowed to be killed either, would I? Ergo, I say, there’s a fundamental contradiction here!” Each might apply this as he saw fit, a sensible answer it was not, and Mr. Hiff chuckled philosophically, so as to hide the fact that he was dying to know if the others had understood him all the same, or if something wasn’t right in his head.
Mr. Huff, the third one, pensively trampled an earthworm underfoot and replied: “We don’t only kill animals, we also protect them and preserve order in the field.”
Then everyone knew that the others knew too; and while everyone secretly remembered it, the experience already began to fade like a dream after waking, for what three men heard and saw cannot be a secret and thereafter not a miracle either, but must at best be a delusion. And all three suddenly sighed: Thank God! Mr. Hiff sighted it over his left boot toe, Mr. Huff over his right, for both squinted back at God in the field, whom they secretly thanked for not having actually appeared in person; but since the two others looked aside, Mr. Haff could turn himself all the way around to the cross, twitch his ears, and say: “We drank brandy on an empty stomach today, a hunter shouldn’t ever do that.”
“That’s it!” all three agreed, sang a merry hunter’s song about green woods and fields, and tossed stones at a cat that had surreptitiously slipped into the field to hunt hare eggs; for now the hunters were no longer afraid of the hare. But this last part of the story may not be quite as authentic as the rest, for there are people who claim that hares lay eggs on Easter.
THE BLACKBIRD
The Blackbird
The two men whom I must mention in order to relate three little stories, in which the narrative pivots around the identity of the narrator, were friends from youth; let’s call them Aone and Atwo. The fact is that such early friendships grow ever more astounding the older you get. You change over the years, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, from the skin’s soft down to the depths of your heart, but strangely enough, your relationship with each other stays the same, fluctuating about as little as the communion we each carry on with that diverse host of sirs successively addressed as I. It is beside the point whether or not you still identify with that little blond numbskull photographed once long ago; as a matter of fact, you can’t really say for sure that you even like the little devil, that bundle of I. And so too, you may very well both disagree with and disapprove of your best friends; indeed, there are many friends who can’t stand each other. And in a certain sense, those friendships are the deepest and the best, for without any admixtures, they contain that indefinable essence in its purest form.
The youth that united the two friends Aone and Atwo was nothing less than religious in character. While both were brought up in an institution that prided itself on the proper emphasis it placed on the religious fundamentals, the pupils of that institution did their best to ignore those selfsame principles. The school chapel, for instance, was a real, big, beautiful church, complete with a stone steeple; it was reserved for the school’s exclusive use. The absence of strangers proved a great boon, for while the bulk of the student body was busy according to the dictates of sacred custom, now kneeling, now rising at the pews up front, small groups could gather at the rear to play cards beside the confessional booths, or to smoke on the organ steps. And some escaped up to the steeple, whose pointed spire was ringed by a saucer-like balcony on the stone parapet of which, at a dizzying height, acrobatics were performed that could easily have cost the lives of far less sin-burdened boys than these.
One such provocation of the Lord involved a slow, muscle-straining elevation of the feet in midair, while with glance directed downward, you grasped at the parapet, balancing precariously on your hands. Anyone who has ever tried this stunt on level ground will appreciate just how much confidence, bravery, and luck are required to pull it off on a foot-wide stone strip up at the top of a tower. It must also be said that many wild and nimble boys, though virtuoso gymnasts on level ground, never did attempt it. Aone, for instance, never tried it. Atwo, on the other hand — and let this serve to introduce him as narrator — was, in his boyhood, the creator of this test of character. It was hard to find another body like his. He didn’t sport an athletic build like so many others, but seemed to have developed muscles naturally, effortlessly. A narrow smallish head sat atop his torso, with eyes like lighting bolts wrapped in velvet, and teeth that one would sooner have associated with the fierceness of a beast of prey than the serenity of a mystic.
Later, during their student days, the two friends professed a materialistic philosophy of life devoid of God or the soul, viewing man as a physiologic or economic machine — which in fact he may very well be, though this wasn’t the point as far as they were concerned, since the appeal of such a philosophy lies not in its inherent truth, but rather in its demonic, pessimistic, morbidly intellectual character. By this time their relationship had already become that special kind of friendship. And while Atwo studied forestry, and spoke of traveling as a forest ranger to the far reaches of Russia or Asia, as soon as he was through with his studies, his friend Aone, who scorned such boyish aspirations, had by then settled on a more solid pursuit, and had at the time already cast his lot with the rising labor movement. And when they met again shortly before the great war, Atwo already had his Russian adventure behind him. He spoke little about it, was now employed in the offices of some large corporation, and seemed, despite the appearance of middle-class comfort, to have suffered considerable disappointments. His old friend had in the meantime left the class struggle and become editor of a newspaper that printed a great deal about social harmony and was owned by a stock broker. Henceforth the two friends despised each other insuperably, but once again fell out of touch; and when they finally met again for a short while, Atwo told the following story the way one empties out a sack of memories for a friend, so as to be able to push on again with a clean bill of lading. It matters little under the circumstances how the other responded, and their exchange can perhaps best be related in the form of a monologue. It would be far more important to the fabric of the tale were it possible to describe exactly what Atwo looked like at the time (which is easier said than done), for this raw impression of the man is not without bearing on the gist of his words. Suffice it to say that he brought to mind a sharp, taut and narrow riding crop balanced on its soft tip, leaning up against the wall; it was in just such a half-erect, half-slouching posture that he seemed to feel most at ease.