“You’re still alive,” said Meeme, and his voice sounded muffled, as if from underground, and it was hard to understand his words; they seemed to have collapsed in his mouth. “I didn’t dare to hope that I’d see you again.”
“So you wanted to see me?” I asked, anticipating when Meeme would raise his inseparable wineskin to his lips, take a sip, and choke a cough. I thought that might clear his throat a little, so it would be easier for me to understand what he said. But Meeme didn’t drink, and to tell the truth I couldn’t have said whether he even had hands or whether they’d rotted away so he’d have nothing to hold his wine vessel with.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I thought you should still be alive after all, and you’d turn up before I finally disintegrate, so I want to tell you something. Not that it’s important; no, it’s all senseless. But that’s the way.”
“What did you want to tell me?” I asked.
“About the Frog of the North,” said Meeme.
This was unexpected. I crouched down by Meeme and immediately sensed traces of that rotting stench that emanated from his decomposing body. I shrank away in disgust and Meeme grinned, noticing this, with his moldy mouth.
“Stinks, eh?” he asked. “Stinks! I myself don’t notice anything anymore, but I know I don’t actually exist. I have rotted away. For a few months I haven’t moved from here; I haven’t eaten or drunk. I don’t even remember the taste of wine anymore, and if anyone poured it into my mouth, it would soak into the ground like rain, because I don’t have a back any longer. I can feel plants sprouting inside me; in the spring they’ll grow right through me like shrubs, and the goats will eat them without noticing a dead human lying under their hooves. I can’t feel my arms or legs anymore. My head has still held out, because it’s as hard as rock, but if you’d come a few days later, I wouldn’t have been able to speak. I wouldn’t have been sad, because what I have to say isn’t that important. You see I was a watchman. And before dying the watchmen have to choose a successor. As you understand, that isn’t hard for me to do; apart from you, there’s no one. You don’t have to go to the trouble if you don’t want to. The Frog of the North can get by without you. I haven’t been to see him for years. But still I thought that if I should happen to meet you again, I’d tell you, and see what you’re doing. It’s all the same to me.”
“How will I find the Frog of the North?” I asked, excited.
“You remember that ring I once gave you?” asked Meeme. “Yes, of course you remember. You came to ask me about it, but then I didn’t have a reason to give you an answer. The watchman is only allowed to reveal his secret before his death. Actually I shouldn’t have given you that key either, because you were still a child and you might have lost it, but that didn’t concern me. All this was senseless anyway. Everything had come to an end long ago and it made no difference whether I was the last watchman or if anyone else came after me. This is only the death rattle and after that comes silence anyway, and the Frog of the North will sleep his own eternal sleep in complete isolation. Maybe I even hoped that you would lose the key; then this foolishness would end sooner. Tell me, have you lost your key?”
“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen that ring for a long time, but it must still be in Mother’s shack. I’m sure I’ll find it. How is it used?”
“It’s not to do with the ring. That is only a useless trinket, pulled off the finger of some foreigner who was killed. But around the ring was a pouch — thin and so light that the slightest wind could carry it away. The ring was put in that bag as a weight, to keep the bag in place. Do you still have that pouch?”
“Yes, definitely,” I assured him. “What is it about the pouch?”
“It was made from the skin of the Frog of the North,” replied Meeme. “Once every ten thousand years the Frog of the North sheds his skin; he has already done it countless times and will go on doing it. From that skin the watchman must cut out a tiny piece, which he presents to his successor. That is the key. It will lead you to the Frog of the North.”
“How?”
“You have to eat that skin. After that everything happens by itself.”
“I’ll search for that pouch this very night,” I promised. “More than anything in this world I’ve wanted to see the Frog of the North and now it will be possible.”
“Don’t forget that he will never see you. He’s asleep and there’s nothing that would wake him. It’s a useless, silly task that you’re taking on, and I’d recommend you rather to throw that bit of skin in the fire and give up the whole thing. I had to tell you, but you don’t have to obey me.”
“But I want to see him!”
“Then off you go. Be happy, and give my greetings to that being. You’ll have the happiness of dying with his help.”
He closed his eyes. That was the last time I saw him alive, because I rushed straight to my mother’s hovel to look for the ring and the pouch, and when several days later I happened upon that place again, Meeme was no longer speaking. His face had crumbled away, and there was nothing left of him but a soggy substance, a puddle among the bushes that you could hop over if you didn’t want to get your feet wet.
I hurried homeward and found my own dwelling, silent and cool. It was long since anyone had lit a fire in the inglenook, and the smell of roast meat, which had never left the walls of our home, and that always made your mouth water as soon as you stepped over the threshold, had now vanished. Although I had thought that seeing my home again could not move me, I felt something catching in my throat as I looked at that dark and empty room. But for the moment I was still too occupied by my wish to find the Frog of the North, so there was no time for giving in to sad memories. I started rummaging in chests and drawers, and after a few moments the ring and its pouch were in my hands.
Impatiently I shook the ring out of its precious skin and it rolled with a clink onto the floor like useless rubbish. I studied the pouch, stroked it with my fingers, and came to the threshold to inspect the skin of the Frog of the North better in the moonlight. The little strip of skin was really thin; if you raised it to your eyes, the moon shone clearly through it. I was so excited that it was hard to breathe. I folded the piece of skin into a tiny square and put it in my mouth. I didn’t even have to swallow it; the skin of the Frog of the North seemed to dissolve on my tongue. I held my breath and waited to see what would happen to me next. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my body had suddenly caught fire, or if I had grown all at once to the height of the highest trees in the forest. But nothing happened to me. I was still standing on the threshold of my old home with the moon shining on me, but I knew where the Frog of the North was sleeping.
That knowledge did not come to me as an unexpected blow and did not invade my brain as a flash of lightning. It simply seemed to occur to me — like something you have long ago forgotten and quite by chance comes back to your mind. It was roughly: Oh yes, how could I have forgotten such a simple thing in the meantime? I had been seeking the Frog of the North throughout the forest, but his hiding place was so easy to discover! It almost wasn’t a hiding place at all; after eating the piece of skin it appeared to me that anyone could easily stumble on the Frog of the North; he was right here. Throughout my life I had been walking past the mouth of the cave beyond which he was sleeping his eternal sleep, and I had never thought to step inside.
I closed the door of my own home behind me and stepped in from the opening that yawned right opposite my old shack — which I had nevertheless never paid heed to before. A wide passage led me straight ahead, slowly descending into the depths of the earth. A light glimmered ahead of me. It was warm and gentle and didn’t become too bright or dazzling even as I approached it. The Frog of the North was glowing like a smoldering fire.