After the burial, the caterpillar went looking for her husband. She went to the inn. She looked each man in the face. “It’s not you,” she said from one table to the next. The landlord went up to her and said: “But your husband is dead.” She held her thin plait in her hand. She wept and ran out into the street.
Every day the caterpillar went looking for her husband. She went into every house and asked if he had been there.
One winter’s day, when the fog was driving white hoops across the village, the caterpillar went out into the fields. She was wearing a summer dress and no stockings. Only her hands were dressed for snow. She was wearing thick woollen gloves. She walked through the bare thickets. It was late afternoon. The forester saw her. He sent her back to the village.
The next day the forester came into the village. The caterpillar had lain down on a blackthorn bush. She had frozen to death. He brought her into the village across his shoulder. She was as stiff as a board.
“That’s how irresponsible she was,” said Windisch’s wife. “She left her three-year-old child alone in the world.” The three-year-old child was Rudi’s grandfather. He was a joiner. He didn’t care about his fields. “He let burdock grow on that good soil,” said Windisch.
All Rudi’s grandfather thought about was wood. He spent all his money on wood. “He made figures out of wood,” said Windisch’s wife. “He carved faces out of every piece of wood — they were quite monstrous.”
“Then came the expropriation,” said Windisch. Amalie was painting red nail varnish on her finger nails. “All the farmers were shaking with fear. Some men came from town. They surveyed the fields. They wrote down the names of the people and said: Anyone who doesn’t sign, will be imprisoned. All the gates on the lane were locked,” said Windisch. “The old skinner didn’t lock his gate. He left it wide open. When the men had come, he said: I’m glad you’re taking it. Take the horses too, then I’m rid of them.”
Windisch’s wife snatched the bottle of nail varnish out of Amalie’s hand. “No one else said that,” she said. In her anger, a small blue vein swelled up behind her ear. “Are you listening at all,” she had shouted.
The old skinner had carved a naked woman out of the lime tree in the garden. He put it in the yard in front of the window. His wife wept. She took the child. She laid it in a wicker basket. “She took the child and the few things she could carry and moved into an empty house at the edge of the village,” said Windisch.
“The child already had a deep hole in its head from all the wood,” said Windisch’s wife.
The child is the skinner. As soon as he could walk, he went into the fields every day. He caught lizards and toads. When he was bigger, he crept up the church tower at night. He took the owls that couldn’t fly out of their nests. He carried them home under his shirt. He fed the owls with lizards and toads. When they were fully grown, he killed them. He hollowed them out. He put them in slaked lime. He dried them and stuffed them.
“Before the war,” said Windisch, “the skinner won a goat at the fair. He skinned the goat alive in the middle of the village. Everyone ran away. The women were sick.”
“Even today no grass grows on the spot,” said Windisch’s wife, “where the goat bled to death.”
Windisch leant against the cupboard. “He was never a hero,” sighed Windisch. “He just knackered animals. We weren’t fighting lizards and toads in the war.”
Amalie was combing her hair in the mirror.
“He was never in the SS,” said Windisch’s wife, “only in the army. After the war he started hunting owls and storks and blackbirds again and stuffing them. And he slaughtered all the sick sheep and hares in the district. And tanned the hides. His whole loft is full of carrion.”
Amalie reached out for the small bottle of nail varnish. Windisch felt a grain of sand behind his forehead; it moved from one temple to the other. A red drop fell onto the tablecloth from the small bottle. “You were a whore in Russia,” said Amalie to her mother, looking at her fingernail.
THE STONE IN THE LIME
The owl flies in a circle over the apple tree. Windisch looks at the moon. He’s watching which direction the black patches are moving. The owl doesn’t close its circle.
The skinner had stuffed the last owl from the church tower two years before and given it to the priest as a gift. “This owl lives in another village,” thinks Windisch.
The unknown owl always finds its way here to the village at night. No one knows where it rests its wings by day. No one knows where it closes its beak and sleeps.
Windisch knows that the owl can smell the stuffed birds in the skinner’s loft.
The skinner had given the stuffed animals to the town museum as a gift. He didn’t receive any money for them. Two men came. Their car stood in front of the skinner’s house for a whole day. It was white and closed like a room.
The men said: “These stuffed animals are part of the wildlife population of our forests.” They packed all the birds in boxes. They threatened a heavy punishment. The skinner presented them with all his sheepskins. Then they said everything was all right.
The white, closed car drove out of the village as slowly as a room. The skinner’s wife smiled in fear and waved.
Windisch is sitting on the veranda. “The skinner applied later than we did,” he thinks. “He paid in town.”
Windisch hears a leaf on the stones in the hallway. It’s scratching on the stones. The wall is long and white. Windisch closes his eyes. He feels the wall growing on his face. The lime burns his forehead. A stone in the lime opens its mouth. The apple tree trembles. Its leaves are ears. They listen. The apple tree drenches its green apples.
THE APPLE TREE
Before the war an apple tree had stood behind the church. It was an apple tree that ate its own apples.
The night watchman’s father had also been night watchman. One summer night he was standing behind the boxwood hedge. He saw the apple tree open a mouth at the top of the trunk, where the branches forked. The apple tree ate apples.
In the morning the night watchman didn’t lie down to sleep. He went to the village mayor. He told him that the apple tree behind the church ate its own apples. The mayor laughed. The night watchman could hear fear behind the laughter. Little hammers of life were beating in the mayor’s head.
The night watchman went home. He lay in bed with his clothes on. He fell asleep. He slept covered in sweat.
While he was sleeping, the apple tree rubbed the mayor’s temple raw. His eyes were reddened and his mouth was dry.
After lunch the mayor struck his wife. He had seen apples floating in the soup. He swallowed them.
The mayor couldn’t sleep after his meal. He shut his eyes and heard tree-bark scraping against the other side of the wall. The strips of bark hung in a row. They hung on ropes and ate apples.
That evening the mayor called a meeting. The people assembled. The mayor set up a committee to watch over the apple tree. Four wealthy peasants, the priest, the village teacher and the mayor himself belonged to the committee.
The village teacher made a speech. He named the apple tree committee the “Summer Night’s Committee”. The priest refused to mount watch on the apple tree behind the church. He made the sign of the cross three times. He excused himself with: “May God forgive his sinners.” He threatened to go into town the following morning and report the blasphemy to the bishop.
Darkness fell very late that evening. The sun had been so hot that the day would not end. Night flowed out of the earth and over the village.
The Summer Night’s Committee crawled along the boxwood hedge in the darkness. It lay down under the apple tree, and looked into the tangle of branches.