How strange, the old man said, I’ve just realised I’ve never told this to anyone. A Neapolitan friend I had many years ago built this barrel organ, Michele Bacigalupo, may he rest in peace. Michele was fiercely proud of this instrument, and when he was asked to play at a dance, he always took it with him because he claimed it had the merriest sound of all. He made his living with it, until one evening, while he was playing a tarantella, a young man was stabbed for refusing to let his fiancée dance with another man. All of a sudden, there was a scrum of men fighting each other rather than helping the victim. When she realised her fiancé was bleeding to death, the poor girl screamed and threw herself off the roof. When he saw the girl fall, the young man who had stabbed her fiancé leapt after her. It seems the rest of them were too busy brawling to notice any of this. And do you know what Michele did? He carried on playing! The poor man was so petrified he started up the tarantella again and again. From that moment on, the villagers became superstitious about the barrel organ — the families of the victims claimed it was cursed. No one wanted to dance to its music any more and Michele could no longer play it in public. Years later, I met Michele and began as an apprentice in his workshop. He taught me to play the barrel organ, to appreciate its sound, and to repair it, and then one day he gave it to me. He told me he couldn’t bear the fact that no one listened to it any more, and he knew it would be safe with me. I painted it, varnished it and promised him I would never make it play a tarantella (and have you kept your promise all these years? Hans broke in), my dear boy, how can you even ask? Tarantellas are not to be taken lightly.
And that’s how this creature ended up with me, the organ grinder said, caressing the wooden box. And do you know what? That was my last trip, I was a very young man in those days, but I’ve never been out of Wandernburg since. (And those landscapes on the sides, said Hans, did you paint them yourself?) Oh, they’re nothing much, only what you see from the cave in spring, I painted them so it would get used to the breeze from our river, which is as small and melodious as the organ itself is (some credit should go to the hand, shouldn’t it? Hans said with a smile, you saw what a mess I made of it), well, it’s not so difficult, it’s a question of having the right touch, touch is the important thing. (Hans, who was toying with the idea of bringing a notebook with him to the cave, persisted: Tell me more.) My dear fellow, you talk like a detective! (Almost, said Hans, I’m a traveller.) Well, this is how I see it — every tune tells a tale, nearly always a sad one. When I turn the handle I imagine I’m the hero of that tale and I try to feel at one with its melody. But at the same time it’s as if I’m pretending, do you see? No, not pretending, let’s say that even as I’m getting carried away I have to think about the end of the tune, because I know how it ends, of course, but maybe the people listening don’t, or if they do they’ve forgotten. That’s what I mean by touch. When it works nobody notices, but when it doesn’t everyone can hear. (So, for you the barrel organ is a box that tells stories, said Hans.) Yes, exactly! Goodness, what a way you have of putting things, playing the barrel organ is like telling stories around the fire, like you the other night. The tune is already written on the barrel and it may seem like it’s all done for you, a lot of people think you just turn the handle and think of something else. But for me it’s the intention that counts, just turning the handle isn’t the same thing as really applying yourself, do you see? The wood also suffers, or is grateful. When I was young, because I was young once like you, I heard many organ grinders play, and I can assure you no two tunes ever sounded the same, even on the same instrument. That’s how it is, isn’t it? The less love you put into things the more they resemble one another. The same goes for stories, everyone knows them by heart, but when someone tells them with love, I don’t know, they seem new. Well, that’s what I think, anyway.
The organ grinder lowered his head and began dusting his barrel organ. Hans thought to himself: Where did this fellow spring from?
Light snow had begun to fall outside. The old man finished tuning his instrument. Excuse me, he said, I’ll be back. He went out into the snow and lowered his trousers, unembarrassed. A slow light shone through the leafless poplar trees bordering the river, entangling itself in their branches before filtering through the other side and onto the organ grinder’s scrawny buttocks. Hans stared at the old man’s urine melting a hole in the snow, his meagre excrement. Common or garden shit, plain old shit, shitty shit.
How beautiful you look this morning, daughter, said Herr Gottlieb, taking Sophie by the arm as they stepped into St Nicholas’s Church. Thank you, Father, Sophie smiled, there’s still hope I’ll return to normal by the afternoon.
The parishioners had formed a queue along Archway, opposite the entrance to the church. St Nicholas’s Church was set back from the market square, shielded by a small park with some wooden benches. The church was Wandernburg’s oldest and most peculiar building. Looked at from nearby, from where the parishioners were now gathered, the most striking thing about it was its brown brickwork, which looked like it had been baked by the sun. Besides its main portal, which fanned out into pointed arches within arches, it had numerous side doors shaped like keyholes. Stepping back a few yards and examining it as a whole, what most stood out were the church’s asymmetrical steeples. One ended in a sharp point like a gigantic pencil, the other, more rounded, housed a toneless bell in a tower with such narrow openings that the wind could barely pass through. And yet what most bewildered Hans was the facade slanting perceptibly towards him, as though it were about to topple forward.
Since his visit to Herr Gottlieb’s house, Hans had continued to be friendly towards him. What worried Hans was that, despite greeting him warmly and stopping to chat with him when they met in the street, Herr Gottlieb had not extended him another formal invitation to the house. For the moment he was content to drop vague comments such as “How nice it was to see you” or “Let’s hope we bump into one another again”, courtesies too casual to justify Hans’s turning up at the house unannounced. Hans therefore had been discreetly loitering in Stag Street for days, hoping to force a meeting with Sophie. He had succeeded on a couple of occasions, but she had seemed rather enigmatic. Although she answered him with unswerving abruptness, the way she looked at him made him tremble inside. She never drew out their conversations, nor laughed at his jokes, and yet when she stopped to talk to him she stood at a distance that would have aroused Hans’s suspicions had he not felt so unsure of himself. Determined to keep trying, and having learnt that Sophie accompanied her father to Sunday matins at St Nicholas’s Church, Hans had risen early that timidly bright Sunday, in order to go to Mass. When Frau Zeit had caught sight of him in the kitchen at eight o’clock, she had frozen, knife in mid-air, her mouth gaping wide like the cod she was about to fillet.