Nonetheless, in recent years he has found out a great deal. Essentially he now knows where things come from, how the world came into being, and why everything is the way it is: spirits, substances, souls, wood, water, sky, leather, grain, crickets. Hüttner would be proud of him. It won’t be long before he has filled in the final gaps. Then he himself will write a book containing all the answers, and then the scholars in their universities will marvel and feel ashamed and tear out their hair.
But it won’t be easy. His hands are big, and the thin quill is always breaking between his fingers. He will have to practice a lot before he will be able to fill a whole book with spidery signs in ink. But it has to happen, for he cannot forever retain in his memory everything he has found out. Even now it’s too much, it’s painful to him, often he feels dizzy from all the knowledge in his head.
Perhaps he will one day be able to teach his son something. He has noticed that the boy occasionally listens to him at meals, almost against his will and trying not to let anything show. He is thin and too weak, but he seems to be clever. Not long ago Claus caught him juggling three stones, very easily and effortlessly—sheer nonsense, but still a sign that the child is perhaps not as dull-witted as the others. Recently the boy asked him how many stars there actually are, and because only a short while ago Claus had counted, he was, not without pride, able to give him an answer. He hopes that the baby Agneta is carrying will be another boy—with some luck even one who is stronger so that he can help him better with the work, and whom he can then teach something too.
The floorboards are too hard. But if he were lying on a softer surface, he would fall asleep and wouldn’t be able to observe the moon. Painstakingly Claus made a grid out of thin threads in the slanted attic window. His fingers are thick and ponderous, and the wool spun by Agneta is recalcitrant. Yet in the end he succeeded in dividing the window into small and almost equal-sized squares.
And so he lies and stares. Time passes. He yawns. Tears come to his eyes. You must not fall asleep, he tells himself, no matter what, you must not fall asleep!
And finally the moon is there, silver and nearly round, with spots like those of dirty copper. It appeared in the lowest row, yet not in the first square as Claus would have expected, but in the second. But why? He squints. His eyes hurt. He fights sleep and dozes off and is awake again and dozes off again, but now he is awake and squints, and the moon is no longer in the second but in the third row from the bottom, in the second square from the left. How did that happen? Unfortunately, the squares are not equal-sized, because the wool frays, hence the knots turned out too thick—but why is the moon behaving like this? It is a wicked heavenly body, treacherous and deceitful; it’s no accident that in the cards its picture stands for decline and betrayal. To record when the moon is where, one must also know the time, but how, by all the devils, is one supposed to read the time if not from the position of the moon? It can drive you completely mad! On top of this, one of the threads has just come undone; Claus sits up and tries to tie it with intractable fingers. And no sooner has he finally succeeded than a cloud approaches. The light gleams faintly around its edges, but where exactly the moon is can no longer be said. He closes his weary eyes.
When Claus comes to, freezing, early in the morning, he has dreamed of flour. It’s unbelievable—this keeps happening to him. He used to have dreams full of light and noise. There was music in his dreams. Sometimes ghosts spoke with him. But that was a long time ago. Now he dreams of flour.
As he sits up in annoyance, it becomes clear to him that it wasn’t the flour dream that woke him, it was voices from outside. At this hour? Unsettled, he remembers the omen of the past night. He leans out the window and at the same moment the twilight gray of the forest opens and Agneta and Heiner hobble out.
They really made it, against all odds. At first the farmhand carried both of them, the living woman and the dead baby; then he couldn’t go on, and Agneta walked on her own, supported by him; then the baby was too heavy for him and too dangerous too, for one who died unbaptized attracts spirits, both those from above and those from the depths, and Agneta had to carry her herself. Thus they gropingly found their way.
Claus climbs down the ladder, stumbles over the snoring mill hands, kicks a goat aside, flings open the door, and runs out just in time to catch Agneta as she collapses. Carefully, he lays her down and gropes for her face. He feels her breath. He draws a pentagram on her forehead, with the point on top, of course, to bring about healing, and then he inhales deeply and says in a single breath: Christ was born in Bedlem, baptized in tho flem Jordan. Also tho flem astode, also astond thi blode. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. He knows only roughly what this means, but the spell is ancient and he knows none stronger to stanch bleeding.
Now quicksilver would be good, but he has none left, so instead he makes the sign of quicksilver over her lower body—the cross with the eight that stands for Hermes, the great Mercury; the sign by itself doesn’t work as well as real quicksilver, but it’s better than nothing. Then he shouts at Heiner: “Go on, to the attic, fetch the orchis!” Heiner nods, staggers into the mill, and climbs up the ladder, gasping for breath. Only when he is up in the room, which smells of wood and old paper, and staring in confusion at the wool mesh in the window does it occur to him that he has no idea what an orchis is. And so he lies down on the floor, lays his head on the hay-stuffed pillow in which the miller has left an imprint, and falls asleep.
Day breaks. After Claus has carried his wife into the mill, the dew rises from the meadow, the sun comes up, the morning haze gives way to the noon light. The sun reaches its zenith and begins its path downward. Next to the mill there’s now a mound of earth freshly piled up: there lies the nameless baby who was not baptized and is therefore barred from the cemetery.
And Agneta doesn’t die. This surprises everyone. Perhaps it is due to her strength, perhaps to Claus’s spells, perhaps to the orchis, although it is not very strong, bryony or monkshood would have been better, but unfortunately he recently gave away the last of his supply to Maria Stelling, whose child was stillborn; there are rumors she helped make it happen, because she was pregnant not by her husband but by Anselm Melker, but this doesn’t interest Claus. Agneta, in any case, didn’t die, and only when she sits up and looks around wearily and calls a name at first softly, then more loudly, and finally earsplittingly, does everyone realize that in all the excitement they have forgotten the boy and the wagon with the donkey. And the expensive flour.
But the sun will go down soon. It’s too late to head out now. And so another night begins.
Early in the morning Claus sets off with Sepp and Heiner. They walk in silence. Claus is absorbed in his thoughts. Heiner never says a word anyway, and Sepp whistles softly to himself. Since they’re men and there are three of them, they don’t have to take a detour but can cut straight across the clearing with the old willow. The evil tree stands there black and huge, and its branches move in ways branches don’t usually move. The men make an effort not to look. When they are in the forest again, they heave a sigh.
Claus’s thoughts keep returning to the dead baby. Even though it was a girl, the loss is painful. It is indeed a good custom, he tells himself, not to love your own children too soon. Agneta has given birth so often, but only one of the babies survived, and even he is thin and frail, and they don’t know whether he has come through the two nights in the forest.
The love for your children—better to fight against it. You don’t get too close to a dog, after all; even if it looks friendly, it can snap at you. You always have to keep a distance between you and your children, they simply die too quickly. But with each year that passes, you get more used to such a being. You begin to trust, you allow yourself to be fond of them—and suddenly they’re gone.