—
A few days later Claus sends the boy to Ludwig Stelling, the smith, in the village. Claus needs a new hammer, which must not be expensive, however, because ever since he lost the load of flour, he is deep in debt to Martin Reutter.
On the way the boy picks up three stones. He throws the first up into the air, then the second, then he catches the first and throws it up again, then he throws the third, catches the second and throws it again, then he catches the third and throws it, then the first again—now all three are in the air. His hands make circular movements, and everything takes care of itself. The trick is not to think and not to look sharply at any of the stones. You have to pay close attention and at the same time pretend they aren’t there.
Thus he walks, the stones whirling around him, past Hanna Krell’s house and across Steger’s field. Outside the smithy he drops the stones into the mud and enters.
He places two coins on the anvil. He still has two in his pocket, but the smith doesn’t need to know that.
“Much too little,” says the smith.
The boy shrugs, takes the two coins, and turns to the door.
“Wait,” says the smith.
The boy stops.
“You do have to give more.”
The boy shakes his head.
“It doesn’t work like that,” says the smith. “If you want to buy something, you have to bargain.”
The boy walks to the door.
“Wait!”
The smith is gigantic, his naked belly is hairy, he has a cloth tied around his head, and his face is red and full of pores. Everyone in the village knows that he goes into the bushes at night with Ilse Melkerin, only Ilse’s husband doesn’t know, or maybe he knows and only pretends not to know, for what can anyone do against a smith. When the priest preaches on Sunday about immorality, he always looks at the smith and sometimes at Ilse too. But that doesn’t stop them.
“That’s too little,” the smith says.
But the boy knows that he has won. He wipes his forehead. The fire radiates scorching heat. Shadows dance on the wall. He puts his hand on his heart and swears: “This is all I was given, by the salvation of my soul!”
With an angry expression the smith gives him the hammer. The boy thanks him politely and walks slowly, so that the coins in his pocket don’t jingle, to the door.
He walks past Jakob Brantner’s cowshed and the Melker house and the Tamm house to the village square. Might Nele be there? And indeed, she is sitting there, in the drizzle, on the little wall of the well.
“You again,” he says.
“Then just go away,” she says.
“You go away.”
“I was here first.”
He sits down next to her. They both grin.
“The merchant was here,” she says. “He said the Kaiser is now having all the noblemen of Bohemia beheaded.”
“The King too?”
“The Winter King. Him too. That’s what they call him, because he was king for only a winter after the Bohemians gave him their crown. He was able to flee and will come back, at the head of a large army, because the English king is his wife’s father. He will reconquer Prague, and he will depose the Kaiser and become Kaiser himself.”
Hanna Krell comes with a bucket and busies herself at the edge of the well. The water is dirty, it’s undrinkable, but it’s needed for washing and for the livestock. When they were little, they drank milk, but for a few years now they have been old enough for small beer. Everyone in the village eats groats and drinks small beer. Even the rich Stegers. For Winter Kings and Kaisers there’s rose water and wine, but simple people drink milk and small beer, from their first day to their last.
“Prague,” says the boy.
“Yes,” says Nele. “Prague!”
The two of them think about Prague. Precisely because it’s a word, because they know nothing about it, it sounds as full of promise as a place in a fairy tale.
“How far is Prague?” asks the boy.
“Very far.”
He nods as if that were an answer. “And England?”
“Also very far.”
“It probably takes a year to journey there.”
“Longer.”
“Shall we go?”
Nele laughs.
“Why not?” he asks.
She doesn’t reply, and he knows that they have to be careful now. One wrong word can have consequences. Peter Steger’s youngest son gave Else Brantnerin a wooden pipe last year, and because she accepted the gift, the two of them are now engaged, even though they don’t like each other that much. The matter went all the way to the reeve in the district seat, who in turn passed it on to the diocese court, where it was decided that there was nothing to be done about it: a gift is a promise, and a promise is binding before God. To invite someone on a journey is not yet a gift, but it is almost a promise. The boy knows this, and he knows that Nele knows it too, and they both know that they have to change the subject.
“How is your father?” asks the boy. “The rheumatism better?”
She nods. “I don’t know what your father did. But it helped.”
“Spells and herbs.”
“Will you learn how to do that? Heal people, will you be able to do it too one day?”
“I’d rather go to England.”
Nele laughs.
He stands up. He has the vague hope that she will hold him back but she doesn’t budge.
“At the next solstice festival,” he says, “I will jump over the fire like the others.”
“Me too.”
“You’re a girl!”
“And this girl is about to smack you.”
He sets off without looking back. He knows that this is important, because if he turns around, she has won.
The hammer is heavy. The wooden footbridge ends at the Steger farm. The boy leaves the path and makes his way through tall grass. This is not entirely without danger, due to the Little People. He thinks of Sepp. Ever since the night in the forest the mill hand has been afraid of him and has kept a safe distance, which has been useful. If only he knew what happened in the forest. He knows that he shouldn’t think about it. Memory is a peculiar thing: it doesn’t simply come and go as it pleases; rather you can light it and extinguish it again like a pitchwood torch. The boy thinks of his mother, who can only just stand up again, and for a moment he thinks of the dead infant too, his sister, whose soul is now in the cold, because she was not baptized.
He stops and looks up. You would have to stretch the rope over the crowns, from one church tower to the next, from village to village. He spreads his arms out and imagines it. Then he sits down on a rock and watches the clouds parting. It has grown warm, and the air is filling with steam. He is sweating, puts the hammer down next to him. Suddenly he feels sleepy, and he’s hungry, but it’s still many hours until groats. And if you could fly? Flap your arms, leave the rope, rise higher, higher? He plucks a blade of grass and slides it between his lips. It tastes sweet, damp, and a little acrid. He lies down in the grass and closes his eyes so that the sunlight lies warm on his lids. The wetness of the grass penetrates his clothing clammily.
A shadow falls on him. The boy opens his eyes.
“Did I frighten you?”
The boy sits up, shakes his head. There are rarely strangers here. Sometimes the reeve comes from the district capital, and now and then come merchants. But he doesn’t know this stranger. He is young, just barely a man. He has a little goatee, and he is wearing a jerkin, breeches made of good gray material, and high boots. His eyes are bright and curious.
“Been imagining what it would be like if you could fly?”
The boy stares at the stranger.
“No,” says the stranger, “it wasn’t magic. Another person cannot read your thoughts. No one can do that. But when a child spreads his arms and stands on tiptoe and looks up, then he is thinking about flying. He does this because he cannot yet fully believe that he will never fly. That God doesn’t permit us to fly. The birds, yes, but not us.”