“Hold your tongue!” says Agneta.
“A few months ago I found two leaves near the old oak on Jakob Brantner’s field. Actually it’s not Brantner’s field, it has always belonged to the Lesers, but in the inheritance dispute the prefect decided that it’s a Brantner field. No matter, the leaves, in any case, looked exactly alike.”
“It most certainly is Brantner’s field,” says Sepp, who was a hand on Brantner’s farm for a year. “The Lesers are liars, devil take them.”
“If there’s a liar here,” says Rosa, “then it’s Jakob Brantner. You need only see how he looks at the women in church.”
“But it really is his field,” says Sepp.
Claus pounds on the table. Everyone goes silent.
“The leaves. They looked alike, every vein, every crack. I dried them, I can show them to you. I even bought a magnifying glass from a merchant when he came through the village, to be able to view them better. The merchant doesn’t come often, his name is Hugo, he has only two fingers on his left hand, and when you ask him how he lost the others, he says: Miller, they’re only fingers!” Claus stops and thinks briefly, astounded at where the stream of his speech has carried him. “Well, when they were lying there in front of me, the two leaves, I suddenly wondered whether it doesn’t mean that they are actually one. If the difference consists only in the fact that the one leaf is on the left and the other on the right—well, all you need to do is make a hand movement.” He demonstrates it with such an awkward gesture that a spoon flies in one direction and a bowl in the other. “Imagine someone says now that the two leaves are one and the same—what can you reply? He would be right!” Claus thumps on the table, but all except Agneta, who is looking at him fixedly and beseechingly, are following with their eyes the rolling bowl, which goes around in a circle once, twice, and then comes to rest. “These two leaves, then,” Claus says into the silence. “If they are only in appearance two leaves and in truth one, doesn’t that mean that…all this here and there and elsewhere is only a web that God has woven so that we won’t penetrate his mysteries?”
“You must be silent now,” says Agneta.
“And speaking of mysteries,” says Claus, “I have a book that I can’t read.”
“No two leaves in all Creation are alike,” says Dr. Kircher. “Nor even two grains of sand. No two things between which God doesn’t distinguish.”
“The leaves are upstairs, I can show them to you! And I can show you the book too! And what you said about the grub is not true, honorable sir, crushed grub cannot heal, but causes back pain and cold joints.” Claus gives his son a sign. “Fetch the big book, the one without binding, the one with the pictures!”
The boy stands up and runs to the ladder that leads upstairs. He climbs with lightning speed, disappearing through the hatch.
“You have a good son,” says Dr. Kircher.
Claus nods distractedly.
“Be that as it may,” says Dr. Tesimond. “It’s late, and we must be in the village before nightfall. Are you coming, miller?”
Claus looks at him uncomprehendingly. The two guests stand up.
“You idiot,” says Agneta.
“Where?” asks Claus. “Why?”
“No reason to worry,” says Dr. Tesimond. “We just want to talk, at length and in peace. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it, miller? In peace. About everything that occupies your mind. Do we look like bad people?”
“But I can’t,” says Claus. “Steger is coming the day after tomorrow and wants his grain. It is not yet ground. I have it up in the room. Time is pressing.”
“These are good mill hands,” says Dr. Tesimond. “One can rely on them. The work will be done.”
“He who refuses to follow his friends,” says Dr. Kircher, “must be prepared to deal with people who are not his friends. We supped together, sat together in the mill. We can trust each other.”
“This Latin book,” says Dr. Tesimond. “I want to see it. If you have questions, we can answer them.”
Everyone is waiting for the boy, who is groping through the dark attic room above. It takes a while before he has found the right book next to the heap of grain. By the time he climbs back down, his father and the guests are standing in the doorway.
He hands the book to Claus, who strokes his head, then bends down and kisses him on the forehead. In the last light of day the boy sees the thin wrinkles chiseled into his father’s face. He sees the flicker in his restless eyes, which can always only briefly look at one thing, he sees the white hairs in the black beard.
And as Claus looks down at his son, it amazes him that so many of his children have died at birth but that of all his children this one survived. He didn’t take enough interest in the boy, he was simply too accustomed to all of them immediately disappearing again. But that will change, Claus thinks, I will teach him what I know, the spells, the squares, the herbs, and the course of the moon. Cheerfully he takes the book and steps out into the evening. The rain has stopped.
Agneta clasps him. They embrace for a long time. Claus wants to let go, but Agneta keeps holding him. The mill hands titter.
“You’ll be back soon,” says Dr. Tesimond.
“There you have it,” says Claus.
“You idiot,” says Agneta, weeping.
Suddenly all this is embarrassing to Claus—the mill, the sobbing wife, the scrawny son, his whole poor existence. Resolutely he pushes Agneta away from him. It pleases him that he will now have the chance to make common cause with the learned men, to whom he feels closer than to these mill people, who know nothing.
“Don’t worry,” he says to Dr. Tesimond. “I’ll find the way in the dark too.”
Claus sets off with long strides. The two men follow him. Agneta watches them until the twilight swallows them.
“Go inside,” she says to the boy.
“When is he coming back?”
She closes and bolts the door.
II
Dr. Kircher opens his eyes. Someone is in the room. He listens. No, there’s no one here except Dr. Tesimond, whose snoring he hears from the bed over there. He throws back the blanket, crosses himself, and gets up. The time has come. The day of the trial.
To crown it all he dreamed again of Egyptian signs. A clay-yellow wall, in it little men with dog heads, lions with wings, axes, swords, lances, wavy lines of all sorts. No one understands them. The knowledge of them has been lost, until a divinely gifted intellect will appear to decipher them again.
That will be he. One day.
His back hurts as it does every morning. The straw sack on which he has to sleep is thin, the floor icy cold. There’s only one bed in the priest’s house, and his master is sleeping in it; even the priest must lie on the floor in the next room. At least his master didn’t wake up last night. Often he screams in his sleep, and sometimes he pulls out the knife hidden under his pillow and thinks his life is in danger. When this happens, he has again been dreaming of the great conspiracy, in England, when he and a few brave people almost succeeded in blowing up the King. The attempt failed, but they didn’t give up: for days they searched for Princess Elizabeth in order to kidnap her and place her on the throne by force. It could have succeeded, and had it succeeded, the island would today again be in possession of the true faith. For weeks Dr. Tesimond lived in the forests, on roots and spring water. He was the only one to escape and make his way across the sea. Later he will be canonized, but at night one shouldn’t lie near him, for the knife is always under his pillow, and his dreams are swarming with Protestant oppressors.
Dr. Kircher throws his cloak over his shoulders and leaves the priest’s house. In a daze, he stands in the pale light of the early morning. On his right is the church, in front of him the main square with the well and the linden and the platform erected yesterday, next to it the houses of the Tamms, the Henrichs, and the Heinerlings. He now knows all the inhabitants of this village, he has interrogated them, he knows their secrets. Something is moving on the roof of the Henrich house. Instinctively he recoils, but it is probably only a cat. He murmurs a protective blessing and crosses himself three times, go away, evil spirit, desist, I stand under the protection of the Lord and the Virgin and all the saints. Then he sits down, leans against the wall of the priest’s house, and waits with chattering teeth for the sun.