No, it’s easier to be hanged. And if it should be that after death you can remember what was before, then this could advance your knowledge of the world further than any ten years of research and exploration. Perhaps afterward he will understand the principles behind the course of the moon, perhaps also grasp at which grain a heap ceases to be a heap, possibly even see what distinguishes two leaves between which there’s no difference but the fact that they are indeed two and not one. Perhaps it’s due to the wine and the warm comfort enveloping Claus for the first time in his life—whatever the reason, he no longer wants out. Let the wall stay where it is.
The door is unbolted. Master Tilman brings cake. “But that’s it now, I’m not coming again.” He pats Claus on the shoulder. He likes to do that, probably because he is forbidden ever to touch people outside. Then he yawns, walks out, and slams the door so loudly that the sleeping man wakes up.
He sits up, stretches, and looks around in all directions. “Where’s the old woman?”
“In a different shed,” says Claus. “Fortunately. She moans incessantly, it’s unbearable.”
“Give me wine!”
Claus looks at him in fright. He wants to reply that this is his wine, all his alone, that he has honestly earned it, for he must die for it. But then he feels sorry for the man, who doesn’t have it easy either, after all, and so he passes him the jug. The man grabs it and takes big gulps. Stop, Claus wants to cry, I won’t get any more! Yet he cannot bring himself to do it, for this is a man of rank; you don’t give someone like that commands. The wine runs down his chin and makes stains on his velvet collar, but it doesn’t seem to trouble him, so thirsty is he.
Finally he puts down the jug and says: “My God, that’s good wine!”
“Yes, yes,” says Claus, “very good.” He fervently hopes that the man doesn’t want the cake too.
“Now that no one can hear us, tell me the truth. Were you in league with the devil?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“How can someone not know that?”
Claus reflects. It’s obvious that he did something wrong in his stupid head, or else he wouldn’t be here. But he doesn’t really know what it was. He was interrogated for so long, again and again, in so much pain, he had to retell his story so many times, each time something else was missing, he always had to add something, another demon that had to be described, another conjuration, another dark book, another Sabbath, so that Master Tilman would let him be, and then he had to retell these new details too again and again, so that he no longer really knows what he had to make up and what actually happened in his short life, where there had not been much order anyhow: now he was here, now there, then somewhere else, and then he was suddenly in the flour dust, and his wife was dissatisfied, and the mill hands had no respect, and now he is in chains, and that was everything already. Just as the cake is about to be finished—three or four more bites, perhaps five, if he has only very little each time.
“I don’t know,” he says again.
“Damned misfortune,” the man says, looking at the cake.
In fright Claus takes all that’s left and swallows it without chewing. The cake filling his throat, he swallows as hard as he can: it’s gone. So that was it with food. Forever.
“Sir,” says Claus, to show that he knows what is proper. “What’s going to happen to you now?”
“Hard to predict. Once you’re in, it’s not easy to get out. They will bring me to the city, then they will interrogate me. I will have to confess something.” With a sigh, he gazes at his hands. He is obviously thinking of the executioner; everyone knows that he always starts with the fingers.
“Sir,” Claus says again. “If you imagine a heap of grain.”
“What?”
“You keep taking one away and putting it to the side.”
“What?”
“Always just one. When is it no longer a heap?”
“After twelve thousand grains.”
Claus rubs his forehead. His chains rattle. He feels the imprint of the leather band on his forehead. It was hellish agony, he still remembers every second he howled and begged, but Master Tilman loosened it only when he invented and described another Witches’ Sabbath. “Twelve thousand exactly?”
“Naturally,” says the man. “Do you think I can get a meal like that too? There must be something left. This is all a great injustice. I shouldn’t be here. I only wanted to defend you to write about it in my book. I finished the study of crystals. Now I wanted to take up law. But my situation has nothing to do with you. Perhaps you are in league with the devil, what do I know, perhaps you really are! Perhaps you’re not.” He is silent for a short time. Then he calls Master Tilman in an imperious tone.
This won’t go well, thinks Claus, who knows the executioner fairly well by now. He sighs. Now he would like to have some more wine to keep the sadness from returning, but he was clearly told there was no more.
The door is unbolted. Master Tilman looks in.
“Bring me some of this meat,” the man says without looking at him. “And wine. The jug is empty.”
“Will you be dead tomorrow too?” asks Master Tilman.
“This is a misunderstanding,” the man says hoarsely, acting as if he were speaking to Claus, for it’s better even to talk to a condemned warlock than to an executioner. “And it’s a nasty affront too, for which some people are going to pay.”
“If you will be alive tomorrow, you don’t get a hangman’s meal,” says Master Tilman. He puts his hand on Claus’s shoulder. “Listen,” he says softly. “When you’re standing under the gallows tomorrow—don’t forget that you have to forgive everyone.”
Claus nods.
“The judges,” says Master Tilman. “And you have to forgive me too.”
Claus closes his eyes. He still feels the wine—a warm, soft dizziness.
“Loud and clear,” says Master Tilman.
Claus sighs.
“It is proper,” says Master Tilman. “It is what’s done: the condemned forgives his hangman loud and clear so that everyone can hear. You know that?”
Claus can’t help thinking of his wife. Earlier Agneta was there and talked to him through the cracks between the wall boards. She was so sorry, she whispered. She had no choice but to say what they demanded of her. Could he forgive her?
Of course, he replied. He forgave everything. But he kept to himself that it was not quite clear to him what she was even talking about. There was nothing to be done about it; since his interrogations, his mind was no longer as reliable as it used to be.
Then she wept again and spoke of her hard life and also of the boy, who worried her, and she didn’t know what to do with him.
Claus was happy to hear about the boy, because he hadn’t thought about him for a long time, and at bottom he really was fond of him. But there was something odd about him, it was hard to explain, the boy seemed not to be made of the same stuff as other people.
“You have it easy,” she said. “You don’t have to trouble your head about anything anymore. But I can’t stay here in the village. They won’t let me. And I’ve never been anywhere else—what am I supposed to do?”
“Yes, certainly,” he replied, still thinking about the boy. “That’s true.”
“Maybe I could go to my family in Pfünz.”
“You have family in Pfünz?”
“The wife of my uncle’s nephew. Franz Melker’s cousin. You didn’t know my uncle; he died when I was a child. But before he died, he said he heard that she is now in Pfünz. Maybe it’s true. Where else am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what about the boy? Maybe she’ll help me, if she remembers, who knows. If she’s still alive. But two hungry people at the same time? That’s too many.”
“Yes, that’s too many.”
“Maybe I can get the boy work as a day laborer. He’s small and not a good worker, but it might be possible. What else am I supposed to do? I’m not allowed to stay here.”