“No, you’re not allowed.”
“You stupid creature, you have it easy now. But just tell me, should I go looking for her? Maybe it wasn’t Pfünz at all. You always know everything, tell me, what do I do?”
Fortunately, at that moment the hangman’s meal came, and Agneta withdrew so that the executioner wouldn’t see her, for no one is permitted to talk to a condemned man. And then the wine and food were so good that the sobbing had completely passed from his mind.
“Miller!” Master Tilman shouts. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, yes.”
Master Tilman’s hand is lying heavily on his shoulder. “You have to say it loud tomorrow! That you forgive me! Do you hear? In front of everyone, did you hear? It’s what’s done!”
Claus wants to reply, but his mind keeps wandering, especially now that he finds himself thinking about the boy once again. Recently he saw him juggling. It was between two interrogations, in the empty time in which the world consists of nothing but throbbing pain—he looked through the cracks and saw his son passing by and making stones whirl above him as if they had no weight, as if it were happening of its own accord. Claus called his name to warn him. Someone who can do something like that must be careful; for that too you can be accused of witchcraft. But the boy didn’t hear him—perhaps also because Claus’s voice was too weak. That is now always the case, he can’t help it, it’s due to the interrogation.
“Listen,” says Master Tilman. “You will not summon me to the Valley of Josaphat!”
“The curse of a dying man is the most powerful,” says the man in the straw. “It clings to the soul, you can never get rid of it.”
“You won’t do that, miller, curse the executioner, you won’t do that to me, will you?”
“No,” says Claus. “I won’t.”
“You might think it doesn’t matter. You’re going to hang anyway, you think, but I’m the one who stands with you on the ladder, and I’m the one who puts on the noose, and I have to pull on your legs so that your neck breaks, or else it will take a long time!”
“That’s true,” says the man in the straw.
“You won’t summon me to the Valley of Josaphat? You won’t curse me, you’ll forgive the hangman, as is proper?”
“Yes, I will,” says Claus.
Master Tilman takes his hand off his shoulder and gives him a friendly pat. “I don’t care if you forgive the judges. That’s not my concern. You can handle that as you please.”
Suddenly Claus can’t help smiling. It must still be due to the wine, but it’s also because he realized that he can now finally try out the great Key of Solomon. There has never been an opportunity for it. He learned the many long sentences from old Hüttner. At the time it came easily to him. Probably he could still find them in his memory. They will see when he is standing on the ladder tomorrow and all at once the chains break as if they were made of paper. They will goggle when he spreads his arms and rises and hovers in the air above their stupid faces—above that idiotic Peter Steger and his even stupider wife and his relatives and children and grandparents, each one stupider than the next, above the Melkers and the Henrichs and the Holtzes and the Tamms and all the others. How they will goggle when he doesn’t fall but rises and keeps rising, how their mouths will hang open. For a brief time he sees them shrinking, then they are dots, and then the village itself is a spot in the middle of the dark green forest, and when he lifts his head he will see the white velvet of the clouds and their inhabitants, some with wings, some made of white fire, some with two or three heads, and there he is, the Prince of the Air, the King of the Spirits and Flames. Have mercy, my great devil, take me into your realm, set me free, and now Claus hears him reply: See my land. See how vast it is, and see how far below. Fly with me.
Claus laughs out loud. For a moment he sees mice swarming around his feet, some with the tails of snakes, others with the feelers of caterpillars, and it seems to him as if he felt their bites, but the pain is prickly and almost pleasant, and then he sees himself flying again, so light am I when my Lord permits it. All you have to do is remember the words. None may be wrong, none missing, or else the Key of Solomon will not unlock, or else it is in vain. If you find the words, however, everything will fall away from you, the heavy chains, the distress, the miller’s existence of cold and hunger.
“That’s due to the wine,” says Master Tilman.
“I won’t be imprisoned for long,” the man says without looking at him. “Tesimond will be sorry.”
“He said he’ll forgive me,” says Master Tilman. “He said he won’t curse me.”
“Don’t talk to me!”
“Say whether you heard it,” says Master Tilman. “Or I’ll hurt you. Did he say it?”
Both of them look at the miller. He has closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, and he won’t stop giggling.
“Yes,” says the man. “He said it.”
IV
Nele noticed at the very outset that he was not good. But only now, hearing Gottfried perform the song about the devilish miller in front of the crowd in the market town, does it become clear to her that they have stumbled on the worst balladeer of all.
He sings much too high, and sometimes he clears his throat in the middle of a line. When he speaks, his voice still sounds all right, yet when he sings, it cracks and squeaks. The voice by itself would not be bad if he could only carry a tune. Just as the poor singing would not be so bad if he could at least play the lute—Gottfried incessantly plays the wrong notes, and sometimes he forgets how the rest of the song goes. But even this would not be so unbearable if only his verses were better. They tell of the wicked miller and the village he had under his thumb, of his witcheries and tricks, yet although they are as rich in grisly stories and bloody details as people expect, they are jumbled and hard to understand, and the rhymes are so awkward that it must bother even a child.
Still, the people listen. Balladeers don’t come often, and people want to hear ballads about witch trials even when they’re terrible. But after four verses Nele can see that their expressions are changing, and by the time he has arrived at the twelfth and last, many have left. Now there’s an urgent need for something that will go over better. This much he must know, thinks Nele, this much he must be able to sense!
Gottfried starts the song from the beginning.
He notices the restlessness in the people’s faces, and in his desperation he sings louder, which makes his voice even shriller. Nele looks over at Tyll. He rolls his eyes. Then he spreads his arms in a resigned gesture. Light-footedly he leaps beside the singer and begins to dance on the wagon.
The improvement is immediate. Gottfried is singing as badly as before, but suddenly it no longer matters. Tyll is dancing as if he had been trained, he is dancing as if his body had no weight and as if there were no greater pleasure. He leaps and spins and leaps again as if he hadn’t just lost everything, and it’s so infectious that a few members of the audience and then another few and then more and more begin to dance too. Now coins are flying over. Nele gathers them up.
Gottfried sees it too, and in his relief he now manages better to keep the rhythm; Tyll is dancing with such abandon and such light determination that watching him Nele could almost forget that the song is about his father. Miller is rhymed with dealer, devil with shovel, fire with fear, and night with night, for this word is constantly repeated: dark night, black night, Witches’ Night. From the fifth verse on it’s about the triaclass="underline" the stern and virtuous judges, God’s mercy, the punishment that in the end befalls every evildoer, despite all Satan’s maneuvers, under the eyes of his accusers, and the gallows on which the wicked miller must breathe his last, while the devil stands aghast. Tyll doesn’t stop dancing during all this, for they need the coins, they have to eat.