Thus they traveled for a long time. The singer sang, the horse grunted from time to time, and the wheels rumbled and squealed as if they were carrying on a conversation with each other. Nele saw out of the corner of her eye that tears were running down the boy’s face. He had turned his head away so that no one would notice.
When Gottfried was finished with his song, he started from the beginning. Next he sang them a ballad about the handsome Elector Friedrich and the Bohemian estates, next he sang about the evil dragon Kufer and the knight Robert, next about the wicked king in France and the great king in Spain, his enemy. Then he told stories from his life. His father was an executioner, so he was supposed to become an executioner too. But he ran away.
“Like us,” said Nele.
“Many people do it, more than you think! It is part of an upstanding life to stay put, but the land is full of people who didn’t stay put. They have no protection, but they are free. They don’t have to string anyone up. They don’t have to kill anyone.”
“Don’t have to marry the Steger son,” said Nele.
“Don’t have to be day laborers,” said the boy.
They heard how Gottfried had fared in earlier days with his master. Vogtland had often struck him and kicked him and once even bit him in the ear because he didn’t hit the right notes and could also hardly play the lute with his thick fingers. Poor idiot, Vogtland exclaimed, didn’t want to be a hangman, now you torture people ten times over with your music! But then Vogtland didn’t drive him away after all, and so he improved more and more, Gottfried said proudly, until he himself finally became a master. He discovered, however, that people want to hear about executions, everywhere, all the time. No one is indifferent to executions.
“I know all there is to know about executions. How to hold the sword, how to position the knot, how to stack a pyre, and the best place to apply the hot tongs—I know everything about that. Other singers might have smoother rhymes, but I can tell which hangman knows his trade and which doesn’t, and my ballads are the most accurate.”
When it grew dark, they lit a fire. Gottfried shared his provisions with them: dry flatbread, which Nele immediately recognized as having been made by her father. Her eyes briefly welled up with tears too, for at the sight of this bread with the cross pressed into the middle and the crumbling edges it became clear to her that she was in the same situation as the boy. He would never see his father again because he was dead, but she wouldn’t see hers either, because she couldn’t go back. Both of them were now orphans. But the moment passed. She stared into the fire and all at once felt as free as if she could fly.
The second night in the forest was not as bad as the first. They were now used to the sounds; besides, warmth emanated from the embers, and the singer had given them a blanket. As she was falling asleep, she noticed that Tyll was still awake next to her. He was so wakeful, so attentive, he was thinking so hard that she could feel it. She didn’t dare turn her head in his direction.
“Someone who carries fire,” he said softly.
She didn’t know whether he was talking to her. “Are you ill?”
He seemed to have a fever. She snuggled up to him. Waves of warmth radiated from him, which was pleasant and kept her from freezing so. Thus she fell asleep after a short time and dreamed of a battlefield and thousands of people marching over a hilly landscape, and then the cannons began to hammer. When she woke up, it was morning, and it was raining again.
The singer was sitting hunched under his blanket, a small writing calendar in one hand and the pencil in the other. He wrote in tiny signs, almost illegibly, for he had only this calendar, and paper was expensive.
“Versifying is the hardest,” he said. “Do you know a word that rhymes with rogue?”
But finally he did finish the song of the evil miller, and now they are in the market town, while Gottfried sings and Tyll dances to it, with such lightness and elegance that it surprises even Nele.
Other wagons are standing here too. On the opposite side of the square is the wagon of a cloth merchant, next to two scissors grinders, next to a fruit merchant, a kettle mender, another scissors grinder, a healer who is in possession of theriac, which can cure any illness, another fruit merchant, a spice merchant, another healer who unfortunately has no theriac and hence is left empty-handed, a fourth scissors grinder, and a barber. All these people are in the traveling trades. Anyone who robs or kills them is not prosecuted. That is the price of freedom.
At the edge of the square are another few dubious figures. These are the dishonest people, including musicians with fife, bagpipes, and fiddle. They stand far away, yet it seems to Nele as if they were grinning across at her and whispering jokes about Gottfried to each other. Next to them sits a storyteller. You can recognize him by the yellow hat and the blue jerkin and by the sign around his neck on which something is written in big letters that must mean “storyteller,” for only storytellers have signs—senseless though it is, since his audience consists of people who cannot read. You can recognize musicians by their instruments and merchants by their wares, but to recognize a storyteller all it takes is a sign. And then there’s also a man of small stature in the widely recognizable clothing of traveling entertainers: motley jerkin, puffed breeches, fur collar. With a thin smile he too looks across, something worse than mockery is in it, and when he notices that Nele is looking at him, he raises an eyebrow, shows his tongue in the corner of his mouth, and winks.
Gottfried has reached the twelfth verse for the second time, he concludes his ballad for the second time, considers for a moment, and then starts again from the beginning. Tyll gives Nele a sign. She stands up. She has danced before, of course—at the village festivals, when musicians came and the young people jumped over the fire, and often she also danced with the female hands, just like that, without music, during breaks from work. But she has never done it in front of an audience.
Yet as she spins first in one direction and then in the other, she realizes that it doesn’t make a difference. She only has to follow Tyll. Whenever the boy claps his hands, she claps too, when he raises his right foot, she raises her right foot, and the left when he raises the left, at first with a slight delay, but soon simultaneously, as if she knew beforehand what he was going to do, as if they were not two people but in dancing became one—and now all at once he pitches forward and dances on his hands, and she spins around him, again and again and again, so that the village square turns into a smear of colors. Dizziness rises in her, but she fights against it and keeps her gaze directed into empty space, it’s getting better already, and she can keep her balance without teetering while she spins.
For a moment she is confused when the music swells and the tones grow richer, but then she realizes that the musicians have joined in. Playing their instruments, they approach, and Gottfried, who cannot keep their rhythm, helplessly lowers the lute, so that now finally everything sounds right. The people applaud. Coins leap over the wood of the wagon. Tyll is again standing on his feet. Nele stops spinning, suppresses her dizziness, and watches as he knots a rope—where did he get it from so quickly?—to the wagon and then casts it from him so that it unwinds. Someone catches it, she can’t tell who it is because everything is still swaying, someone has fastened it, and now Tyll is standing on the rope and jumping forward and back and bowing, and more coins are flying, and Gottfried can hardly pick them up fast enough. Finally Tyll jumps down and takes her hand, the musicians play a fanfare, the two of them bow, and the people clap and howl. The fruit merchant throws them apples. She catches one and bites into it. She hasn’t eaten an apple in an eternity. Next to her Tyll catches one too and another and another and then another and juggles them. Again a cheer goes through the crowd.