“Yes,” said the King, “but where’s Hudenitz?”
He tried to count how large his army still was. There was the fool, and there was the cook, and there was himself, and there was the fool as well, that made four, yet when he counted a second time to be safe he came up with just two, namely the fool and the cook. Because that couldn’t be right, however, he counted once again and came up with three, but the next time it was four again: the King of Bohemia, the cook, the fool, himself. And at that point he gave up.
“We have to dismount,” said the cook.
And indeed, the snow was too high; the horses could bear them no farther.
“But he can’t walk,” the King heard the fool say, and for the first time his voice didn’t sound derisive but like that of an ordinary person.
“But we have to dismount,” said the cook. “You see, don’t you? We can’t go on.”
“Yes,” said the fool. “I see.”
While the cook held the reins, the King, propped up on the fool, dismounted. He sank into the snow up to his knees. The horse snorted with relief when it was rid of the weight, warm breath rising from its nostrils. The King patted its muzzle. The animal looked at him with dull eyes.
“We can’t just abandon the horses,” said the King.
“Don’t worry,” said the fool. “Before they have frozen to death, someone will eat them.”
The King coughed. The fool supported him from the left, the cook from the right, and they trudged on.
“Where are we going?” asked the King.
“Home,” said the cook.
“I know,” said the King, “but today. Now. In the cold. Where are we going now?”
“Half a day’s march westward there’s supposed to be a village where there are still people,” said the cook.
“No one knows for sure,” said the fool.
“Half a day’s march is a whole day’s march,” said the cook. “With so much snow.”
The King coughed. He trudged while he coughed, he coughed while he trudged, he trudged and trudged, and he coughed, and he marveled at the fact that his chest hardly hurt anymore.
“I think I’m getting better,” he said.
“Definitely,” said the fool. “It shows. You are indeed, Majesty.”
The King could tell that he would have fallen down if the two of them hadn’t been supporting him. The snowdrifts grew higher and higher. It became harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open in the cold wind. “Where’s Hudenitz, then?” he heard himself asking for the third time. His throat hurt. Snowflakes everywhere, and even when he closed his eyes he saw them: gleaming, dancing, whirling dots. He sighed. His legs buckled. No one was holding him. The soft snow received him.
“Can’t leave him behind,” he heard someone saying above him.
“What should we do?”
Hands reached for him and pulled him up. A hand stroked his head almost tenderly, which reminded him of his favorite nursemaid, who had raised him, in those days in Heidelberg when he was only a prince and not a king and all was still well. His feet trudged in the snow, and when he briefly opened his eyes, he saw next to him the contours of cracked roofs, empty windows, a destroyed well, but people were nowhere to be seen.
“We can’t go inside any of them,” he heard. “The roofs are broken. Besides, there are wolves.”
“But we’ll freeze to death out here,” said the King.
“The two of us won’t freeze to death,” said the fool.
The king looked around. And indeed, the cook was no longer to be seen; he was alone with Tyll.
“He tried a different way,” said the fool. “Can’t be held against him. Everyone fends for himself in a storm.”
“Why won’t we freeze to death?” asked the King.
“You’re burning too hot. Your fever is too high. The cold can’t do anything to you, you’ll die first.”
“Of what, then?” asked the King.
“Of the plague.”
The King was silent for a moment. “I have the plague?”
“Poor fellow,” said the fool. “Poor Winter King, yes, that’s what you have. You’ve had it for days now. You haven’t noticed the lumps on your neck? You don’t feel it when you inhale?”
The King inhaled. The air was icy. He coughed. “If it’s the plague,” he said, “then you’ll get infected too.”
“It’s too cold for that.”
“Can I lie down now?”
“You’re a king,” said the fool. “You can do what you want, when and wherever you like.”
“Then help me. I’m going to lie down.”
“Your Majesty,” said the fool, supporting him by the back of the neck and helping him onto the ground.
The King had never before lain on such a soft surface. The snowdrifts seemed to be glowing faintly, the sky was already darkening, but the flakes were still a bright shimmer. He wondered whether the poor horses might still be alive. Then he thought of Liz. “Can you deliver a message to her?”
“Of course, sire.”
It didn’t suit him that the fool was speaking so respectfully to him, it wasn’t proper—that was why you had a court jester, after all, so that your mind wasn’t lulled to sleep by all the adulation. A fool was expected to be impertinent! He cleared his throat to scold him, but then he had to cough once again, and he found it too difficult to speak.
But hadn’t there been something else? Ah, yes, the message to Liz. She had always loved the theater, the appeal of which he had never understood. People standing on the stage and pretending to be someone else. He had to smile. A king without a country in a storm, alone with his fool—something like this would never happen in a play, it was too absurd. He tried to sit up, but his hands sank into the snow and he slumped back again. What was it he had wanted to do? Oh, yes, the message to Liz.
“The Queen,” he said.
“Yes,” said the fool.
“Will you tell her?”
“I will.”
The King waited but the fool still made no move to mock him. And yet it was his duty! Annoyed, he closed his eyes. To his surprise, this didn’t change anything at alclass="underline" he still saw the fool, and he saw the snow too. He felt paper in his hands—apparently the fool had slid it between his fingers—and he felt something firm, probably a piece of coal. We shall see each other again before God, he wanted to write, in my life I have loved only you, but then everything became muddled and he was no longer certain whether he had already written it or had only wanted to write it, and he also didn’t remember clearly to whom the message was to be sent. Therefore he wrote with a shaky hand: “Gustav Adolf will soon be dead, I know that now, but I will die first.” Yet that wasn’t the message at all, it was completely beside the point, hence he added: “Take good care of the donkey, I give him to you,” but no, he hadn’t wanted to say that to Liz but to the fool, and the fool was here, he could say it to him personally, while the message was for Liz. And so he started over and was about to write, but it was too late, it was no longer possible. His hand went limp.
He could only hope that he had already written down everything that was important.
Effortlessly he stood up and walked. When he looked back once more, he noticed that they were again three: the fool, kneeling in his calfskin cloak, the King on the ground, whose body was already half covered with white, and he. The fool looked up. Their eyes met. The fool raised his hand to his forehead and bowed.
He lowered his head in parting, turned, and walked away. Now that his feet no longer sank into the snow, the going was swift and easy.
Hunger
“Once upon a time,” says Nele.
It’s already their third day in the forest. Now and then light filters through the canopy of leaves, and despite this ceiling of foliage above them they get wet from the rain. They wonder whether the forest will ever end. Pirmin, who walks ahead of them and from time to time scratches the semicircle of his bald head, never turns around to look at them. Sometimes they hear him muttering, sometimes singing in a foreign language. They now know him well enough not to speak to him, for that could make him angry, and once he’s angry, it won’t be long before he hurts them.