“You are a very shrewd man,” said the donkey.
“Do you have musicians?” asked Kircher, who was aware that it could damage his reputation to talk to a donkey before witnesses.
“Certainly,” said the donkey. “Half a dozen. The director and the woman dance, it is the climax, the peak of our performance, how would that be possible without musicians?”
“That’s enough,” said Kircher. “The ventriloquist shall now show himself!”
“I’m here,” said the donkey.
Kircher closed his eyes, exhaled deeply, inhaled. A mistake, he thought, the whole journey, this visit here, all a mistake. He thought of the peace in his study, of his stone desk, of the books on the shelves, he thought of the peeled apple that his assistant brought him every afternoon when the clock struck three, of the red wine in his favorite Venetian crystal glass. He rubbed his eyes and turned away.
“Do you need a barber surgeon?” asked the donkey. “We also sell medicine. Just say the word.”
It’s just a donkey, thought Kircher. But his fists clenched with rage. Now one was being mocked by even the German animals! “Handle this,” he said to Olearius. “Talk to these people.”
Olearius looked at him in astonishment.
Kircher was already stepping over a heap of donkey manure to climb back into the coach, without paying further attention to him. He closed the door and drew the curtains. He heard Olearius and Fleming outside talking to the donkey—undoubtedly they were now laughing at him, all of them, but it didn’t interest him. He didn’t even want to know. To quiet his mind, he tried to think in Egyptian signs.
—
The old woman at the washtub faced Olearius and Fleming as they approached her. Then she stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle. Immediately three men and a woman emerged from one of the tents. The men were unusually stocky. The woman had brown hair, and she was no longer young, but her eyes were bright and piercing.
“Distinguished visitors,” said the woman. “We don’t often have such an honor. Do you want to see our show?”
Olearius tried to answer, yet his voice didn’t obey him.
“My brother is the best tightrope walker, he was court jester for the Winter King. Do you want to see him?”
Olearius’s voice still failed.
“Can’t you talk?”
Olearius cleared his throat. He knew that he was making a fool of himself, but it was no use, he couldn’t speak.
“Certainly we want to see something,” said Fleming.
“These are our acrobats,” said the woman. “Tumblers, show our well-born guests something!”
Without a moment’s hesitation one of the three men fell forward and stood on his hands. The second climbed up him with inhuman speed and did a handstand on the first one’s feet, and now the third man scaled the two of them, only he remained standing upright on the feet of the second, his arms stretched high in the sky, and now, before you knew it, the woman clambered up, and the third man pulled her to him and lifted her over his head. Olearius stared upward, she was hovering over him, in the air.
“Do you want to see more?” she called down.
“We would like to,” said Fleming, “but that’s not why we’re here. We need musicians, we’ll pay well.”
“Your distinguished companion is mute?”
“No,” said Olearius, “not no. Not mute, I mean.”
She laughed. “I’m Nele!”
“I am Magister Fleming.”
“Olearius,” said Olearius. “Court mathematicus in Gottorf.”
“Are you coming back down?” called Fleming. “It’s hard to talk like this!”
As if on command, the human tower crumbled. The man in the middle leaped, the man on top rolled forward, the man on the bottom did a somersault, the woman seemed to fall, but somehow the jumble sorted itself out in midair, and they all landed on their feet and stood upright. Fleming clapped his hands. Olearius stood rigid.
“Don’t clap,” said Nele, “that wasn’t an act. If it had been an act, you’d have to pay.”
“We would like to pay too,” said Olearius. “For your musicians.”
“Then you have to ask them yourselves. All who are with us are free. If they want to go with you, then they shall go. If they want to continue with us, then they will continue with us. You are in Ulenspiegel’s circus only if you want to be in Ulenspiegel’s circus, because there is no better circus. Even the freak is here of his own free will, elsewhere he wouldn’t have it so good.”
“Tyll Ulenspiegel is here?” asked Fleming.
“People come from all over for him,” said one of the acrobats. “I wouldn’t want to leave. But ask the musicians.”
“We have a flutist and a trumpeter and a drummer and a man who plays two fiddles at the same time. Ask them, and if they want to go, we shall part as friends and find other musicians, that won’t be hard, everyone wants to join Ulenspiegel’s circus.”
“Tyll Ulenspiegel?” Fleming asked again.
“None other.”
“And you are his sister?”
She shook her head.
“But you said—”
“I know what I said, sir. He is indeed my brother, but I am not his sister.”
“How is that possible?” asked Olearius.
“Amazing, isn’t it, sir?”
She looked him in the face, her eyes flashing, the wind playing in her hair. Olearius’s throat was dry, and his limbs were weak, as if he had caught an illness along the way.
“You don’t understand it, do you?” She pushed one of the acrobats in the chest and said: “Will you fetch the musicians?”
He nodded, flung himself forward, and walked away on his hands.
“One question.” Fleming pointed at the donkey, which was calmly plucking grass and now and then raising its head and looking at them with dull animal eyes. “Who taught the donkey to—”
“Ventriloquism.”
“But where is the ventriloquist hiding?”
“Ask the donkey,” said the old woman.
“Who are you, then?” asked Fleming. “Are you her mother?”
“God forbid,” said the old woman. “I am just the old woman. I’m no one’s mother, no one’s daughter.”
“Well, you must be someone’s daughter.”
“And if grass has already grown over all the people whose daughter I was? I am Else Kornfass from Stangenriet. I was sitting outside my house and digging my little garden without a thought in my head, when Ulenspiegel and she, Nele, and Origenes came with the cart, and I called, Good day, Tyll, because I recognized him, everyone recognizes him, and suddenly he pulls on the reins so that the wagon stops and says: The day doesn’t need your praise, just come. I didn’t know what he meant, and I told him: Don’t play jokes on old women, first of all they are poor and weak, and secondly they can cast a spell on you so you fall ill, but he says: You don’t belong here. You are one of us. And me: I might have been once, but now I am old! To which he replies: We are all old. And me: If I drop dead along the way, what will you do? His reply: Then we’ll leave you behind, for someone who is dead is no longer my friend. To which I didn’t know what else to say, sir, and that’s why I’m here.”
“Eats us out of house and home,” said Nele. “Doesn’t work much, sleeps a lot, always has an opinion.”
“All true,” said the old woman.
“But she can memorize something,” said Nele. “She delivers the longest ballads, never forgets a line.”
“German ballads?” asked Fleming.
“Certainly,” said the old woman. “Never learned Spanish.”
“Let’s hear,” said Fleming.
“If you pay, I’ll let you hear.”
Fleming rummaged in his pocket. Olearius looked up at the rope. For a moment he thought he saw someone up there, but it was swaying empty in the wind. The acrobat came back, followed by three men with instruments.
“It will cost you,” said the first man.
“We’ll come with you,” said the second, “but we want money.”