Tyll sat down on the ground. The fog was already thinning, a few rays of sun broke through. The coaches and a few tents and the contours of the spectator benches could now be made out. A moment later it was broad daylight. Moisture steamed from the grass, the fog was gone.
The secretaries looked at each other in confusion. One of the two coach horses was no longer there; the drawbar jutted into the air. While everyone was wondering where the fog had suddenly come from, while the acrobats did cartwheels because they couldn’t go long without doing them, while the donkey plucked blades of grass, while the old woman resumed reciting to Fleming, and while Olearius and Nele talked to each other, Tyll sat there motionless, with his eyes narrowed and his nose raised into the wind. And he did not stand up even when one of the secretaries approached and told Olearius that His Excellency Professor Kircher had apparently ridden away without farewell. He had not even left a message.
“We won’t find the dragon without him,” said Olearius.
“Shall we wait?” asked the secretary. “Perhaps he will come back.”
Olearius cast a glance at Nele. “That would probably be best.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Nele, who had walked over to Tyll.
He looked up. “I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“Juggle for us. Then it will be better.”
Tyll stood up. He groped for the pouch that hung at his side and took out first a yellow leather ball and then a red one and then a blue one and then a green one. Carelessly he began to throw them into the air, and he took out even more balls, another and another and another, until there seemed to be dozens of them leaping over his spread hands. Everyone was watching the rising, falling, rising balls, and even the secretaries couldn’t help smiling.
—
It was early in the morning. Nele had been waiting for quite a while outside the tent. She had been thinking, had been walking up and down, had prayed, torn out grass, wept silently, wrung her hands, and, at length, had pulled herself together.
Now she slipped into the tent. Tyll was asleep, yet as soon as she touched his shoulder, he was wide awake.
She told him that she had spent the night with Olearius, the courtier from Gottorf, out in the field.
“So what?”
“This time it’s different.”
“Didn’t he give you anything nice?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Well, then it’s the same as always.”
“He would like me to come with him.”
Tyll raised his eyebrows in feigned astonishment.
“He wants to marry me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Marry?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“Why?”
“He means it. He lives in a castle. It’s not a beautiful castle, he says, and in the winter it’s cold, but he has enough to eat and a duke who provides for him, and for this he doesn’t have to do anything but teach the duke’s children and sometimes calculate something and keep an eye on the books.”
“Will they run away otherwise, the books?”
“As I said, he has it good.”
Tyll rolled off his straw sack, got to his feet, stood up. “Then you have to go with him.”
“I don’t like him very much, but he is a good person. And very lonely. His wife died, when he was in Russia. I don’t know where Russia is.”
“Near England.”
“Now we never did make it to England.”
“In England it’s the same as here.”
“And when he came back from Russia, she was dead, and they didn’t have children, and ever since he has been sad. He is still fairly healthy, I could tell, and I think he can be trusted. Someone like this won’t come to me again.”
Tyll sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. Outside the old woman could be heard reciting a ballad. Evidently, Fleming was still sitting with her and having her perform again and again so that he could commit it to memory.
“Someone like this is certainly better than a Steger,” she said.
“Probably he won’t even hit you.”
“It’s possible,” Nele said thoughtfully. “And if he does, I’ll hit back. That will take him by surprise.”
“You can even still have children.”
“I don’t like children. And he is already old. But he will be grateful, with children or without.”
She was silent. The wind rustled the tent, and the old woman started from the beginning.
“I don’t actually want to.”
“But you have to.”
“Why?”
“Because we are no longer young, sister. And we’re not getting any younger. Not by one day. No one who is old and homeless has it good. He lives in a castle.”
“But we belong together.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps he’ll take you along too.”
“That won’t work. I can’t stay in a castle. I wouldn’t be able to stand it. And even if I could stand it, they wouldn’t want to have me there for long. Either they will chase me away, or I’ll burn the castle down. One or the other. But it would be your castle, so I must not burn it down, so nothing will come of it.”
For a while they were quiet.
“Yes, nothing will come of it,” she then said.
“Why does he want you anyway?” asked Tyll. “You’re not even especially beautiful.”
“In a moment I’m going to smack you in the mouth.”
He laughed.
“I think he loves me.”
“What?”
“I know, I know.”
“Loves you.”
“These things happen.”
Outside the donkey made a donkey sound, and the old woman began another ballad.
“If it hadn’t been for the marauders,” said Nele. “That time in the forest.”
“Don’t talk about it.”
She went silent.
“People like him don’t usually take people like you,” he said. “He must be a good man. And even if he’s not a good man—he has a roof overhead and coins in his pouch. Tell him that you’ll come with him, and tell him before he changes his mind.”
Nele began to weep. Tyll took his hand off her shoulder and looked at her. Shortly thereafter, she calmed down.
“Will you come visit me?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Look, how is that supposed to work? He won’t want to be reminded of where he found you. In the castle no one will know, and you yourself won’t want people to know. The years will pass, sister, soon all this will be a distant memory, only your children will be amazed that you can dance and sing so well and catch anything they throw.”
She gave him a kiss on the forehead. Hesitantly she slipped out of the tent, stood up and went over to the coaches to inform the court mathematician that she would accept his offer and move with him to Gottorf.
When she came back, she found Tyll’s tent empty. With lightning speed he had set off and had taken nothing with him but the juggling balls, a long rope, and the donkey. Only Magister Fleming, who had encountered him out in the meadow, had spoken with him. But what Tyll had said he would not reveal.
—
The circus scattered in all directions. The musicians headed south with the acrobats, the fire eater went west with the old woman, the others turned northeast, in the hope of getting far away from war and hunger. The freak was admitted to the Elector of Bavaria’s cabinet of curiosities. Three months later, the secretaries reached the city of Rome, where Athanasius Kircher was impatiently waiting for them. He never again left the city, carried out thousands of experiments, and wrote dozens of books, until he died in high esteem forty years later.
Nele Olearius survived Kircher by three years. She had children and buried her husband, whom she had never loved but always appreciated, because he had treated her well and expected nothing more from her than some kindness. Before her eyes Gottorf Castle blossomed into new splendor, she saw her grandchildren grow up and rocked even her first great-grandson on her lap. No one had an inkling that she had once roamed the land with Tyll Ulenspiegel, but just as he had predicted, her grandchildren were amazed that even in her old age she could still catch anything you threw to her. She was well liked and respected; no one would have suspected that she had ever been anything but an honorable woman. Nor did she tell anyone that she still had the hope that the boy with whom she had once set off from her parents’ village might come back and take her with him.