Only when death was clutching at her, only in the confusion of the final days, did it seem to her as if she could see him. Thin and smiling, he stood by the window; thin and smiling, he came into her room; and smiling, she sat up and said: “It took you a while!”
And the Duke of Gottorf, a son of the duke who had formerly employed her husband, having come to her deathbed to say goodbye to the oldest member of his household, understood that now was not the moment to correct errors, took the stiff little hand that she held out to him, and gave the reply that his instinct provided him: “Yes, but now I am here.”
—
That same year, on the Holstein plain, the last dragon of the north died. He was seventeen thousand years old, and he was tired of hiding.
Thus he buried his head in the heather, lay his body, which had adapted so completely to its background that even eagles could not have made it out, flat in the softness of the grass, sighed, and briefly regretted that it was now over with scent and flowers and wind and that he would no longer see the clouds in a storm, the rising sun, or the curve of the earth’s shadow on the copper-blue moon, which had always especially delighted him.
He closed his four eyes and still growled softly when he felt a sparrow alight on his nose. All was fine with him, for he had seen so much, but still he didn’t know what would happen to someone like him after death. With a sigh, he fell asleep. His life had lasted long. Now it was time to transform.
In the Shaft
“God Almighty, Lord Jesus Christ, help us,” Matthias said just a short while ago, and Korff replied: “But God is not here!” and Iron Kurt said: “God is everywhere, you swine,” and Matthias said: “Not down here,” and then everyone laughed, yet then there was a bang and a blast so sharp and hot that it flung them to the floor. Tyll fell on Korff, Matthias on Iron Kurt, and then it was pitch-black. For a while no one moved, they all held their breath, each man wondered whether he was dead, and only gradually did they all grasp, because you simply never grasp such a thing immediately, that the shaft had caved in. Now they know that they must not make a sound, for what if the Swedes have broken through, if they are standing over them in the darkness, knives drawn—then not the slightest peep, not a breath, not a sniffle or groan or cough.
It is dark. But dark in a different way than up above. For when it’s dark, you usually still see something. You don’t quite know what you’re seeing, but there’s not nothing; you move your head, the darkness is not the same everywhere, and once you have grown accustomed to it, outlines emerge. But not here. The darkness remains. Time passes, and when more time has passed and they can no longer hold their breath, and cautiously begin to breathe again, it is still as dark as if God had extinguished all the light in the world.
Finally, because apparently no Swedes with knives are standing over them, Korff says: “Men, report!”
And Matthias: “Since when are you the boss, you drunkard?”
Korff: “Since yesterday, you dirtbag, when the lieutenant kicked the bucket. Now I have seniority.”
Matthias: “Up there maybe, but not down here.”
Korff: “Report, right now, or I’ll kill you. I have to know who’s still alive.”
And Tylclass="underline" “I think I’m still alive.”
The truth is that he’s not sure. When you’re lying flat and everything is black, how can you tell? But now that he has heard his voice, he realizes that it’s so.
“Then get off me,” says Korff. “You’re lying on me, you bag of bones!”
When he’s right, he’s right, thinks Tyll, it is really not so good to be lying here on Korff. So he rolls to the side.
“Report, Matthias,” says Korff.
“Fine, I report.”
“Kurt?”
They wait, but Iron Kurt, as they all call him because of his iron right hand, or perhaps it was the left, no one quite remembers and it’s too dark to check, doesn’t report.
“Kurt?”
It’s quiet, not even any explosions are to be heard anymore. A moment ago they could still be heard, distant peals of thunder from above, which made the stones tremble; it was the Swedes under Torstensson trying to blow up the bastions. But now there’s only breathing, Tyll’s and Korff’s and Matthias’s, but Kurt cannot be heard.
“Are you dead?” cries Korff. “Kurt, did you bite the dust?”
But Kurt still says nothing, which is not like him at all; ordinarily you can hardly shut him up. Tyll hears Matthias groping. He must be feeling for Kurt’s neck, to see whether his heart is beating, then for his hand—first the iron one, then the real one. Tyll has to cough. It’s dusty, and stifling, the air feels like thick butter.
“Yes, he is dead,” Matthias finally says.
“Are you sure?” Korff asks. They can tell by his voice how it irks him—he only just got seniority yesterday, when the lieutenant was killed, and already he’s down to two subordinates.
“He isn’t breathing,” says Matthias, “and his heart isn’t beating, and he won’t talk either, and here, you can feel it, half of his head is gone.”
“Shit,” says Korff.
“Yes,” says Matthias, “shit. Although, look, I didn’t like him. Yesterday he took my knife, and when I said to give it back, he said: I’ll give it back all right, between your ribs. He had it coming.”
“Yes, he had it coming,” says Korff. “God have mercy on his soul.”
“It won’t get out of here,” says Tyll. “How’s a soul supposed to find its way out?”
For a while there’s an uneasy silence, because they are all thinking about the possibility that Kurt’s soul might still be here, cold and slippery and most likely angry. Then they hear a scraping, a pushing, a grinding.
“What are you doing there?” asks Korff.
“I’m looking for my knife,” says Matthias. “I’m not leaving it to that dirty pig.”
Tyll has to cough again. Then he asks: “What happened? I’m fairly new to this, why is it dark?”
“Because no sun is getting through,” says Korff. “There’s too much earth between it and ourselves.”
Serves me right, thinks Tyll, it really was not an intelligent question. And to ask a better one, he says: “Are we going to die?”
“Absolutely,” says Korff. “Us and everybody else.”
He’s right again, thinks Tyll, although, who knows, I, for one, have never died yet. Then, for the dark can be very confusing, he tries to remember how he ended up in the shaft.
First of all, because he came to Brno. He could have gone elsewhere, but in hindsight you always know better, and he came to Brno because they said the city was rich and safe. And no one suspected, after all, that Torstensson would march here with half the Swedish army. They always said he would go to Vienna, where the Kaiser is hunkering down, only you just don’t know what goes on in men’s heads underneath their big hats.
And then there was the town commandant, with his bushy eyebrows, his little pointed beard, his greasy cheeks, and that haughtiness in his every splayed finger. On the main square he watched Tyll, apparently with difficulty, because his eyelids drooped so nobly low and because someone like him undoubtedly thought he deserved more to look at than a fool in a pied jerkin.