Applause broke out. “Tyll!” someone shouted. “Bravo, Tyll!” someone else exclaimed. “Bravo! Bravo!”
The musicians began to play again. Liz felt dizzy. It was so hot in the hall, due to the many candles, and her fur was much too thick. On the right side of the entrance hall a door was open. Behind it a spiral staircase led upward. She hesitated. Then she went up.
The staircase was so steep that she stopped twice, gasping for breath. She propped herself up against the wall. Briefly, everything went black, her knees were weak, and she thought she would fall down. Then she recovered her strength, pulled herself together, and continued climbing. Finally she reached a small balcony.
She threw back her hood and leaned against the stone balustrade. Down below was the main square. To her right, the towers of the cathedral rose into the sky. The sun must have just set. A fine drizzle still filled the air.
Down below in the twilight a man crossed the square. It was Lamberg. He walked bent forward, with small, dragging steps, toward his residence. The purple cloak flapped languidly around his shoulders. For a moment he stood slumped outside the door. He seemed to be reflecting. Then he went in.
She closed her eyes. The cold air did her good.
“How is my donkey?” she asked.
“He’s writing a book. And you, little Liz?”
She opened her eyes. He was standing next to her, resting on the balustrade. A cloth was tied around his hand.
“You are well preserved,” he said. “You’ve grown old, but your mind is not yet weak, and you even still make a good impression.”
“You too. Only the cap doesn’t suit you.”
He raised his unwounded hand and played with the little bells. “The Kaiser wants me to wear it, because that’s how I was drawn in a brochure he likes. I had you brought to Vienna, he said to me, now you should also look the way people know you.”
She pointed questioningly at his wrapped-up hand.
“In front of distinguished lords and ladies I always miss. Then they give more money.”
“What is the Kaiser like?”
“Like everyone. At night he sleeps, and he likes when people are nice to him.”
“And where is Nele?”
He was silent for a moment, as if he had to remember whom she was talking about. “She got married,” he said. “A long time ago.”
“Peace is coming, Tyll. I will return home. Across the sea, to England. Do you want to come with me? I’ll give you a warm room, and you won’t go hungry. Even when you one day are no longer able to perform.”
He said nothing. So many flakes had mingled with the raindrops that there was no longer any doubt—it was snowing.
“For old times’ sake,” she said. “You know as well as I do that the Kaiser will sooner or later grow annoyed with you. Then you will be on the street again. You’d have it better with me.”
“Are you offering me charity, little Liz? A daily soup and a thick blanket and warm slippers until I die in my bed?”
“That’s not so bad.”
“But do you know what’s better? Even better than dying in one’s bed?”
“Tell me.”
“Not dying, little Liz. That is much better.”
She turned to the staircase. From the hall below she heard shouts and laughter and music. When she turned back to him, he was gone. Astonished, she bent over the balustrade, but the square lay in darkness, and Tyll was nowhere to be seen.
If it kept snowing like this, she thought, tomorrow everything would be covered with white, and the return journey to The Hague might be difficult. Wasn’t it far too early in the year for snow? Probably some unfortunate person would soon be standing in the pillory down there for this.
And yet it’s because of me, she thought. I am the Winter Queen!
She leaned her head back and opened her mouth as wide as she could. She hadn’t done this in a long time. The snow was still as sweet and cold as it had been when she was a girl. And then, to taste it better, and only because she knew that in the darkness no one could see her, she stuck her tongue out.
A Note About the Author
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Berlin and New York. His works have won the Candide Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, and the Hölderlin Prize, among others. His novel Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the greatest successes in postwar German literature.
A Note About the Translator
Ross Benjamin’s previous translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew, Joseph Roth’s Job, Thomas Pletzinger’s Funeral for a Dog, Clemens J. Setz’s Indigo, and Daniel Kehlmann’s You Should Have Left. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on Franz Kafka’s diaries.
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