The unknown fisherman holds out his hand, and she helps him climb out of the rocking boat and then lets his hand go again. Only when he holds out his hand to her a second time does she understand that he wants her to lead him further. Halfway up the slope where the earth is no longer quite so dark and the grass is drier, there will surely be a place for her and the fisherman, whose hair is so wet that the water is dripping to his shoulders and running down his arms all the way to where his fingers are intertwined with hers. Only now, when she is looking for a good spot to sit down with him, does it strike her how many people there are all around her in this bit of woods, and everywhere there might be an attractive spot to rest, someone is already sitting or standing, some are reclining in the shade, asleep, others are having their evening meal, and yet others are leaning against a tree, smoking and blowing rings in the air. It’s no doubt because all these people are so quiet that she didn’t notice them before. In a sunny spot under the big oak tree the kind of grass she likes is growing, tall, dry grass, tuft after tuft of it, and when she kneels down there and draws the fisherman down beside her, the others finally begin to move, they put their sandwiches, apples and hard-boiled eggs back in their baskets, fold up their blankets and calmly rise to their feet, while the ones who are leaning against the tree trunks now toss their cigarettes on the ground and crush the stubs beneath the soles of their shoes. One at a time, all of them turn to walk back up the slope, leaving behind this place without addressing a single word or even a wave to Klara and her fisherman. The fisherman lays his head in the lap of the mayor’s youngest and as yet unmarried daughter, and she begins to dry his wet shock of hair with her skirt. On the far side of the oak tree directly behind her, two last silent visitors to this bit of woods whom she had overlooked now rise to their feet and leave as well.
Red is birth, / green is life, / white is death.
I know a little creaturely, / its features are quite mannerly. / Good manners has the creaturely./ It wears its bones atop its flesh.
In our cellar lies a man / who has a hundred petticoats on.
Something crosses the floor, / it doesn’t tip, it doesn’t tap.
Toss it up on the roof white / and it comes down yellow.
In our garden stands a white mare / whose tail reaches high into the air.
A queen was drinking tea. / Three hinds were swimming / across the lake. / What was the queen’s name?
I’m a poor soldier and must stand watch, / I have no legs but have to march, / I have no arms but have to fight / and tell all the people what is right.
Nothing but holes. / And still it holds.
At first the sisters don’t notice anything except that Klara is now sometimes particularly courteous when she wishes them good morning and inquires as to their well-being, as though they were strangers, or as though she hadn’t seen them in a long time. On other days she might look away when her sisters wish her good morning. The second thing that strikes her sisters as well as the people in the village is that Klara often leaves the farm with the bucket of scraps intended for the hogs instead of emptying it out in the sty. With the bucket in her hand, she walks through the village, passing the butcher shop and school, and after the brickyard turns left onto Uferweg. Old Warnack, whose grounds border Klara’s Wood on the right-hand side, reports to Wurrach that Klara always first empties her bucket there somewhere in the bushes and then sits down in the grass, leaning her back against the oak tree and propping her feet on the upside-down bucket, and talks with the air or else is simply silent. After her father forbids her to leave the farm, she begins to hide within the farm itself. She squats down behind the bushes and trees in the garden, or under boards that are leaning up against a wall somewhere, she also climbs into barrels and chests. Everywhere on the farm and on the property, the sisters and farmhands have to be prepared to come across Klara. She can often be heard wailing or arguing in some hiding place or other, but if you pull her out, she is always quiet and friendly. Once Grete opens the closet door to take out a broom, and Klara is standing there in the cramped space smiling at her calmly as though she had been waiting in the dark for her sister all the while. Another time she puts her hand into her bowl during lunch and in front of everyone smears the hot porridge all around her mouth as though she were intentionally resisting finding the entrance, but all this time she is smiling and appears content. For a moment everything is very still at the table of the village mayor. During this period there is scarcely a farmhand or maid willing to enter into the service of the powerful Wurrach, for it is no trivial matter to arm oneself against possible attack by someone who has veered from the world of appropriate behavior. Her sisters place all the sharp knives in a drawer with a lock, the farmhands lay their axes high up on top of the compartment built into the entry gate, which a woman cannot reach without a stepstool, and in Klara’s room her father removes the window latches and the inside door handle, during the night he himself locks the door from the outside. During the night, Klara, the last daughter of the village mayor, sometimes turns her chamber pot upside down and uses it as a drum.
This is the key to the garden / for which three girls are waiting. / The first is named Binka, / the second Bibeldebinka. / The third’s name is Zickzettzack Nobel de / Bobel de Bibel de Binka. / Then Binka took a stone / and struck Bibeldebinka’s leg bone. / Then Zick, Zett, Zack, / Nobel de Bobel de Bibel de Binka / began to weep and to moan.
And then nothing further happens except that Grete and Hedwig and Emma and even Klara grow older, and their father grows old. Nothing further happens except that in Klara’s Wood one of the old oak tree’s branches breaks off, remains lying there in the grass and rots. All the villagers have long since gotten used to the Mayor’s Old Maid, as Klara is now called by the villagers, sometimes limping through the village with two different shoes on her feet or perhaps only socks, walking as far as the butcher shop, the school, the brickyard but never farther, and if you ask her: Where are you going? she will reply: Dunno.
Last glove / I lost my autumn. / I had to find three days / before I looked for it. / Then I walked past a garden, / and saw a gentleman there. / Around the gentleman sat three tables. / Then I took off my day / and wished them all a good hat, sirs. / Then the gentlemen laughed to begin / until their bursts bellied.
Old Wurrach sells the first third of Klara’s Wood to a coffee and tea importer from Frankfurt an der Oder, the second third to a cloth manufacturer from Guben, who enters his son’s name in the contract of sale in order to arrange for his inheritance, and finally Wurrach sells the third third, the part where the big oak tree stands, to an architect from Berlin who discovered this sloping shoreline with its trees and bushes while out for a steamboat ride and wishes to build a summer cottage there for himself and his fiancée. The village mayor enters into conversations about so-and-so-many square meters first with the coffee and tea importer, then with the cloth manufacturer, and finally with the architect, for the first time in his life he is measuring ground not in hides or hectares, for the first time in his life he is speaking of parcels of land. For several hundred years Klara’s Wood was considered logging grounds, every thirty years all the land surrounding the big oak tree was cleared and then reforested, and now a number of the trees are to remain there forever just as they stand, the architect’s fiancée says: For the shade. While her father is negotiating the price for the third third, Klara, whom everyone now calls the Mayor’s Old Maid, goes limping through the village as always, one of her feet shod, the other with just a stocking on, she limps past the butcher shop, then past the school, then past the brickyard, and later back again. At dusk, snow falls for the first time. As the seller of the third parcel of land on Schäferberg, Old Wurrach signs the contract in the name of his incapacitated daughter, and on behalf of the architect, the architect’s young fiancée signs as the new landowner.