Alfons stepped outside and took a few steps closer, then he recognized one of the men, it was Klemens, the carpenter’s son, and it dawned on him that these must be the guys from Open Air. The idea had struck in winter, and for weeks the whole village had talked about nothing else. The young people wanted to organize an Open Air Festival for local bands, with a bar and activities for children. In January, Klemens had come by. He had introduced himself as president of the Organizing Committee, told Alfons that the festival would take place in the meadow below his house, and asked if they could take power and water from him. Of course they would install meters, and he would be properly reimbursed. Alfons felt he had little choice but to agree. After that, he had heard nothing more from the organizers, and forgotten all about the whole thing.
He was surprised when his neighbor had part of the pasture mown a couple of days ago, even though the grass wasn’t that long. That was where the truck was parked now, and the men were starting to unload timber. Alfons walked down and asked them when the festival was happening. In ten days, said Klemens, the last weekend of June. That Sunday is Seven Sleepers. Klemens asked what that was, and Alfons explained. He had read the story in a farmers’ almanac. On Seven Sleepers’ Day, according to an old legend, seven Christians were found who in Roman times had been walled into a cave and had slept through two hundred years. From a farmers’ rule of thumb, that day predicted the weather for the next seven weeks. Then we can only hope it will have picked up by then, said Klemens, and returned to the planks.
All afternoon Alfons chopped weeds in his celery field. By the time he was finished and came home, at six, the truck was gone, but there were piles of boards and beams in the grass. The young men were busy putting up a large white tent at the bottom of the meadow. They worked until it got dark, then they lit a fire and drank beer. They had a CD player with them, and through his closed window Alfons could hear the distant music and the men laughing and shouting. It was midnight before there was quiet.
The next day, a workman came from the utilities company and laid improvised water and power mains from Alfons’s cellar across the road and down into the meadow. Alfons knew the man from the rifle club. He offered him a cup of coffee, and they talked about the festival a bit. The workman said he thought it was good for the young people to set something up on their own, instead of just hanging around and doing drugs. Even though Alfons was younger than some of the committee, he noticed the workman talked to him as though he was an old man.
THE MEN MUST HAVE got time off from work, because from now on they came every day and worked from early morning until late at night. They built a stage, fenced off the field, and put up a second tent. A portable toilet was brought along, and fridges and sinks installed. One time, a truck with a black cover was parked behind the stage, and a couple of fellows in black T-shirts set up lights and amplifiers. While Alfons was working after lunch on the top field by the edge of the woods, he could hear one of the men going one two, one two, all afternoon, one two, one two, and then a shrill whistling sound.
Occasionally someone would come up from the field and ask Alfons for a tool, or some bandages, or a wheelbarrow, whatever they happened to be short of. He fetched whatever it happened to be, and said, That’s fine. Oskar, his neighbor, turned up on the meadow almost every day, to keep an eye on things. He parked his Subaru on the grass and watched the workmen, kidded around with them, and lent a hand when asked.
The weather was cool that whole week, but sunny. At last, Alfons was able to put his French beans in and go out on the fields with his machines. At night he was tired, he just quickly filled in his weather chart and went to bed early. Then he heard the music and the voices of the men sitting around the fire after their day. The noise really didn’t bother him; on the contrary, he had the feeling of being part of the village for the first time.
On Friday morning the rain returned. Alfons worked all day in the tunnel, with a short break for lunch at home. He saw three men and a woman unloading instruments from a white minivan and carrying them onto the stage. When he finished work in the evening, there were already a few little tents up in the bottom of the meadow, and the first visitors were standing around on the festival site, mostly in rain ponchos, a few under umbrellas. From a temporary parking lot on the edge of the village, others walked up in dribs and drabs. The big feeding tent was lit up, even though it hadn’t gotten dark yet. The trestle tables were half full. Alfons wondered about going down there himself, but he had been outside all day, so he fixed himself something and ate it at home.
THE MUSIC STARTED a little after six. Alfons was listening to the evening news, then it was suddenly there, so loud it was as though the musicians were in his living room. He looked out the window. In spite of the rain, there was a decent crowd in front of the stage. From where he was, he couldn’t see the players. He sat down by the window, opened it a crack, and listened. Even though the music was very loud, the falling rain was clearly audible. It got a little quieter during the pause between sets, and Alfons sat down at his desk and did a few calculations, but as soon as the next band struck up, he couldn’t concentrate, and returned to his place by the window. In the meantime, even more people had turned up, the meadow was pretty full. Five hundred, reckoned Alfons, and he multiplied it by the entrance price. The bar must have a good turnover, and then there were the T-shirts with the festival logo on them. He had no idea what the bands were paid to perform, or what the equipment cost to rent. The building materials had presumably been provided free of charge by Klemens’s father, but if you threw in all the work the men had put in, there was probably not much left by the end.
There was another break, and a third band started to play, even louder than the two before. It had got dark by now, and there were colored lights flashing over the stage. A few people were dancing at the front. The crowd farther back was more slow-moving, swaying back and forth, as though trying to keep its balance on shifting ground. Right at the edge of the crowd, people were coming and going. A few sat on the grass, in spite of the rain.
Alfons was in bed by the time the music stopped on the dot of one. There was a fiercely strummed guitar chord, one last crash of the cymbals, and then some applause, followed by total silence. Alfons got up one more time and looked out of his bedroom window. Two spotlights under the roof of the stage were playing over the crowd. People dispersed, visitors drifted to their tents or to the parking lot. A sort of haze seemed to come off the people, and Alfons was put in mind of his father’s cows, standing steaming on the grass in the rain or fog.
There were two long lines outside the toilets, and in the campsite he could make out the uncertain beams of many flashlights. On the road a truck was parked, with motor running and lights on. Alfons watched the band climb into the truck and drive away. He was glad of his warm bed, and not to have to spend the night out of doors.
ALTHOUGH HE HAD got to sleep so late, and it was a Saturday, he was up at six. He had breakfast, got the details from the weather station, and ambled down to the festival site. It was no longer raining, but the sky was clouded over, it could begin again at any moment. There was no one on the doors. The meadow had been turned into a swamp, there was hardly a blade of grass left near the stage. There was litter everywhere, empty bottles and cigarette packs. Everyone seemed to be asleep, except in the food tent a couple of women were already at work. They said hello to Alfons, and he asked if there was coffee yet. In five minutes, said the younger of the two, and rolls should be here any moment as well. Aren’t you Klemens’s girlfriend? asked Alfons, and they shook hands. Jasmine, she said. Her father owned the farm machine store in the village, where Alfons had bought his seed drill.