The Passport

THE YOUNG OWL

The young owl has been sitting in the valley for a week. People see it every evening when they come back from town. Grey dusk lies over the rails. Strange, black maize waves around the train. The young owl sits among the faded thistles as if in snow.

People get out at the station. They don’t speak. The train hasn’t whistled for a week. They hold their bags close to them. They are on their way home. When they meet other people on the way home, they say: “That is the last stopping place. Tomorrow the young owl will be there to catch up on the dying.”

The priest sends the altar-boy up into the church tower. The bell peals. When the altar-boy is back down on the ground again, he is pale. “I don’t pull the bell. The bell pulls, me,” he says. “If I hadn’t held onto the beam, I would have flown up into the sky.”

The pealing of the bell confused the young owl. It flew back into the country. It flew south. Along the Danube. It flew along the sound of the water, to where the soldiers are.

In the south the plain is treeless and hot. It’s burning. The young owl sets its eyes alight among the red hips. With its wings above the barbed wire it wishes itself a death.

The soldiers lie in the grey morning. Thickets separate them. They are on manoeuvres. They are at war with their hands, their eyes, their foreheads.

The officer shouts an order.

A soldier sees the young owl in the thicket. He lays his rifle in the grass. He stands up. The bullet flies. It strikes.

The dead man is the tailor’s son. The dead man is Dietmar.

The priest says: “The young owl sat by the Danube and thought of our village.”

Windisch looks at his bicycle. He has brought the news of the bullet from the village to the farm. “It’s just like in the war again,” he says.

Windisch’s wife raises her eyebrows. “It’s nothing to do with the owl,” she says. “It was an accident.” She pulls a yellow leaf from the apple tree. She looks Windisch up and down, from his head to his shoes. Looks a long time at the breast pocket of the jacket, under which his heart beats.

Windisch feels the fire in his mouth. “Your understanding is tiny,” he shouts. “It doesn’t even stretch from your forehead down to your mouth.” Windisch’s wife cries and crushes the yellow leaf.

Windisch feels the pressure of the grain of sand in his forehead. “She’s crying for herself,” he thinks. “Not for the dead man. Women only ever cry for themselves.”