Brodeck

XL

—

got out the old cart, the one we arrived with, Fedorine and I, a long time ago. I never thought we were going to need it again one day. I never thought there would be another departure. But maybe there can only be departures, eternally, for those like us, for those made in our image.

Now I’m far away.

Far away from everything.

Far away from the others.

I’ve left the village.

Then again, maybe I’m nowhere anymore. Maybe I’ve left the story. Maybe I’m like the traveler in the fable, in the unlikely event that the hour of fables has come.

I left the typewriter in the house. I don’t need it anymore. Now I write in my brain. There’s no more intimate book. No one will be able to read it. I won’t have to hide it. It’s nowhere to be found, forever.

When I got up this morning, very early, I felt Amelia lying against me and saw Poupchette asleep in her little bed with her thumb in her mouth. I took both of them in my arms. In the kitchen, Fedorine was ready and waiting for us. The bundles were already made up. We left without making any noise. I took Fedorine in my arms, too; she weighs nothing, she’s so old and frail. Life has worn her thin, like a cloth that’s been washed a thousand times. I started walking, carrying my three treasures like that and pulling the cart. There’s an old story, I think, about a traveler who left this way, fleeing his burning city and carrying his old father and his young son on his shoulders. I must have read that tale somewhere. Yes, I must have read it. I’ve read so many books. Could it be something Nösel told us about? Or maybe I heard it from Kelmar or Diodemus.

The streets were quiet and the houses asleep, and so were the people inside those houses. Our village was like unto itself, like a flock, as Orschwir had said, yes, a flock of houses pressed against one another, tranquil under the still-black but already starless sky, and as inert and blank as every stone in their walls. I passed Schloss’s inn. A little light was shining in his kitchen. I passed Mother Pitz’s café, Gott’s forge, and Wirfrau’s bakery, and I heard the baker kneading his dough. I passed close to the covered market and the church and in front of Röppel’s hardware store and Brochiert’s butcher’s shop. I passed all the fountains and drank a little water as a sign of farewell. All those places were alive, intact, preserved. I stopped a moment in front of the monument to the dead and read there what I’d always read: the names of Orschwir’s two sons; the name of Jenkins, our policeman who died in the war; Cathor’s name, Frippman’s name, and mine, half effaced. I didn’t linger, as I felt Amelia’s hand on my neck. I’m sure she was trying to tell me to go on; she’d never liked it when we passed the monument and I stopped to read the names aloud.

It was a beautiful night, clear and cold, a night that seemed to have no desire to end, wallowing in its own darkness, turning round and round in it, as one sometimes likes to remain between warm sheets on a cold morning. I skirted the mayor’s farm and heard the pigs moving about in their pens. I also saw Lise, Die Keinauge, cross the farmyard, holding a bucket that seemed to be full of milk and overflowed at every step, leaving a little white trail behind her.

I went on. I crossed the Staubi on the old stone bridge. I stopped a moment to listen to the murmur of the water one last time. A river tells many stories, if you know how to listen to it. But people never listen to what rivers tell them, or forests, or animals, or trees, or the sky, or the rocks on the mountainsides, or other people. Nevertheless, there must be a time for listening as well as a time for speaking.

Poupchette hadn’t woken up yet, and Fedorine was dozing. Only Amelia had her eyes wide open. I carried the three of them along without any trouble. I felt no fatigue. Shortly after we crossed the bridge, I saw Ohnmeist about fifty meters away. He seemed to be waiting for me, as if he wanted to show me the way. He started trotting as I approached, and he went ahead of me like that for more than an hour. We climbed the path in the direction of the Haneck plateau. We passed through the great conifer woods, with their pleasant aromas of moss and needles. Snow formed gleaming corollas at the feet of the tall firs, and the wind swayed the tops of the trees and made their trunks pop and creak. When we reached the upper limit of the forest and started to cross Bourenkopf’s stubble fields, Ohnmeist broke into a run and climbed atop a boulder. The first rays of the dawning sun shone on him then, and I perceived that he was no longer a masterless dog, no longer the Ohnmeist that walked down our streets and through our houses as though everything were part of his realm, but a fox, a very handsome and very old fox as far as I could judge. He struck a pose, turned his head in my direction, gazed at me for a long time, and then, with one agile, graceful bound, disappeared among the broom.

I walk tirelessly. I’m happy. Yes, happy.

The summits around me are my accomplices. They’re going to hide us. I turned around a few moments ago, near the wayside cross with the strange and beautiful Christ, to take a last look at our village. There’s usually such a fine view from that spot — the village looks small, the houses like tiny boxes. If you stretched out your arm, you could almost scoop them up in the palm of your hand. But this morning, I saw none of that. It was no use looking; I didn’t see anything. Although there was no fog, no clouds, no mist, there was also no village there below me. There was no village anymore. The village, my village, had completely disappeared. And with it, all the rest: the faces, the river, the living beings, the sorrows, the springs, the paths I’d just taken, the forests, the rocks. It was as though the landscape and everything it contained had receded as I passed. As if, at every step, the set were being dismantled behind me, the painted backdrop rolled up, the lights extinguished. But I, Brodeck, am not responsible for any of that. I am not guilty of that disappearance. I have neither provoked nor desired it, I swear.

I’m Brodeck, and I had nothing to do with it.

Brodeck is my name.

Brodeck.

For pity’s sake, don’t forget it.

Brodeck.