Brodeck

VIII

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he fact remains that the Anderer made a couple of calm remarks on that fateful spring day, smiling all the while, then got back on his horse, abandoned Gunther Beckenfür without another word, and continued on to the village. Beckenfür stood there for a long time, watching him go until he disappeared behind the Kölnke rocks.

But before he reached the village, he must necessarily have stopped somewhere. I’ve worked out the times, and there’s a gap between the moment when Beckenfür lost the Anderer from sight and the instant when he passed through the village gate, at dusk, under the eyes of the eldest Dörfer boy who was hanging about, reluctant to go home because his father was roaring drunk again and threatening to disembowel him. It’s a gap that not even the indolent gait of the Anderer’s horse can sufficiently explain. Upon reflection, I think he stopped near the river, by the Baptisterbrücke, at the place where the road makes a curious winding turn in a field of grass as tender as a child’s cheek. I can’t see where else he might have gone. The view is very beautiful in that spot, and if someone doesn’t know our region, that’s the place where he can feel it like a piece of fabric, for from there he can see the roofs of the village, he can hear its sounds, and above all, he can be amazed by the river.

The Staubi isn’t a watercourse that fits the landscape it’s in. One would expect to find here a sluggish, meandering stream, overflowing and spreading out into the meadows and bogging down among the golden-headed buttercups; one would expect slow-moving algae, as soft as wet hair. Instead we have an impetuous, romping torrent, which hisses, cries, collides, churns up gravel, and wears down the rocks showing through its surface as it hurls water and foam into the air. The Staubi’s a true, untamed mountain savage, clear and sharp as crystal; you can see the gray flashes of trout in its depths. Summer and winter, its water is cold enough to chill the inside of your skull, and occasionally, during the war, creatures other than fish were found floating in the river, blue creatures, some of them still looking a bit astonished, others with their eyes well closed, as if they’d been put to sleep by surprise and tucked into lovely liquid sheets.

From my conversations with him, I’m certain that the Anderer took the time to observe our river. Staubi — it’s a funny name. It means nothing, not even in our dialect. No one knows where it came from. Diodemus himself, in all the pages that he read and rummaged through, failed to find its origin or its meaning. They’re strange, names are. Sometimes you know nothing about them, and yet you’re always saying them. Basically, they’re like people: I mean like the ones whose paths you cross for years but never know, until one day, before your eyes, they reveal themselves to be what you would never have imagined them capable of being.

I don’t know what the Anderer must have thought when he saw our roofs and our chimneys for the first time. He had arrived. His journey was over. He had reached his goal, which was our village and nowhere else. Beckenfür was the first to realize that, and later we all felt as he did. There was no mistake. Without any doubt, the Anderer came here of his own free will and deliberate choice, having prepared his adventure and brought along everything he would need. His coming was the result of no sudden impulse or passing fancy.

His calculations must have included even the hour of his arrival. An oblique hour, during which the light exalts things — the mountains that watch over our narrow valley, the forests, the pastures, the walls and gables, the hedgerows, the voices — and makes them more beautiful and more majestic. Not an hour of full daylight, yet sufficiently bright to give every event a unique sheen and the arrival of a stranger a distinct impact, in a village of four hundred souls already quite busy imagining things, even in ordinary times. And conversely, an hour which by the mere fact of its ongoing attachment to the dying day arouses curiosity, but not yet fear. Fear comes later, when the windows are down and the shutters closed, when the last log has slipped beneath the ashes, and when silence extends its realm over the inmost depths of every house.

I’m cold. My fingertips are like stones, hard and smooth. I’m in the shed behind my house, surrounded by abandoned planks, pots, seeds, balls of string, chairs in need of reseating — a great clutter of more or less decrepit things. This is where life’s dross is piled up. And I’m here, too. I’ve come here of my own accord. I need to isolate myself so that I can try to put this terrible story into some semblance of order.

We’ve been in this house for nearly ten years. We left our cabin to come here after I’d managed to buy the place with the money saved from my salary and from the sale of Amelia’s embroidery. When I signed my name to the act of sale, Lawyer Knopf vigorously shook both my hands. “Now you’ve really got a home of your own, Brodeck. Never forget: a house is like a country.” Then he brought out some glasses and we drank a toast, he and I, because the seller refused the drink the notary held out to him. Rudolf Sachs was his name; he wore a monocle and white gloves and had made a special trip from S. He looked down on us from a great height, as if he lived on a white cloud and we wallowed in liquid manure. The house had belonged to one of his great-uncles, whom, as it happened, Sachs had never known.

The cabin had been given to us when we — Fedorine, her cart, and I — first arrived in the village, more than thirty years ago. We came from the ends of the earth. Our journey had lasted for weeks, like an interminable dream. We’d traversed frontiers, rivers, open country, mountain passes, towns, bridges, languages, peoples, forests, and fields. I sat in the cart like a little sovereign, leaning against the bundles and stroking the belly of the rabbit, which never took its velvet eyes off me. Every day, Fedorine fed me with bread, apples, and bacon, which she drew out of big blue canvas sacks, and also with words; she slipped them into my ear, and I had to let them out again through my mouth.

And then, one day, we arrived in the village which was to become our village. Fedorine stopped the cart in front of the church and told me to get out and stretch my legs. Back in those days, people weren’t yet afraid of strangers, even when they were the poorest of the poor. The villagers gathered around us. Women brought us food and drink. I remember the faces of the men who insisted on pulling the cart and leading us to the cabin, declaring that Fedorine had done enough. Then there was Father Peiper, who was still young and full of energy, who still believed what he said, and also the mayor, Sibelius Craspach, a former medical officer in the imperial army, now an old man with impressive white mustachios and a beribboned ponytail. They settled us in the cabin and made it clear that we could stay there one night or several years. The main room contained a large black stove, a pine-wood bed, a wardrobe, a table, and three chairs; there was also a smaller, empty room. The wooden walls were the color of honey, soft and warm, and the cabin itself was warm as well. Sometimes at night, we could hear the murmur of the wind in the high branches of the nearby fir trees and the creaking of the wood caressed by the warm breath of the stove. I’d fall asleep thinking about squirrels and badgers and thrushes. It was Paradise.

Here, in the shed, I’m alone. It’s no place for women, whether young or old. In the evening, the candles cast their fantastic shadows all around. The wooden beams play a dry music. I have the feeling that I’m very far away. I feel, perhaps mistakenly, that nothing can disturb or reach me here, that I’m safe from everyone and from all harm, completely safe, even though I’m in the heart of the village, surrounded by the others, and they’re aware of everything about me, every deed I do, every breath I take.

I’ve placed the typewriter on Diodemus’s table. After his death, Orschwir had everything Diodemus owned — his clothes, his few pieces of furniture, his novels — thrown away and burned, under the pretext that it was imperative to make a clean sweep in order to welcome the new teacher properly. Johann Lülli, a local boy, has replaced Diodemus as teacher. He’s got one leg shorter than the other and a pretty wife who has borne him three children, the youngest of them still in swaddling clothes. Lülli isn’t very knowledgeable, but he isn’t an idiot, either. Before succeeding to his current position, he did the accounts for the mayor’s office, and now he draws letters and numbers on a blackboard and makes children stammer out their lessons. He was present on the night of the Ereigniës. Among all those heads that were looking at me, I saw his red mane and his broad, square shoulders, which always look as though he forgot to remove the hanger when he put on his coat.

I didn’t really need Diodemus’s table, but I wanted to keep something of his, something he’d touched and used. His table’s like him. Two handsome panels of polished walnut glued edge to edge and set on four simple legs, without airs or ornaments. A big drawer locked with a key, but I don’t have the key. Nor have I been curious enough to break into the drawer to see if there’s anything in it. When I shake the table a little, I hear no sound coming from inside. The drawer is clearly empty.