Tyll

In the Shaft

“God Almighty, Lord Jesus Christ, help us,” Matthias said just a short while ago, and Korff replied: “But God is not here!” and Iron Kurt said: “God is everywhere, you swine,” and Matthias said: “Not down here,” and then everyone laughed, yet then there was a bang and a blast so sharp and hot that it flung them to the floor. Tyll fell on Korff, Matthias on Iron Kurt, and then it was pitch-black. For a while no one moved, they all held their breath, each man wondered whether he was dead, and only gradually did they all grasp, because you simply never grasp such a thing immediately, that the shaft had caved in. Now they know that they must not make a sound, for what if the Swedes have broken through, if they are standing over them in the darkness, knives drawn—then not the slightest peep, not a breath, not a sniffle or groan or cough.

It is dark. But dark in a different way than up above. For when it’s dark, you usually still see something. You don’t quite know what you’re seeing, but there’s not nothing; you move your head, the darkness is not the same everywhere, and once you have grown accustomed to it, outlines emerge. But not here. The darkness remains. Time passes, and when more time has passed and they can no longer hold their breath, and cautiously begin to breathe again, it is still as dark as if God had extinguished all the light in the world.

Finally, because apparently no Swedes with knives are standing over them, Korff says: “Men, report!”

And Matthias: “Since when are you the boss, you drunkard?”

Korff: “Since yesterday, you dirtbag, when the lieutenant kicked the bucket. Now I have seniority.”

Matthias: “Up there maybe, but not down here.”

Korff: “Report, right now, or I’ll kill you. I have to know who’s still alive.”

And Tyll: “I think I’m still alive.”

The truth is that he’s not sure. When you’re lying flat and everything is black, how can you tell? But now that he has heard his voice, he realizes that it’s so.

“Then get off me,” says Korff. “You’re lying on me, you bag of bones!”

When he’s right, he’s right, thinks Tyll, it is really not so good to be lying here on Korff. So he rolls to the side.

“Report, Matthias,” says Korff.

“Fine, I report.”

“Kurt?”

They wait, but Iron Kurt, as they all call him because of his iron right hand, or perhaps it was the left, no one quite remembers and it’s too dark to check, doesn’t report.

“Kurt?”

It’s quiet, not even any explosions are to be heard anymore. A moment ago they could still be heard, distant peals of thunder from above, which made the stones tremble; it was the Swedes under Torstensson trying to blow up the bastions. But now there’s only breathing, Tyll’s and Korff’s and Matthias’s, but Kurt cannot be heard.

“Are you dead?” cries Korff. “Kurt, did you bite the dust?”

But Kurt still says nothing, which is not like him at all; ordinarily you can hardly shut him up. Tyll hears Matthias groping. He must be feeling for Kurt’s neck, to see whether his heart is beating, then for his hand—first the iron one, then the real one. Tyll has to cough. It’s dusty, and stifling, the air feels like thick butter.

“Yes, he is dead,” Matthias finally says.

“Are you sure?” Korff asks. They can tell by his voice how it irks him—he only just got seniority yesterday, when the lieutenant was killed, and already he’s down to two subordinates.

“He isn’t breathing,” says Matthias, “and his heart isn’t beating, and he won’t talk either, and here, you can feel it, half of his head is gone.”

“Shit,” says Korff.

“Yes,” says Matthias, “shit. Although, look, I didn’t like him. Yesterday he took my knife, and when I said to give it back, he said: I’ll give it back all right, between your ribs. He had it coming.”

“Yes, he had it coming,” says Korff. “God have mercy on his soul.”

“It won’t get out of here,” says Tyll. “How’s a soul supposed to find its way out?”

For a while there’s an uneasy silence, because they are all thinking about the possibility that Kurt’s soul might still be here, cold and slippery and most likely angry. Then they hear a scraping, a pushing, a grinding.

“What are you doing there?” asks Korff.

“I’m looking for my knife,” says Matthias. “I’m not leaving it to that dirty pig.”

Tyll has to cough again. Then he asks: “What happened? I’m fairly new to this, why is it dark?”

“Because no sun is getting through,” says Korff. “There’s too much earth between it and ourselves.”

Serves me right, thinks Tyll, it really was not an intelligent question. And to ask a better one, he says: “Are we going to die?”

“Absolutely,” says Korff. “Us and everybody else.”

He’s right again, thinks Tyll, although, who knows, I, for one, have never died yet. Then, for the dark can be very confusing, he tries to remember how he ended up in the shaft.

First of all, because he came to Brno. He could have gone elsewhere, but in hindsight you always know better, and he came to Brno because they said the city was rich and safe. And no one suspected, after all, that Torstensson would march here with half the Swedish army. They always said he would go to Vienna, where the Kaiser is hunkering down, only you just don’t know what goes on in men’s heads underneath their big hats.

And then there was the town commandant, with his bushy eyebrows, his little pointed beard, his greasy cheeks, and that haughtiness in his every splayed finger. On the main square he watched Tyll, apparently with difficulty, because his eyelids drooped so nobly low and because someone like him undoubtedly thought he deserved more to look at than a fool in a pied jerkin.

“Can’t you show us something better?” he grumbled.

As it happens, Tyll rarely loses his temper, but when he does, then he is better at insulting than anyone, then he says something that someone like that will never forget. What was it that he said? The darkness really does muddle your memory. The stupid thing was that they were currently recruiting men for the defense of the Brno fortress.

“Just you wait. You will do your part, you will join the soldiers! You can choose a unit for yourself. Only make sure, everyone, that he doesn’t run away!”

Then he laughed, the town commandant, as if it had been a good joke, and to be fair, it wasn’t bad, for that’s the point of a siege, after all, that no one can run away; if you could run away from a siege, it wouldn’t be a siege.

“What do we do now?” Tyll hears Matthias ask.

“Find the pickax,” replies Korff. “It must be lying around here someplace. If not, I tell you, we can save ourselves the trouble. Then we’re done for.”

“Kurt had it,” says Tyll. “It must be under Kurt.”

He hears the two of them scraping and pushing and groping and cursing in the dark. He remains sitting—he doesn’t want to be in their way, and above all he doesn’t want them to remember that it wasn’t Kurt who had the pickax but he himself. He is not entirely certain, because you grow more and more muddleheaded here. You can still remember distant events clearly, but the closer something was to the bang a short while ago, the more soupy and runny it is in your mind. He is in fact fairly sure that he had the pickax but that, because it was heavy and kept dangling between his legs, it is now lying somewhere in the shaft. He doesn’t say a word about this, though. It’s better if the two of them think that the pickax is with Iron Kurt, for he has moved on; however angry they get, it doesn’t matter to him.

“Are you helping, bag of bones?” asks Matthias.

“Of course I’m helping,” says Tyll, without budging. “I’m searching and searching! I’m searching like mad, like a mole, can’t you hear?”

And because he is a good liar, this satisfies them. His aversion to moving is due to the air. It is suffocating, nothing is flowing in, nothing out, you could easily pass out and never wake up. In air like this it’s better not to move and to breathe only as much as absolutely necessary.

He shouldn’t have joined the miners. That was a mistake. The miners are deep down below, he had thought, and the bullets fly up above. The miners are protected by the earth, he had thought. The enemy has miners to blow up our walls, and we have miners to blow up the shafts the enemy digs under our walls. Miners dig, he had thought, while up above there’s hewing and stabbing. And if a miner pays attention, he had thought, and takes advantage of the moment, then he can also simply keep digging and dig himself a tunnel and pop up somewhere outside, he had thought, beyond the fortifications, and make off before anyone’s the wiser. And because Tyll had thought this, he told the officer holding him by the collar that he wanted to join the miners.

And the officer: “What?”

“The commandant said I can choose!”

And the officer: “Yes, but…really? The miners?”

“You heard me.”

Yes, that was stupid. Miners almost always die, but they didn’t tell him that until he was underground. For every five miners, four die; for every ten, eight die; for every twenty, sixteen; for every fifty, forty-seven; and for every hundred, all of them die.

At least Origenes got away. It was due to their quarrel, just last month, on the way to Brno.

“In the forest there are wolves,” the donkey said, “hungry wolves, don’t leave me here.”

“Don’t worry, the wolves are far away.”

“They’re so close I can smell them. You’re climbing a tree, but I’m standing down here, and what do I do when they come?”

“You do what I say!”

“But what if you say something stupid?”

“Even then. I’m the human. I should never have taught you to speak.”

“They shouldn’t have taught you to speak either, you almost never make any sense, and your juggling is not what it was. Soon you’ll be slipping off your rope. You can’t order me around!”

And then Tyll simply remained angrily in the tree and the donkey remained angrily down below. Tyll has slept so often in trees that it’s no longer hard for him—you need a thick branch and a rope to tie yourself up, and a good sense of balance, and as with everything else in life you need practice.

For half the night he heard the donkey cursing. Until the moon rose he grumbled and muttered, and Tyll did feel sorry for him, but it was late, and at night you cannot move on, what could you do. So Tyll just fell asleep, and when he woke up, the donkey was gone. No wolves had come, he would have noticed; apparently the donkey decided that he could make it on his own and didn’t need a ventriloquist.

And Origenes was right about the juggling. Here in Brno, in front of the cathedral, Tyll blundered and a ball fell to the ground. He pretended it had been intentional, made a face that made everyone laugh, but something like that is no joke, it can happen again, and if next time it really is the foot on the rope, what then?

Well, that’s one less thing to worry about. It doesn’t look like they’re going to get out of here.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going to get out of here,” says Matthias.

Yet it must have been Tyll, those were his thoughts that strayed into Matthias’s head in the darkness, but perhaps it was the other way around, who could tell. Now they also see little lights, buzzing like glowworms, which, however, are not really there either, Tyll knows that, for although he sees the lights, he also sees that it is still completely dark.

Matthias groans, and then Tyll hears a thud, as if someone had punched the wall. Then Matthias utters a wild curse—one that Tyll never heard before. Have to remember that, he thinks, but then he has immediately forgotten it nonetheless and wonders whether he only imagined it, but what was it anyway, what did he imagine? Suddenly he no longer knows.

“We’re not going to get out of here,” Matthias says again.

“Shut your stupid trap,” says Korff, “we’ll find the pickax, we’ll dig ourselves out, God will help.”

“Why should he?” asks Matthias.

“He didn’t help the lieutenant,” says Tyll.

“I’ll bash your heads in,” says Korff. “Then you definitely won’t get out.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” asks Matthias. “You are Ulenspiegel, aren’t you?”

“They forced me. You think I’d volunteer? And what are you doing here?”

“I was forced, too. Stole bread, was put in chains, bim bam boom. But you? How did that happen? You’re famous, aren’t you? Why would they force someone like you?”

“Down here no one is famous,” says Korff.

“Who forced you, then?” Tyll asks Korff.

“No one forces me to do anything. Anyone who tries to force Korff, Korff kills. I was with the drummers under Christian von Halberstadt, then I went to the French as a musketeer, then to the Swedes, but when they didn’t pay, I went back to the French as an artilleryman. Then my battery was hit, you’ve never seen anything like it, direct hit with heated shot, all the powder blows up, fire like the end of the world, but Korff threw himself into the bushes and survived. Then I went over to the imperial forces, but they didn’t need cannoneers, and I didn’t want to be a pikeman anymore, so I came to Brno, and because I didn’t have any money left and no one gets paid as well as the miners, I mined. Been doing it for three weeks now. Most don’t survive that long. I was just with the Swedes, now I kill the Swedes, and you two dirtbags are lucky that you’ve been buried alive with Korff, because Korff is hard to kill.” He wants to say more, but now he is running out of air, and he coughs, and then he is quiet for a while. “You, bag of bones,” he finally says. “Have any money?”

“Not a penny,” says Tyll.

“But you’re famous. Can someone be famous and have no money?”

“If he’s stupid, he can.”

“And you’re stupid?”

“Brother, if I were smart, would I be here?”

Korff can’t help laughing. And because Tyll knows that no one can see it, he pats down his jerkin. The gold pieces in the collar, the silver in the button border, the two pearls, securely sewn into the bottom of the lapel—all still there. “Honestly. If I had anything, I would give it to you.”

“You’re just a poor wretch too,” says Korff.

“Forever and ever, amen.”

All three of them can’t help laughing.

Tyll and Korff stop laughing. Matthias keeps laughing.

They wait, but he is still laughing.

“He’s not stopping,” says Korff.

“He’s going mad,” says Tyll.

They wait. Matthias keeps laughing.

“I was there outside Magdeburg,” says Korff. “I was with the besiegers, it was before I was with the Swedes, at the time I was still with the imperial troops. When the city fell, we took everything, burned everything, killed everyone. Do what you want, the general said. It’s hard to get the hang of it, you know, you have to get used to it first, that you really are allowed. That it’s possible. To do what you want to people.”

Suddenly it seems to Tyll as if they were outside again, as if the three of them were sitting in a meadow, the sky blue above them, the sun so bright that you had to squint. But while he is narrowing his eyes, he also still knows that it isn’t so, and then he no longer knows what it was that he just knew wasn’t so, and then he has to cough, because of the bad air, and the meadow is gone.

“I think Kurt said something,” says Matthias.

“He didn’t say anything,” says Korff.

He’s right, thinks Tyll, who didn’t hear anything either. Matthias is imagining it, Kurt didn’t say anything.

“I heard it too,” says Tyll. “Kurt said something.”

Immediately they hear Matthias shaking the dead Iron Kurt. “Still alive,” he cries, “still there?”

Tyll remembers yesterday, or was it the day before yesterday? The attack when the lieutenant was killed. Suddenly the hole in the wall of the shaft, suddenly knives and screaming and banging and crashing, he pressed himself very deep into the dirt, someone stepped on his back, and when he lifted his head again, it was already over: A Swede stabbed the lieutenant in the eye, Korff slit the Swede’s throat, Matthias shot the second Swede in the belly with his pistol, making him scream like a stuck pig, for nothing hurts like a shot in the belly, and the third Swede beheaded one of theirs, whose name Tyll never learned, for he was new, and now it doesn’t matter, now he no longer needs to know the name, with his saber, making him spray like a fountain of red water, but the Swede couldn’t rejoice for long, for Korff, whose pistol was still loaded, now shot him in the head, clip-clop, zip-zop, it took no longer than that.

Things like that never take long. Even that time in the forest it went quickly. Tyll can’t help it, he has to think about it, because of the darkness. In the darkness everything gets muddled, and what you have forgotten is suddenly back. That time in the forest he was closest to Godfather Death, he felt his hand—that’s why he knows so well how it feels, that’s why he recognizes it now. He has never spoken of it, has never thought about it again either. For it’s possible to do that: simply not think about something. Then it’s as if it never happened.

But now, in the dark, everything wells up. Closing your eyes helps as little as opening your eyes wide, and to fend it off he says: “Shall we sing? Perhaps someone will hear us!”

“I don’t sing,” says Korff.

Then Korff begins to sing: There is a reaper, they call him Death. Matthias sings along, then Tyll joins in too, whereupon the other two go silent and listen to him. Tyll’s voice is high, clear, and forceful. His power’s from God on high. He’ll come and steal away our breath, no matter how we cry.

“Sing along!” says Tyll.

And they do so, but Matthias immediately stops again and laughs to himself. Fair flower, beware. So fresh and green, so bonny and bright today, tomorrow with his scythe so keen, he’ll cut your life away. Now Kurt can be heard singing along too. He doesn’t manage it very loudly and is hoarse and doesn’t hit the right notes, but he shouldn’t be judged too severely; when someone is dead, singing can certainly be hard for him too. You roses red and you lilies white that gladden the meadows and hills, you lilacs that fill the air with delight, you hyacinths and you daffodils. Fair flower, beware.

“My goodness,” says Korff.

“I told you he’s famous,” says Matthias. “It’s an honor. A respected man is dying with us.”

“I am indeed famous,” says Tyll, “but I have never been respected in all my life. Do you think anyone heard it, the singing, do you think anyone’s coming?”

They listen. The explosions have resumed. A rumbling, a trembling in the ground, silence. A rumbling, a trembling, silence.

“Torstensson is blasting away half our city wall,” says Matthias.

“He won’t succeed,” says Korff. “Our miners are better than his. They’ll find the Swedish shafts, they’ll smoke them out. You’ve never seen Tall Karl angry.”

“Tall Karl is always angry, but also always drunk,” says Matthias. “I could strangle him with one hand behind my back.”

“Your brain has gone to the dogs!”

“Shall I show you? You think you’re a great man because of Magdeburg and wherever you’ve been!”

Korff is quiet for a moment. Then he says softly: “I’ll beat you to death.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll do it.”

Then they are silent for a while, and they hear the bangs of the explosions from above. They also hear stones trickling. Matthias says nothing, because he has understood that Korff means it seriously; and Korff says nothing, because all at once he is overwhelmed by longing, as Tyll is well aware, for due to the darkness your thoughts don’t stay with you alone, you overhear those of the others, whether you want to or not. Korff feels the longing for air and light and the freedom to move wherever he pleases. And then, because this reminds him of something else, he says: “Fat Hanna!”

“Oh, yes,” says Matthias.

“Those thick thighs,” says Korff. “That behind.”

“My God,” says Matthias. “Her behind. Her arse. Her arse behind.”

“You had her too?”

“No,” says Matthias. “I don’t know her.”

“And the tits on her,” says Korff. “At Tübingen I knew another one with such tits. You should have seen her. She did anything you wanted, as if there were no God.”

“Have you had many women, Ulenspiegel?” asks Matthias. “You had money once, you must have indulged yourself, tell us.”

Tyll is about to reply, but all at once it is no longer Matthias next to him but the Jesuit on his stool, whom he sees as clearly as back then: You must tell the truth, you must tell us how the miller summoned the devil, you must say that you were afraid. Why must you say it? Because it’s true. Because we know it. And when you lie, look, there’s Master Tilman, look what he has in his hand, he will use it, so speak. Your mother spoke too. She didn’t want to at first, she had to feel it, but then she felt it and spoke, that’s how it always is, everyone speaks when they feel it. We already know what you will say, because we know what’s true, but we must hear it from you. And then he says, whispering, leaning forward, almost kindly: Your father is lost. You will not save him. But you can save yourself. He would want that.

Yet the Jesuit is not here, Tyll knows that, only the two miners are here, and Pirmin over on the forest path, they have just left him behind. Stay here, Pirmin cries, I’ll find you, I’ll hurt you! And that is a mistake, for now they know that they must not help him, and the boy runs back again and fetches the pouch with the balls. Pirmin screams his head off and swears like a coachman, not only because the balls are the most valuable thing he has, but also because he realizes what it means that the boy is taking them with him: I curse you, I’ll find you, I won’t cross over, I’ll stay to search for you! It’s frightening to see him lying like that, so contorted. Thus the boy runs and still hears him from a distance and runs and runs, Nele alongside him, and they still hear him. It’s his own fault, she gasps, but the boy senses Pirmin’s curses working and something bad coming toward them, in the middle of the bright morning, help, King, get me out of here, undo it, back then in the forest.

“Well, go on, tell us,” someone says. Tyll recognizes the voice, he remembers, it is Matthias. “Say something about arses, say something about tits. If we’re going to die, at least give us some tits.”

“We’re not going to die,” says Korff.

“But tell us,” says Matthias.

Tell us, the Winter King says too. What was there in the forest, remember, what was it?

But the boy doesn’t tell. Not him and not anyone else and especially not himself, for if you don’t think about it, it’s as if you have forgotten it, and if you have forgotten it, it did not happen.

Tell us, says the Winter King.

“You dwarf,” says Tyll, because he is beginning to get angry. “You king without a country, you nothing, and besides, you’re dead. Leave me alone, crawl away.”

“You crawl,” says Matthias. “I’m not dead, Kurt is dead. Tell us!”

But the boy cannot tell, for he has forgotten. He has forgotten the path in the forest, and he has forgotten Nele and himself there on the path, he has forgotten the voices in the leaves, go no farther, but it was not actually true, they didn’t whisper that, the voices, if they had, Nele and he certainly would have listened, and all at once standing in front of them are the three men, whom he no longer remembers, he no longer sees them, he has forgotten them, standing there in front of them.

Marauders. Disheveled, angry, without knowing at what. Well, well, says one of them, children!

And Nele thinks of it, fortunately. Of what the boy told her: We are safe as long as we are faster. When you run faster than the others, nothing can happen to you. And so she darts sideways and runs. Later the boy doesn’t remember—and how should he remember, for he has forgotten everything—why he didn’t run too. But that’s just the way it is, one mistake is enough: don’t understand something one time, goggle for too long one time, and already he is putting his hand on your shoulder. He bends over him. He smells of brandy and mushrooms. The boy wants to run, but it’s too late, the hand remains where it is and the other man is standing next to him, and the third has run after Nele, but now he is coming back, panting—of course he didn’t catch her.

The boy tries to make the three of them laugh. He learned that from Pirmin, who is lying an hour from here and is perhaps still alive and would have guided them better, for with him they never encountered wolves or evil people, not once in all this time. So he tries to make them laugh, but it doesn’t work, they won’t laugh, they are too angry, they’re in pain, one of them is injured, he asks: Do you have any money? And he actually does have a little bit of money and gives it to him. He tells them that he could dance for them or walk on his hands or juggle, and they almost become curious, yet then they realize that they would have to let go of him, and the one who is holding him says, We’re not that stupid.

And now the boy grasps that there’s nothing he can do, except to forget what happens, forget it even before it has finished happening: forget their hands, their faces, everything. Not be here where he is now but rather next to Nele as she runs and finally stops and leans against a tree and catches her breath. Then she creeps back, holding her breath and taking care that no branch cracks under her feet, and she ducks into the bushes, for the three are coming. They stagger past her and don’t notice her and soon they’re gone. But still she waits awhile before she ventures out and walks along the path that she was just taking with the boy. And she finds him and kneels beside him, and both of them grasp that they must forget it and that the bleeding will stop, for someone like him does not die. I’m made of air, he says. Nothing will happen to me. There’s no reason to moan. All this is still fortunate. It could have been worse.

To be stuck here in the shaft, for example, this is probably worse, for here not even forgetting helps. If you forget the shaft in which you’re stuck, you’re still in the shaft.

“I’m going into the monastery,” says Tyll. “If I get out of here. I mean it.”

“Melk?” asks Matthias. “I was there once. It’s grand.”

“Andechs. They have strong walls. If it’s safe anywhere, then in Andechs.”

“Will you take me with you?”

Gladly, is what Tyll thinks, if you get us out of here, we’ll go together. But what he says is: “No way they’ll let you in, you gallows bird.”

He realizes it’s come out the wrong way around, because of the darkness. I was only joking, he thinks, of course they’ll let you in, but says: “I’m a good liar!”

Tyll stands up. It’s probably better if he shuts his mouth. His back hurts, he can’t stand on his left leg. You have to protect your feet, you only have two of them, after all, and if you injure one, you can’t get back up on the rope.

“We kept two cows,” says Korff. “The older one had good milk.” He must have been caught up in a memory too. Tyll can see it before his eyes: the house, the meadow, smoke over the chimney, a father and a mother, everything poor and dirty, but Korff didn’t have any other childhood.

Tyll feels his way along the wall. Here is the wooden frame that they mounted earlier. A piece has broken off on top, or is that the bottom? He hears Korff weeping softly.

“It’s gone,” Korff moans. “Gone, gone! All the good milk!”

Tyll jiggles a piece of rock on the ceiling. It’s loose and comes off. Stones trickle.

“Stop,” cries Matthias.

“It wasn’t me,” says Tyll. “I swear it.”

“Outside Magdeburg I lost my brother,” says Korff. “A shot in the head.”

“I lost my wife,” says Matthias. “At Braunschweig, she was with the supply train, the plague took her, our two children too.”

“What was her name?”

“Johanna,” says Matthias. “My wife. I can’t remember the names of the children.”

“I lost my sister,” says Tyll.

Korff stumbles around. Tyll hears him next to him and draws back. Better not to bump into him. Someone like Korff won’t put up with that, he won’t hesitate to attack. Another explosion. Again stones trickle. The ceiling won’t hold much longer.

You’ll see, says Pirmin, being dead isn’t so bad. You get used to it.

“But I’m not dying,” says Tyll.

“That’s the spirit,” says Korff, “that’s right, bag of bones!”

Tyll steps on something soft, it must be Kurt, then he bumps into a wall of coarse debris, this is where the shaft caved in. He wants to dig with his hands, for now it doesn’t matter, now there’s no need to conserve air, but immediately he has to cough, and the rock won’t move, Korff was right, it’s impossible without a pickax.

Don’t worry, you will hardly notice it, says Pirmin. You’ve already lost half your mind, soon the rest will abandon you too. Then you will pass out, and when you wake up, you’ll be dead.

I will think of you, says Origenes. I will make something of myself, I’ll learn to write next, and if you like, I’ll write a book about you, for children and old people. What do you think of that?

And don’t you even want to know how I’ve fared? asks Agneta. You and me and me and you—how long has it been? You don’t even know whether I’m still alive, little son.

“I don’t even want to know,” says Tyll.

You betrayed him as I did. You don’t need to be angry with me. You called him a servant of the devil as I did. A warlock as I did. What I said, you said too.

She’s right again, says Claus.

“Maybe if we find the pickax after all,” Matthias says with a groan. “Maybe we can loosen it with the pickax.”

Alive or dead, you attach too much weight to the difference, says Claus. There are so many chambers in between. So many dusty corners in which you are no longer the one and not yet the other. So many dreams from which you can no longer awake. I’ve seen a cauldron of blood, boiling over hot flames, and the shadows dance around it, and when the Great Black One points to one of them, but he does so only every thousand years, then there’s no end to the shrieking, then he dips his head into the blood and drinks, and you know, that was still far from hell, it was not even the entrance to it yet. I’ve seen places where the souls burn like torches, only hotter and brighter and for eternity, and they never stop screaming, because their pain never stops, and still this is not it. You think that you have an inkling, my son, but you don’t have the slightest inkling. To be confined in a shaft is almost like death, you think, war is almost hell, but the truth is that anything, anything is better, it’s better down here, it’s better out there in a bloody ditch, it’s better in the torture chair. So don’t let go, stay alive.

Tyll can’t help laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” asks Korff.

“Well, then divulge a spell to me,” says Tyll. “You were not a good sorcerer, but perhaps you’ve learned more.”

Who are you talking to? asks Pirmin. There’s no ghost here except me.

Another explosion. Then there’s a crack and a boom. Matthias lets out a howl. Part of the ceiling must have collapsed.

Pray, says Iron Kurt. I was the first to go, now it’s Matthias’s turn.

Tyll squats down. He hears Korff shouting, but Matthias no longer responds. Something tickles his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, it feels like a spider, but there are no insects here, so it must be blood. He feels around and finds a wound on his forehead, beginning up by his hair and going down to the root of his nose. It is very soft to the touch, and the trickle of blood keeps growing. But he feels nothing.

“God have mercy on me,” says Korff. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy. Holy Ghost. I killed a comrade for his boots. Mine had holes in them, he was fast asleep, it was in the camp at Munich, what should I have done, I do need boots! So I struck. I strangled him, he opened his eyes, but he couldn’t scream. I just needed some boots. And he had a medallion that wards off bullets, I needed that too, thanks to the medallion I have never been hit. It didn’t help him against strangling.”

“Do I look like a priest?” asks Tyll. “You can confess to your grandmother, leave me alone.”

“Dear Lord Jesus,” says Korff. “In Braunschweig I freed a woman from the stake, a witch. It was early in the morning, she was supposed to burn at noon. She was very young. I was passing. No one saw it, because it was still dark. I cut through the fetters, said: Quickly, run with me! She did it, she was so grateful, and then I took her as often as I wanted to, and I wanted to often, and then I slit her throat and buried her.”

“I forgive you. This very day you will be with me in paradise.”

Another explosion.

“Why are you laughing?” asks Korff.

“Because you will not get into paradise, not today and not later either. Not even Satan will touch a gallows bird like you. And I’m also laughing because I’m not going to die.”

“Yes, you are,” says Korff. “I didn’t want to believe it, but we’re never getting out. It’s all over for Korff.”

Another bang. Again everything shakes. Tyll holds his hands over his head as if that could do any good.

“Perhaps it’s all over for Korff. But not for me. I’m not going to die today.”

He takes a leap as if he were standing on the rope. His leg hurts, but he stands firmly on his feet. A stone falls on his shoulder. More blood runs down his cheek. Again there is a crash, again stones fall. “And I’m not going to die tomorrow or any other day. I don’t want to! I’m not doing it, do you hear?”

Korff doesn’t respond, but perhaps he can still hear.

So Tyll shouts: “I’m not doing it, I’m leaving now, I don’t like it here anymore.”

A bang, a trembling. Another stone falls and grazes his shoulder.

“I’m leaving now. This is what I’ve always done. When things get tight, I leave. I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to die today. I’m not going to die!”