Before the Feast (26 page)

“Terrific,” says Anna.

“There,” says Herr Schramm, switching the indicator on.

We don't know how to tell the next bit. At the moment when Herr Schramm switches off the engine, there is a curse from the upper floor of the boarding house opposite, and someone says, “I don't believe it,” and at the boarding-house window appears the sleepy head of—we don't believe it either, we can't say her name—

“Frau. . . Mahlke?” cries Herr Schramm incredulously, and if there is one thing that for decades Herr Schramm has not been, and never will be again after tonight, it is incredulous.

“Wilfried?” says Frau Mahlke at first hesitantly, and then, reasonably enough, sounding annoyed. “Wilfried, what are you doing there?”

Of course that is not a very good question, thinks Herr Schramm, because it is fairly obvious what he is doing, and he says so too. “Well, getting some cigarettes.”

And in the first faint light of dawn Herr Schramm, former Lieutenant-Colonel in the National People's Army, then a forester, now a pensioner and also, because the pension doesn't go far enough, moonlighting as a mechanic, a driver and a cleaner for Von Blankenburg Agricultural Machinery, sees the color and light of Frau Mahlke's eyes (green and glowing), which remind him of the meatballs, the hot summer's day, the best day of the whole summer, and he sees the color and light of the Mammoth 6800 (sky-blue and shiny), which remind him of the journey from Schwerin, the best spring day of the spring, a day when he did something he could do, did something he wanted to do, and this girl stayed with him, wanted
to save his life without knowing what his life was like, yes, thinks Schramm, it's all right after all. And from upstairs Frau Mahlke calls, “Come on up and I'll roll you one,” and it is so improbable that she is calling that, so improbably improbable that she is there at all, that Herr Schramm can only shake hands with Anna, give the Mammoth a pat, and then run to the door of the boarding house, although it will stay closed until Frau Mahlke comes down with the key.

IV

WE ARE TOUCHED. JUST AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR
the Feast, one of those who have moved to the village, namely Frau Reiff, has tracked down our four oldest postcards and had them reprinted on good cardboard. The Homeland House can sell them and keep the money. Frau Reiff has given us the originals for the auction.

1.
The War Memorial
in the Friedhofshain: the year is 1913. It is an eagle on top of a rectangular column tapering toward the top. You can see the gravestones indistinctly behind it. It records the names of the dead in three wars: 1864, 1866, 1870. In the corner it says
Greetings from Fürstenfelde
.

It has survived the World Wars. The list of names from those two wars, as you might expect, is longer, and stands on extra stones beside the column.

2.
The Shooting Range
shows Fritz Blissau's beer garden. The year is 1935, the village is celebrating the Anna Feast. The village has put on its Sunday best and is wearing a hat. Except for Gustav. Gustav is eight. But Gustav's pudding-bowl haircut looks like a hat, so it fits in. A young woman is coming up from the left in the postcard, carrying a tray laden with drinks, although everyone has a drink already apart from Gustav.

Those are good years. There are 400 more of us than today. We leave the village from two railway stations and drive around in fifteen motor cars. Optimism procreates children. Gustav's
parents can afford a proper haircut for Gustav. His father is the pastor, his mother is a secretary at the telegraph office. The country people nearby regard us as townies. We believe in work and the Fatherland, we have work and the Fatherland, we wear bows in our hats. We are living in a condition of blissful ignorance. After the war we'll be going around barefoot.

There's a canopy of chestnut leaves above the shooting range. Gustav is sitting at his table alone. His father wanted him to be in the photo, and had to persuade Blissau, who doesn't like to see children running round among his guests and his jugs. Gustav likes running round. He wants to be a geographer, like Hans Steffen. The Nuremberg Laws are six days old. The tablecloths are white.

The village looks at the camera. Only the young woman stares at her tray of drinks: please don't let there be an accident now. It does us good to see you all looking so tense because of the photographs, while at the same time we can tell that you really feel relaxed.

Herr Schliebenhöner releases the shutter.

A bee settles beside Gustav's hand. Bells ring. The sun seems to be shining above the chestnut leaves.

3.
The Windmill
: a beautiful tower with wide sails. Two cows are grazing in front of the mill. In the viewer's imagination, the wind is blowing and the sails are going round. No one is indifferent to windmills. In the course of his life, every fifth male Federal German citizen will try to understand exactly how a windmill works.

Nothing is left of the mill today. The people in the new buildings hang out their washing to dry where it used to be. Silent Suzi's mother hangs out her bed linen. The Bunny logo flutters in the wind and rain.

Windmills are windmills, washing lines are washing lines. The village doesn't say: oh, if only the windmill were still standing. The people from the new buildings are glad to have washing lines outdoors; their apartments are small.

But we'd like to talk about mills. There were four of them here. One was demolished in 1930, only the lower part of another still stands and is used as a second home at weekends by a married couple from Hamburg. The third dates from the sixteenth century. The feudal lord, Count Poppo von Blankenburg, was not at all happy about the flour it produced, and sent miller after miller packing. Finally he decided to try his luck as a miller himself. He took on three young miller's men to help him, gave the priest living quarters in the mill to protect it from the Devil, and also hired a wise woman who promised to drive away mealworms and any ghosts haunting the mill (§ 109 of the Procedure for the Judgment of Capital Crimes, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's statute introduced in 1532, made it easy to distinguish between harmless and harmful magic). Finally he gave orders for three virgins to be brought to him. History does not relate what they were meant for.

The result was disastrous.

The priest and the wise woman went for each other first metaphysically, then physically. The miller's men seduced
the virgins, or vice versa, and when the village had no flour left at all, not even bad flour, its people assembled outside the mill to ask what was going on. The Count appeared at a window, shivering and shouting. How, he asked, was a man to get anywhere with a mill that felt like a human being and just didn't fancy grinding flour?

“Talk to it kindly,” called a small voice from down below through his ranting. “Be nice to it.” The speaker was a girl with blue-gray eyes and short blonde hair. The nobleman fell silent, and the farmers, the laborers with their pitchforks, and a fox who had come to see what there was to be seen here were surprised too. But then the people agreed with the girl. Perhaps they really thought it would help, but more likely they just wanted to hear how their Count went about beguiling the mill.

And he did it, too. He immediately turned to the mill's shutters and began praising them lavishly. What beautiful shutters over its windows, whether they were open or closed! And its sails! So large and useful. And so on, although here we must point out that no one would know the story today if Frau Schwermuth hadn't discovered it.

In the place where Poppo von Blankenburg spent a day flattering a windmill, bewitching it, whispering sweet nothings to it, until in the evening he heard a sigh—perhaps it was the mill, perhaps it was the wind—whereupon he found that he could grind such fine, pure flour that at the Anna Feast, which was soon celebrated, the villagers hardly touched any meat once they had tasted the bread; in that place a wind turbine stands today.

The fourth mill, the one on the postcard, was demolished by Belorussians in the last days of the war. It then occurred to them that flour wasn't a bad idea, and they put the mill back in running order. The bread, which had a sour flavor, tasted wonderful to anyone who could get hold of any. We can still hear the grinding sound of the mill. We remember Alwin, the miller's man here in the war. He had crooked teeth and could do conjuring tricks, he made the coins brought by servants coming to collect the flour disappear, and days later they found a coin in their bread, what a surprise! Alwin had to stop that game when matters of hygiene were taken seriously. After that he always guessed which card was the King of Hearts. The Belorussians shot him outside the mill. His name was Alwin, he had crooked teeth, and he could do conjuring tricks.

The mill itself had a name, but it got lost among the rubble.

It was demolished in 1960 and carried away, bit by bit, to our gardens, our walls, our cellars.

4.
The Promenade
: lined by ash trees as it still is today, so there's not much change there. The lake on the left, the town wall on the right. A bench between them. Shady. Shade is the theme. A young woman and a young man are sitting on the bench, holding hands. She is in white, with a brooch on her collar, he is trying to follow the fashion for mustaches. The year is 1941. Hardly anyone wishes you “Good day” now. Either it's “Heil Hitler” or you don't give a greeting at all, but in a public place like the promenade no one would like to appear discourteous.

An ordinary sort of couple. Not too good-looking, not too elegant. Hands perhaps a centimeter or so apart. We say they are a couple because we know how it turned out; they almost held hands that day; there was a wedding, and nine months later along came Herrmann. Only they weren't in love. Not on the promenade, not in the bad times that were coming and fired up many a relationship. They stayed together, yes, and they didn't bother each other. You could say they behaved to one another all their lives like their hands on the postcard, just about to touch. If you look closely, you can see that the young woman on the promenade is suppressing a yawn.

Two people under the ash trees on the promenade. Two people who wouldn't have spent their lives together but for the promenade. If Herr Schliebenhöner hadn't stopped them separately and asked them to pose for a photo on the bench, they'd have passed each other a little way up the promenade with a shy “Heil Hitler,” and that would have been it.

You would have been able to see the ferryman from the promenade. And the women in Frau Kranz's first painting. Three bells are resting under the ash trees beside the lake. Perhaps they like it on the promenade.

That well-lit promenade. That subsidized, undermined promenade. Ah, those mice who scurry over the tarmac. A little refuge for those who may be in love, a forum for proletarians, a place for Anna to run when she goes running, a country road for satnav devices. That eternal promenade. Our promenade.

ANNA COMES UP FROM THE PROMENADE, RUNS
past the new buildings, past the Gölow property, turns along the former railway embankment, puts on a spurt at the dilapidated railway station where, as we remember it, the morning train from Prenzlau let off the first guests coming to the Feast.

Anna approaches the fallow field. Not even the oak tree has survived such a night as that intact. Anna is tired. She would be home in two or three minutes, but she wants to look at the oak tree. The tree slants up into the mist, its branches touch the ground to left and right as if they were growing straight from the soil. Anna climbs over the fence and makes her cautious way through the bushes. The field doesn't care about caution, she can hardly move along, gets her clothes caught in the undergrowth, does not get impatient.

Lightning has split the oak tree, breaking it open from inside. It is white; white timber. Let's imagine that the air smells of smoke. The ground is churned up, a narrow grave as if the lightning had turned the soil. Or as if someone had been digging.

Two pale skulls lie in the earth. The yellowish-white of hungry teeth. Anna has only a few meters to go, in a week's time her term begins, she's going to study marine technology in Rostock, she wants to design ships; she'd like the ships that
she designs to be built so that other people can steer them over the seas. She bends over the skulls, is going to pick one of them up, puts a twig into its eye socket, and a hand comes down on her shoulder.

We would scream. Anna keeps calm. The skull slips off the twig and is caught by a stranger's hand in mid-flight through the air.

“Good catch in this light,” says the tall, handsome one, grinning at the skull.

“They never had a Christian burial rite,” says the small, sturdy one, crouching down at the side of the grave. They are Anna's rescuers from earlier in the night. Anna takes a deep breath and shakes the hand off her shoulder.

“What are you two still doing here?” As long as you can say the right words in a firm voice, you have nothing to fear.

“We thought we wouldn't go before telling ourselves hello,” says Q, examining the skull and cleaning soil out of the holes in it with his forefinger. Henry plucks leaves off his companion's coat. They have cigarettes with them, and cans of beer. Anna declines to drink with them—oh, come on! No.

Q gives Henry a light; the flame shoots out of his thumb. Henry dips his hands into the grave like a surgeon into a patient's body, bones clatter, he brings out the second skull. Q holds his to his cheek, as if he wanted to show Anna the likeness.

“The oak tree,” says Anna. “Frau Schwermuth once told me people were hanged from it.”

“We come into the world innocent, we may go to our death sinners.”

“The rope showed that we weren't always winners.” They laugh. Anna doesn't. They clink the skulls together. To the dead! They drink. Henry offers his skull a sip too.

“Who—” Anna hesitates. “
What
are you?”