Before the Feast (28 page)

The village has not pinned nosegays of pinks to its breast, and does not sit amicably together singing the old songs, nor does it say whether it rained the night before the Feast:

“If St Anna brings us rain, heaven's blessings come again.” It's all one to the village whether it rains on St Anne's day or not, no one whispers
so help us God, Maria, holy St Anne, so help us God
these days, and St Anne's day is really in July.

The first thresher has not made the Anna Crown, and the crown, interwoven with flowers, is not placed on the head of any girl not yet promised in marriage, nor interwoven with thorns to lie on the head of any woman who has made a pact with demons. No wearer of a crown will dance round
the bonfire or burn on it, and white-clad children do not flit between the festive tables, the rakes are not adorned with colored ribbons, and the colored ribbons don't flutter in the wind. Sometimes there isn't any wind.

THE SENIOR CITIZENS ARE AWAKE. IMBODEN IS
doing his morning exercises: 1–2–3.

Frau Steiner is saying her morning prayers. Frau Steiner's golden teeth, her white hair: how people stared at her when she was a young woman. Her hair was red then, and she preferred to be alone with her cats, or out and about in the Kiecker Forest looking for herbs. Difficult, difficult. So Frau Steiner joined the faithful and took care to be seen more often in human company. Soon fewer people stared, apart from the men, because she wasn't bad-looking. Today her hair is white and there is indifference in her eyes.

Frau Steiner is delivering advertising leaflets for Netto and Saturn and such stores. She once even shopped at Globetrotter in Prenzlau herself, when a pair of walking boots that took her fancy was reduced in price. She still likes to be out and about in the ancient forest. From five cats at first, she now has fifteen, but today you are considered no worse than crotchety with so many cats.

If she isn't careful the red roots show at her parting.

Frau Steiner has survived three husbands; each of them died after exactly nine months of marriage. Difficult, difficult. Anyone could work it out in retrospect. Anyone could say something, meaning something else.

But no one says anything else, only: poor Frau Steiner. Three husbands, no children. Devout. Has to deliver leaflets.

We are the only ones who hear her morning prayer. And it isn't a prayer, or it is one that you must say in a whisper, shaking as if you were feverish. The cats mew; they are hungry.

I am fighting with mine ire, with she-demons I conspire.

May the first demon heed him, may the second demon lead him.

May the third demon charm him, may the fourth demon harm him.

May the fifth demon bind him, may the sixth demon blind him.

May the seventh bring him to me and make him wish to woo me
.

Frau Steiner puts her lips to the head of a little stone figure in her hand and closes her eyes. It is a statuette of St Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary and patron saint of widows.

The senior citizens stretch. The senior citizens shake out their pillows.

THE VILLAGE WAKES UP COFFEE MACHINE BY
coffee machine. Eggs are hard-boiled, anglers collect their catch. Ditzsche cleans himself and the chicken run, looks under the wings of his chickens. The bakery has given away free coffee, has sold orange juice and yeast pastries with vanilla filling, only Frau Kranz has gone off again without paying, but maybe the milk was meant to be free too.

There are no bells ringing for prayer. The acoustic heralds of the Feast are the sound of drilling from a power drill and the engine of a bus revving up—the wheels, stuck in the mud, are doing their nut. Lada is responsible for the drill. Lada knows he shouldn't be doing what he is doing, but Lada often knows that. Lada is drilling holes in the commemorative stone beside the holes that already exist. Before long the first windows are opening for protests to be uttered. The classic protest is that the drill makes too much noise. Lada either can't hear the protests, or he hears them and he couldn't care less. He has worked through the night, he's wearier than the protesters, and an exhausted man is always right.

Otherwise the village has little to protest about. A new day is beginning, and no one has died. Even though pistols were involved. Herr Schramm hasn't shot himself or anyone else. Frau Kranz hasn't drowned.

Fürstenfelde in the Uckermark, number of inhabitants: no change.

There have been cases of breaking and entering, one or two, we're not sure how many, but nothing was stolen. All is well, in that we still have what belongs to us. What happened in the Homeland House? Broken glass, and an electricity failure, and since Eddie is dead we can't blame it on him any more. The police don't like calling us to say there's nothing to tell us really.

The first guests soon arrive. Some satnav devices show Friedhofsweg and its extension the promenade as a fully negotiable road. There's supposed to be a large car park about halfway down. That, of course, is often seen as a huge joke. The Sat 1 transmission bus, for one, can't confirm that the Friedhofsweg is a fully negotiable road. Unless you're a mountain bike. The Sat 1 transmission bus can't confirm the existence of the car park either, or that at best the lake might be it. The Friedhofsweg slopes steeply toward it. On the right the graveyard wall, on the left the town wall, straight ahead the water. Nowhere to turn. In rain the ground is saturated, the bus can confirm that all right. The wheels, the reverse warning tone hovering over the monument to the fallen, beep-beep-beep, bats fly up. Britta Hansen in her Norwegian pullover is in the passenger seat. She has warned the driver, let's call him Jörg, about the road, but only half-heartedly because it's ages since she was here. Her grandfather is with us for ever, lying next to the road in the soft ground. “I get
so damn melancholy when I'm here,” she says. Jörg has other problems. Jörg changes up a gear. Beep-beep-beep.

Not twenty meters away, by the water, the bells watch the large vehicle. The bell-ringer didn't set his alarm, and that's a bit of luck, because the bells are not at home—he can sleep his fill for once. Johann has decided to take his bell-ringing exam. Pa will look after Ma that long. But somehow the bells must be hoisted up again. He didn't want to worry the bell-ringer, so he texted Lada, and Lada answered at once: “Sure what you paying.” And straight afterward: “We do it this way I help you then you come to Eddie's place and help me for free.” And a few minutes later: “And my golf out of the lake okay.”

Ulli has got hold of the sliced sausage and opened the garage. He has decorated the platters of meat with cocktail umbrellas. They're practical because of the toothpicks. Now the platters are waiting on two stools, and it's too early for sausage. However, the drinking has begun. Ulli is discussing the matches of the day with several pensioners from the new buildings. The ritual is the same every Saturday. Ulli acquires the betting slips, lectures his audience on the odds and the most interesting matches in short and poetic terms:

“Hannover away

won't get very far

against Borussia Dortmund.”

Then they mark up their slips and dream. Today he also gives the pensioners a scratchcard. The sound of coins scraping is in the air.

Ulli has known people to win, and sometime there'll be another win. Down below here the Feast has begun; it's the same as usual at Ulli's. Almost. He is washing yesterday's glasses. Normally the guests wash their own, sometimes there's a little queue at the sink. The men give each other tips on the best way to do it (how much dishwashing detergent to use,
this
is the best technique with the little sponge, how to dry glasses and so on).

Imboden comes in, mildly excited. Has Ulli seen it yet? Seen what yet? Right, then Ulli must come with him, but first they both need a beer to bring along, there's something to celebrate.

It's the commemorative stone. A small wooden panel is hanging from it. So now Ulli reads Lada's wooden panel before Imboden's happy eyes. The betting pensioners have joined them too, people are already drinking to Ulli. He feels both slightly pleased and slightly embarrassed because of what the panel says and drinking to himself like this, although what the panel says is true:

JUAN STEFFEN OPENED PEACE NEGOTIATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA
ULLI OPENED THE GARAGE IN FÜRSTENFELDE
.

Ulli nods, everyone nods. Now what? Well, nothing, the day goes on.

Imboden goes to Frau Reiff's. He has a date to meet the bell-ringer, they're the old guard; in the past Eddie would have
joined them. There's coffee and apple cake and a lecture. They both like lectures; it would be nice if there were lectures here more often, but this is okay.

Imboden tells the bell-ringer about the panel, the bell-ringer tells him about his injury. What they don't say is more exciting. The bell-ringer doesn't say that he does not want to be the bell-ringer any more, just Gustav, and Imboden doesn't say he's been at the garage again. Both have much the same reason: they're ashamed. Imboden knows Gustav doesn't think much of the garage. He's bothered about the kind of people you get there. In principle, the bell-ringer doesn't think himself too refined for anyone, but on the other hand he doesn't think he's the unrefined sort. But most of all, he notices when Imboden's been drinking. In principle he has nothing against that either, but he'd prefer it if Imboden drank with him. That has nothing to do with the kind of people they are, it's just that then he could keep an eye on Imboden better.

After the lecture (a hobby diver showed slides of things lying at the bottom of our lakes, for instance a bazooka and a washing machine), the old men make plans for the rest of the day. Any time now, at twelve, the bell-ringer should be supervising Johann's bell-ringing exam. He has decided it won't take place. He would have to ring one of the bells, and he can't. Nor does he want to. He doesn't know how he is to teach the boy. The anti-Fascist bicycle ride is to be at twelve too. Imboden must be there; as father of our Deputy Mayor, Frau Zink, he can't boycott it.

At this point we ought to make it clear, anyway, in case anyone gets the wrong idea, that strictly speaking it is a preventative anti-Fascist bicycle ride, because while racism etc. has been known not so far away, of course, here it hasn't had any public profile since the war, except maybe at Ulli's recently, when Özil didn't sing the national anthem again, and some people thought that meant they can't be glad when Özil scores for Germany: only a man who sings his country's anthem can score for his country. And we think they think they really aren't glad, but that's not so, because they were definitely glad when things were close and Podolski decided the game.

Anyway, Frau Schwermuth had the idea of the anti-Fascist bicycle ride, and expected twenty participants. At twelve noon there were eighty waiting outside the Homeland House. There was whistling, an IG Heavy Metal banner brought along by a joker, several people who came cycling especially from Prenzlau and Woldegk.

At five past twelve Frau Schwermuth still isn't there. We don't expect her to turn up. But then a bicycle bell rings, and Frau Schwermuth has exchanged her spiked helmet for a cycling helmet and zooms down Marx-Strasse, laughing: “No braking, come on, everyone, follow me!”

On the whole we can say that the anti-Fascist bicycle ride was a success, but also not entirely a success, and not because after three rounds of the village it was over, but because Rico and Luise weren't even awake at twelve.

The Templin Cycling Group joined in the third round. They did a time trial in our honor, Templin—Fürstenfelde—Templin. General ringing of bicycle bells by the anti-Fascist cyclists, general waving by the time-trial cyclists, because they don't have bells, every gram of weight is one gram too many, Frau Schwermuth briefly got into the slipstream of a sporting cyclist. Everyone was happy.

The event finished at the parsonage. Frau Schober had baked three cherry cakes for the cyclists, which of course was nothing like enough cherry cake to go round. Hirtentäschel made a speech lasting half an hour about the anti-Semitism lurking in the midst of bourgeois society, often in the guise of criticism of Israel. At the end of his talk Hirtentäschel gave three sentences as examples of how to criticize Israel
without—
intentionally or unintentionally—saying anything anti-Semitic.

Frau Schwermuth is happy. Happy about the cakes, the cyclists, the applause for Hirtentäschel. But however often, like her, you don't eat cake, you still don't snap at friends and guests, and you don't leave an occasion that you've organized yourself early—unless you're not really happy and don't want other people to be worried.

Out in the road, tears come to Frau Schwermuth's eyes. People are out walking, opening the open doors of the craft shops, clattering the lids of biscuit tins. The village asks itself questions, the village shows its talents. She just wants to get home quickly. Frau Schwermuth passes her hand over her eyes.

The day smells bitter of coffee brewed for too long, sweet with the cinnamon dusted over apple cake, and bitter-sweet of horse dung. Outside the Homeland House the blacksmith is patting a horse, trying to calm it down. The two of them are surrounded by a fierce group of about a dozen girls. The girls want the big man and the big animal to do something fascinating, they've been promised that will happen.

Someone calls Frau Schwermuth's name. It is Zieschke at the window of the Homeland House. He looks harassed, sounds grateful. “My word, Johanna, good to see you,” and can she take over for him there? They all want something from him, and he doesn't know his way about the place very well. He also has to prepare for the auction.

Frau Schwermuth blinks her tears away.

It is very busy in the Homeland House. A Californian pensioner is in polite competition with a party on an excursion from Neubrandenburg for the use of the only table. He wants to spread out his ancestors in their Leitz file folders, they want to spread out their picnic wrapped in silver foil.