Brodeck (12 page)

XVIII

————

he faces. Their faces. Was this another of those agonizing dreams, like the ones that used to seize me at night in the camp and fling me into a world where nothing was familiar? Where am I? Will this all come to an end some day? Is this Hell? What wrong have I done? Tell me, Amelia. Why is this happening? Because I left you? Yes, it’s true: I left you. I wasn’t there. My darling, forgive me, please forgive me. You know they took me away. You know there was nothing I could do. Speak to me. Tell me what I am. Tell me you love me. Stop that humming, I beg you, stop it. Stop droning that tune. It breaks my head and my heart. Open your lips and let words come out. I can hear everything now. I can understand everything. I’m so tired. I’m so insignificant, and there’s no light in my life without you. I’m dust, and I know it. I’m futile.

I’ve drunk a little too much this evening. It’s the middle of the night. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I must write everything down. They could be coming. I’m waiting for them. Yes, I’m waiting for them.

In the council room, I read the few pages—ten at the most—on which I’d recorded witnesses’ statements and reconstructed events. I kept my eyes on the lines, never looking up at my audience of four, who sat there and listened. I kept slipping off the chair, whose seat was tilted forward, and the desk was so small that my legs barely fit under it. My position was distinctly uncomfortable, but that’s what they wanted: they wanted me to be ill at ease in that vast room, in that trial-like setting.

I read in a lifeless, absent voice. I hadn’t yet recovered from the surprise—and the bitter disappointment—of encountering my former schoolmaster there. My eyes and mouth read, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Many memories of him came to my mind, some of them very old: my first day of school, when I stepped inside the door and saw his eyes turn toward me, big eyes of a glacial blue, the blue of deep crevasses; and the times—how I’d loved them!—when he had me stay after school and helped me progress in my studies, helped me make up for the time I’d lost, coaching me with patience and kindness. His voice grew less solemn during those sessions. We were alone together, and he spoke to me gently, corrected my mistakes without anger, encouraged me. I remember back then, when I was still a little boy and I’d lie awake at night trying to evoke my father’s face, I would often catch myself giving him the schoolmaster’s features, and I also remember that the image was pleasant and comforting.

A short while ago, when I came back home, I pulled down the mushrooms, the trumpets of death that Limmat had given me the other day when I visited him to talk about the foxes, and threw the garlands into the fire.

Fedorine opened one eye and noticed what I was doing. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “What’s wrong with them?”

“With them? Nothing. But the hands that strung them together aren’t exactly clean.”

There was a ball of coarse wool and some knitting needles in her lap. She said, “You’re speaking Tibershoï, Brodeck.”

Tibershoï is the magic language of the country of Tibipoï, the setting of so many of Fedorine’s tales. Elves, gnomes, and trolls speak Tibershoï, but humans can never understand it.

I didn’t reply to her. I grabbed the brandy bottle and a glass and went out to the shed. It took me several long minutes to free the door from all the snow piled up against it. And snow was still falling; the night was full of it. The wind had stopped, and the snowflakes, abandoned to their own caprice, came down in unpredictable, graceful swirls.

There was a long silence in the council room when I finished reading what I’d written. It was a question of who would speak first. I raised my eyes to them, which I hadn’t done since I’d started to read. Lawyer Knopf was sucking his pipe as though the fate of the world depended on it. He couldn’t produce more than a wisp of smoke, and this seemed to irritate him. Göbbler was apparently asleep, and Orschwir was making a note on a piece of paper. Limmat alone was looking at me and smiling. The mayor raised his head. “Good,” he said. “Very good, Brodeck. It’s very interesting and well written. Keep on going, you’re on the right path.”

He turned toward the others on either side of him, seeking their assent or authorizing them to state their opinions. Göbbler dived in first. “I was expecting more, Brodeck. I hear your typewriter so much. It seems to me you really write a lot, and yet the Report is far from being finished …”

I tried to hide my anger. I tried to reply calmly, without showing surprise at anything, without challenging Göbbler’s observation or even his presence. I surely would have liked to tell him that he’d do better to direct his attention to the fire burning in his wife’s ass than to my compositions. I replied that writing this sort of Report did not come naturally to me, that I had difficulty finding the right tone and the right words, that collating the statements of the people I’d interviewed, putting together an accurate account, seizing the truth of what had gone on during the last few months constituted an arduous task. Yes, I was constantly at my typewriter, but I labored, I revised, I crossed out, I tore up, I started over, and that was the reason why I wasn’t going farther or faster.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Brodeck. What I said was just a passing comment. I apologize,” Göbbler said, miming embarrassment.

Orschwir seemed satisfied with my justifications. He turned once more to his colleagues on either hand. Siegfried Knopf looked happy because his pipe was working again. He gazed upon it with benevolent eyes and stroked its bowl with both hands, without paying the least heed to the people around him.

“Schoolmaster Limmat, perhaps you have a question?” the mayor asked respectfully, turning toward the old teacher. I felt the sweat spring to my forehead, as it had done when he quizzed me in front of the whole class. Limmat smiled, allowed some time to pass, and rubbed his long hands together.

“No, not a question, Mr. Mayor, but rather a remark, a simple remark … I know Brodeck very well. I’ve known him a long time. I know he’ll conscientiously perform the task we’ve entrusted to him, but… how shall I say it… he’s a dreamer, and I use that word in no bad sense because I think dreaming is a great and positive thing, but in this particular case, he mustn’t make a muddle of everything, he mustn’t mix up dreams and reality or confuse what exists with what never took place. I exhort him to pay attention. I exhort him to stay on the straight road and not to let his imagination govern his thoughts and his sentences.”

For hours after the meeting, I kept going over Limmat’s words in my mind. What were they supposed to mean? I had no idea.

“We won’t keep you any longer, Brodeck. I imagine you’re in a hurry to get back home.” Having said these words, Orschwir rose to his feet, and I immediately followed suit. I bade farewell to the others with a little movement of my head and began walking rapidly toward the door. This was the moment that Lawyer Knopf chose to arouse himself from his reverie. His old nanny-goat’s voice caught up with me: “That’s a handsome cap you’ve got there, Brodeck. It must be really warm. I’ve never seen anything like it… Where’d you get it?”

I turned around. Lawyer Knopf was approaching me, hopping a little on his crooked legs. His eyes were fixed on the
Anderer’s
cap, which I had just placed on my head. Knopf was now quite close to me, and he reached for the cap with one clawlike hand. I felt his fingers running over the fur. “Very original, and what fine work! Beautiful! Just the thing for the weather that’s on the way. I envy you, Brodeck.”

Knopf trembled a little as he stroked the cap. I could smell his tobacco-laden breath, and I saw a delirious light dancing in his eyes. Suddenly I wondered whether he hadn’t gone mad. Göbbler came over to us and said, “You didn’t answer Lawyer Knopf’s question, Brodeck. He wants to know who made your cap for you.”

I hesitated. I hesitated between silence and a few words I could fling at them like knives. Göbbler was waiting. Limmat joined us, clutching the lapels of his velvet jacket around his skinny neck.

In the end, I summoned up a confident tone and said, “Göbbler, you’ll never believe me, but be that as it may, I’m going to tell you the absolute truth. Remember, however, that it’s a secret, and please don’t repeat it to anyone. You see this cap? Just imagine, the Virgin Mary made it for me and the Holy Ghost delivered it!”

Ernst-Peter Limmat burst out laughing. Knopf laughed, too. Göbbler was the only one scowling. His nearly dead eyes searched for mine, as if he wanted to gouge them out. I left the lot of them standing there and went out the door.

Outside the snow hadn’t stopped falling, and the path
Zungfrost
had cleared an hour previously had already vanished. The village streets were deserted. Halos quivered around the lanterns hanging from the gables. The wind had come up again, but very lightly, and it made the snowflakes flutter in every direction. Suddenly I felt a presence against me. It was
Ohnmeist
, who was trying to bury his cold muzzle in my pants. Such familiarity surprised me. I began to wonder whether the dog wasn’t mistaking me for someone else, for the
Anderer
, the only other person with whom it had taken such liberties.

We trudged along side by side, the dog and I, surrounded by the smells of the snowy cold and the pinewood smoke that came down from the chimneys in gusts. I no longer remember exactly what I thought about in the course of that strange promenade, but I know that suddenly I found myself very far from those streets, very far from the village, very far from familiar, barbaric faces. I was walking with Amelia. We were holding on to each other, arm in arm. She was wearing a coat of blue cloth with embroidered sleeves and a border of gray rabbit fur around the collar. Her hair, her most beautiful hair, was coiled up under a little red hat. It was very cold. We were very cold. It was our second meeting. I gazed hungrily at her face, at her every gesture, her small hands, her laughter, her eyes.

“So you’re a student, you say?”

She had a delicious accent, which slid over her words and gave them all, the pretty ones as well as the ugly ones, a discreet highlight. We were circling the lake for the third time, walking along the Elsi Promenade. We weren’t alone. There were other couples like us, groups of two people looking at each other a great deal, speaking little, laughing for no reason, and falling silent again. With the three pennies I’d borrowed off Ulli Rätte, I bought a sizzling hot crêpe from the vendor whose stall was next to the skating rink. He poured a generous extra spoonful of honey over the crêpe and held it out to us, saying, “For the lovers!” We smiled, but we didn’t dare look at each other. I offered the crêpe to Amelia. She seized it as though it were a treasure, cut it in half, and handed me my portion. Night was falling, and with it the icy air that turned Amelia’s cheeks even rosier and made her hazel eyes shine all the more brightly. We ate the crêpe. We looked at each other. We were at the very beginning of our life.

With a long, drawn-out whine,
Ohnmeist
brought me back to the village. He rubbed his head against me one more time and then went away, taking little steps and wagging his tail as if waving good-bye. I followed him with my eyes until he disappeared behind the woodshed that stands beside the workroom in Gott’s smithy. He’d probably found some shelter there for the winter.

I hadn’t noticed how much distance the dog and I had covered. We’d gone all the way to the end of the village, close to the church and the cemetery. The snow was coming down as thickly as before. The edge of the forest was invisible, even though it began barely thirty meters away. When the church came into sight, I thought about Father Peiper, and the light in his kitchen window made me decide to knock on his door.

XIX

————

spoke and Peiper listened, steadily refilling his glass. I spilled my guts. I went on at length. I didn’t talk about the pages I’m writing alongside the Report, but I discussed everything else. I revealed all my doubts and fears. I told him how odd it felt to have fallen into a trap and to be unable to understand who had woven it, who was holding the cords, why I had been pushed into it, and especially how I might manage to get out of it. When I finally stopped, Peiper let a little while pass in silence. Talking had done me good.

“Who are you confiding in, Brodeck? The man, or what’s left of the priest?”

I hesitated to reply, simply because I had no idea what my reply should be. Peiper sensed my confusion and said, “I’m asking the question because the two aren’t the same. You know they aren’t, even though you no longer believe in God. I’m going to help you a bit, and I’ll start by telling you something in confidence: I hardly believe in God anymore, either. I spoke to Him for a long time, for years and years, and throughout those years, He really seemed to listen to me and to respond as well, with little signs, with the thoughts that came to me, with the things He inspired me to do. And then, that all stopped. I know now that He doesn’t exist or He’s gone away forever, which comes to the same thing. So there it is: we’re alone. Nevertheless, I go on with the show. I play my part badly, no doubt, but the theater’s still standing. It causes no one any harm, and there are some elderly souls in the audience who would be still more alone and still more abandoned if I closed the place down. You see, every performance gives them a little strength, the strength to go on. And there’s another principle I haven’t repudiated: the seal of confession. It’s my cross, and I bear it. I shall bear it to the end.”

All at once, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I know everything, Brodeck. Everything. And you can’t even imagine what that
Everything
means.”

He stopped talking, having just realized that his glass was empty. He rose to his feet, trembling, and cast anxious looks at the bottles that littered the room. He moved five or six before finding one that still held a little wine. He smiled and clasped the bottle in his arms, the way you embrace a loved one you’re happy to see again. He returned to his chair and filled his glass. “Men are strange. They commit the worst crimes without question, but later they can’t live anymore with the memory of what they’ve done. They have to get rid of it. And so they come to me, because they know I’m the only person who can give them relief, and they tell me everything. I’m the sewer, Brodeck. I’m not the priest; I’m the sewer man. I’m the man into whose brain they can pour all their ordure, all their filthy deeds, and then they feel relieved, they feel unburdened. When it’s over, they go away as though nothing’s happened. They’re all new and clean. Ready to start afresh. They know the sewer has closed over what they dumped into it and will never repeat what it’s heard to anybody. They can sleep in peace, Brodeck, and at the same time I’m all awash, I’m overflowing, I can’t take any more, but I hold on, I try to hold on. I’ll die with all these deposits, these horrors, in me. You see this wine? It’s my only friend. It puts me to sleep and makes me forget, for a little while, the great, vile mass I carry around inside, the putrid load they’ve all entrusted to me. I’m not telling you this because I want your pity. I just want you to understand. You feel alone because you must write about hideous things; I feel alone because I must absolve them.”

He stopped, and in the multiple, moving light of the candles, I distinctly saw his eyes fill with tears.

“I didn’t always drink, Brodeck, as you well know. Before the war, water was my daily beverage, and I knew that God was at my side. The war … maybe the peoples of the world need such nightmares. They lay waste to what they’ve taken centuries to build. They destroy today what they praised yesterday. They authorize what was forbidden. They give preferential treatment to what they used to condemn. War is a great broom that sweeps the world. It’s the place where the mediocre triumphs and the criminal receives a saint’s halo; people prostrate themselves before him and acclaim him and fawn upon him. Must men find life so gloomy and monotonous that they long for massacre and ruin? I’ve seen them jump up and down on the edge of the abyss, walk along its crest, and look with fascination upon the horror of the void, where the vilest passions hold sway. Destroy! Defile! Rape! Slash! If you had seen them …”

The priest snatched my wrist and pressed it hard. “Why do you think they tolerate my incoherent sermons and my drunken Masses, my cursing and raving? Why do they all come to church? Why hasn’t anyone asked the bishop to recall me? Because they’re afraid, Brodeck. It’s as simple as that: they’re afraid of me and of all the things I know about them. Fear is what governs the world. It holds men by their little balls. It squeezes them from time to time, just to remind their owners that it could annihilate them if it so desired. I see their faces in my church when I’m in the pulpit. I see them through their masks of false calm. I smell their sour sweat. I smell it. It’s not holy water running down the cracks of their asses, believe me! They must curse themselves for having told me so much … Do you remember when you were an altar boy, Brodeck? Do you remember serving when I said Mass?”

I was very small, and Father Peiper made a great impression on me. He had a deep, silky voice, a voice that wine-bibbing hadn’t yet worn down. He never laughed. I wore a white alb and a bright-red collar. I closed my eyes and inhaled the incense, believing God would come into me more readily if I did that. My happiness, my bliss was without flaw. There were no races, no differences among men. I’d forgotten who I was and where I’d come from. I’d never thought about the bit of flesh missing from between my thighs, and no one had ever reproached me for it. We were all God’s people. At the altar in our little church, I stood at Father Peiper’s side. He turned the pages of the Holy Book. He brandished the host and the chalice. I rang the little bells. I presented him the water and the wine and the white linen cloth he used to wipe his lips. I knew there was a Heaven for the innocent and a Hell for the guilty. Everything seemed simple to me.

“He came to visit me once …” Peiper’s head was bowed down, and his voice had become colorless. I thought he was talking about God again.

“He came, but I don’t think I was capable of understanding him. He was so … different. I couldn’t… I wasn’t able to understand him.”

Suddenly I realized that the priest was talking about the
Anderer
.

“It couldn’t end any other way, Brodeck. That man was like a mirror, you see. He didn’t have to say a single word. They each saw their reflection in him. Or maybe he was God’s last messenger, before He closes up shop and throws away the keys. I’m the sewer, but that fellow was the mirror. And mirrors, Brodeck—mirrors can only break.”

As though underlining his words, Peiper grabbed the bottle in front of him and hurled it against the wall. Then he grabbed another one and another one and another one after that, and as each bottle shattered, launching thousands of glass shards to all corners of the kitchen, he laughed, he laughed like one of the damned and shouted,
“Ziebe Jarh vo Missgesck! Ziebe Jarh vo Missgesck! Ziebe Jarh vo Missgesck!”—
“Seven years of bad luck! Seven years of bad luck! Seven years of bad luck!” Then, abruptly, he stopped, clutched his face in his hands, threw himself forward onto the table, and sobbed like a child.

I stayed with him for a few moments without daring to move or say a word. He sniffled twice, very loudly, and then there was silence. He remained in his chair, his upper body sprawled on the table, his head hidden between his arms. The candles consumed themselves and went out, one by one, and the kitchen gradually grew dark. Peaceful snores emanated from Peiper’s body. The church bell sounded ten o’clock. I left the room, closing the door very gently behind me.

I was surprised by the light outdoors. The snow had stopped, and the sky was almost entirely clear. The last clouds were still trying to cling to the Schnikelkopf peaks, but the wind, now blowing from the east, was busy tidying them up, tearing the cloud remnants into small strips. The stars had put on their silver apparel. As I raised my head and looked at them, I felt as though I were plunging into a sea both dark and glittering, its inky depths studded with innumerable bright pearls. They seemed very near. I even made the stupid gesture of stretching out my hand, as if I might seize a handful of them and stick them inside my coat as a present for Poupchette.

Smoke rose straight up from the chimneys. The air had become very dry again, and the cold had formed a hard, sparkling crust on the mounds of snow piled up in front of the houses. I felt in my pocket for the pages I’d read to the others a few hours ago; they were just a few thin sheets of very light paper, but they seemed heavy and hot. I thought over what Peiper had told me about the
Anderer
, and it was hard for me to decide between the ravings of a drunkard and the words of a man accustomed to speaking in parables. More than anything else, I wondered why the
Anderer
had visited the priest, especially considering that our new neighbor quite noticeably avoided the church and never went to Mass. What could he and Peiper have talked about?

As I passed Schloss’s inn, I saw that a light was still burning in the main room. And then—I don’t know why—I felt a sudden urge to step inside.

Dieter Schloss was behind the bar, talking with Caspar Hausorn. They were both leaning forward, so close to each other that you would have thought they were going to kiss. I let out a greeting that made them jump, and then I went over to the table in the corner, right next to the fireplace, and sat down.

“Do you still have some hot wine?”

Schloss nodded. Hausorn turned in my direction and made a curt movement with his head that might have passed for a “good evening.” Then he leaned toward Schloss’s ear once more, murmured something the innkeeper seemed to agree with, picked up his cap, finished his beer in one gulp, and left without looking at me again.

It was the second time I’d been in the inn since the
Ereigniës
. And just as I had done the previous time, I found it hard to believe that this very ordinary place was where a man had been put to death. The inn looked like any other village inn: a few tables, chairs, and benches, shelves holding one-liter bottles of wine and liquor, big, framed mirrors so covered with soot they hadn’t reflected anything for years, a cabinet for the chess and checkers sets, sawdust on the floor. The rooms were upstairs. There were exactly four of them. Three of them hadn’t been used for a long time. As for the fourth room, the biggest and also the prettiest, it had been occupied by the
Anderer
.

On the day following the
Ereigniës
, after my visit to Orschwir, I’d stayed in Mother Pitz’s place for nearly an hour in an effort to recover my wits, to calm my mind and my heart, while the old woman sat beside me, turning the pages of a volume of her dried-plant collection and providing a running commentary on all the flowers pressed inside the book. Then, after my head had finally cleared, I thanked her, left her café, and went straight to the inn. I found the door locked and the shutters closed. It was the first time I’d ever seen Schloss’s inn in that state. I knocked on the door, dealing it rapid, heavy blows, and waited. Nothing. I knocked again even harder, and this time a shutter opened partway and Schloss appeared at the window, looking suspicious and fearful.

“What do you want, Brodeck?”

“I want to talk to you. Open up.”

“This may not be the best time.”

“Open up, Schloss. You know I have to make the Report.”

The word had come out of my mouth all by itself. Using it for the first time felt utterly strange, but it had an immediate effect on Schloss. He closed the shutter, and I heard him hurrying downstairs. A few seconds later, he was unbolting the big door. He opened it and said, “Come in quick!”

He closed the door behind me so promptly that I couldn’t stop myself from asking him if he was worried that a ghost might slip inside. He said, “That’s no joking matter, Brodeck,” and crossed himself twice. “What do you want?”

“I want you to show me the room.”

“What room?”

“Don’t play dumb. The room.”

Schloss hesitated. He seemed to be thinking over my request. Then he said, “Why do you want to see it?”

“I want to see it right now. I want to be thorough. I don’t want to forget anything. I have to tell the whole story.”

Schloss ran his hand over his forehead, which was gleaming as though he’d rubbed it with lard. “There’s not a lot to see, but if you insist… Follow me.”

We climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Schloss’s big body took up the entire width of the staircase, and every step bent under his weight. He was breathing hard. When we got to the landing, he reached into one of the pockets in his apron, took out a key, and handed it to me, saying, “I’ll let you unlock the door, Brodeck.”