Brother of Sleep: A Novel (10 page)

This happened in the spring of 1820. Elsbeth was thirteen years old, a beautiful, elegant young woman with a strikingly dark complexion and hence, even in March, a suntanned face. She was small, and she remained so her whole life long. That and her pretty face, lent special charm by a little snub nose, meant that some of the boys did not take her seriously; she was seen as a delightful woman, with whom one might indeed be happy to dally but whom no one would ever have thought of as having spirit and intelligence. But even as a little girl Elsbeth did have a certain intel­ligence; she knew, as a sleepwalker knows, who would be dangerous, useful, or helpful company. From the start she was clever enough to avoid her father, and her brother as well. And yet something vulgar persisted in her speech. She had never heard eloquence until the day Elias Alder entered her life, and he had entered her life when he saved it.

In the spring of 1820, Elias walked over almost every day and asked for Peter, his friend. In fact, he yearned for Elsbeth. The girl liked the tall man in his
black frock coat. She felt respect for his age and en­
joyed his mannered way of walking and his speech. For when he spoke, even that was music.

In the months of that particular spring a curious event occurred in Eschberg. As so often happened, a trivial incident provoked such hysteria among the inhabitants that they could turn overnight into saints or murderers. The incident was the sermon of a traveling preacher. There were many traveling preachers in the countryside at that time, and their calling and their character were always dubious in the extreme. None­theless, they saw themselves as the new and true Church of Christ, were therefore bitterly hostile to the old and true Church of Christ, and were forbidden either to enter or to preach in the house of God.

The traveling preacher Corvinius Feldau von Feld­
berg–certainly a pseudonym–was a man of disheveled appearance, about thirty years of age, with a sleepy-looking face and unkempt red hair. He was dressed in nothing but a sheepskin–and two women claimed to have seen his member dangling beneath it. This Corvinius came to the village on Palm Sunday and delivered a sermon in front of the little church, the consequences of which were catastrophic for the peasants of Eschberg, as we shall shortly see.

“Rejoice in the beloved of thy youth,” began the redhead with a yawn, “for she is like a roe or a young hart. Let her love assuage you always, and savor all the ways of her love.” And the preacher began to interpret the language of Solomon so graphically that everyone was soon breathless. He was, he said, as he awakened a little from his somnolence, an apostle of love. Nothing was more important in this contemptible world than love. No other law was valid. Everyone, young and old, should devote themselves to the intoxication of love. The end was nigh; a mighty host of Moors stood waiting just beyond the Arlberg. Anyone with a woman should take her and never let go of her. Children should Copulate, and the old likewise. Marriage, swore the apostle of love, was dissolved forever. The world was freed from its bonds. If a woman desired two men, she should take three. If a man coveted another's wife, his ox, or his cow, so be it.

Speaking in these terms, the carrottop's voice rose to an orgiastic screech, and his body contorted in the most obscene fashion as he sought to depict, with a flood of indecent words, the copulation of men and animals. Silence fell, and heavy outpourings of breath came from dilated nostrils. The women's breasts heaved, and there were stirrings in many a pair of trousers. The people had never experienced anything like this before, being stir­red to lust by a mere sermon!

Reaching the peak of his proclamations, he expressed himself in such tattered words that many of the women burst out laughing and screeching. For, he croaked, he alone could enter paradise who had devoted himself to love for life. Dark veins stood out on his brow, and the people feared he might collapse with exhaustion. “Not for a moment may you rest!” he cried from his inflamed throat. “Anyone who lets a single hour go past without love will have to spend that time in purgatory. You may sleep no more, for when sleeping you do not love. Look at me! For ten days and nights I have not slept!” And with the words “He who sleeps does not love!” traveling preacher Corvinius Feldau von Feldberg finally collapsed in a faint.

The charlatan's sermon had an undesirable effect on certain minds. The baptismal register for 1820 shows twelve christenings for the month of December, and the death register speaks of “three women deceased w/out the blessing of the Church.”

It is curious that the mere appearance of this rough character, preaching fornication, should have captured the heart and mind of our musician. Although he was alert to the vulgar intentions that others had also perceived, Elias still understood the unbelievable anar­chism of the words with which the redhead had collapsed. In fact, that night and the night that followed, Elias Alder did not rest but devoted all his thought and yearning to young Elsbeth. He went into the mountains, and beneath the full Easter moon he thanked God for his life, now knowing it had found its ultimate purpose. Stretched out on the black grass of the still meager mountain pastures, he spread his arms and legs, wept, and sang, ‘He who loves does not sleep! He who loves does not sleep!' He clutched the grass with his fingers as if to hold on tight to this big, round, beautiful world. No, he would not let go of it, for on this big, round, beautiful world lived Elsbeth.

He would have liked to spend another night in the mountain, had Philipp not been having such desperate dreams. The idiot was inconsolable and howled endlessly, like a dog.

At about midday on Holy Thursday they set off for their first walk together. Together, that is: Elsbeth, Elias, and his little idiot brother; and, hiding: Peter, who had been following them since the first day. With his eyes to start with. He saw them taking the path to the Emmer, and when they disappeared he could not
bear it. Perhaps Elias heard the curious rustling in the undergrowth. Perhaps he once saw Peter's shadow in the clearing or heard his breathing close by. But Elias knew Peter was following them from a short distance. And he said nothing.

He had washed, stolen a starched shirt from his father, dabbed on two drops of his mother's eau de rose, which had faded long ago, brushed his shoes, and carved a double
E
on his walking stick in baroque letters. It was thus that he received her; he would have liked to have given her his arm, so she could put her own little arm into it, when the path grew steep and bumpy.

Seff, who was busy fencing off a spring pasture in the neighboring hamlet, saw the three figures of different sizes. When he saw the black frock coat a glint of melancholy came to his eyes. His mallet dropped to the ground and he moved his lips, pursing them briefly as though about to call to his son. He would have liked to have called, Son! Will you never forget it? Then he buried his fingers in his thin earth-brown beard, and again he heard the cries of the burning Roman Lampar­ter, and again he had terrible pains in his head. Since the murder Seff had worn a full beard, as if to hide his face behind it.

Elsbeth's eyes flashed with curiosity. “Is it a long way to this stone?” she asked merrily, undoing her blue damask apron.

“Sometimes I think it's far, and then again so near!” said Elias. He held his head high and tried to affect the mannered gait of a dancer.

This was a joy to Philipp, who was walking behind them and tried to imitate his brother, which made Elsbeth laugh with all her heart.

“Little Philipp!” she joked. “You'll be a good dancer. When the violins and the tambourines come for the fair, we'll dance, won't we?” Elsbeth took the child, held him to her breast, and began to sing, “This is the month of maying.”

At that moment Elias wished he were Philipp, to be carried and rocked like that by this young woman. “Wait a second!” he cried suddenly. “A tune's coming to me!”

Elsbeth fell silent and looked at him.

“Pay attention now! You go on singing the tune and I'll sing above and below it. But be strict with yourself and don't make me lose the notes!”

Elsbeth did not understand what he meant and did not want to sing because he had been listening to her. But so insistent were his pleas that she finally agreed and sang “Now is the month of maying” again.

Then something incredible and uncanny came to the girl's ears. While she was singing, Elias suddenly began to sing with her voice. The girl was so frightened that Philipp nearly slipped from her arms. Elias picked them both up with his strong arms and tried, blushing, to smile into her eyes. “Many people are afraid when they hear the sound of their own voice,” he said darkly. “You must know that I'm familiar with all the voices in our village. And I've discovered,” he whispered, “that you can tell a person's character just from the sound of their voice.”

Elsbeth looked at him, horror-struck, and did not know whether she should be more frightened of him than of the bright yellow of his irises, which she had not seen so close up before.

“What are you afraid of? I've known your voice for ages. It's a fine voice and a kind one.” And to distract the girl he turned actor and gave her some samples of his talent for imitation. He captured the metallic voice of Charcoalburner Michel so accurately that Elsbeth was soon laughing. And when he gave a precise impression of the curate's nasal whimpering, she cried out with astonishment.

“How did you learn that?” she asked, having grown calmer.

“It's all a matter of hearing,” he answered proudly. “You too, if you wanted to, could imitate the voices of many women.” And she made him promise that he would soon initiate her in the mysteries of vocal imitation.

The forest began to thin out. Young reeds grew here and there on the sunlit shores. The Emmer reflected the lush green of the mixed forest, and the water smelled of snow from the Kugelberg, where the source
of the Emmer lay. In the course of the year the moun­
tain stream had developed various new curves. Elias studied its new course with visible sadness. Where he had sat the previous summer, on a particular patch of the bank, he would never be able to sit again in his life, because the stream no longer flowed past it. The ceaseless transformation in the course of the stream gave him a sense of transience, a sense of his own mortality.

“You see that big flat stone over there?” he asked Elsbeth, who was looking for a good place to cross the stream.

“Where?” she asked, rather inattentively, jumping unsuccessfully and ending up with one shoe in the water. She uttered a short vulgar curse, clutched at some willow roots, and managed to return to shore. Elias had put Philipp on his shoulders and crossed the Emmer purposefully and safely.

“My place is up there!” he cried, as if singing a song of praise. On his shoulders, Philipp emitted a quiet, guttural yelp, for he could sense the joy in his brother's heart.

The water-polished stone lay motionless and majestic as always. It looked like the giant fossilized sole of a foot, as if God himself, in time immemorial, had stepped into the world at that spot. Elias advised the girl to rest for a while, brought the child down from his shoulders, opened his frock coat, and spread it out on the rock. They sat down a respectable distance apart, while Philipp cheerfully crept hither and thither between them. For a long time Elias gazed steadfastly at the deep green of the little pond beneath his feet, and for a moment it seemed to Elsbeth that his eyes had assumed a grayish-green color. But it was only the reflection of the stream.

“So what's so strange about this stone?” she asked, still out of breath.

He looked at her, and his eyes slid to her dry lips and down to her bodice, with its crisscross lacing,
where her little breasts were outlined. Elias was ashamed of his unseemly gaze and tried to cast his eyes down, but they would not obey him. When he looked at the bare hands that lay impatiently in her lap, his eyes slid farther down to her bare knee, revealed by the open seam of her skirt, and as they glided along the white fluff of her shins, he almost lost his senses.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!
thundered in his head. “It is sinful to gaze upon a woman with lust for her!” he heard the curate preaching in the distance. Oh, he wanted to be a good and honorable husband to Elsbeth! And if God and the saints gave him strength, he would not lust after her as long as he lived. He wanted to show her that true love does not seek after the flesh but devotes itself entirely to the soul.

“What's special about this stone?” asked Elsbeth for the second time, tapping him on the shoulder. And Elias woke up and began to tell her.

“A strange power emanates from this place and always has. Even when I was a child this stone called to me. I listened, rose from my bed, and came here. I knew for certain that this stone is alive. And whenever I was sad it comforted me. You will think me quite mad, dear Elsbeth,” he said uncertainly, “but I think it is from this spot that one reaches heaven. That all the people in our village, when they have died, must come down here and wait until the Lord opens the clouds for them.”

While he was speaking, a curious silence fell around them. Philipp had grown quiet and gazed milky-eyed at his brother. Elsbeth, too, was staring motionlessly at Elias's emaciated face. When Elias saw the girl looking at him like that, he felt once more the certainty he had felt in the mountains, when he had had to hold on to the nighttime grass for sheer joy. Only someone who loves can look like that, he thought with happiness. But Elsbeth was looking at him with eyes of admiration and great astonishment. He had cast his spell over her, for she had never heard a man utter such a speech, so skillful, each word sounding like music. Elsbeth was astonished, and Elias thought she had fallen in love with him at that moment. Only someone who really loves can be so cruelly mistaken.