Brother of Sleep: A Novel (13 page)

Elias stared at the woman's broad pelvis and could not take his eyes off the rich hair of her private parts. He could not hear what was being breathed, hot-lipped, into his ear. He only returned to his senses when Peter pinched his arm.

“I still don't believe you!” cried Gottfried from the holly bush. “You must undergo two more tests, and if you pass those tests, we will be man and wife this very month.”

Burga waited in patient silence.

“A woman should,” said Gottfried with long pauses, “submit to her husband in all things. Prove to me that you can obey me!”

“Whatever you command, I shall do!” said Burga trustfully.

“Undo your plait!” commanded Gottfried in his broken voice. And while Burga untwined her plait, something flashing flew to her feet. “Take the knife and cut off your hair!” Burga did not hesitate for a moment;
she felt for the knife and cut off her hair, so great was her love of Gottfried. “And now,” said the trembling voice, “lie down in the mud! Roll around in it as the deer roll around!”

“Why do you demand such things of me?” stammered Burga, humiliated. “Is this not enough?”

“Do what I say or you will never be mine!” cried Gottfried.

And the naked woman fell to her knees, plunged her hands in the morass, threw herself in on her belly, rolled around in it, and began to sob, loudly and sorrowfully. Then she suddenly heard hidden laughter. She stopped and cast a horrified look in all directions. The laughter became so loud that an echo rang out against the walls of the rock. Burga tore herself from the mud and cried, in a desperate voice, “You dogs! You dogs!” but she could only make out the shadows of two people hurrying into the valley. Burga set after them but soon had to give up because she had torn her feet to pieces in the holly.

There she stood, her hair shorn, howling and naked. And all she had done was trust the saying that the full moon brings two lovers together.

“That's woman for you!” Peter bellowed triumphantly, when he was sure they had escaped their pursuer. “Woman is stupid and simple. She is soft and cowardly. And for love,” he added theatrically, “she will do anything!” Then he stepped close to the impressionist, who was trembling with exhaustion. “Why are you trembling?” he asked angrily. “That woman deserved to be treated like that! She's a whore, you saw it with your own eyes!”

“Holy Mother of God, what have I done?” stammered Elias, and began to weep unrestrainedly. Peter took the weeping man's head in his hands, held it tight, and began to kiss his dry lips. And he ran his hands tenderly over his shoulders and his chest and felt for Elias's sex. “It would be good,” Peter murmured darkly, “if we could die here, on this spot.” Then he pushed
Elias from him with a loud cry and fled into the dark­
ness of the forest.

The crime perpetrated on the innocent woman unleashed bitter feelings of guilt in Elias. He sought refuge and salvation in prayer and deprived himself, with litanies and Hail Marys, of the few hours of sleep remaining to him. But the image of the naked woman beneath the moon's rays, her full pear-shaped breasts, her silvery tuft, would not leave him in peace. He inflicted the most terrible tortures upon himself to chase them away, but the woman returned every night. He sought forgiveness in organ playing and was fearful on his own behalf when he realized he had turned into someone else. He began to take pleasure in composing in defiance of the laws of the ear. He knew intuitively that unresolved dissonances are something sinful and forbidden. And because he could not instill order in himself or in his life, his playing became all the more rich in dissonances. He had discovered sin, and he began to savor it. Hitherto naive, his playing now had the force of the demonic.

And Burga? She knew there was only one person in the village who could imitate the voices of Eschberg. She also suspected that the second shadow had been Peter's shadow. But she did not say a word about it to anyone and did not even give them accusing looks. She lied to her cousin, saying she had cropped her hair because it was sick. Then she patiently returned to her everyday life. That was her way.

When he smoked his little pipe after lunch on Sundays, she sniffed happily at the tobacco smoke, considered her Gottfried, and was content. She loved people and life. No one could spoil that love for her.

THE LIGHTS OF HOPE

FOR
the second time that Laetare Sunday, Seff Alder opened the door to the children's room, where Elias lay in a fever with sweat-drenched hair and wide, staring eyes. Seff held his breath. The air was a brownish-yellow haze of incense and the smoke of the many tallow candles that the lovesick man was burning to ease his suffering. Seff went to the bedside table, pushed the plaster Marys aside, and put four peeled cooked po­tatoes there. And a bit of cheese from which he had cut the rind. That seemed to be the only consolation he was able to give his still-beloved son. He was not a talker.

But blast it, he must talk to him today, Seff said furiously to himself, seeing his son in this miserable state. Today, he would frankly beg his forgiveness for the crime he had committed long ago against Roman Lamparter. He finally had the courage to do this. Yes,
he would even kneel before him, if the boy demanded it. He must tell him that he was not a real murderer. Nulf, his brother, had egged him on to burn the Lam­parter alive. He must understand: that night the family had stood by the embers of their farm, by the abyss. He must understand that. He wasn't a real murderer.… Seff threw his hand to his brow and pressed three fingers against his temples. If only that terrible laughter would stop in his brain. That terrible laughter.

“The black ‘un's calved,” he said heavily. His Adam's apple rose; his fleshy lips barely moved. “Yes­terday, after rosary.”

Elias stayed motionless and stared at the curved boards of the ceiling.

“People have been talking. Because of the organ playing today. Are you ill?” said Seff after a long pause. His eyes slid down the skinny, cadaverous body. “Eat! They're hot,” he encouraged his son.

Elias leaned his head to one side; he did not want to eat. Seff saw his staring eyes suddenly grow watery, and when he saw a silent tear running down it was hard for him to suppress the water in his own eyes. How could anyone suffer so for the sake of a woman? thought Seff. It was not good for a man to let himself go like that. Elias had been lying in bed for four days now, in this airless tomb, refusing to eat, neglecting the school–and all because of that Elsbeth. “Blast it, a man is strong!” He suddenly cursed out loud, and because he could no longer look at his son weeping away before him, he tried to comfort him with a little white lie.

“Elsbeth says to get well soon,” he said, with an almost tenderly warm voice. He saw Elias's eyelids close at the word Elsbeth, as if a doctor had given him the medicine he had needed for so long.

“Is that true?” asked Elias in a clogged voice, cleared his throat for a long time, for he had not spoken a word for four days. “She told me to get well soon,” he repeated, and his features began to calm down. The medicine was beginning to work.

Seff smiled and went on lying to the sick man in unwieldy words. Elsbeth had been sad that the organist had been away. During mass she had been constantly craning her neck toward the organ loft, she had sat uneasily in the pew, she had flicked impatiently at her missal and shown no reverence. She had looked disappointed, as many people had looked disappointed. For without his excellent organ playing the church had been cold and desolate.

While Seff spoke, Elias sat up in bed, plumped his pillow, squeezed it behind his head, and leaned into it, and the dry leaves in the pillow crackled agreeably. After Seff had finished, there was another long silence in the room. But Seff noticed that the spark of folly had vanished from the sick man's eye. Taking enormously arduous detours, Seff revealed all the things that had plagued him for years. The father confessed to the son. For the first time they were talking to each other. After Seff had finished, the silence lasted more than a quarter of an hour. While they were sitting in silence, a memory arose from Elias's childhood: Had he not taken his father's stable hat at some point and, on nights when sleep was difficult, smelled the cold sweat, the hair, the smell of the cattle until he was comforted?

Then they looked each other straight in the eye. Seff felt that Elias had forgiven him. His heart was jubilant, and he knew that the crippling headaches would now come to an end. Since that Laetare Sunday, the quiet light of hope radiated from Seff's eyes. The time of walking past each other was over. The time of peace had come.

Now Seff could work happily again, for the piercing headaches actually did go away. And the laughter seemed to grow quieter, as if the dead man had finally found rest. From then on Seff nurtured the idea of renovating and extending the farm. In spring he would go to the cattle market in Hohenberg and buy two bullocks and a cow. The barn would need to be rearranged, and the pigsty would need to be enlarged, for besides the cattle he would buy two pregnant sows. In the pasture by the house he would need to plant some apple trees and pear trees, a lucrative business for the future. They could sell some cider to Martini, in Dorn­berg; the city dwellers, everybody said, paid good prices.…

Some weeks later, when the spring of 1825 had arrived, Seff Alder disappeared. The last thing Seff's wife could say of his whereabouts was his vague remark that he had gone into the young forest to wash the little pine trees. The peasants extended their search and crossed the forest in all directions down to Götzberg. But Seff Alder was not to be found. When they had still not found him on the fourth day of their search, the people of Eschberg assembled eight groups of two men, who were systematically to comb the region from the Kugelberg to the beginning of the valley. That same afternoon, Philipp was playing with his kitten in the meadow, to the east of the Alder farm. The kitten set off in pursuit of a slowworm that was streaking toward the woodshed. It crept into the shed through a rotten plank. That was where the Mongoloid child found his father. He was leaning against the wood block, fallen in on himself; the right-hand corner of his mouth hung loosely down, spittle was running from it, his right shoulder drooped, his right hand was blue and motion­less. But in his eyes the peaceful light of hope still gleamed. Philipp danced around his father, uttering sounds and cries of joy, laughed, and tried to play with him. Fritz, the oldest son, who was about to join the search party with Lukas Alder, came and held his father. Seff had had a stroke. At the age of forty-eight, he remained paralyzed down one side of his body until the end of his life. Fritz, not a single word from whom has been passed down to us, said nothing now either.

Hope of any kind is meaningless. Let no one succumb to the notion of wishing his dreams reality. One should, on the contrary, realize the vanity of one's hopes. Having understood this, one may go on hoping. When one can still dream, life has a meaning.

In Elsbeth's eyes, too, there now gleamed a quiet light of hope. She had passed her seventeenth birthday and was happy and content as she had never been in her
life. During this time she began embroidering on dam­
ask and soon discovered her great skill. First she worked for nothing and gave away her cloths and covers. Then Peter made her offer her goods for sale in Götzberg, so that it became profitable. Although she received none of the money, she was still content. The cries of “Pretty, pretty!” and “Ah, how elegant!” were reward enough.

During this time the girl was thinking a great deal about matters of love, for her heart was full of it. Elias, who had weighed up every word she had ever spoken, saw in all she said a sign of the fulfillment of his life. Although they were the closest of friends, they kept their important feelings secret from each other. This was a quite typical trait of the Alder family and, we might add in passing, of the people of the Vorarlberg in general. No Alder would ever have confessed love to another. Everything had to be unspoken or, if spoken, then only in hints and suggestions. These people were speechless, speechless until death.

How we should like, with a wrathful fist, to take this dry, black, yellow-eyed, feverishly wandering figure with the thin long hair, grab him by the shoulders, and shout in his face, “Say something, will you? Tell her how you feel! It is better to know the truth than to dream in lies!” It would do no good. Even if we begged him in the name of his genius, he would only smile his tormented smile, for he is unaware of how great a musician he is. And even if he did know, it would still be no use. He
would look at us with angry eyes and ask accusingly, “Is love not more important than the greatest genius of this world?” We would fall silent. And because we know that, we do not grab him by the shoulders with our wrathful fist.

It so happened that Elias was driving his oxen to Götzberg to buy salt, lamp oil, haberdashery, and spices for the people of Eschberg. Previously this task had been entrusted to Charcoalburner Michel, but
then it had been discovered that he was regularly set­
ting aside a few farthings for himself. That was why Michel was no longer allowed to drive the oxen to Götzberg. It so happened that on that very day Elsbeth too wanted to walk to Götzberg to offer her embroid­eries for sale. It was a cold May morning. On the northern slopes they saw a Lamparter mowing the first meager grass–much too early, but the winter supplies had been used up and the animals were hungry.

Elias, in his black frock coat, was yoking his oxen to the shafts when the girl walked over to him. So unutterably beautiful was she that morning that he heard his heart beating in his fingertips. Elsbeth was wearing her leaf-yellow hair down, the morning sun gleamed on her lips, and her eyes were small and full of sleep. Her face bore an unfamiliar pallor, although her complexion was dark. Elias saw this and asked long-windedly whether she really felt well enough to undertake the journey into the valley. He spoke very quietly, almost in a whisper. This was a habit from his childhood days, for his hearing was always at its most sensitive in
the morning. And how he had suffered when his mother had gone about her business in the kitchen first thing in the morning, clattering and shouting.

“Praised be Jesus Christ!” said Elsbeth, without answering his questions. She put her basket on the ground and wrapped her gray woolen plaid around her shoulders. “May I climb up?”

Elias returned her greeting. They settled themselves and set off. The spokes groaned, the oxen's hides steamed. Elias and Elsbeth barely exchanged two words. That was doubtless, one might imagine, the effect of the early hour, when yesterday's thoughts have yet to reassemble for the coming day. But it was not so.

At this time Elias had already abandoned hope of Elsbeth. It was said in the village that there was soon to be a wedding in Eschberg. It was not the Lamparter gossip who had put this rumor into circulation; no, it was Nulf Alder himself. He wanted to have Lukas Alder as a son-in-law. Lukas Alder, fleshy but not
rough or crude, came from the richest farm in Esch­
berg. For some years he had visited what was now Peter's farm, but it would have been untrue to claim that a passionate love had ever flared between Lukas and Elsbeth. No, over the years the girl had grown used to following her brother's wishes. She had grown used, we might say, to the idea that she might one day marry Lukas Alder. And when that had happened, then she would love him.

Elias sat silently on the seat, closed to Elsbeth and the world.

He was a curious boy when you looked at him, Elsbeth thought during their journey. She had known him for many, many years, but she basically knew nothing about him. Did he have a secret girlfriend? No, he was far too respectable for that. He was just like a real scholar, very little concerned with the things of everyday life. The same could not be said of Lukas. He had both feet firmly on the ground. She would have liked it if he had paid rather more attention to her than to his cattle. But that was how it had to be, her mother said. And it was true: Lukas was good to his cattle. She had never once seen him beating or shouting at them.

Elias sat silently on the seat.

Ah, love, she sang to herself, unheard, love was such a sad thing. While it set the mouth to laughing, the heart remained a dark forest. And she threw her head back, squinted into the bright green leaves of the mixed forest as they flowed quietly over her head, and pressed her eyelids together when the gleaming sunlight burst into her face. She kept her eyelids closed and imagined how it would be if Elias were to ask for her hand. Maybe he did not even love her? She would be a poor catch, it was true, for there was nothing at home for her to inherit. Ah, he would certainly say fine words to her! He would stand straight before her, look into her eyes, and see her blushing. He would remain tactfully silent, and when she least expected it he would ask, “Miss Elsbeth–will you be my wife?” His hands would surely accompany his words with fine gestures. What silly things were running through her head! Elsbeth opened her eyelids.