Tyll Page 11
Claus closes his eyes. He still feels the wine—a warm, soft dizziness.
“Loud and clear,” says Master Tilman.
Claus sighs.
“It is proper,” says Master Tilman. “It is what’s done: the condemned forgives his hangman loud and clear so that everyone can hear. You know that?”
Claus can’t help thinking of his wife. Earlier Agneta was there and talked to him through the cracks between the wall boards. She was so sorry, she whispered. She had no choice but to say what they demanded of her. Could he forgive her?
Of course, he replied. He forgave everything. But he kept to himself that it was not quite clear to him what she was even talking about. There was nothing to be done about it; since his interrogations, his mind was no longer as reliable as it used to be.
Then she wept again and spoke of her hard life and also of the boy, who worried her, and she didn’t know what to do with him.
Claus was happy to hear about the boy, because he hadn’t thought about him for a long time, and at bottom he really was fond of him. But there was something odd about him, it was hard to explain, the boy seemed not to be made of the same stuff as other people.
“You have it easy,” she said. “You don’t have to trouble your head about anything anymore. But I can’t stay here in the village. They won’t let me. And I’ve never been anywhere else—what am I supposed to do?”
“Yes, certainly,” he replied, still thinking about the boy. “That’s true.”
“Maybe I could go to my family in Pfünz.”
“You have family in Pfünz?”
“The wife of my uncle’s nephew. Franz Melker’s cousin. You didn’t know my uncle; he died when I was a child. But before he died, he said he heard that she is now in Pfünz. Maybe it’s true. Where else am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what about the boy? Maybe she’ll help me, if she remembers, who knows. If she’s still alive. But two hungry people at the same time? That’s too many.”
“Yes, that’s too many.”
“Maybe I can get the boy work as a day laborer. He’s small and not a good worker, but it might be possible. What else am I supposed to do? I’m not allowed to stay here.”
“No, you’re not allowed.”
“You stupid creature, you have it easy now. But just tell me, should I go looking for her? Maybe it wasn’t Pfünz at all. You always know everything, tell me, what do I do?”
Fortunately, at that moment the hangman’s meal came, and Agneta withdrew so that the executioner wouldn’t see her, for no one is permitted to talk to a condemned man. And then the wine and food were so good that the sobbing had completely passed from his mind.
“Miller!” Master Tilman shouts. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, yes.”
Master Tilman’s hand is lying heavily on his shoulder. “You have to say it loud tomorrow! That you forgive me! Do you hear? In front of everyone, did you hear? It’s what’s done!”
Claus wants to reply, but his mind keeps wandering, especially now that he finds himself thinking about the boy once again. Recently he saw him juggling. It was between two interrogations, in the empty time in which the world consists of nothing but throbbing pain—he looked through the cracks and saw his son passing by and making stones whirl above him as if they had no weight, as if it were happening of its own accord. Claus called his name to warn him. Someone who can do something like that must be careful; for that too you can be accused of witchcraft. But the boy didn’t hear him—perhaps also because Claus’s voice was too weak. That is now always the case, he can’t help it, it’s due to the interrogation.
“Listen,” says Master Tilman. “You will not summon me to the Valley of Josaphat!”
“The curse of a dying man is the most powerful,” says the man in the straw. “It clings to the soul, you can never get rid of it.”
“You won’t do that, miller, curse the executioner, you won’t do that to me, will you?”
“No,” says Claus. “I won’t.”
“You might think it doesn’t matter. You’re going to hang anyway, you think, but I’m the one who stands with you on the ladder, and I’m the one who puts on the noose, and I have to pull on your legs so that your neck breaks, or else it will take a long time!”
“That’s true,” says the man in the straw.
“You won’t summon me to the Valley of Josaphat? You won’t curse me, you’ll forgive the hangman, as is proper?”
“Yes, I will,” says Claus.
Master Tilman takes his hand off his shoulder and gives him a friendly pat. “I don’t care if you forgive the judges. That’s not my concern. You can handle that as you please.”
Suddenly Claus can’t help smiling. It must still be due to the wine, but it’s also because he realized that he can now finally try out the great Key of Solomon. There has never been an opportunity for it. He learned the many long sentences from old Hüttner. At the time it came easily to him. Probably he could still find them in his memory. They will see when he is standing on the ladder tomorrow and all at once the chains break as if they were made of paper. They will goggle when he spreads his arms and rises and hovers in the air above their stupid faces—above that idiotic Peter Steger and his even stupider wife and his relatives and children and grandparents, each one stupider than the next, above the Melkers and the Henrichs and the Holtzes and the Tamms and all the others. How they will goggle when he doesn’t fall but rises and keeps rising, how their mouths will hang open. For a brief time he sees them shrinking, then they are dots, and then the village itself is a spot in the middle of the dark green forest, and when he lifts his head he will see the white velvet of the clouds and their inhabitants, some with wings, some made of white fire, some with two or three heads, and there he is, the Prince of the Air, the King of the Spirits and Flames. Have mercy, my great devil, take me into your realm, set me free, and now Claus hears him reply: See my land. See how vast it is, and see how far below. Fly with me.
Claus laughs out loud. For a moment he sees mice swarming around his feet, some with the tails of snakes, others with the feelers of caterpillars, and it seems to him as if he felt their bites, but the pain is prickly and almost pleasant, and then he sees himself flying again, so light am I when my Lord permits it. All you have to do is remember the words. None may be wrong, none missing, or else the Key of Solomon will not unlock, or else it is in vain. If you find the words, however, everything will fall away from you, the heavy chains, the distress, the miller’s existence of cold and hunger.
“That’s due to the wine,” says Master Tilman.
“I won’t be imprisoned for long,” the man says without looking at him. “Tesimond will be sorry.”
“He said he’ll forgive me,” says Master Tilman. “He said he won’t curse me.”
“Don’t talk to me!”
“Say whether you heard it,” says Master Tilman. “Or I’ll hurt you. Did he say it?”
Both of them look at the miller. He has closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, and he won’t stop giggling.
“Yes,” says the man. “He said it.”
IV
Nele noticed at the very outset that he was not good. But only now, hearing Gottfried perform the song about the devilish miller in front of the crowd in the market town, does it become clear to her that they have stumbled on the worst balladeer of all.
He sings much too high, and sometimes he clears his throat in the middle of a line. When he speaks, his voice still sounds all right, yet when he sings, it cracks and squeaks. The voice by itself would not be bad if he could only carry a tune. Just as the poor singing would not be so bad if he could at least play the lute—Gottfried incessantly plays the wrong notes, and sometimes he forgets how the rest of the s
ong goes. But even this would not be so unbearable if only his verses were better. They tell of the wicked miller and the village he had under his thumb, of his witcheries and tricks, yet although they are as rich in grisly stories and bloody details as people expect, they are jumbled and hard to understand, and the rhymes are so awkward that it must bother even a child.
Still, the people listen. Balladeers don’t come often, and people want to hear ballads about witch trials even when they’re terrible. But after four verses Nele can see that their expressions are changing, and by the time he has arrived at the twelfth and last, many have left. Now there’s an urgent need for something that will go over better. This much he must know, thinks Nele, this much he must be able to sense!
Gottfried starts the song from the beginning.
He notices the restlessness in the people’s faces, and in his desperation he sings louder, which makes his voice even shriller. Nele looks over at Tyll. He rolls his eyes. Then he spreads his arms in a resigned gesture. Light-footedly he leaps beside the singer and begins to dance on the wagon.
The improvement is immediate. Gottfried is singing as badly as before, but suddenly it no longer matters. Tyll is dancing as if he had been trained, he is dancing as if his body had no weight and as if there were no greater pleasure. He leaps and spins and leaps again as if he hadn’t just lost everything, and it’s so infectious that a few members of the audience and then another few and then more and more begin to dance too. Now coins are flying over. Nele gathers them up.
Gottfried sees it too, and in his relief he now manages better to keep the rhythm; Tyll is dancing with such abandon and such light determination that watching him Nele could almost forget that the song is about his father. Miller is rhymed with dealer, devil with shovel, fire with fear, and night with night, for this word is constantly repeated: dark night, black night, Witches’ Night. From the fifth verse on it’s about the trial: the stern and virtuous judges, God’s mercy, the punishment that in the end befalls every evildoer, despite all Satan’s maneuvers, under the eyes of his accusers, and the gallows on which the wicked miller must breathe his last, while the devil stands aghast. Tyll doesn’t stop dancing during all this, for they need the coins, they have to eat.
It still seems like a dream to her. That this village is not her village, that people live here whose faces she doesn’t know, and there are houses in which she has never been. Who could have foreseen that she would ever leave her home? It was not in store for her, and she half expects that in a moment she will wake up at home, next to the large oven, from which the bread’s warmth wafts. Girls don’t go to other places. They stay where they were born. So it has always been: you’re little, you help in the house; you get bigger, you help the female hands; you grow up and marry a Steger son, if you’re pretty, or else a relative of the smith or, if things go badly, a Heinerling. Then you have a child and another child and more children, most of whom die, and you continue to help the hands and in church sit somewhat farther toward the front, next to your husband and behind your mother-in-law, and then, when you’re forty and your bones ache and your teeth are gone, you sit in your mother-in-law’s old seat.
Because she didn’t want that, she went with Tyll.
How many days ago was it now? She couldn’t say; in the forest time is muddled. But she remembers well how Tyll stood before her, the evening after the trial, thin and somewhat lopsided, in the billowing grain of the Steger meadow.
“What’s going to happen to you now?” she asked.
“My mother says I have to become a day laborer. She says it will be hard because I’m too small and weak to be a good worker.”
“And that’s what you’ll do?”
“No, I’m going.”
“Where?”
“Far away.”
“When?”
“Now. One of the Jesuits, the younger one, was staring at me so.”
“But you can’t just go away!”
“Yes, I can.”
“And if they catch you? You’re alone, and they are many.”
“But I have two feet, and a judge with a robe or a guard with halberds, they also have only two. Each of them has the same number of feet as I do. No one has more. They can’t run faster together than we can.”
Suddenly she felt a wondrous excitement, and her throat seemed constricted, and her heart pounded. “Why do you say we?”
“Because you’re coming with me.”
“With you?”
“That’s why I was waiting.”
She knew that she must not think, or else she would lose her courage, or else she would stay here, as was in store for her; but he was right, you really could leave. The place where everyone thought you had to stay—in actuality nothing was keeping you there.
“Now go home,” he said, “and fetch as much bread as you can carry.”
“No!”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“Yes, I am coming with you, but I’m not going home first.”
“But the bread!”
“If I see my father and Mama and the oven and my sister, then I won’t leave anymore, then I’ll stay!”
“We need bread.”
She shook her head. And it’s true, she thinks now, while she collects coins on the market square of a strange village—if she had gone to the bakery again, she would have stayed and soon would have married the Steger son, the middle one, whose two front teeth are missing. There are only a few moments when two things are possible, one path as much as another. Only a few moments when you can decide.
“Without bread we can’t go,” he said. “We should also wait until morning. The forest at night, you don’t know what it’s like. You’ve never experienced it.”
“Are you afraid of the Cold Woman?”
Now she knew that she had won.
“I’m not afraid,” he said.
“Well, then let’s go!”
She will never forget that night for the rest of her life, never forget the giggling will-o’-the-wisps, the voices out of the blackness, never forget the animal noises or the sparkling face that appeared in front of her for a moment, only to vanish again before she was even certain that she had seen it at all. For the rest of her life she will think of the fear, her heart in her mouth, the blood pounding in her ears, and the whimpering murmur of the boy in front of her, who was talking either to himself or to the beings of the forest. When morning came, they found themselves trembling with cold at the edge of a loamy clearing. The dew was dripping from the trees. They were hungry.
“You really should have fetched bread.”
“I could bash you in the face.”
As they walked onward, in the clammy morning air, Tyll wept a little, and Nele felt like sobbing too. Her legs were heavy, the hunger was hardly bearable, and Tyll was right, without bread they would surely die. Yes, there were berries and roots, and even the grass should be edible, but that was not enough, it didn’t fill your stomach. In the summer it might do, but not in this cold.
And now they heard behind them the rumble and squeal of a carriage. They hid in the bushes until they saw that it was only the balladeer’s wagon. Tyll jumped out and stood in the middle of the road.
“Oh,” said the singer. “The miller’s son!”
“Take us with you?”
“Why?”
“Because we’ll die if you don’t, for one thing. But also because we’ll help you. Don’t you want company?”
“They’re probably already searching for you,” said the singer.
“Yet another reason. Or do you maybe want me to get caught?”
“Climb on.”
Gottfried explained the essentials to them: If you ride with a balladeer, you belong to the traveling people. No guild protects you, no authoriti
es. If you’re in a city and there’s a fire, you have to slip away, for people will think you started it. If you’re in a village and something is stolen, slip away then too. If you’re ambushed by robbers, give them everything. Most of the time, however, they don’t take anything but demand a song—then sing for them, as well as you can, for robbers often dance better than the dullards in the villages. Always keep your ears open, so that you know where it’s market day, for when it’s not market day they won’t let you into the villages. At a market people come together, they want to dance, they want to hear songs, they part with their money easily.
“Is my father dead?”
“Yes, he is dead.”
“Did you see?”
“Of course I saw it, that’s why I was there. First he forgave the judges, as is proper, then the hangman, then he climbed onto the ladder, then the noose was put around his neck, and then he began to murmur, but I was standing too far back, I couldn’t understand him.”
“And then?”
“It went the way it goes.”
“So he is dead?”
“My boy, when someone is hanging from the gallows, what else is supposed to happen? Of course he’s dead! What do you think?”
“Did it go quickly?”
Gottfried was silent for a while before he answered: “Yes, very quickly.”
For some time they rode without speaking. The trees were no longer so dense; rays of light fell through the canopy of leaves. A fine haze rose from the grass of the clearings. The air was filled with insects and birds.
“How do you become a singer?” Nele finally asked.
“You train. I had a master. He taught me everything. You’ve heard of him, it’s Gerhard Vogtland.”
“No.”
“The one from Trier!”
The boy shrugged.
“The Great Litany of the Campaign of Duke Ernest Against the Treacherous Sultan.”
“What?”
“That’s his most famous song: The Great Litany of the Campaign of Duke Ernest Against the Treacherous Sultan. You really don’t know it? Shall I sing it?”