Tyll Read online

  The coaches had stopped.

  “Are you unwell?” asked Olearius. “You’re pale.”

  “I’m doing splendidly,” Kircher said in annoyance.

  He flung open the door and climbed out. The sweat of the horses was steaming. The meadow too was damp. He squinted and propped himself up against the coach. He was dizzy.

  “Eminent men,” said a voice. “Visiting us!”

  Over by the tents there were people, and somewhat closer the old woman sat in front of the washtub, but right next to them there was only a donkey. The animal looked up, lowered its head again, and plucked blades of grass.

  “Did you hear that too?” asked Fleming.

  Olearius, who had climbed out behind him, nodded.

  “It’s me,” said the donkey.

  “There’s an explanation for this,” said Kircher.

  “And what is it?” asked the donkey.

  “Ventriloquism,” said Kircher.

  “Right,” said the donkey. “I am Origenes.”

  “Where is the ventriloquist hiding?” asked Olearius.

  “He’s asleep,” said the donkey.

  Behind them Fleming and the secretary had climbed out. The other secretaries followed.

  “That’s really not bad,” said Fleming.

  “He rarely sleeps,” said the donkey. “But now he is dreaming of you.” Its voice sounded deep and strange, as if it were not issuing from a human throat. “Do you want to see the show? The next one is the day after tomorrow. We have a fire eater and a hand walker and a coin swallower, that’s me. Give me coins, I’ll swallow them. Do you want to see? I’ll swallow them all. We have a dancer and a woman to play the female roles and we have a maiden who is buried and remains underground for an hour, and when she is dug up, she is fresh and not suffocated. And we have a dancer, did I say that already? The player and the dancer and the maiden are the same person. And we have a peerless tightrope walker, he is our director. But he is asleep at the moment. We also have a freak—when you look at him, your mind will reel. You can hardly tell where his head is, and not even he himself can find his arms.”

  “And you have a ventriloquist,” said Olearius.

  “You are a very shrewd man,” said the donkey.

  “Do you have musicians?” asked Kircher, who was aware that it could damage his reputation to talk to a donkey before witnesses.

  “Certainly,” said the donkey. “Half a dozen. The director and the woman dance, it is the climax, the peak of our performance, how would that be possible without musicians?”

  “That’s enough,” said Kircher. “The ventriloquist shall now show himself!”

  “I’m here,” said the donkey.

  Kircher closed his eyes, exhaled deeply, inhaled. A mistake, he thought, the whole journey, this visit here, all a mistake. He thought of the peace in his study, of his stone desk, of the books on the shelves, he thought of the peeled apple that his assistant brought him every afternoon when the clock struck three, of the red wine in his favorite Venetian crystal glass. He rubbed his eyes and turned away.

  “Do you need a barber surgeon?” asked the donkey. “We also sell medicine. Just say the word.”

  It’s just a donkey, thought Kircher. But his fists clenched with rage. Now one was being mocked by even the German animals! “Handle this,” he said to Olearius. “Talk to these people.”

  Olearius looked at him in astonishment.

  Kircher was already stepping over a heap of donkey manure to climb back into the coach, without paying further attention to him. He closed the door and drew the curtains. He heard Olearius and Fleming outside talking to the donkey—undoubtedly they were now laughing at him, all of them, but it didn’t interest him. He didn’t even want to know. To quiet his mind, he tried to think in Egyptian signs.

  * * *

  —

  The old woman at the washtub faced Olearius and Fleming as they approached her. Then she stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle. Immediately three men and a woman emerged from one of the tents. The men were unusually stocky. The woman had brown hair, and she was no longer young, but her eyes were bright and piercing.

  “Distinguished visitors,” said the woman. “We don’t often have such an honor. Do you want to see our show?”

  Olearius tried to answer, yet his voice didn’t obey him.

  “My brother is the best tightrope walker, he was court jester for the Winter King. Do you want to see him?”

  Olearius’s voice still failed.

  “Can’t you talk?”

  Olearius cleared his throat. He knew that he was making a fool of himself, but it was no use, he couldn’t speak.

  “Certainly we want to see something,” said Fleming.

  “These are our acrobats,” said the woman. “Tumblers, show our well-born guests something!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation one of the three men fell forward and stood on his hands. The second climbed up him with inhuman speed and did a handstand on the first one’s feet, and now the third man scaled the two of them, only he remained standing upright on the feet of the second, his arms stretched high in the sky, and now, before you knew it, the woman clambered up, and the third man pulled her to him and lifted her over his head. Olearius stared upward, she was hovering over him, in the air.

  “Do you want to see more?” she called down.

  “We would like to,” said Fleming, “but that’s not why we’re here. We need musicians, we’ll pay well.”

  “Your distinguished companion is mute?”

  “No,” said Olearius, “not no. Not mute, I mean.”

  She laughed. “I’m Nele!”

  “I am Magister Fleming.”

  “Olearius,” said Olearius. “Court mathematicus in Gottorf.”

  “Are you coming back down?” called Fleming. “It’s hard to talk like this!”

  As if on command, the human tower crumbled. The man in the middle leaped, the man on top rolled forward, the man on the bottom did a somersault, the woman seemed to fall, but somehow the jumble sorted itself out in midair, and they all landed on their feet and stood upright. Fleming clapped his hands. Olearius stood rigid.

  “Don’t clap,” said Nele, “that wasn’t an act. If it had been an act, you’d have to pay.”

  “We would like to pay too,” said Olearius. “For your musicians.”

  “Then you have to ask them yourselves. All who are with us are free. If they want to go with you, then they shall go. If they want to continue with us, then they will continue with us. You are in Ulenspiegel’s circus only if you want to be in Ulenspiegel’s circus, because there is no better circus. Even the freak is here of his own free will, elsewhere he wouldn’t have it so good.”

  “Tyll Ulenspiegel is here?” asked Fleming.

  “People come from all over for him,” said one of the acrobats. “I wouldn’t want to leave. But ask the musicians.”

  “We have a flutist and a trumpeter and a drummer and a man who plays two fiddles at the same time. Ask them, and if they want to go, we shall part as friends and find other musicians, that won’t be hard, everyone wants to join Ulenspiegel’s circus.”

  “Tyll Ulenspiegel?” Fleming asked again.

  “None other.”

  “And you are his sister?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said, sir. He is indeed my brother, but I am not his sister.”

  “How is that possible?” asked Olearius.

  “Amazing, isn’t it, sir?”

  She looked him in the face, her eyes flashing, the wind playing in her hair. Olearius’s throat was dry, and his limbs were weak, as if he had caught an illness along the way.

  “You don’t understand it, do you?” She pushed one of th
e acrobats in the chest and said: “Will you fetch the musicians?”

  He nodded, flung himself forward, and walked away on his hands.

  “One question.” Fleming pointed at the donkey, which was calmly plucking grass and now and then raising its head and looking at them with dull animal eyes. “Who taught the donkey to—”

  “Ventriloquism.”

  “But where is the ventriloquist hiding?”

  “Ask the donkey,” said the old woman.

  “Who are you, then?” asked Fleming. “Are you her mother?”

  “God forbid,” said the old woman. “I am just the old woman. I’m no one’s mother, no one’s daughter.”

  “Well, you must be someone’s daughter.”

  “And if grass has already grown over all the people whose daughter I was? I am Else Kornfass from Stangenriet. I was sitting outside my house and digging my little garden without a thought in my head, when Ulenspiegel and she, Nele, and Origenes came with the cart, and I called, Good day, Tyll, because I recognized him, everyone recognizes him, and suddenly he pulls on the reins so that the wagon stops and says: The day doesn’t need your praise, just come. I didn’t know what he meant, and I told him: Don’t play jokes on old women, first of all they are poor and weak, and secondly they can cast a spell on you so you fall ill, but he says: You don’t belong here. You are one of us. And me: I might have been once, but now I am old! To which he replies: We are all old. And me: If I drop dead along the way, what will you do? His reply: Then we’ll leave you behind, for someone who is dead is no longer my friend. To which I didn’t know what else to say, sir, and that’s why I’m here.”

  “Eats us out of house and home,” said Nele. “Doesn’t work much, sleeps a lot, always has an opinion.”

  “All true,” said the old woman.

  “But she can memorize something,” said Nele. “She delivers the longest ballads, never forgets a line.”

  “German ballads?” asked Fleming.

  “Certainly,” said the old woman. “Never learned Spanish.”

  “Let’s hear,” said Fleming.

  “If you pay, I’ll let you hear.”

  Fleming rummaged in his pocket. Olearius looked up at the rope. For a moment he thought he saw someone up there, but it was swaying empty in the wind. The acrobat came back, followed by three men with instruments.

  “It will cost you,” said the first man.

  “We’ll come with you,” said the second, “but we want money.”

  “Money and gold,” said the first.

  “And a lot of it,” said the third. “Do you want to hear something?”

  And without Olearius giving them a command, they struck a pose and began to play. One of them strummed the lute, another puffed his cheeks on the bagpipes, the third whirled two drumsticks, and Nele threw her hair back and began to dance, while the old woman recited a ballad to the rhythm of the music: She didn’t sing, she spoke in a monotone, and her rhythm submitted to that of the melody. It was about two lovers who could not reach each other because a sea separated them, and Fleming squatted down in the grass next to the old woman, lest he miss even a single word.

  * * *

  —

  In the coach Kircher held his head and wondered when this horrible noise would finally stop. He had written the most important book on music, but for that very reason his ear was too refined to take pleasure in such popular blaring. All at once the coach seemed to him cramped, the bench hard, and this vulgar music bore witness to a cheerfulness that the whole world shared except him.

  He sighed. The sunlight cast thin, cold flames through the gaps in the curtains. For a moment what he saw seemed to him a spawn of his headache and his sore eyes. Only then did he realize that he was not mistaken: someone was sitting opposite him.

  Had the time finally come? He had always known that one day Satan himself would appear to him, but strangely the signs were missing. It didn’t smell of sulfur, the fellow had two human feet, and the cross Kircher wore around his neck had not grown warm. Even if Kircher didn’t understand how he had been able to slip in so soundlessly, it was a man sitting there. He was incredibly gaunt, and his eyes were set deep in their sockets. He wore a jerkin with a fur collar, and he was resting his feet in pointed shoes on the bench, which was a boorish impertinence.

  The man leaned forward, put one hand on his shoulder in an almost tender gesture, and bolted the door with the other.

  “I’d like to ask you something,” he said.

  “I don’t have any money,” said Kircher. “Not here in the coach. One of the secretaries outside has it.”

  “It’s wonderful that you’re here. I’ve waited for so long, I thought the opportunity would never come, but you must know: every opportunity comes, that’s the wonderful thing, every opportunity comes eventually, and I thought, when I saw you, now I’ll finally find out. They say that you can heal people, I can too, did you know that? The house of the dying in Mainz. Full of plague victims, there was coughing, groaning, wailing, and I said: I have a powder, I’ll sell it to you, it will cure you, and the poor swine cried full of hope: Give it to us, give us the powder! I have to make it first, I said, and they cried: Make the powder, make it, make your powder! And I said: It’s not so easy, I’m missing an ingredient, someone has to die for it. Now it was silent. Now they were astonished. Now no one said anything for the time being. And I exclaimed: I have to kill someone, I’m sorry, you can’t make something out of nothing! For I am an alchemist too, you know. Just like you, I know the secret powers, and the healing spirits obey me too.”

  He laughed. Kircher stared at him. Then he reached for the door.

  “Don’t do it,” the man said in a voice that made Kircher withdraw his hand. “So I said: Someone has to die, and I will not determine who it shall be, you have to sort it out among yourselves. And they said: How are we supposed to do that? And I said: If it were the sickest, that would be the least regrettable, so see who can still run, take your crutches, start running, and whoever is the last one in the house, I’ll disembowel. And before you could blink, the house was empty. Three corpses were still inside. No living people. You see, I said, you can walk, you aren’t dying, I cured you. Don’t you recognize me, Athanasius?”

  Kircher stared at him.

  “A long time ago,” said the man. “Many years, a lot of wind in one’s face, a lot of frost, one is burned by the sun, the hunger burns too, in the meantime one looks different. Except here you are, looking exactly the same with your red cheeks.”

  “I know who you are,” said Kircher.

  From outside the music blared. Kircher wondered whether he should cry for help, but the door was bolted. Even if they heard him, which was unlikely, they would have to break open the door, and one didn’t want to imagine what the fellow could do to him in that time.

  “What the book said. He would have so liked to know. He would have given his life for it. And he did. And yet he never found out. But now I could get the answer. I always thought, perhaps I will see the young doctor again, perhaps I will find out, and here you are. Well? What did the Latin book say?”

  Kircher began to pray soundlessly.

  “It had no binding, but it had pictures. One was of a cricket, another of an animal that doesn’t exist, with two heads and wings, or perhaps it does exist, what do I know. One was of a man in a church, but it had no roof, there were columns above it, I remember that, above the columns were other columns. Claus showed it to me and said: Look, this is the world. I didn’t understand, I don’t think he did either. But if he couldn’t know it, I at least want to know it, and you looked at his things, and you understand Latin too, so tell me—what sort of book was that, who wrote it, what is it called?”

  Kircher’s hands trembled. The boy from back then was vividly preserved in his memory, as vividly as the miller, whose final croaks on th
e gallows he would never forget, as vividly as the confession of the miller’s weeping wife, but in his life he had held so many books in his hands, leafed through so many pages, and seen so much in print that he could no longer keep it all apart. The man must have been referring to a book that the miller had possessed. But it was no use, his memory failed him.

  “Do you remember the interrogation?” the thin man asked gently. “The older man, the Father, he kept saying: Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you if you tell the truth.”

  “Well, you did so.”

  “And he didn’t hurt me either, but he would have if I hadn’t run away.”

  “Yes,” said Kircher, “you made the right choice.”

  “I never found out what became of my mother. A few people saw her departing, but no one saw her arrive anywhere else.”

  “We saved you,” said Kircher. “The devil would have seized you too, one cannot live near him and remain unscathed. When you spoke against your father, he lost his power over you. Your father confessed and repented. God is merciful.”

  “I just want to know. The book. You have to tell me. And don’t lie, for I’ll be able to tell. That’s what he kept saying, your old Father: Don’t lie, for I’ll be able to tell. Meanwhile, you were constantly lying to him, and he couldn’t tell.”

  The man leaned forward. His nose was now only a hand’s breadth from Kircher’s face; he seemed to be not so much looking at him as smelling him. His eyes were half closed, and Kircher thought he heard him inhaling with a sniff.