Tyll Page 26

“I don’t remember,” said Kircher.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I have forgotten it.”

  “But if I still don’t believe it?”

  Kircher cleared his throat. “Sator,” he said softly. Then he fell silent. His eyes closed, but they twitched under the lids as if he were looking this way and that. Then he opened them again. A tear ran down his cheek. “You’re right,” he said tonelessly. “I lie a great deal. I lied to Dr. Tesimond, but that’s nothing. I have also lied to His Holiness. And His Majesty the Kaiser. I lie in my books. I lie all the time.”

  The professor kept speaking, his voice cracking, but Tyll could not understand him. A strange torpor had come over him. He wiped his forehead, cold sweat ran down his face. The bench in front of him was empty, he was alone in the coach, the door was open. Yawning, he climbed out.

  Outside there was thick fog. Billows rolled past, the air was saturated with white. The musicians had stopped playing, shadowy figures loomed—it was the professor’s companions, and that silhouette there must have been Nele. Somewhere a horse whinnied.

  Tyll sat down on the ground. The fog was already thinning, a few rays of sun broke through. The coaches and a few tents and the contours of the spectator benches could now be made out. A moment later it was broad daylight. Moisture steamed from the grass, the fog was gone.

  The secretaries looked at each other in confusion. One of the two coach horses was no longer there; the drawbar jutted into the air. While everyone was wondering where the fog had suddenly come from, while the acrobats did cartwheels because they couldn’t go long without doing them, while the donkey plucked blades of grass, while the old woman resumed reciting to Fleming, and while Olearius and Nele talked to each other, Tyll sat there motionless, with his eyes narrowed and his nose raised into the wind. And he did not stand up even when one of the secretaries approached and told Olearius that His Excellency Professor Kircher had apparently ridden away without farewell. He had not even left a message.

  “We won’t find the dragon without him,” said Olearius.

  “Shall we wait?” asked the secretary. “Perhaps he will come back.”

  Olearius cast a glance at Nele. “That would probably be best.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Nele, who had walked over to Tyll.

  He looked up. “I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  “Juggle for us. Then it will be better.”

  Tyll stood up. He groped for the pouch that hung at his side and took out first a yellow leather ball and then a red one and then a blue one and then a green one. Carelessly he began to throw them into the air, and he took out even more balls, another and another and another, until there seemed to be dozens of them leaping over his spread hands. Everyone was watching the rising, falling, rising balls, and even the secretaries couldn’t help smiling.

  * * *

  —

  It was early in the morning. Nele had been waiting for quite a while outside the tent. She had been thinking, had been walking up and down, had prayed, torn out grass, wept silently, wrung her hands, and, at length, had pulled herself together.

  Now she slipped into the tent. Tyll was asleep, yet as soon as she touched his shoulder, he was wide awake.

  She told him that she had spent the night with Olearius, the courtier from Gottorf, out in the field.

  “So what?”

  “This time it’s different.”

  “Didn’t he give you anything nice?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well, then it’s the same as always.”

  “He would like me to come with him.”

  Tyll raised his eyebrows in feigned astonishment.

  “He wants to marry me.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Marry?”

  “Yes.”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “Why?”

  “He means it. He lives in a castle. It’s not a beautiful castle, he says, and in the winter it’s cold, but he has enough to eat and a duke who provides for him, and for this he doesn’t have to do anything but teach the duke’s children and sometimes calculate something and keep an eye on the books.”

  “Will they run away otherwise, the books?”

  “As I said, he has it good.”

  Tyll rolled off his straw sack, got to his feet, stood up. “Then you have to go with him.”

  “I don’t like him very much, but he is a good person. And very lonely. His wife died, when he was in Russia. I don’t know where Russia is.”

  “Near England.”

  “Now we never did make it to England.”

  “In England it’s the same as here.”

  “And when he came back from Russia, she was dead, and they didn’t have children, and ever since he has been sad. He is still fairly healthy, I could tell, and I think he can be trusted. Someone like this won’t come to me again.”

  Tyll sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. Outside the old woman could be heard reciting a ballad. Evidently, Fleming was still sitting with her and having her perform again and again so that he could commit it to memory.

  “Someone like this is certainly better than a Steger,” she said.

  “Probably he won’t even hit you.”

  “It’s possible,” Nele said thoughtfully. “And if he does, I’ll hit back. That will take him by surprise.”

  “You can even still have children.”

  “I don’t like children. And he is already old. But he will be grateful, with children or without.”

  She was silent. The wind rustled the tent, and the old woman started from the beginning.

  “I don’t actually want to.”

  “But you have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we are no longer young, sister. And we’re not getting any younger. Not by one day. No one who is old and homeless has it good. He lives in a castle.”

  “But we belong together.”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps he’ll take you along too.”

  “That won’t work. I can’t stay in a castle. I wouldn’t be able to stand it. And even if I could stand it, they wouldn’t want to have me there for long. Either they will chase me away, or I’ll burn the castle down. One or the other. But it would be your castle, so I must not burn it down, so nothing will come of it.”

  For a while they were quiet.

  “Yes, nothing will come of it,” she then said.

  “Why does he want you anyway?” asked Tyll. “You’re not even especially beautiful.”

  “In a moment I’m going to smack you in the mouth.”

  He laughed.

  “I think he loves me.”

  “What?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Loves you.”

  “These things happen.”

  Outside the donkey made a donkey sound, and the old woman began another ballad.

  “If it hadn’t been for the marauders,” said Nele. “That time in the forest.”

  “Don’t talk about it.”

  She went silent.

  “People like him don’t usually take people like you,” he said. “He must be a good man. And even if he’s not a good man—he has a roof overhead and coins in his pouch. Tell him that you’ll come with him, and tell him before he changes his mind.”

  Nele began to weep. Tyll took his hand off her shoulder and looked at her. Shortly thereafter, she calmed down.

  “Will you come visit me?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look, how is that supposed to work? He won’t want to be reminded of where he found you.
In the castle no one will know, and you yourself won’t want people to know. The years will pass, sister, soon all this will be a distant memory, only your children will be amazed that you can dance and sing so well and catch anything they throw.”

  She gave him a kiss on the forehead. Hesitantly she slipped out of the tent, stood up and went over to the coaches to inform the court mathematician that she would accept his offer and move with him to Gottorf.

  When she came back, she found Tyll’s tent empty. With lightning speed he had set off and had taken nothing with him but the juggling balls, a long rope, and the donkey. Only Magister Fleming, who had encountered him out in the meadow, had spoken with him. But what Tyll had said he would not reveal.

  * * *

  —

  The circus scattered in all directions. The musicians headed south with the acrobats, the fire eater went west with the old woman, the others turned northeast, in the hope of getting far away from war and hunger. The freak was admitted to the Elector of Bavaria’s cabinet of curiosities. Three months later, the secretaries reached the city of Rome, where Athanasius Kircher was impatiently waiting for them. He never again left the city, carried out thousands of experiments, and wrote dozens of books, until he died in high esteem forty years later.

  Nele Olearius survived Kircher by three years. She had children and buried her husband, whom she had never loved but always appreciated, because he had treated her well and expected nothing more from her than some kindness. Before her eyes Gottorf Castle blossomed into new splendor, she saw her grandchildren grow up and rocked even her first great-grandson on her lap. No one had an inkling that she had once roamed the land with Tyll Ulenspiegel, but just as he had predicted, her grandchildren were amazed that even in her old age she could still catch anything you threw to her. She was well liked and respected; no one would have suspected that she had ever been anything but an honorable woman. Nor did she tell anyone that she still had the hope that the boy with whom she had once set off from her parents’ village might come back and take her with him.

  Only when death was clutching at her, only in the confusion of the final days, did it seem to her as if she could see him. Thin and smiling, he stood by the window; thin and smiling, he came into her room; and smiling, she sat up and said: “It took you a while!”

  And the Duke of Gottorf, a son of the duke who had formerly employed her husband, having come to her deathbed to say goodbye to the oldest member of his household, understood that now was not the moment to correct errors, took the stiff little hand that she held out to him, and gave the reply that his instinct provided him: “Yes, but now I am here.”

  * * *

  —

  That same year, on the Holstein plain, the last dragon of the north died. He was seventeen thousand years old, and he was tired of hiding.

  Thus he buried his head in the heather, lay his body, which had adapted so completely to its background that even eagles could not have made it out, flat in the softness of the grass, sighed, and briefly regretted that it was now over with scent and flowers and wind and that he would no longer see the clouds in a storm, the rising sun, or the curve of the earth’s shadow on the copper-blue moon, which had always especially delighted him.

  He closed his four eyes and still growled softly when he felt a sparrow alight on his nose. All was fine with him, for he had seen so much, but still he didn’t know what would happen to someone like him after death. With a sigh, he fell asleep. His life had lasted long. Now it was time to transform.

  In the Shaft

  “God Almighty, Lord Jesus Christ, help us,” Matthias said just a short while ago, and Korff replied: “But God is not here!” and Iron Kurt said: “God is everywhere, you swine,” and Matthias said: “Not down here,” and then everyone laughed, yet then there was a bang and a blast so sharp and hot that it flung them to the floor. Tyll fell on Korff, Matthias on Iron Kurt, and then it was pitch-black. For a while no one moved, they all held their breath, each man wondered whether he was dead, and only gradually did they all grasp, because you simply never grasp such a thing immediately, that the shaft had caved in. Now they know that they must not make a sound, for what if the Swedes have broken through, if they are standing over them in the darkness, knives drawn—then not the slightest peep, not a breath, not a sniffle or groan or cough.

  It is dark. But dark in a different way than up above. For when it’s dark, you usually still see something. You don’t quite know what you’re seeing, but there’s not nothing; you move your head, the darkness is not the same everywhere, and once you have grown accustomed to it, outlines emerge. But not here. The darkness remains. Time passes, and when more time has passed and they can no longer hold their breath, and cautiously begin to breathe again, it is still as dark as if God had extinguished all the light in the world.

  Finally, because apparently no Swedes with knives are standing over them, Korff says: “Men, report!”

  And Matthias: “Since when are you the boss, you drunkard?”

  Korff: “Since yesterday, you dirtbag, when the lieutenant kicked the bucket. Now I have seniority.”

  Matthias: “Up there maybe, but not down here.”

  Korff: “Report, right now, or I’ll kill you. I have to know who’s still alive.”

  And Tyll: “I think I’m still alive.”

  The truth is that he’s not sure. When you’re lying flat and everything is black, how can you tell? But now that he has heard his voice, he realizes that it’s so.

  “Then get off me,” says Korff. “You’re lying on me, you bag of bones!”

  When he’s right, he’s right, thinks Tyll, it is really not so good to be lying here on Korff. So he rolls to the side.

  “Report, Matthias,” says Korff.

  “Fine, I report.”

  “Kurt?”

  They wait, but Iron Kurt, as they all call him because of his iron right hand, or perhaps it was the left, no one quite remembers and it’s too dark to check, doesn’t report.

  “Kurt?”

  It’s quiet, not even any explosions are to be heard anymore. A moment ago they could still be heard, distant peals of thunder from above, which made the stones tremble; it was the Swedes under Torstensson trying to blow up the bastions. But now there’s only breathing, Tyll’s and Korff’s and Matthias’s, but Kurt cannot be heard.

  “Are you dead?” cries Korff. “Kurt, did you bite the dust?”

  But Kurt still says nothing, which is not like him at all; ordinarily you can hardly shut him up. Tyll hears Matthias groping. He must be feeling for Kurt’s neck, to see whether his heart is beating, then for his hand—first the iron one, then the real one. Tyll has to cough. It’s dusty, and stifling, the air feels like thick butter.

  “Yes, he is dead,” Matthias finally says.

  “Are you sure?” Korff asks. They can tell by his voice how it irks him—he only just got seniority yesterday, when the lieutenant was killed, and already he’s down to two subordinates.

  “He isn’t breathing,” says Matthias, “and his heart isn’t beating, and he won’t talk either, and here, you can feel it, half of his head is gone.”

  “Shit,” says Korff.

  “Yes,” says Matthias, “shit. Although, look, I didn’t like him. Yesterday he took my knife, and when I said to give it back, he said: I’ll give it back all right, between your ribs. He had it coming.”

  “Yes, he had it coming,” says Korff. “God have mercy on his soul.”

  “It won’t get out of here,” says Tyll. “How’s a soul supposed to find its way out?”

  For a while there’s an uneasy silence, because they are all thinking about the possibility that Kurt’s soul might still be here, cold and slippery and most likely angry. Then they hear a scraping, a pushing, a grinding.

  “What are you doing there?” asks Korff.

  “I’m
looking for my knife,” says Matthias. “I’m not leaving it to that dirty pig.”

  Tyll has to cough again. Then he asks: “What happened? I’m fairly new to this, why is it dark?”

  “Because no sun is getting through,” says Korff. “There’s too much earth between it and ourselves.”

  Serves me right, thinks Tyll, it really was not an intelligent question. And to ask a better one, he says: “Are we going to die?”

  “Absolutely,” says Korff. “Us and everybody else.”

  He’s right again, thinks Tyll, although, who knows, I, for one, have never died yet. Then, for the dark can be very confusing, he tries to remember how he ended up in the shaft.

  First of all, because he came to Brno. He could have gone elsewhere, but in hindsight you always know better, and he came to Brno because they said the city was rich and safe. And no one suspected, after all, that Torstensson would march here with half the Swedish army. They always said he would go to Vienna, where the Kaiser is hunkering down, only you just don’t know what goes on in men’s heads underneath their big hats.

  And then there was the town commandant, with his bushy eyebrows, his little pointed beard, his greasy cheeks, and that haughtiness in his every splayed finger. On the main square he watched Tyll, apparently with difficulty, because his eyelids drooped so nobly low and because someone like him undoubtedly thought he deserved more to look at than a fool in a pied jerkin.

  “Can’t you show us something better?” he grumbled.

  As it happens, Tyll rarely loses his temper, but when he does, then he is better at insulting than anyone, then he says something that someone like that will never forget. What was it that he said? The darkness really does muddle your memory. The stupid thing was that they were currently recruiting men for the defense of the Brno fortress.

  “Just you wait. You will do your part, you will join the soldiers! You can choose a unit for yourself. Only make sure, everyone, that he doesn’t run away!”

  Then he laughed, the town commandant, as if it had been a good joke, and to be fair, it wasn’t bad, for that’s the point of a siege, after all, that no one can run away; if you could run away from a siege, it wouldn’t be a siege.