Tyll Read online

  Again she stands up. Apparently the bleeding has abated. Heiner holds out the baby to her. She takes her and realizes at once that there’s no life left in her, so she gives her back, because she needs both hands to hold on to a tree trunk. He lays the baby on the ground, but Agneta hisses at him, and he picks her back up. For of course they can’t leave her here: moss would grow over her, plants entwine her, bugs live in her limbs. Her spirit would never rest.

  And at this moment it happens that a premonition of something wrong creeps up on Claus in the attic room of his mill. He quickly murmurs a prayer, sprinkles a pinch of crushed mandrake into the flame of his weak, smoky lamp. The bad omen is confirmed: instead of flaring up, the flame immediately goes out. A sharp stench fills the room.

  In the darkness Claus writes a square of moderate strength on the wall:

  M I L O N

  I R A G O

  L A M A L

  O G A R I

  N O L I M

  Afterward, to be safe, he says aloud seven times: Nipson anomimata mi monan ospin. He knows that this is Greek. What it means, he doesn’t know, but it reads the same way forward as backward, and sentences of this sort have special power. Then he lies back down on the hard floorboards to continue his work.

  Recently he has been observing the course of the moon every night. His sluggish progress is enough to drive him to despair. The moon always rises in a different place than it did the night before; its path never stays the same. And because apparently no one can explain this, Claus decided to clear up the matter himself.

  “When there’s something no one knows,” Wolf Hüttner once said to him, “we have to find it out!”

  Hüttner, the man who was his teacher, a chiromancer and necromancer of Konstanz, a night watchman by trade. Claus Ulenspiegel spent a winter in his employ, and not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of him with gratitude. Hüttner showed him the squares, spells, and potent herbs, and Claus hung on every word when Hüttner spoke to him of the Little People and the Big People and the Ancient Ones and the People of the Earthly Depths and the Spirits of the Air and the fact that you couldn’t trust the scholars, for they knew nothing, but they wouldn’t admit it, lest they fall out of favor with their princes, and when Claus moved on after the thaw, he had three books from Hüttner’s collection in his bag. At the time he had not yet known how to read, but a pastor in Augsburg whom he cured of rheumatism taught him, and when he moved on, he took with him three books from the pastor’s library too. All the books were heavy; a dozen of them filled the bag like lead. Soon it became clear to him that he either had to leave the books behind or else settle down somewhere, ideally in a hidden place away from the big roads, for books are expensive and not every owner had parted with his voluntarily, and by a stroke of ill fortune Hüttner himself could suddenly appear outside his door, put a curse on him, and demand back what belonged to him.

  When he had amassed so many books that he actually couldn’t remain on the move, fate took its course. A miller’s daughter caught his fancy. She was pretty, and she was funny too, and strong, and a blind man could see that she liked him. To win her wasn’t hard. He was a good dancer, and he knew the right spells and herbs to bind a heart. On the whole he knew more than anyone else in the village. She found that appealing. At first her father had doubts, but none of the other mill hands seemed capable of taking over the mill, so he gave in. And for a while all was well.

  Then he sensed her disappointment. First occasionally, then more often. And then all the time. She didn’t like his books, she didn’t like his need to solve the mysteries of the world, and besides, she wasn’t wrong, it’s a huge task, it doesn’t leave much strength for other things, especially not for the daily routine of the mill. Suddenly it seemed like a mistake to Claus too: What am I doing here, what do these clouds of flour have to do with me, or these dull farmers who always try to cheat you when they pay, or these slow-witted mill hands who never do what you instruct them to? On the other hand, he tells himself often, life simply leads you somewhere or other—if you weren’t here, you would be elsewhere, and everything would be just as strange. What really troubles him, however, is the question of whether a person will go to hell for stealing so many books.

  But you must simply snatch knowledge wherever it can be found. People are not meant to languish in ignorance. And when you have no one to talk to, it’s not easy. So much preoccupies you, but no one wants to hear it, your thoughts about what the sky is and how stones come into being, and flies, and the teeming life everywhere, and in what language the angels speak with each other, and how the Lord God created himself and still must create himself, day after day, for if he didn’t do so, everything would cease from one moment to the next—who, if not God, should prevent the world from simply not existing?

  Some books took Claus months, others years. Some he knows by heart and still doesn’t understand. And at least once a month he returns in perplexity to the thick Latin work he stole from the burning house of a priest in Trier. He wasn’t the one who started the fire, but he was nearby and smelled the smoke and seized the opportunity. Without him the book would have been reduced to ashes. He has a right to it. Yet he cannot read it.

  It’s seven hundred sixty-six pages long, closely printed, and some pages contain pictures that seem to come from bad dreams: men with bird heads, a city with battlements and tall towers on a cloud from which rain is falling in thin lines, a horse with two heads in a forest clearing, an insect with long wings, a turtle climbing heavenward on a ray of sun. The first leaf, which must have once had the book’s title on it, is missing; someone also tore out the leaf with pages twenty-three and twenty-four and the one with pages five hundred nineteen and five hundred twenty. Claus has brought the book to the priest three times and asked for help, but each time the priest sent him away brusquely and declared that only educated people were entitled to concern themselves with Latin writings. At first Claus considered saddling him with a mild curse—rheumatism or an infestation of mice or spoiled milk—but then he realized that the poor village priest who drinks too much and is constantly repeating himself in his sermons in truth hardly understands Latin himself. Thus he has nearly reconciled himself to never being able to read this one book that possibly holds the key to everything. For who could teach him Latin here, in a godforsaken mill?

  Nonetheless, in recent years he has found out a great deal. Essentially he now knows where things come from, how the world came into being, and why everything is the way it is: spirits, substances, souls, wood, water, sky, leather, grain, crickets. Hüttner would be proud of him. It won’t be long before he has filled in the final gaps. Then he himself will write a book containing all the answers, and then the scholars in their universities will marvel and feel ashamed and tear out their hair.

  But it won’t be easy. His hands are big, and the thin quill is always breaking between his fingers. He will have to practice a lot before he will be able to fill a whole book with spidery signs in ink. But it has to happen, for he cannot forever retain in his memory everything he has found out. Even now it’s too much, it’s painful to him, often he feels dizzy from all the knowledge in his head.

  Perhaps he will one day be able to teach his son something. He has noticed that the boy occasionally listens to him at meals, almost against his will and trying not to let anything show. He is thin and too weak, but he seems to be clever. Not long ago Claus caught him juggling three stones, very easily and effortlessly—sheer nonsense, but still a sign that the child is perhaps not as dull-witted as the others. Recently the boy asked him how many stars there actually are, and because only a short while ago Claus had counted, he was, not without pride, able to give him an answer. He hopes that the baby Agneta is carrying will be another boy—with some luck even one who is stronger so that he can help him better with the work, and whom he can then teach something too.

 
The floorboards are too hard. But if he were lying on a softer surface, he would fall asleep and wouldn’t be able to observe the moon. Painstakingly Claus made a grid out of thin threads in the slanted attic window. His fingers are thick and ponderous, and the wool spun by Agneta is recalcitrant. Yet in the end he succeeded in dividing the window into small and almost equal-sized squares.

  And so he lies and stares. Time passes. He yawns. Tears come to his eyes. You must not fall asleep, he tells himself, no matter what, you must not fall asleep!

  And finally the moon is there, silver and nearly round, with spots like those of dirty copper. It appeared in the lowest row, yet not in the first square as Claus would have expected, but in the second. But why? He squints. His eyes hurt. He fights sleep and dozes off and is awake again and dozes off again, but now he is awake and squints, and the moon is no longer in the second but in the third row from the bottom, in the second square from the left. How did that happen? Unfortunately, the squares are not equal-sized, because the wool frays, hence the knots turned out too thick—but why is the moon behaving like this? It is a wicked heavenly body, treacherous and deceitful; it’s no accident that in the cards its picture stands for decline and betrayal. To record when the moon is where, one must also know the time, but how, by all the devils, is one supposed to read the time if not from the position of the moon? It can drive you completely mad! On top of this, one of the threads has just come undone; Claus sits up and tries to tie it with intractable fingers. And no sooner has he finally succeeded than a cloud approaches. The light gleams faintly around its edges, but where exactly the moon is can no longer be said. He closes his weary eyes.

  When Claus comes to, freezing, early in the morning, he has dreamed of flour. It’s unbelievable—this keeps happening to him. He used to have dreams full of light and noise. There was music in his dreams. Sometimes ghosts spoke with him. But that was a long time ago. Now he dreams of flour.

  As he sits up in annoyance, it becomes clear to him that it wasn’t the flour dream that woke him, it was voices from outside. At this hour? Unsettled, he remembers the omen of the past night. He leans out the window and at the same moment the twilight gray of the forest opens and Agneta and Heiner hobble out.

  They really made it, against all odds. At first the farmhand carried both of them, the living woman and the dead baby; then he couldn’t go on, and Agneta walked on her own, supported by him; then the baby was too heavy for him and too dangerous too, for one who died unbaptized attracts spirits, both those from above and those from the depths, and Agneta had to carry her herself. Thus they gropingly found their way.

  Claus climbs down the ladder, stumbles over the snoring mill hands, kicks a goat aside, flings open the door, and runs out just in time to catch Agneta as she collapses. Carefully, he lays her down and gropes for her face. He feels her breath. He draws a pentagram on her forehead, with the point on top, of course, to bring about healing, and then he inhales deeply and says in a single breath: Christ was born in Bedlem, baptized in tho flem Jordan. Also tho flem astode, also astond thi blode. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. He knows only roughly what this means, but the spell is ancient and he knows none stronger to stanch bleeding.

  Now quicksilver would be good, but he has none left, so instead he makes the sign of quicksilver over her lower body—the cross with the eight that stands for Hermes, the great Mercury; the sign by itself doesn’t work as well as real quicksilver, but it’s better than nothing. Then he shouts at Heiner: “Go on, to the attic, fetch the orchis!” Heiner nods, staggers into the mill, and climbs up the ladder, gasping for breath. Only when he is up in the room, which smells of wood and old paper, and staring in confusion at the wool mesh in the window does it occur to him that he has no idea what an orchis is. And so he lies down on the floor, lays his head on the hay-stuffed pillow in which the miller has left an imprint, and falls asleep.

  Day breaks. After Claus has carried his wife into the mill, the dew rises from the meadow, the sun comes up, the morning haze gives way to the noon light. The sun reaches its zenith and begins its path downward. Next to the mill there’s now a mound of earth freshly piled up: there lies the nameless baby who was not baptized and is therefore barred from the cemetery.

  And Agneta doesn’t die. This surprises everyone. Perhaps it is due to her strength, perhaps to Claus’s spells, perhaps to the orchis, although it is not very strong, bryony or monkshood would have been better, but unfortunately he recently gave away the last of his supply to Maria Stelling, whose child was stillborn; there are rumors she helped make it happen, because she was pregnant not by her husband but by Anselm Melker, but this doesn’t interest Claus. Agneta, in any case, didn’t die, and only when she sits up and looks around wearily and calls a name at first softly, then more loudly, and finally earsplittingly, does everyone realize that in all the excitement they have forgotten the boy and the wagon with the donkey. And the expensive flour.

  But the sun will go down soon. It’s too late to head out now. And so another night begins.

  Early in the morning Claus sets off with Sepp and Heiner. They walk in silence. Claus is absorbed in his thoughts. Heiner never says a word anyway, and Sepp whistles softly to himself. Since they’re men and there are three of them, they don’t have to take a detour but can cut straight across the clearing with the old willow. The evil tree stands there black and huge, and its branches move in ways branches don’t usually move. The men make an effort not to look. When they are in the forest again, they heave a sigh.

  Claus’s thoughts keep returning to the dead baby. Even though it was a girl, the loss is painful. It is indeed a good custom, he tells himself, not to love your own children too soon. Agneta has given birth so often, but only one of the babies survived, and even he is thin and frail, and they don’t know whether he has come through the two nights in the forest.

  The love for your children—better to fight against it. You don’t get too close to a dog, after all; even if it looks friendly, it can snap at you. You always have to keep a distance between you and your children, they simply die too quickly. But with each year that passes, you get more used to such a being. You begin to trust, you allow yourself to be fond of them—and suddenly they’re gone.

  Shortly before noon they discover footprints of the Little People. Out of caution they stop, but after a thorough examination Claus determines that they are leading southward, away from here. Besides, the Little People are not yet dangerous in spring. Only in autumn do they become restless and malevolent.

  They find the place in the late afternoon. They almost would have passed it, because they veered off the path a little. The underbrush is thick; you hardly know where you’re going. But then Sepp noticed the sweetly sharp smell. They pushed branches aside, broke limbs, covered their noses with their hands. With each step the smell grew stronger. And there is the wagon, a cloud of flies swarming around it. The sacks have been torn open. The ground is white with flour. Something is lying behind the wagon. It looks like a heap of old skins. It takes them a moment to realize that it’s the remains of the donkey. Only the head is missing.

  “It was probably a wolf,” says Sepp, flailing his arms to fend off the flies.

  “That would look different,” says Claus.

  “The Cold Woman?”

  “She’s not interested in donkeys.” Claus bends down and gropes around. A smooth cut, no bite marks anywhere. No doubt, it was a knife.

  They call for the boy. They listen. They call again. Sepp looks up and goes silent. Claus and Heiner keep calling. Sepp stands as if frozen.

  Now Claus too looks up. Horror reaches for him and holds him and grips him even tighter until he thinks he might choke to death. Something is hovering above them, white from head to toe, and staring downward, and even though it’s growing dark, they can see the wide eyes, the bared teeth, the contorted face. And as they’re
gaping upward, they hear a high sound. It sounds like a sob, but it’s not one. Whatever is above them there, it’s laughing.

  “Come down,” calls Claus.

  The boy, for it’s really him, giggles and doesn’t budge. He’s completely naked, completely white. He must have rolled around in the flour.

  “Good Lord,” says Sepp. “Great merciful Lord!”

  And while Claus is looking up, he sees something else that he just a moment ago didn’t see yet, because it’s too strange. What the boy is wearing on his head up there, while he is standing giggling and naked on a rope without falling down, is no hat.

  “Blessed Virgin,” says Sepp. “Help us and don’t abandon us.”

  Even Heiner crosses himself.

  Claus draws his knife and, his hand trembling, carves a pentagram into a tree trunk: point on the right, the shape securely closed. To the right of it he engraves an alpha, to the left an omega. Then he holds his breath, counts slowly to seven, and murmurs an incantation—spirits of the upper world, spirits of the lower world, all saints, kind Virgin, stand by us in the name of the triune God. “Get him down,” he then says to Sepp. “Cut the rope!”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I say so.”

  Sepp stares and doesn’t move. Flies land on his face, but he doesn’t wave them away.

  “Then you,” Claus says to Heiner.

  Heiner opens and closes his mouth. If he didn’t find it so hard to speak, he would now say that he has only just dragged a woman through the forest and saved her; completely on his own he found the way. He would say that everything has its limits, even the tolerance of the most forbearing. But since talking is not in his nature, he crosses his arms and looks stubbornly at the ground.

  “Then you,” Claus says to Sepp. “Someone has to do it. And I have rheumatism. You climb now or you’ll regret it as long as you live.” He tries to remember the spell that compels the resistant to obey, but the words slip his mind.