Tyll Read online

  This afternoon he then tried it in reality. The most difficult part was hauling so much unground grain up to the attic room without losing some in the process, for the day after tomorrow Peter Steger is coming and picking up the flour. Claus had to shout and threaten the mill hands to make them be careful; he cannot afford any more debts. Agneta called him a furry horned animal, whereupon he told her not to meddle in things that are too difficult for women, whereupon she smacked him, whereupon he told her to watch herself, whereupon she slapped him so hard that he had to sit down for a while. This is how it often goes between them. In the beginning he sometimes hit Agneta back, but it never went well for him, he may be stronger, but she is usually angrier, and in every fight whoever is angrier wins, and so he long ago gave up hitting her, for as quickly as her anger comes, it fortunately evaporates just as quickly.

  Then he began to work in his attic room. At first deliberate and scrupulous, examining the heap with each grain, but gradually sweating and morose and by late afternoon in sheer despair. On the right side of the room there was eventually a new heap and on the left side something that could perhaps still be called a heap, but perhaps not. And a little while later there was on the left only a handful of grains.

  And where, then, was the dividing line? It’s enough to make you cry. He spoons his groats, sighs, and listens to the pelting rain. The groats taste bad as always, but for a while the sound of the rain soothes him. Then it occurs to him that it’s similar with rain: How many drops fewer would have to fall for it to no longer be rain? He groans. Sometimes it seems to him as if it were God’s goal in the way he made the world to confound a poor miller.

  Agneta puts her hand on his arm and asks whether he’d like more groats.

  He doesn’t want more, but he understands that she feels sorry for him and that it’s a peace offering because of the slaps. “Yes,” he says softly. “Thank you.”

  Then there’s a thump at the door.

  Claus crosses his fingers for protection. He murmurs a spell, makes signs in the air; only then does he call: “Who’s there, in the name of God?” Everyone knows never to say come in before whoever is outside has said his name. The evil spirits are powerful, but the vast majority of them cannot cross the threshold unless they are invited.

  “Two wanderers,” calls a voice. “In Christ’s name, open the door.”

  Claus stands up, goes to the door, and unbolts it.

  A man enters. He is no longer young, but he looks strong. His hair and his beard are dripping wet. Rainwater forms pearls on the thick gray linen of his cloak. He is followed by a second, much younger man. This man looks around, and when he sees the boy, a smile passes over his face. It’s the stranger he encountered at noon.

  “I am Dr. Oswald Tesimond of the Society of Jesus,” says the older man. “This is Dr. Kircher. We were invited.”

  “Invited?” asks Agneta.

  “Society of Jesus?” asks Claus.

  “We are Jesuits.”

  “Jesuits,” Claus repeats. “Real, true Jesuits?”

  Agneta brings two stools to the table; the others move closer together.

  Claus bows awkwardly. “I am Claus Ulenspiegel,” he says, “and this is my wife and this is my son and these are my mill hands. We rarely receive distinguished visitors. It’s an honor. There’s not much, but what we have is at your disposal. Here are the groats, there is the small beer, and there’s still some milk in the jug.” He clears his throat. “May I ask whether you are scholars?”

  “I should say so,” replies Dr. Tesimond, taking a spoon gingerly. “I am a doctor of medicine and of theology, in addition a chemicus specializing in dracontology. Dr. Kircher concerns himself with occult signs, crystallography, and the nature of music.” He eats some groats, screws up his face, and puts down the spoon.

  For a moment it is silent. Then Claus leans forward and says, “May I be permitted to ask a question?”

  “With certainty,” says Dr. Tesimond. Something about the way he speaks is unusual: some words in his sentences are not where you would expect them, and he also emphasizes them differently; it sounds as if he had little stones in his mouth.

  “What is dracontology?” asks Claus. Even in the weak light of the tallow candle the others can tell that his cheeks have turned red.

  “The study of the nature of dragons.”

  The mill hands raise their heads. Rosa’s mouth hangs open.

  The boy feels hot. “Have you seen any?” he asks.

  Dr. Tesimond furrows his brow as if an unpleasant noise had disturbed him.

  Dr. Kircher looks at the boy and shakes his head.

  “My apologies,” says Claus. “This is a simple house. My son doesn’t know how to behave and sometimes forgets that a child is to be quiet when adults are speaking. But the question did occur to me too. Have you seen any?”

  “It is not the first time I’ve heard this amusing question,” says Dr. Tesimond. “Indeed every dracontologist is met with it regularly among the simple people. But dragons are rare. They are very…what’s the word again?”

  “Shy,” says Dr. Kircher.

  “German is not my native tongue,” says Dr. Tesimond. “I must apologize, sometimes I fall into the idiom of my beloved native land, which I will never see again in my life: England, the island of apples and of morning fog. Yes, dragons are inconceivably shy and capable of astounding feats of camouflage. You could search for a hundred years and yet never get close to a dragon. Just as you can spend a hundred years in immediate proximity to a dragon and never notice it. That is precisely why dracontology is necessary. For medical science cannot do without the healing power of their blood.”

  Claus rubs his forehead. “Where do you get the blood, then?”

  “We don’t have the blood, of course. Medicine is the art of…what’s the word?”

  “Substitution,” says Dr. Kircher.

  “Yes, indeed,” says Dr. Tesimond, “dragon blood is a substance of such power that you don’t need the stuff itself. It’s enough that the substance is in the world. In my beloved native land there are still two dragons, but no one has tracked them down in centuries.”

  “Earthworm and grub,” says Dr. Kircher, “look like the dragon. Crushed into a fine substance their bodies can achieve astonishing things. Dragon blood has the power to make a person invulnerable, but as a substitute pulverized cinnabar can still cure skin diseases due to its resemblance. Cinnabar is itself hard to obtain, yet all herbs with surfaces that are scaly like dragons can in turn be substituted for cinnabar. The art of healing is substitution according to the principle of resemblance—crocus cures eye afflictions because it looks like an eye.”

  “The better a dracontologist knows his trade,” says Dr. Tesimond, “the better he can make up for the absence of the dragon through substitution. The pinnacle of the art, however, lies in using not the body of the dragon, but its…what is it called?”

  “Knowledge,” says Dr. Kircher.

  “Its knowledge. As early a writer as Pliny the Elder reports that dragons know an herb by means of which they bring dead members of their species back to life. To find this herb would be the Holy Grail of our science.”

  “But how do we know that dragons exist?” asks the boy.

  Dr. Tesimond furrows his brow. Claus leans forward and slaps his son’s face.

  “Because of the efficacy of the substitutes,” says Dr. Kircher. “How would such a puny insect as the grub have healing power if not by its resemblance to the dragon! Why can cinnabar heal, if not because it is dark red like dragon blood!”

  “Another question,” says Claus. “While I am speaking with learned men…while I have the opportunity…”

  “Go on,” says Dr. Tesimond.

  “A heap of grains. If you always take away only one. It’s driv
ing me mad.”

  The mill hands laugh.

  “A well-known problem,” says Dr. Tesimond. He makes an encouraging gesture in Dr. Kircher’s direction.

  “Where one thing is, no other thing can be,” says Dr. Kircher, “but two words do not exclude each other. Between a thing that is a grain heap and a thing that is not a grain heap there is no sharp dividing line. The heap nature fades little by little, comparable to a cloud dispersing.”

  “Yes,” Claus says as if to himself. “Yes. No, no. Because…No! You can’t make a table out of a fingernail of wood. Not one you could use. It’s not enough. It’s impossible. Nor out of two fingernails of wood. Not enough wood to make a table never becomes enough wood just because you add a tiny bit!”

  The guests are silent. Everyone listens to the rain and the scratching of the spoons and the wind rattling the windows.

  “A good question,” says Dr. Tesimond, looking encouragingly at Dr. Kircher.

  “Things are what they are,” says Dr. Kircher, “but vagueness is embedded deep within our concepts. It is simply not always clear whether a thing is a mountain or not a mountain, a flower or not a flower, a shoe or not a shoe—or, indeed, a table or not a table. That is why, when God wants clarity, he speaks in numbers.”

  “It’s unusual for a miller to take an interest in such questions,” says Dr. Tesimond. “Or in things like that.” He points to the pentagrams engraved over the doorframe.

  “They keep away demons,” says Claus.

  “And one just engraves them? That’s sufficient?”

  “You need the right words.”

  “Hold your tongue,” says Agneta.

  “But it’s difficult with the words, isn’t it?” says Dr. Tesimond. “With the…” He looks questioningly at Dr. Kircher.

  “Spells,” says Dr. Kircher.

  “Exactly,” says Dr. Tesimond. “Isn’t it dangerous? They say that the same words that banish demons under certain conditions also lure them.”

  “Those are different spells. I know them too. Don’t worry. I know the difference.”

  “Be quiet,” says Agneta.

  “And in what else, then, does a miller like you take an interest? What occupies his mind, what does he want to know? How else can one…help you?”

  “Well, with the leaves,” says Claus.

  “Hold your tongue!” says Agneta.

  “A few months ago I found two leaves near the old oak on Jakob Brantner’s field. Actually it’s not Brantner’s field, it has always belonged to the Lesers, but in the inheritance dispute the prefect decided that it’s a Brantner field. No matter, the leaves, in any case, looked exactly alike.”

  “It most certainly is Brantner’s field,” says Sepp, who was a hand on Brantner’s farm for a year. “The Lesers are liars, devil take them.”

  “If there’s a liar here,” says Rosa, “then it’s Jakob Brantner. You need only see how he looks at the women in church.”

  “But it really is his field,” says Sepp.

  Claus pounds on the table. Everyone goes silent.

  “The leaves. They looked alike, every vein, every crack. I dried them, I can show them to you. I even bought a magnifying glass from a merchant when he came through the village, to be able to view them better. The merchant doesn’t come often, his name is Hugo, he has only two fingers on his left hand, and when you ask him how he lost the others, he says: Miller, they’re only fingers!” Claus stops and thinks briefly, astounded at where the stream of his speech has carried him. “Well, when they were lying there in front of me, the two leaves, I suddenly wondered whether it doesn’t mean that they are actually one. If the difference consists only in the fact that the one leaf is on the left and the other on the right—well, all you need to do is make a hand movement.” He demonstrates it with such an awkward gesture that a spoon flies in one direction and a bowl in the other. “Imagine someone says now that the two leaves are one and the same—what can you reply? He would be right!” Claus thumps on the table, but all except Agneta, who is looking at him fixedly and beseechingly, are following with their eyes the rolling bowl, which goes around in a circle once, twice, and then comes to rest. “These two leaves, then,” Claus says into the silence. “If they are only in appearance two leaves and in truth one, doesn’t that mean that…all this here and there and elsewhere is only a web that God has woven so that we won’t penetrate his mysteries?”

  “You must be silent now,” says Agneta.

  “And speaking of mysteries,” says Claus, “I have a book that I can’t read.”

  “No two leaves in all Creation are alike,” says Dr. Kircher. “Nor even two grains of sand. No two things between which God doesn’t distinguish.”

  “The leaves are upstairs, I can show them to you! And I can show you the book too! And what you said about the grub is not true, honorable sir, crushed grub cannot heal, but causes back pain and cold joints.” Claus gives his son a sign. “Fetch the big book, the one without binding, the one with the pictures!”

  The boy stands up and runs to the ladder that leads upstairs. He climbs with lightning speed, disappearing through the hatch.

  “You have a good son,” says Dr. Kircher.

  Claus nods distractedly.

  “Be that as it may,” says Dr. Tesimond. “It’s late, and we must be in the village before nightfall. Are you coming, miller?”

  Claus looks at him uncomprehendingly. The two guests stand up.

  “You idiot,” says Agneta.

  “Where?” asks Claus. “Why?”

  “No reason to worry,” says Dr. Tesimond. “We just want to talk, at length and in peace. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it, miller? In peace. About everything that occupies your mind. Do we look like bad people?”

  “But I can’t,” says Claus. “Steger is coming the day after tomorrow and wants his grain. It is not yet ground. I have it up in the room. Time is pressing.”

  “These are good mill hands,” says Dr. Tesimond. “One can rely on them. The work will be done.”

  “He who refuses to follow his friends,” says Dr. Kircher, “must be prepared to deal with people who are not his friends. We supped together, sat together in the mill. We can trust each other.”

  “This Latin book,” says Dr. Tesimond. “I want to see it. If you have questions, we can answer them.”

  Everyone is waiting for the boy, who is groping through the dark attic room above. It takes a while before he has found the right book next to the heap of grain. By the time he climbs back down, his father and the guests are standing in the doorway.

  He hands the book to Claus, who strokes his head, then bends down and kisses him on the forehead. In the last light of day the boy sees the thin wrinkles chiseled into his father’s face. He sees the flicker in his restless eyes, which can always only briefly look at one thing, he sees the white hairs in the black beard.

  And as Claus looks down at his son, it amazes him that so many of his children have died at birth but that of all his children this one survived. He didn’t take enough interest in the boy, he was simply too accustomed to all of them immediately disappearing again. But that will change, Claus thinks, I will teach him what I know, the spells, the squares, the herbs, and the course of the moon. Cheerfully he takes the book and steps out into the evening. The rain has stopped.

  Agneta clasps him. They embrace for a long time. Claus wants to let go, but Agneta keeps holding him. The mill hands titter.

  “You’ll be back soon,” says Dr. Tesimond.

  “There you have it,” says Claus.

  “You idiot,” says Agneta, weeping.

  Suddenly all this is embarrassing to Claus—the mill, the sobbing wife, the scrawny son, his whole poor existence. Resolutely he pushes Agneta away from him. It pleases him that he will now
have the chance to make common cause with the learned men, to whom he feels closer than to these mill people, who know nothing.

  “Don’t worry,” he says to Dr. Tesimond. “I’ll find the way in the dark too.”

  Claus sets off with long strides. The two men follow him. Agneta watches them until the twilight swallows them.

  “Go inside,” she says to the boy.

  “When is he coming back?”

  She closes and bolts the door.

  II

  Dr. Kircher opens his eyes. Someone is in the room. He listens. No, there’s no one here except Dr. Tesimond, whose snoring he hears from the bed over there. He throws back the blanket, crosses himself, and gets up. The time has come. The day of the trial.

  To crown it all he dreamed again of Egyptian signs. A clay-yellow wall, in it little men with dog heads, lions with wings, axes, swords, lances, wavy lines of all sorts. No one understands them. The knowledge of them has been lost, until a divinely gifted intellect will appear to decipher them again.

  That will be he. One day.

  His back hurts as it does every morning. The straw sack on which he has to sleep is thin, the floor icy cold. There’s only one bed in the priest’s house, and his master is sleeping in it; even the priest must lie on the floor in the next room. At least his master didn’t wake up last night. Often he screams in his sleep, and sometimes he pulls out the knife hidden under his pillow and thinks his life is in danger. When this happens, he has again been dreaming of the great conspiracy, in England, when he and a few brave people almost succeeded in blowing up the King. The attempt failed, but they didn’t give up: for days they searched for Princess Elizabeth in order to kidnap her and place her on the throne by force. It could have succeeded, and had it succeeded, the island would today again be in possession of the true faith. For weeks Dr. Tesimond lived in the forests, on roots and spring water. He was the only one to escape and make his way across the sea. Later he will be canonized, but at night one shouldn’t lie near him, for the knife is always under his pillow, and his dreams are swarming with Protestant oppressors.