Tyll Read online

  He realizes that everyone is looking at him, only the accused are looking down at the ground. It happened again: he was absent. He can only hope that it didn’t last too long. Hastily he looks around and finds his bearings: In front of him lies Hanna Krell’s confession. He recognizes the handwriting, it is his own, he wrote it himself, and now he has to read it out. With unsteady fingers he reaches for it, but at the very moment his fingers touch the paper, a wind stirs. Dr. Kircher grasps the paper, fortunately quickly enough. It is firmly in his hand. It doesn’t bear thinking about what would have happened if it had flown away from him. Satan is powerful, the air his realm. It would suit him perfectly if the tribunal made a mockery of itself.

  As he reads Hanna’s confession aloud, he thinks back helplessly to the interrogation. To the dark room in the back of the priest’s house, once the broom closet, now the interrogation room in which Master Tilman and Dr. Tesimond worked day after day on luring the truth out of the old woman. Dr. Tesimond has a kind soul and would have preferred to stay away from the harsh interrogation, but the Procedure for the Judgment of Capital Crimes of Kaiser Charles obliges a judge to be present at every torture he orders. And it also prescribes a confession. No trial may end without a confession; no sentence may be imposed if the defendants have not admitted anything. The actual trial takes place in the locked closet, but on the day of the tribunal, when the confession is publicly confirmed and the verdict delivered, all are present.

  While Dr. Kircher is reading, cries of horror come from the crowd. People gasp, people whisper, people shake their heads, people bare their teeth in fury and disgust. His voice trembles as he hears himself speaking of nocturnal flights and exposed flesh, of traveling on the wind, of the great Sabbath of the night, of blood in the cauldrons and naked bodies, lo, they are rolling, the huge billy goat with never-flagging lust, he takes you from in front and takes you from behind, to songs sung in the language of Orcus. Dr. Kircher turns the page and comes to the curses: cold and hail on the fields, spoiling the crop of the pious, and hunger visited on the heads of the God-fearing and death and disease on the weak and pestilence on the children. Several times his voice almost fails, but he thinks of his sacred ministry and admonishes himself, and thank God he is prepared. None of these horrible things is new to him. He knows every word, has written it not only once but again and again, outside the closet, while the interrogation took place inside and Master Tilman brought to light everything that must be confessed in a witchcraft trial: And did you not fly too, Hanna? All witches fly. Do you mean to tell me that you of all people did not fly, will you deny it? And the Sabbath? Did you not kiss Satan, Hanna? If you speak, you will be forgiven, but if you keep silent, then look what Master Tilman has in his hand, he will use it.

  “This has happened.” Dr. Kircher reads the last lines aloud. “In this way I, Hanna Krell, daughter of Leopoldina and Franz Krell, have renounced the Lord, betrayed the community of Christians, visited harm upon my fellow citizens and upon the holy church and my authorities too. In deep shame I confess and accept the just punishment, so help me God.”

  He falls silent. A fly buzzes past his ear, flies in an arc, settles on his forehead. Should he drive it away or pretend he doesn’t notice it? What is more appropriate to the dignity of the tribunal, what is less ridiculous? He glances at his master inquisitively, but he doesn’t give him any sign.

  Instead Dr. Tesimond leans forward, looks at Hanna Krell, and asks: “Is this your confession?”

  She nods. Her chains rattle.

  “You have to say it, Hanna!”

  “That is my confession.”

  “You have done all this?”

  “I’ve done all that.”

  “And who was the leader?”

  She is silent.

  “Hanna! Who was your leader? Who brought all of you to the Sabbath? Who taught you how to fly?”

  She is silent.

  “Hanna?”

  She raises her hand and points to the miller.

  “You have to say it, Hanna.”

  “He did.”

  “Louder!”

  “It was he.”

  Dr. Tesimond makes a hand movement. The guard pushes the miller forward. Now the main part of the trial begins. They came upon old Hanna only incidentally. A warlock almost always has followers. Nonetheless, it took a while before Ludwig Stelling’s wife admitted under threat of punishment that her rheumatism had been plaguing her only since she had quarreled with Hanna Krell, and again only after a week of interrogation did it also occur to Magda Steger and Maria Leserin that storms always came when Hanna was supposedly too ill to attend church. Hanna herself didn’t deny it long. As soon as Master Tilman showed her the instruments, she began to confess her crimes, and when he set to work in earnest, their full magnitude was very quickly revealed.

  “Claus Ulenspiegel!” Dr. Tesimond holds three sheets of paper in the air. “Your confession!”

  Dr. Kircher sees the sheets of paper in his master’s hand, and immediately his head hurts. He knows every sentence on them by heart. He rewrote it again and again, outside the locked door of the interrogation room through which you could hear everything.

  “May I say something?” asks the miller.

  Dr. Tesimond looks at him disapprovingly.

  “Please,” says the miller. He rubs the red imprint of the leather band on his forehead. The chains rattle.

  “What, then?” asks Dr. Tesimond.

  This was how it went the whole time. Never before, Dr. Tesimond repeated often, had he encountered such a difficult case as this miller! And this is still so, despite all of Master Tilman’s efforts—despite blade and needle, despite salt and fire, despite leather loop, wet shoes, thumbscrew, and steel countess—all unclear. An executioner knows how to loosen tongues, but what does he do with someone who talks and talks and has absolutely no qualms about contradicting himself as if Aristotle had written nothing on logic? At first Dr. Tesimond took it for a perfidious ruse, but then he realized that the miller’s confusions always also contained fragments of truths—indeed, even astonishing insights.

  “I’ve been thinking,” says Claus. “Now I understand. About my errors. I ask for forgiveness. I ask for mercy.”

  “Did you do what this woman said? Lead the Witches’ Sabbath, did you do that?”

  “I thought I was clever,” the miller says with downcast eyes. “I overestimated myself. Expected too much of my mind, my stupid intellect. I’m sorry. I ask for mercy.”

  “And the black magic? The ruined fields? The cold, the rain—was that you?”

  “I helped the sick according to the old way. There were some I couldn’t help. The old remedies are not so reliable. I always did my best. I was paid only if it helped, of course. I read the future of those who wanted to know it in water and bird flight. Peter Steger’s cousin, not Paul Steger, the other one, Karl, I told him not to climb the beech tree, not even to find treasures, don’t do it, I said, and the Steger cousin asked: A treasure in my beech tree? And I said: Don’t do it, Steger, and Karl said: If there’s a treasure there, I’m going up, and then he fell and smashed his head. And I can’t figure out, even though I think about it all the time, whether a prophecy that would not have come true if I hadn’t made it is actually a prophecy or something else.”

  “Did you hear the witch’s confession? That she called you the leader of the Sabbath, did you hear that?”

  “If there’s a treasure in the beech tree, then it’s still there.”

  “Did you hear the witch?”

  “And the two birch leaves I found.”

  “Not again!”

  “They looked like a single leaf.”

  “Not the leaves again!”

  Claus is sweating, he is breathing heavily. “The matter confused me so.” He reflects, shak
es his head, scratches his shorn head, rattling his chains. “May I show you the leaves? They must still be in the mill, in the attic, where I pursued my foolish studies.” He turns around and points with a chain-rattling arm over the heads of the spectators. “My son can fetch them!”

  “There are no more magic materials in the mill,” says Dr. Tesimond. “There’s a new miller there now, and he won’t have kept that junk.”

  “And the books?” Claus asks softly.

  Dr. Kircher is unsettled to see a fly land on the paper in his hands. Its little black legs follow the course of the letters. Is it possible that it’s trying to tell him something? But it’s moving so quickly that you can’t read what it’s writing, and he must not let himself be distracted once again.

  “Where are my books?” asks Claus.

  Dr. Tesimond gives his assistant a sign, and Dr. Kircher stands up and reads out the miller’s confession.

  His thoughts turn again to the investigations. The mill hand Sepp readily told how often he found the miller in a deep sleep during the day. Without a witness to such states of unconsciousness, no one can be convicted of witchcraft, there are strict rules about that. The servants of Satan leave their bodies behind, and their spirits fly out to distant lands. Even shaking him, shouting at him, and kicking him wouldn’t have done any good, Sepp testified, and the priest too heavily incriminated the miller: I curse you, he cried as soon as anyone in the village angered him, I’ll burn you to death, I’ll cause you pain! He demanded obedience from the whole village, everyone feared his wrath. And the baker’s wife once saw the demons he invoked after dark on the Steger field: she spoke of throats, teeth, claws, and large genitals, slimy figures of midnight. Dr. Kircher could hardly bring himself to write it down. And then four, five, six villagers, and then another three and then another two, and more and more, described in detail how often he brought bad weather down upon their fields. Black magic is even more important than unconsciousness—if it is not witnessed, an accused can be condemned only of heresy but not of witchcraft. To ensure that there was no error, Dr. Kircher explained to the witnesses for days the gestures and words they must have noticed. Their minds work slowly, you have to repeat everything, the curses, the old spells, the Satanic invocations, before they remember. Indeed it turned out thereafter that they all heard the correct words and saw the correct gestures of invocation. Only the baker, who was also questioned, was suddenly no longer certain, but then Dr. Tesimond took him aside and asked him whether he really wanted to protect a warlock and whether his life was so pure that he had nothing to fear from a thorough investigation. Then the baker remembered after all that he saw everything the others saw, and then nothing more was needed to lead the miller to a confession in a severe interrogation.

  “I sent the hail onto the fields,” Dr. Kircher reads aloud. “I carved my circles into the earth, summoned the powers below and the demons above and the Lord of the Air, brought ruin to the crops, ice onto the earth, death to the grain. In addition, I acquired a forbidden book, written in Latin…”

  At this point he notices a stranger and goes silent. Where did he come from? Dr. Kircher didn’t see him approaching, but if the man had already been among the spectators before, with his broad-brimmed hat and the velvet collar and the silver cane, he would surely have caught Dr. Kircher’s eye! Yet there he stands, next to the balladeer’s wagon. What if he alone could see him? His heart begins to pound. If the man were here only for him and invisible to the others, what then?

  But as the stranger now comes forward with slow strides, the people step aside to let him pass. Dr. Kircher heaves a sigh of relief. The man’s beard is cut short, his cloak is made of velvet, a feather bobs on his felt hat. With a solemn gesture he takes off the hat and bows.

  “Greetings. Vaclav van Haag.”

  Dr. Tesimond stands up and bows himself. “An honor,” he says. “A great pleasure!”

  Dr. Kircher too stands up, bows, and sits back down. So it is not the devil, but the author of a well-known work on crystal formation in limestone caves—Dr. Kircher read it at some point and retained little in his memory. Questioningly he looks at the linden: The light wavers as if everything were an illusion. What is this expert on crystallization doing here?

  “I’m writing a treatise on witchcraft,” says Dr. van Haag as he straightens up again. “Word has spread that you have apprehended a warlock in this village. I ask permission to defend him.”

  A murmur goes through the spectators. Dr. Tesimond hesitates. “I’m certain,” he then says, “a man of your erudition has better things to do with his time.”

  “Perhaps, but nonetheless I am here and ask you for this favor.”

  “The Procedure for the Judgment of Capital Crimes prescribes no advocate for the condemned.”

  “Nor does it forbid advocacy, however. Administrator, will you permit me—”

  “Address the judge, dear colleague, not the administrator. He will announce the verdict, but I will judge.”

  Dr. van Haag looks at the administrator, who is white with rage, but it’s true, he has no say here. Van Haag briefly tilts his head and speaks to Dr. Tesimond: “There are numerous precedents. Trials with advocates are becoming more and more common. Many a condemned man doesn’t speak as well for himself as he would certainly do if he could only speak well. For example, the forbidden book that was just mentioned. Wasn’t it said that it was written in Latin?”

  “Correct.”

  “Has the miller read it?”

  “Well, for God’s sake, how could he have read it?”

  Dr. van Haag smiles. He looks at Dr. Tesimond, then Dr. Kircher, then the miller, then Dr. Tesimond again.

  “So what?” asks Dr. Tesimond.

  “If the book is written in Latin!”

  “Yes?”

  “And if the miller doesn’t speak Latin.”

  “Yes?”

  Dr. van Haag spreads his arms and smiles again.

  “Can I ask a question?” says the miller.

  “A book that one is forbidden to possess, dear colleague, is a book that one is forbidden to possess, not a book that one is merely forbidden to read. The Holy Office speaks deliberately of having, not of knowing. Dr. Kircher?”

  Dr. Kircher swallows, clears his throat, blinks. “A book is a possibility,” he says. “It is always prepared to speak. Even someone who does not understand its language can pass it on to others who can read it very well, so that it may do its wicked work on them. Or he could learn the language, and if there’s no one to teach it to him, he might find a way to teach it to himself. That’s not unheard of either. It can be achieved purely by examining the letters, by counting their frequency, by contemplating their pattern, for the human mind is powerful. In this way Saint Zagraphius learned Hebrew in the desert, merely out of the strong yearning to know God’s word in its primordial sound. And it’s reported that Taras of Byzantium comprehended Egyptian hieroglyphs solely by examining them for years. Unfortunately, he left us no key, and so we must undertake anew the task of deciphering them, but the problem will be solved, perhaps even soon. And lest we forget, there’s always the possibility that Satan, whose vassals understand all languages, endows one of his servants overnight with the ability to read the book. For these reasons the question of understanding is to be left to God and not his servants. To that God who will look into our souls on the Day of Judgment. The task of the human judges is to clear up the simple circumstances. And the simplest of them is this: if a book is forbidden, one is not permitted to have it.”

  “Besides, it’s too late for a defense,” says Dr. Tesimond. “The trial is over. Only the verdict remains to be delivered. The accused confessed.”

  “But evidently under torture?”

  “Yes, of course,” cries Dr. Tesimond. “Why else should he have confessed? Without tortur
e no one would ever confess anything!”

  “Whereas under torture everyone confesses.”

  “Thank God, yes!”

  “Even an innocent man.”

  “But he is not innocent. We have the testimony of the others. We have the book!”

  “The testimony of the others who would have been subjected to torture if they had not testified?”

  Dr. Tesimond is silent for a moment. “Dear colleague,” he says softly. “Naturally, someone who refuses to testify against a warlock must himself be investigated and charged. Where would we be if we did things differently?”

  “Very well, another question: What does the unconsciousness of the warlocks actually mean? In the past it was said the unconscious ones had congress with the devil in their dreams. The devil has no power in God’s world, as even Institoris writes, therefore he must use sleep to instill in his allies the delusion he is giving them wild pleasure. Now, however, we condemn warlocks for the very acts we formerly declared illusions inspired by the devil, but we still indict them for the sleep and the delusional dreams. Well, is the evil deed real or imagined? It cannot be both. That doesn’t make sense, dear colleague!”

  “It makes perfect sense, dear colleague!”

  “Then explain it to me.”

  “Dear colleague, I will not allow the trial to be debased by drivel and doubt.”

  “May I ask a question?” the miller calls out.

  “Me too,” says Peter Steger, smoothing his robe. “This is taking a long time, can we take a break? The cows’ udders are full, you can hear it yourselves.”

  “Arrest him,” says Dr. Tesimond.

  Dr. van Haag takes a step back. The guards stare at him.

  “Take him away and bind him. It’s true that the Procedure for the Judgment of Capital Crimes permits the condemned an advocate, but nowhere does it say that it is decent to set oneself up as the advocate of a servant of the devil and to disrupt the trial with stupid questions. With all due respect to a learned colleague, I cannot tolerate that, and we will clear up in a rigorous interrogation what induces an esteemed man to conduct himself in this fashion.”