Brodeck Page 12

  All at once, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I know everything, Brodeck. Everything. And you can’t even imagine what that Everything means.”

  He stopped talking, having just realized that his glass was empty. He rose to his feet, trembling, and cast anxious looks at the bottles that littered the room. He moved five or six before finding one that still held a little wine. He smiled and clasped the bottle in his arms, the way you embrace a loved one you’re happy to see again. He returned to his chair and filled his glass. “Men are strange. They commit the worst crimes without question, but later they can’t live anymore with the memory of what they’ve done. They have to get rid of it. And so they come to me, because they know I’m the only person who can give them relief, and they tell me everything. I’m the sewer, Brodeck. I’m not the priest; I’m the sewer man. I’m the man into whose brain they can pour all their ordure, all their filthy deeds, and then they feel relieved, they feel unburdened. When it’s over, they go away as though nothing’s happened. They’re all new and clean. Ready to start afresh. They know the sewer has closed over what they dumped into it and will never repeat what it’s heard to anybody. They can sleep in peace, Brodeck, and at the same time I’m all awash, I’m overflowing, I can’t take any more, but I hold on, I try to hold on. I’ll die with all these deposits, these horrors, in me. You see this wine? It’s my only friend. It puts me to sleep and makes me forget, for a little while, the great, vile mass I carry around inside, the putrid load they’ve all entrusted to me. I’m not telling you this because I want your pity. I just want you to understand. You feel alone because you must write about hideous things; I feel alone because I must absolve them.”

  He stopped, and in the multiple, moving light of the candles, I distinctly saw his eyes fill with tears.

  “I didn’t always drink, Brodeck, as you well know. Before the war, water was my daily beverage, and I knew that God was at my side. The war … maybe the peoples of the world need such nightmares. They lay waste to what they’ve taken centuries to build. They destroy today what they praised yesterday. They authorize what was forbidden. They give preferential treatment to what they used to condemn. War is a great broom that sweeps the world. It’s the place where the mediocre triumphs and the criminal receives a saint’s halo; people prostrate themselves before him and acclaim him and fawn upon him. Must men find life so gloomy and monotonous that they long for massacre and ruin? I’ve seen them jump up and down on the edge of the abyss, walk along its crest, and look with fascination upon the horror of the void, where the vilest passions hold sway. Destroy! Defile! Rape! Slash! If you had seen them …”

  The priest snatched my wrist and pressed it hard. “Why do you think they tolerate my incoherent sermons and my drunken Masses, my cursing and raving? Why do they all come to church? Why hasn’t anyone asked the bishop to recall me? Because they’re afraid, Brodeck. It’s as simple as that: they’re afraid of me and of all the things I know about them. Fear is what governs the world. It holds men by their little balls. It squeezes them from time to time, just to remind their owners that it could annihilate them if it so desired. I see their faces in my church when I’m in the pulpit. I see them through their masks of false calm. I smell their sour sweat. I smell it. It’s not holy water running down the cracks of their asses, believe me! They must curse themselves for having told me so much … Do you remember when you were an altar boy, Brodeck? Do you remember serving when I said Mass?”

  I was very small, and Father Peiper made a great impression on me. He had a deep, silky voice, a voice that wine-bibbing hadn’t yet worn down. He never laughed. I wore a white alb and a bright-red collar. I closed my eyes and inhaled the incense, believing God would come into me more readily if I did that. My happiness, my bliss was without flaw. There were no races, no differences among men. I’d forgotten who I was and where I’d come from. I’d never thought about the bit of flesh missing from between my thighs, and no one had ever reproached me for it. We were all God’s people. At the altar in our little church, I stood at Father Peiper’s side. He turned the pages of the Holy Book. He brandished the host and the chalice. I rang the little bells. I presented him the water and the wine and the white linen cloth he used to wipe his lips. I knew there was a Heaven for the innocent and a Hell for the guilty. Everything seemed simple to me.

  “He came to visit me once …” Peiper’s head was bowed down, and his voice had become colorless. I thought he was talking about God again.

  “He came, but I don’t think I was capable of understanding him. He was so … different. I couldn’t… I wasn’t able to understand him.”

  Suddenly I realized that the priest was talking about the Anderer.

  “It couldn’t end any other way, Brodeck. That man was like a mirror, you see. He didn’t have to say a single word. They each saw their reflection in him. Or maybe he was God’s last messenger, before He closes up shop and throws away the keys. I’m the sewer, but that fellow was the mirror. And mirrors, Brodeck—mirrors can only break.”

  As though underlining his words, Peiper grabbed the bottle in front of him and hurled it against the wall. Then he grabbed another one and another one and another one after that, and as each bottle shattered, launching thousands of glass shards to all corners of the kitchen, he laughed, he laughed like one of the damned and shouted, “Ziebe Jarh vo Missgesck! Ziebe Jarh vo Missgesck! Ziebe Jarh vo Missgesck!”—“Seven years of bad luck! Seven years of bad luck! Seven years of bad luck!” Then, abruptly, he stopped, clutched his face in his hands, threw himself forward onto the table, and sobbed like a child.

  I stayed with him for a few moments without daring to move or say a word. He sniffled twice, very loudly, and then there was silence. He remained in his chair, his upper body sprawled on the table, his head hidden between his arms. The candles consumed themselves and went out, one by one, and the kitchen gradually grew dark. Peaceful snores emanated from Peiper’s body. The church bell sounded ten o’clock. I left the room, closing the door very gently behind me.

  I was surprised by the light outdoors. The snow had stopped, and the sky was almost entirely clear. The last clouds were still trying to cling to the Schnikelkopf peaks, but the wind, now blowing from the east, was busy tidying them up, tearing the cloud remnants into small strips. The stars had put on their silver apparel. As I raised my head and looked at them, I felt as though I were plunging into a sea both dark and glittering, its inky depths studded with innumerable bright pearls. They seemed very near. I even made the stupid gesture of stretching out my hand, as if I might seize a handful of them and stick them inside my coat as a present for Poupchette.

  Smoke rose straight up from the chimneys. The air had become very dry again, and the cold had formed a hard, sparkling crust on the mounds of snow piled up in front of the houses. I felt in my pocket for the pages I’d read to the others a few hours ago; they were just a few thin sheets of very light paper, but they seemed heavy and hot. I thought over what Peiper had told me about the Anderer, and it was hard for me to decide between the ravings of a drunkard and the words of a man accustomed to speaking in parables. More than anything else, I wondered why the Anderer had visited the priest, especially considering that our new neighbor quite noticeably avoided the church and never went to Mass. What could he and Peiper have talked about?

  As I passed Schloss’s inn, I saw that a light was still burning in the main room. And then—I don’t know why—I felt a sudden urge to step inside.

  Dieter Schloss was behind the bar, talking with Caspar Hausorn. They were both leaning forward, so close to each other that you would have thought they were going to kiss. I let out a greeting that made them jump, and then I went over to the table in the corner, right next to the fireplace, and sat down.

  “Do you still have some hot wine?”

  Schloss nodded. Hausorn turned in my direction and made a curt movement with his head that might have passed for a “good evening.” Then he leaned toward Schloss’s ear
once more, murmured something the innkeeper seemed to agree with, picked up his cap, finished his beer in one gulp, and left without looking at me again.

  It was the second time I’d been in the inn since the Ereigniës. And just as I had done the previous time, I found it hard to believe that this very ordinary place was where a man had been put to death. The inn looked like any other village inn: a few tables, chairs, and benches, shelves holding one-liter bottles of wine and liquor, big, framed mirrors so covered with soot they hadn’t reflected anything for years, a cabinet for the chess and checkers sets, sawdust on the floor. The rooms were upstairs. There were exactly four of them. Three of them hadn’t been used for a long time. As for the fourth room, the biggest and also the prettiest, it had been occupied by the Anderer.

  On the day following the Ereigniës, after my visit to Orschwir, I’d stayed in Mother Pitz’s place for nearly an hour in an effort to recover my wits, to calm my mind and my heart, while the old woman sat beside me, turning the pages of a volume of her dried-plant collection and providing a running commentary on all the flowers pressed inside the book. Then, after my head had finally cleared, I thanked her, left her café, and went straight to the inn. I found the door locked and the shutters closed. It was the first time I’d ever seen Schloss’s inn in that state. I knocked on the door, dealing it rapid, heavy blows, and waited. Nothing. I knocked again even harder, and this time a shutter opened partway and Schloss appeared at the window, looking suspicious and fearful.

  “What do you want, Brodeck?”

  “I want to talk to you. Open up.”

  “This may not be the best time.”

  “Open up, Schloss. You know I have to make the Report.”

  The word had come out of my mouth all by itself. Using it for the first time felt utterly strange, but it had an immediate effect on Schloss. He closed the shutter, and I heard him hurrying downstairs. A few seconds later, he was unbolting the big door. He opened it and said, “Come in quick!”

  He closed the door behind me so promptly that I couldn’t stop myself from asking him if he was worried that a ghost might slip inside. He said, “That’s no joking matter, Brodeck,” and crossed himself twice. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to show me the room.”

  “What room?”

  “Don’t play dumb. The room.”

  Schloss hesitated. He seemed to be thinking over my request. Then he said, “Why do you want to see it?”

  “I want to see it right now. I want to be thorough. I don’t want to forget anything. I have to tell the whole story.”

  Schloss ran his hand over his forehead, which was gleaming as though he’d rubbed it with lard. “There’s not a lot to see, but if you insist… Follow me.”

  We climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Schloss’s big body took up the entire width of the staircase, and every step bent under his weight. He was breathing hard. When we got to the landing, he reached into one of the pockets in his apron, took out a key, and handed it to me, saying, “I’ll let you unlock the door, Brodeck.”

  I had to insert the key three times before I could turn it. I couldn’t control my shaking hand. Schloss backed off a few steps and tried to catch his breath. Finally there was a little click, and I pushed the door open. My heart was like a hunted bird. I was afraid of seeing that room again, afraid of encountering a dead man, but what I saw surprised me so much that my anxiety vanished at once.

  The room was completely empty. There was no more furniture, no more art objects, no more clothes, no trunks; all that remained was a big wardrobe, which was bolted to the wall. I opened the double doors, but the wardrobe, too, was empty. There was nothing in the room anymore. It was as if the Anderer had never occupied it. As if he’d never existed.

  “What happened to all his baggage?”

  “What are you talking about, Brodeck?”

  “Don’t insult me, Schloss.”

  The room smelled like damp wood and soap. The floor had been copiously wetted down and scrubbed. In the place where the bed used to stand, I could make out a big stain, which was darker than the rest of the bare larch-wood planks.

  “Was it you who washed the floor?”

  “Somebody had to do it…”

  “And what’s that stain?”

  “What do you think it is, Brodeck?”

  I turned to Schloss.

  “What do you think?” he repeated wearily.

  XX

  ————

  got up very late this morning, with a hammer at work inside my head. I believe I really drank too much last night. The brandy bottle’s almost completely empty. My mouths as dry as tinder, and I have no idea how I found the way to my bed. I wrote late into the night, and I remember being unable to feel my fingers toward the end because the cold had numbed them. I also remember that the keys on the typewriter were sticking more and more. The windowpane was covered with frost shaped like fern fronds, and I was so drunk I thought the forest was on the march, preparing to surround and smother the shed, and me with it.

  When I finally got out of bed, Fedorine asked no questions. She brewed an infusion for me, a concoction in which I recognized the aromas of wild thyme, pennyroyal, and houseleek. She simply said, “Drink this. It’s good for what you’ve got.” I did what she said, as I used to do when I was little. Then she placed before me a basket Alfred Wurtzwiller had brought a little earlier in the day. It contained potato soup, a loaf of rye bread, half a ham, apples, and leeks—but no money. This wasn’t my usual delivery. When the administration in S. deigned to show that it hadn’t completely forgotten me, I’d receive a money order, along with three or four stamped, restamped, signed, and countersigned official documents, attesting to the payment made thereby. But in this basket, there was only food. I couldn’t help drawing a connection between the food basket and the previous evening’s audition in front of the mayor and the others. They were paying me like this. They were paying me a little. For the Report. For what I’d already written, and—especially—for what I hadn’t written.

  Next, Fedorine bathed Poupchette in the tub. My darling clapped her hands and slapped the hot water, laughing and shouting, “Li’l fish! Li’l fish!” I took her in my arms, pressing her against me, as wet as she was, and kissed her soft, warm, naked skin, which made her laugh all the more. Behind us, at the window, her eyes raised to the distance and the white immensity of the valley, Amelia hummed her song. Poupchette started struggling, and I put her down. She scooped up a handful of suds, ran to her mother, and threw them at her. Amelia turned and looked at the child but kept right on humming. Her dead eyes settled for a few moments on Poupchette’s pretty smile, and then she stared out at the whiteness again.

  I feel weak and useless. I’m trying to write things down, but who’s going to read them? Who? I’d do better to take Amelia and Poupchette in my arms, sling old Fedorine across my back, along with a bundle of provisions, clothes, and a few nice keepsakes, and go far away from here. Start over. Start all over again. In the old days, Nösel said this was mankind’s distinguishing feature: “Man is an animal that always starts over.” Nösel spoke in slow, cadenced, spellbinding sentences, his two hands flat on his wide desk, and after each pronouncement he left a great silence, which each of us could fill as he chose.

  “Man is an animal that always starts over.” But what is it he’s always starting over? His mistakes, or the fragile scaffolding whose construction sometimes allows him to climb close to heaven? Nösel never said, maybe because he knew that life itself, the life we hadn’t completely entered yet, would eventually make us understand. Or maybe because he simply had no idea, or because he was untroubled by doubts, or because he’d fed on books for so long he’d forgotten the real world and those who dwelled in it.

  Last night, Schloss brought me my hot wine and then sat down uninvited at my table. I knew he wanted to say something to me, but I had nothing to say to him. I was too absorbed in what Father Peiper had told me. Moreover, I wante
d to drink my glass of hot wine and feel the fire reviving my body, and that was all. I wasn’t looking for anything else. My skull was teeming with unanswered questions and hundreds of little pieces of a big mechanism I had to invent so that I could put it together.

  “I know you don’t like me too much, Brodeck,” Schloss suddenly murmured. I’d forgotten he was there. “But I’m not the worst, you know.”

  The innkeeper seemed even bigger and sweatier than usual. He was twisting his fingers and gnawing his plump, cracked lips. “I did what I was told, that’s all. I don’t want any trouble, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking … Look, I’m only a simple man. I’m not as intelligent as you are, but whatever you might think, I’m not vicious, either. I’m not the worst. It’s true that I served drinks to the Fratergekeime while they occupied the village. But what did you want me to do? Serving drinks is my business. I wasn’t about to get myself killed for refusing to serve a glass of beer. I’ve always regretted what happened to you, Brodeck, I swear, and I had nothing to do with it, you can believe me … and as for what they did to your wife … My God …”

  I nearly spat in Schloss’s face when he referred to Amelia, but what he said after that stopped me.