Brodeck Page 8
In the end, I concluded that the only person who could possibly shed light on the matter was Marcus Stern, who lives alone in the middle of the forest, an hour’s walk from the village. He was the person I was off to see on the morning when I ran into Orschwir.
XIII
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he path that leads to Stern’s cabin begins its steep climb almost as soon as you exit the village. You enter the woods, go around a few hairpin curves, and in no time at all you’re looking down at the roofs. At the halfway point on the path, a rock shaped like a table invites the hiker to take a break. The rock is called the Lingen, from the dialect name of the little woodland sprites that are said to gather there and dance on it by moonlight, singing their songs, which sound like muffled laughter. Here and there on the broad rock, small cushions of milky green moss soften its hard surface, and heather provides bouquets of flowers. It’s a fine place for lovers and dreamers. I remember seeing the Anderer there one day in high summer—on July 8, in fact (I make a note of everything)—around three o’clock in the afternoon, that is, in the very hottest part of the day, when the sun seemed to have stopped its course across the sky and was pouring its heat like molten lead on the world. I had gone there to pick some raspberries for my little Poupchette, who’s crazy about them. I wanted to surprise her when she woke up from her afternoon nap.
The forest was alive and humming with busy bees and darting wasps, with frenzied flies and horseflies buzzing around in every direction, as if seized by a sudden madness. It was a great symphony, which seemed to arise out of the ground and emerge from the air. In the village, I hadn’t come across a living soul.
Although brief, the climb unsteadied my legs and winded me. My shirt was already soaked through, covered with dust, and sticking to my skin. I stopped on the path to catch my breath, and that was when I noticed him: a few meters away from where I stood, his back turned to me, there was the Anderer, contemplating the roofs of the village from a position on the rock. He was sitting on his strange, portable seat, which had been an object of fascination for everyone the first time we saw him deploy it. It was a folding stool, big and sturdy enough to support his ample buttocks, but when collapsed and stashed away, it looked like a simple cane.
In that landscape, all greenery and bright yellow, his dark clothing, his eternal, impeccably ironed black cloth frock coat, cast a shadow that looked out of place. Drawing a little closer to him, I noticed that he was also wearing his ruffled shirt, his woolen waistcoat, and gaiters on his heavy, highly polished shoes, which reflected light like the shards of a mirror.
Some twigs cracked under my feet, and he turned in my direction and saw me. I looked, I have no doubt, like a thief, but he didn’t seem startled. He smiled at me, raising his right hand and doffing an imaginary hat in a gesture of greeting. He had very pink cheeks, and the rest of his countenance—forehead, chin, nose—was covered with white lead. With the black curls on either side of his balding skull providing the final touch, he looked like an old actor. Great drops of perspiration ran down his face, which he mopped with a handkerchief whose embroidered monogram I couldn’t read.
“May I assume that you have also come here to take the measure of the world?” he asked me in his soft, mellifluous, mannered voice, gesturing at the countryside spread out before us. Then I noticed that an open notebook was lying across his perfectly round knees and that he was holding a graphite pencil in one hand. There were straight lines and curving lines and shadowed areas sketched on the notebook page. When he realized what I was looking at, he closed the book and put it in his pocket.
It was the first time I’d been alone with him since his arrival in the village, and also the first time he’d ever spoken to me. “Would you be so kind as to render me a service?” he asked, and since I made no reply and my face no doubt hardened a little, he went on, flashing the enigmatic smile that was never far from his lips. “Nothing to worry about. I simply hoped you might tell me the names of all these heights that enclose the valley. I fear that my maps may be inaccurate.”
And accompanying his words with a sweep of his hand, he indicated the mountains outlined in the distance, shimmering in the torpor of that summer day. Parts of them almost blended into the sky, which seemed intent on dissolving them. I stepped over to him, knelt down to be on his level, and starting from the east, I began to give the names: “This one, the one closest to us, is the Hunterpitz, so called because its profile looks like a dog’s head. Next you have the three Schnikelkopfs, then the Bronderpitz, and after that the ridge of the Hörni mountains, with its highest point, which is Hörni peak. Then there’s the Doura pass, the crest of the Florias, and finally, due west, the peak of the Mausein, which is shaped like a man bent over and carrying a load on his back.”
I stopped speaking. He finished writing the names in his notebook, which he had taken out of his pocket, but which he very quickly put away again. “I’m infinitely grateful to you,” he said, warmly shaking my hand. A gleam of satisfaction brightened his big green eyes, as if I’d just presented him with a treasure. As I was about to leave him, he added, “I understand that you are interested in flowers and herbs. We are alike, the two of us. I am fond of landscapes, forms, portraits. Quite an innocent vice, aside from its other charms. I have brought with me some rather rare books that I believe you would find interesting. I should be delighted to show them to you, if one day you would honor me with a visit.”
I nodded my head slightly but made no other response. I’d never heard him talk so much. I went away and left him on the rock.
“And you gave him all the names!?” Wilhem Vurtenhau raised his arms to heaven and glared at me. He’d just come into Gustav Röppel’s hardware store, at the moment when I was relating my encounter with the Anderer, some hours after it had taken place. Gustav was a comrade of mine. We were bench mates in school, sitting side by side, and when we were working out problems, I’d often let him see the solutions in my exercise book; in exchange for this service, he’d give me nails, screws, or a bit of twine, things he’d managed to nick from the store, which at the time was owned and operated by his father. I just wrote that Gustav was a comrade, because now I’m not sure that’s true anymore. He was with the others at the Ereigniës. He did what cannot be undone! And ever since, he hasn’t spoken a single word to me, even though we’ve met every Sunday after Mass in front of the church, where Father Peiper, red-faced and wobbly on his feet, accompanies his flock before bestowing upon them the incomplete gestures that constitute his last blessing. I don’t dare enter Gustav’s hardware store, either. I’m too afraid that there’s nothing left between us but a great void.
As I believe I’ve already mentioned, Vurtenhau is very rich and very stupid. He beat his fist on Röppel’s counter, causing a box of thumbtacks to tumble down from its shelf. “Do you realize what you did, Brodeck?” he asked. “You gave him the names of all our mountains, and you say he wrote them down!”
Vurtenhau was beside himself. All the blood in his body seemed to have been pumped into his huge ears. In vain, I pointed out that the names of mountains are no secret, that everybody knows them or can find them in maps or books; my observations failed to calm him down. “You’re not even considering what he might be up to, coming here out of the blue, nosing around everywhere the way he does, asking all his innocent questions, him with his fish face and his smooth manners!”
I tried to soothe Vurtenhau by repeating some of what the Anderer had said to me on the subject of forms and landscapes, but that only made him angrier. He stormed out of the hardware store, flinging over his shoulder one final remark which at the time seemed unimportant: “Don’t forget, Brodeck, if anything happens, it’ll be your fault!”
Only today do I realize the enormity of the menace his words contained. After he banged the door, Gustav and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders simultaneously, and burst into loud laughter, the way we used to do in the old days, in the time of our childhood.
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nbsp; XIV
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t took me nearly two hours to reach Stern’s cabin, whereas normally one good hour is enough. But no one had opened a trail, and as soon as I passed the upper limit of the broadleaf trees and entered the forest of tall firs, the fallen snow became so thick that I sank into it up to my knees. The forest was silent. I saw no animal and no bird. All I heard was the sound of the Staubi, about two hundred meters below me, where it rushes into a fairly sharp bend and crashes into some large rocks.
When I passed near the Lingen, I turned my eyes away and didn’t stop moving. I even increased my pace, and the frigid air penetrated into my lungs so deeply that they hurt. I was too afraid of seeing the Anderer’s ghost, in the same position as before, sitting on his little stool, surveying the landscape, or maybe stretching out his arms to me in supplication. But supplication for what?
Even had I been in the inn when the others all went mad that night, what could I have done on my own? The least word, the least gesture from me would have meant my life, and I would have suffered the same fate he did. That thought, too, filled me with terror: the knowledge that if I had been in the inn, I wouldn’t have done anything to stop what happened, I would have made myself as small as possible, and I would have looked on impotently as the horrible scene unfolded. That act of cowardice, even though it had never actually taken place, filled me with disgust. At bottom, I was like the others, like all those who surrounded me and charged me with writing the Report, which they hoped would exonerate them.
Stern lives outside the world—I mean, outside our world. All the Sterns have lived the way he does, for as long as anyone can remember: staying in the midst of the forest and maintaining only distant relations with the village. But he’s the last of the Sterns. He’s alone. He’s never taken a wife, and he has no children. His line will die out with him.
He lives by tanning animal skins. He comes down to the village twice every winter, and a little more often in fine weather. He sells his furs as well as various objects that he carves from the trunks and branches of fir trees. With the cash thus acquired, he buys some flour, a sack of potatoes, some dried peas, tobacco, sugar, and salt. And if he’s got any money left over, he drinks it in fruit brandy and makes the climb back to his cabin dead drunk. He never gets lost. His feet know the way.
When I reached the cabin, I found him sitting on the threshold, busy with binding some dead branches together to make a broom. I greeted him. Always suspicious of visitors, he replied with a movement of his head but spoke no word. Then he got up and went inside, leaving the door open.
Many things, both animal and vegetable, were hung up to dry from the ceiling beams; the acrid, violent odors blended and clung to whoever was in the room. The fire in the hearth produced some stingy little flames and a great deal of smoke. Stern dipped a ladle into a kettle and filled two bowls with thick soup, a porridge of groats and chestnuts, which had no doubt been simmering since the early morning. Then he cut two thick slices of hard bread and filled two glasses with dark wine. We sat facing each other and ate in silence, surrounded by a stench, with its overtones of carrion, that many would have fled from. But as for me, I was familiar with stenches. That one didn’t bother me. I had known worse.
In the camp, after my stay in the Büxte and before becoming Brodeck the Dog, for a few long months I was the Scheizeman, the “shit man.” My task consisted of emptying out the latrines into which more than a thousand prisoners relieved their bowels several times a day. The latrines were large trenches a meter deep, two meters wide, and about four meters long. There were five of them, and my job was to muck them out thoroughly. To accomplish this task, I had only a few tools at my disposal: a big pan attached to a wooden handle, and two large tin buckets. I used the pan to fill the buckets, and then, under escort, I went back and forth to the river, into which I emptied their contents.
The pan, which only a few lengths of old string kept fastened to the handle, often came loose and fell into the latrine. When that happened, I had to jump down, plunge my hands into the mass of ordure, and feel around for the pan. The first few times I did this, I remember puking up my guts and the little they contained. Then I got used to it. You can get used to anything. There are worse things than the smell of shit. A great many things have no smell at all, and yet they rot senses, hearts, and souls more surely than all the excrement in the world.
The two guards who escorted me back and forth held handkerchiefs soaked in brandy over their noses. They kept a few meters away from me and talked about women, sprinkling their tales with obscene particulars that made them laugh and inflamed their faces. I stepped into the river. I emptied the buckets. And I was always surprised at the frenzy of the hundreds of little fish that arrived in a brownish whirl and wallowed in the filth, flicking their thin silvery bodies in every direction, as though driven mad by their stinking food. But the current quickly diluted it, vile though it was, and soon clear water and the movements of algae were all that could be seen, as well as the reflections of the sunlight, which struck the surface of the river and shattered it into a thousand mirrors.
Sometimes the guards, in their drunken euphoria, allowed me to wash myself in the river. I would pick up a round, smooth stone and use it like a bar of soap, rubbing my skin with it to remove the shit and the dirt. Occasionally, I’d manage to catch some of the little fish that were still lingering around my legs, perhaps hoping for another portion. I’d quickly press their bellies with two fingers to squeeze out their guts and pop the fish into my mouth before the guards had time to see me. We were forbidden under pain of death to eat anything other than the two liters of fetid broth we were served in the evening and the chunk of hard, sour bread we got every morning. I chewed those fish for a good long time, as though they were savory delicacies.
Throughout that period, the odor of shit never left me. It was my true and only clothing. The result was that during the night, I had more room to sleep because no one in the hut wanted to be near me. Man is made thus: He prefers to believe himself a pure spirit, a creator of ideas and ideals, of dreams and marvels. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he’s also a material being, and that what flows out between his buttocks is as much a part of him as what stirs and germinates in his brain.
Stern wiped his bowl clean with a piece of bread and then, with a brief whistle, made a slender creature appear out of nowhere: a ferret, which he’d tamed and which kept him company. The small animal went to him and ate from his hand. Every now and then, while it was gobbling away, it cast a curious glance in my direction, and its round, gleaming little eyes looked like black pearls or ripe mulberries. I’d just told Stern everything I knew about the foxes and all about my visits to Limmat and Mother Pitz.
He got slowly to his feet, disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the room, returned, and spread out on the big table several handsome fox skins, bound together with a piece of hemp cord. “You can add these to your fox count,” he said. “Thirteen of them. And I didn’t have to kill them. I found them dead, and all in the position you describe.”
Stern took a pipe and filled it with a mixture of tobacco and chestnut leaves while I stroked the fox furs, which were glossy and thick. Then I asked him what all this could possibly mean. He shrugged his shoulders, pulled on his pipe, which crackled merrily, and exhaled great clouds of smoke that made me cough. “I don’t know anything, Brodeck,” he said. “I know nothing about it. Foxes—I can’t figure out foxes.”
He stopped talking and petted his ferret, which began wrapping itself around his arm and emitting little whimpers. Then he spoke again: “I don’t know anything about foxes. But I remember my grandfather Stern talking about wolves. There were still wolves around here in his time. Nowadays, whenever I see one, if it’s not a wolf ghost, it’s a stray come from far away. Once old Stern told me the story of a pack, a fine pack according to him, more than twenty animals. He enjoyed spying on them and stalking them a little, just to get on their nerves. And t
hen one day, they’re all gone. He stops hearing them and stops seeing them. He tells himself they got tired of his little game and went to stay on the other side of the mountain. The winter passes. A heavy winter, full of snow. Then spring returns. He tramps through all the forests, as though he’s inspecting them, and what does he find at the foot of the big Maulenthal rocks? The remains of the entire pack, in an advanced stage of decay. They were all there, every one of them, old and young, males and females, all with their backs or their skulls broken. Now, as a rule, wolves don’t fall off rocks. Occasionally, one may take an accidental step into thin air, or slip, or the edge of the cliff may crumble under its feet, but just one. Not a whole pack.”
Stern fell silent, looking me right in the eye. I said, “You mean to tell me they all fell to their deaths of their own accord?”
“I’m telling you what old Stern told me, that’s all.”
“But what’s that got to do with the foxes?”
“Wolves, foxes, they’re more or less cousins. Family. Maybe man isn’t the only animal that thinks too much.”
Stern’s pipe had gone out. He relit it, grabbed the little ferret, which was now trying to get inside his jacket, and filled our wineglasses.
A great silence passed over us. I don’t know what Stern was thinking about, but I was busy trying to make what he’d just told me jibe with what old Limmat had said. I got nowhere. Nothing was clear; there was nothing I could incorporate into a Report that an official in S. would have accepted without scowling at it and thrusting it into the stove.