Oliver Potzsch: The Beggar King

“Hey, Teuber,” a skinny, pockmarked youth shouted from the first row. “How does that noose feel around your neck? You hanged my brother. I hope you dance just as long as he did.”

“They say the other one’s a hangman, too. Perhaps they can hang each other,” a young maid joked.

As laughter broke out, the crowd surged toward the teetering stack of crates that threatened to collapse at any moment. Atop the hastily built scaffold and beside the two shackled executioners stood four grim raftsmen, the apparent ringleaders. With grave self-importance, they held the crowd back, preventing them from storming the gallows. Kuisl had to assume the four men had designs on the ropes and victims’ clothes and bodies. Bloody talismans were thought to have magical powers, especially those from a pair of hangmen.

“String ’em up! String ’em up!” At first just a few voices chanted, but then others joined in and the shouts rose to a mighty chorus that resounded over the pier.

“String ’em up and let ’em dance!”

Now Kuisl could feel the carpenters beginning to turn the crank on the winch. The cords tightened, pulling the hangmen slowly upward. At first Kuisl could still touch the ground with his toes, but soon he was swinging freely in the air.

The rope squeezed Kuisl’s throat and Adam’s apple tight, crushing his windpipe as his legs began to thrash involuntarily. The hangman knew from experience that death didn’t come immediately to hanged men, and for this reason he often tugged on victims’ feet to break their necks and put an end to the torment. But it was obvious that no one here had any interest in mercy. Kuisl jerked and strained; he could hear blood pounding in his head and, in the background, the crowd’s cries and laughter.

“Look at them flounder! The scaffold is like a dance floor!”

When the hangman opened his eyes again, it was as if a red veil hung in front of his face. The crowd’s voices merged in a senseless, meaningless melee. Images rose within and flashed all around him. He saw himself in the Great War, sword in hand, and in the background a city in flames. Then there was blackness. He saw his father die beneath a hail of stones; he saw soldiers seeking recruits as they passed through Schongau, waving to little Jakob at the side of the road; and finally, he saw himself in his mother’s lap with a soiled headless little wooden doll.

Mama, why does Daddy kill people?

The bloody veil before his eyes moved on like a storm cloud, and behind it a soft, warm blackness appeared, with a tiny light shining at its center. The light grew closer and closer, opening onto a tunnel. At its end stood a form wreathed in light.

Mother, I’m coming home to you… I’m coming…

“Stop! In the name of the city, stop at once!”

Suddenly Kuisl felt himself falling. When he landed with a thud on the hard crates below, his body, which had been drifting off into another realm, suddenly reasserted itself with intense earthly pain. The light and the tunnel disappeared, and at that moment, blissfully, air came streaming back into his lungs, somehow cold and hot at once. His throat burning, he rolled on his side, spitting up bitter bile. When he felt the unpleasant taste on his tongue, he knew he was still alive.

“Everyone stand back! Back to your houses, or I’ll have you all thrown in the stocks and whipped! Do you hear me? That’s an official city order!”

Kuisl opened his blood-encrusted right eye to see a man in front of him dressed in a fur-trimmed cloak and official crimson cap. A half-dozen city guards stood defiantly at his side on the crates, crossbows trained on the crowd below. Snarling like fierce toy dogs, if less playful, the crowd backed away, bit by bit. Only a handful of spectators seemed to object, but in no time the bailiffs gained the upper hand and drove them all into the narrow streets along the Danube. Within a few minutes the uproar had subsided and the docks were as deserted as on a Sunday morning during mass.

Panting, Kuisl stood up and staggered toward the edge of the scaffold, where Teuber was doubled up in a pool of his own vomit, the bandage on his chest soaked in blood. The Regensburg executioner coughed and spat but for the time being seemed to have at least regained consciousness. Kuisl knelt down beside his friend and passed his hand through Teuber’s sweaty hair.

“You think I’ll let you die on me here?” the exhausted Schongau hangman gasped. His throat felt like it was on fire, and he could speak only in fits and starts. “Better forget that idea… I didn’t drag you here all the way from Weidenfeld so that you could give up now. We hangmen are tough dogs. Don’t forget that!”

Teuber seemed to nod; then he turned away like a sick animal and didn’t stir. His breath whistled and rattled, though, as if he wanted to let everyone know he wasn’t dead yet.

“We’ll take him home,” an official’s voice spoke up from Kuisl’s right. “His wife will take care of him. The rest is in God’s hands.”

Kuisl turned around and looked straight into the eye of the man with the crimson hat. He had an old wrinkled face and wore a pince-nez on his nose, but his gaze was as sharp and clear as that of a man in his thirties.

“So you’re this Jakob Kuisl fellow,” Mamminger said, looking him up and down with a severe but curious gaze. “You haven’t made it very easy on us. You can’t be locked up, and torture won’t make you confess-and evidently you can’t be hanged either. Who are you? The devil? A ghost?”

The hangman shook his head. “Just a Kuisl,” he murmured. “We’re a tough breed.”

Mamminger laughed. “I’ll believe you there! Indestructible, the whole lot of you-your daughter and future son-in-law included.” He turned to a guard alongside him. “Cut this man’s bonds; he’s suffered enough. Then bring the other two over here. Now that the mob has cleared out, they have nothing to fear.”

The bailiff cut the ropes from Kuisl’s wrists and jumped down from the scaffold. Shortly thereafter he returned with Simon and Magdalena.

“Thanks to the Virgin Mary and all the saints in heaven! You’re alive!” When the hangman’s daughter caught sight of her father again, she was unrestrainable. With outstretched arms she rushed to the scaffold, clambered swiftly up the pile of crates, and wrapped her arms around her father, squeezing him so hard he thought he was being strangled a second time.

“I don’t want you ever to leave me again, do you hear?” she whispered, placing her hands on his face as if she still couldn’t believe he was alive. “Promise?”

“And don’t you ever leave me, either, shameless wench,” Kuisl replied. “Just think what you’ve done to your mother, vanishing from Schongau like that. She must be crying her eyes out day and night.”

He let out a chest-rattling cough as Magdalena ran her hand through his hair. “We’re on our way home now,” she said, “but first you’ve got to get better. You’ve got a fever-that much is clear-and there’s something wrong with your shoulder as well.”

The hangman blinked warily at Simon, who’d climbed onto the scaffold in the meantime. “Don’t you think for a moment I’m going to let myself be treated by this dubious little quack,” he growled. “I’d rather smear Teuber’s stinking ointment all over my body again.”

Simon grinned and bowed slightly. His clothing was still ripped and wet from his fight with Silvio, but some color had returned to his face. “Please do. You’re more than welcome to saw your own arms off, if you like. Less work for me.”

“Impertinent little shit. If you lay so much as a finger on my daughter again, I’ll smack you in the face.”

“In your condition?”