Oliver Pötzsch: The Werewolf of Bamberg

Finally they reached the ford, where the water, roiled by the rain and the many people passing through, was brown and muddy. A large group of wagon drivers and farmers had gathered there, standing in a half circle and staring down at something lying on the ground in front of them. Curious, Magdalena and Barbara pushed their way forward until they reached the shore.

Magdalena held her breath in astonishment.

“For heaven’s sake,” she finally gasped. “What in the world happened here?”

Lying in the mud in front of them was a severed human arm with shreds of what must have once been a white shirt. A few of the fingertips showed little bite marks, presumably from fish, and some strands of torn muscles hung from the forearm, but otherwise the arm was still in relatively good condition. Magdalena surmised that it had been lying in the water for a few days, but certainly no longer than two weeks.

“And I’m telling you again, it was this beast,” one of the wagon drivers in the group was heard to say. “This arm is a warning. It eats anyone trying to cross the river.”

“A. . a beast?” Barbara asked, wide-eyed. “What kind of beast?” She had difficulty diverting her eyes from the grisly discovery.

“You haven’t heard of it?” Another wagon driver, with a slouch hat and torn jacket, spat in the muddy water alongside the two young women. “They say a monster is loose here in the Bamberg Forest and has already killed a large number of people. We can count ourselves lucky if we manage to get to town unscathed.”

The first wagon driver, a tall, broad-built man of about fifty, resignedly shook his head. “In the city you’re not safe, either,” he growled. “My brother-in-law lives in Bamberg. He saw with his own eyes how the bailiffs fished an arm and a foot from the Regnitz, next to the Great Bridge. And now this. By all the saints, God protect us and our children!” He crossed himself, and an old woman next to him hastily began to pray her rosary.

“Ah, that is surely very bad,” Magdalena began cautiously, “but all the more reason we should move on before it gets dark.” She looked over at the treetops, which were already in the shadows. Her thoughts turned to Simon and their two sons, who were undoubtedly still back in the forest. “So what are we waiting for?”

The tall wagon driver looked at her and explained slowly, as if speaking to a small child. “Don’t you understand? We cannot cross the ford.” He trembled as he pointed at the severed arm. “Can’t you see the hand is pointing in our direction, as if trying to warn us? Anyone crossing the river here is marked for death.”

“Near Munich there was once a hand alongside the bridge,” the other driver said, pointing with his slouch hat and rubbing his unshaved chin pensively. “It was attached with a lead coffin-nail to the railing, and a few men made fun of it. They tore the hand off, threw it in the river, then started across the bridge. It collapsed, the river carried the men away, and they were never seen again.”

“But. . but we can’t all just stand here simply because of an arm!” Magdalena said, shaking her head. “The wagons are backed up behind us.” Nevertheless, she, too, began to tremble when she looked down again at the severed arm, already decaying, lying in the mud. What in God’s name had happened to the man?

“We are all lost,” murmured an old woman standing next to Magdalena and Barbara. “This is the only place for miles around where you can cross the river. If we have to spend the night here, then God help us. The beast will come to fetch us all.” She crossed herself again and looked across to the forest, which in the meantime had grown somewhat darker. The pouring rain showed no sign of stopping.

“Maybe you should go and look for Simon and the children,” Barbara whispered to her older sister. “If there really is something on the prowl around here, it’s certainly better to stay near the wagon.”

Magdalena nodded. “You’re right. In just a minute, I’m going to-”

Just then they heard familiar voices behind them, and when Magdalena turned around, she saw, to her great relief, Simon and the two boys making their way through the crowd. The short medicus looked pale, and there was a slight quiver on his lips.

“Your father said you were down below at the river crossing,” he said, pointing behind him as the huge figure of Jakob Kuisl approached. “He’s cursing like the driver of a beer wagon because nothing is moving.”

“Well, at least we now know the cause for the delay,” Magdalena replied. She pointed at the arm on the ground. “People take it for a sign they are not supposed to cross the river, and. .” She was going to tell Simon the rest, but at that moment her father arrived. Jakob Kuisl paid no heed to those standing around, but glanced down and frowned at the severed arm. Then he bent over to have a better look.

“Don’t touch it,” snarled the wagon driver with the slouch hat. “It will bring misfortune to us all.”

“Just because I touch a moldy arm?” Kuisl still had his cold pipe in his mouth, so his words were hard to understand. “If that’s the case, then bad luck would follow me like it did Job.” Carefully, he picked up the arm and examined it.

“My God, what’s he doing?” gasped the second, heavily built wagon driver. “It looks like he is going to smell it.”

“Ah, not exactly,” Magdalena replied. “It’s just that-”

Kuisl interrupted, finally taking the pipe out of his mouth. “This arm belonged to a man who was old and feeble, around sixty, I would say, or perhaps seventy. He was an aristocratic gentleman, or in any case he signed and sealed a large number of documents. Hm. .” He held the arm right up to his face, as if about to take a bite out of it. “Yes, no doubt a nobleman whose wife died some time ago and who was looking around for a younger partner. He was probably on a trip in search of a woman. But why? He didn’t have long to live, in any case. He’d been suffering badly from gout, and he had at most one or two years to live.” Kuisl nodded, trying to think what it all meant. “By God, this arm can serve as a warning to us not to eat too much fatty meat. Nothing more and nothing less. So now, it’s served its purpose.”

The hangman threw the arm in a wide arc into the swirling, foaming river, where it quickly sank. The crowd let out a collective shout, as if Kuisl had murdered one of them.

“What. . what did you do?” sputtered the man with the slouch hat. “The sign. .”

“What sign? It was just an arm, nothing more. Now let’s get moving before I turn really nasty in this awful weather.”

The men along the river stared at him, dumbfounded, and Kuisl, without another word, took his place in line again behind the wagons.

“For God’s sake, who was that?” one of the wagon drivers finally asked. “A magician? A demon? How can he know exactly who the arm belonged to?”

“Let’s just say he’s seen a number of severed body parts,” Magdalena replied as she turned around. “He has. . uh. . some experience in this area. So you can believe him.” Then she hurried back with Barbara and the other Kuisls to join her father.

They quickly caught up with him as he walked back along the muddy path through the pass, grimly and in haste. Simon had left the two boys in the care of his sister-in-law, Barbara, and now he turned to his father-in-law with an inquisitive expression.

“My compliments, that was very impressive,” he said, as both he and Magdalena struggled to keep up with Jakob. “How did you know so much about that arm?”

“Good God, because the Lord gave me eyes to see,” Kuisl grumbled. “That’s all there is to it. You don’t need any witchcraft for that, so you can spare yourself all that hooey.”