Otfried Preussler - Krabat

‘Come!’ said Tonda softly to Krabat. ‘They’ve been to draw the Easter water. We don’t want to frighten them.’

They drew back into the shadow of the nearest hedge and let the girls go by.

The Easter water, as Krabat knew, must be drawn from a spring before sunrise on Easter morning. It must be drawn in silence, and in silence it must be carried home, and if you washed in it you would have beauty and good luck for a whole year – or so the girls used to say.

Moreover, if you carried the Easter water home to the village without ever looking around, you might meet your future lover – so the girls said, but who knew what to think of that?

The Master had fixed a yoke outside the open door of the house, both ends were nailed to the door frame at shoulder height. As the men came back they had to pass under it, one by one, saying, ‘I bow beneath the yoke of the Secret Brotherhood.’

The Master was waiting for them in the hall, and he gave each man a blow on the right cheek, with the words, ‘Remember you are my pupil!’ Then he struck them on the left cheek, adding, ‘Remember I am the Master!’ After that the men had to bow low to the miller three times, promising, ‘I will obey you in all things, Master, now and forever.’

Tonda and Krabat met with the same reception. The boy did not yet realize that he was now the Master’s property, delivered up to him utterly, body and soul, for life or death. He joined the other men, who were standing at the end of the passage, as if they were waiting for their breakfast. They all had the sign of the pentagram drawn on their foreheads, like Tonda and Krabat.

Petar and Lyshko were not back yet, but they soon appeared at the door, too, and after they had bowed under the yoke, taken their blows on the cheeks and made their promises, the mill began to go around.

‘To work!’ cried the Master to his men. ‘Off with you!’

At that the miller’s men threw off their coats. They ran to the grinding room, rolling up their sleeves as they went, dragged up sacks of grain and set to work, while the Master kept them hard at it, shouting and gesticulating impatiently.

‘And this is supposed to be Easter Sunday!’ thought Krabat. ‘Not a wink of sleep all night, no breakfast – and we have to work twice as hard as usual!’

Even Tonda ran out of breath at last and began to sweat. They were all sweating freely that morning; the perspiration dripped from their foreheads and temples, ran down their necks, poured down their backs so that their shirts were sticking to them.

‘How much longer is this going on?’ Krabat wondered.

Whenever he looked, he saw set, grim faces. They were all grunting and groaning, hot and damp with perspiration as they were. And the pentagrams on their foreheads were blurring, dissolving in their sweat, and gradually disappearing.

Then something quite unexpected happened. Krabat, shouldering a sack of wheat, was struggling up the steps to the bin floor. It took the very last of his strength and every scrap of will power he had. He was just about to stumble and collapse under his burden – when suddenly all his troubles were over. The pain in his legs was gone, his backache had disappeared, and his breathing came easily.

‘Tonda!’ he cried. ‘Look at this!’

He was up on the bin floor with one bound, then, tipping the sack off his shoulder, he grabbed it by both ends, and before emptying it into the hopper he brandished it in the air with shouts of triumph, as easily as if it were full of feathers instead of grain.

It was as if the miller’s men had been transformed by magic. They stretched their arms, laughed, and slapped their thighs. Even the sour-faced Kito was no exception.

Krabat was hurrying off to the granary to fetch the next sack, but the head journeyman cried, ‘Stop! That’ll do!’ They let the wheat run through the mill, and then Tonda stopped the machinery. ‘That’s it for today!’ said he.

With a final creak and clatter the mill wheel ran down, and they knocked the flour out of the meal bins.

‘And now to make merry, brothers!’ shouted Stashko.

All of a sudden there were big pitchers of wine, and Juro was bringing in dishes of Easter cakes, sweet and golden brown, fried in lard and filled with curds or plum jam.

‘Fall to, brothers! Eat them up, and don’t forget the wine!’

They ate and drank and made merry, and later Andrush began to sing, loud and boisterously. They washed down their cakes with red wine, and then formed a circle, linked arms, and stamped their feet in time to the song.

The miller, he sits

At the millhouse door,

Clackety, clickety,

Clack!

Spies as fine a young fellow,

As ever you saw,

Clackety, clickety,

As ever you saw!

Clackety, clickety,

Clack!

The miller’s men sang the ‘Clackety, clickety’ in chorus; then Hanzo started the next verse, and so they went on, singing in turn and dancing in a ring, first to the right, then to the left, into the middle and out again.

Krabat’s turn came last of all, since he was only the apprentice. He shut his eyes and sang the last verse of the song.

This fine young fellow,

No fool was he,

Clackety, clickety,

Clack!

He struck the miller,

Down on his knee,

Clackety, clickety,

Down on his knee!

Clackety, clickety,

Clack!

They stopped dancing and fell to drinking again. Kubo, who was usually so quiet, took the boy aside and patted him on the back.

‘You have a good voice, Krabat. You ought to be singing in a choir!’ said he.

‘Who, me?’ asked Krabat. It was only now Kubo mentioned it that he realized he could sing again – in a deeper voice than before, to be sure, but a voice that was firm and clear. The rasp in his throat that had been bothering him since the beginning of last winter was quite gone.

On Easter Monday the miller’s men went back to work as usual. Everything was back to normal – except that Krabat no longer had to toil so hard. He could easily do whatever the Master told him now. It seemed that the days when he dropped on to his bed half dead with exhaustion every evening were gone forever.

Krabat was heartily thankful for it, and he could guess how it had happened. When he and Tonda were next alone together, he asked his friend.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Tonda. ‘So long as we carry the sign of the pentagram on our foreheads we have to work like slaves – until the moment when the last of us has washed it away in the sweat of his brow. In return, our work will be easy all the year, as long as we do it between dawn and dusk.’

‘What about other times?’ asked Krabat. ‘After dark, I mean.’

‘Not then,’ said Tonda. ‘We have to manage as best we can after dark! But set your mind at rest, Krabat. For one thing, we don’t have to leave our beds to work so very often, and for another, well, it’s bearable when it happens!’