Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

And suddenly we’ve slowed down to a crawl. Or he’s slowed down. He’s walking very slowly and he turns around and puts a finger to his lips. ‘We’ll be there in a minute,’ he whispers. ‘Most of them are asleep.’

And they are asleep. Only a couple of little lamps are on above the aisle and they’re sitting in the dingy light, in bucket seats with the backs leant back, no one moving a muscle, like space travellers frozen in their sleep between the stars, I think.

‘Here we are,’ he says, and then I’m sitting next to him and we’re drinking in silence, in among the silent spacemen, and then we’re moving off. And as if he’d just been waiting for us to move again, he whispers, ‘I’m to blame. If I’d recognised Father Yahweh in His mercy and goodness He wouldn’t have punished me.’

But I don’t reply. I want to ask him, ‘Who are you? Where do you come from? How did Father Yahweh punish you?’ but it’s as if I couldn’t talk any more, even though I do want to find out our secret, even though I know there’s something between us, something I sense but that he doesn’t seem to know, or doesn’t want to know. And he talks and talks, and because I don’t reply he gets louder and louder, never mind that he told me before that we have to be quiet in here. ‘He gave me His light by showing me darkness. You must find the right path before a scourge befalls you too, like it did me. You have to reach your hand out to Father Yahweh so that He gives you His light!’ He talks all kind of nonsense, and I stare out of the window into the darkness. We must be passing through a forest or something; there’s no light to be seen outside, not even a tiny one, nor out of the opposite window either. And I stare into the darkness; what’s behind the darkness? And suddenly the man with the long, thin neck calls out loudly, ‘ Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani! ’ I turn to him and see his contorted face next to me in the semi-darkness. Movements to be felt in front and behind us, I hear the whispering of voices, the astronauts awakening although we’re not yet at our destination, and he calls out again next to me, ‘ Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ and then, as if nothing had happened, he whispers in my ear, ‘That means: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And that’s what I called out, out loud and over and over again, when He took my wife from me, I called it out although I didn’t even know Father Yahweh back then, you see.’ I want to ask him how he knew the words then, but I don’t reply because I’m afraid of his insane explanation. He gives me a zealous nod; it doesn’t seem to bother him that someone behind us just called out, ‘Shut up will you, you madman, there’s people trying to sleep here!’ I see that I’m holding an almost full bottle in my hand; I can’t remember opening it, and I drink in great gulps, and he whispers on next to me; it’s almost as if I’d only imagined his terribly loud ‘ Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, ’ but he made the astronauts angry too, on their paths between the stars. ‘On your paths, on your paths you’ll need Father Yahweh. Without Him, death and damnation await you! Death and damnation, do you hear, you have to turn to Him to escape the punishment for your sins.’

‘Sins?’ I ask, feeling my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth even though I’ve just taken a drink, and I drink again in great gulps.

‘Sins, oh yes, sins!’ He’s got louder again suddenly, bending over to me, and suddenly I can’t bear to be near him any more; I turn aside and twist away, ‘Guilt and punishment,’ he calls right in my ear; I drop the bottle; it falls on the open bag at my feet with the other bottles in it, there’s a clinking and smashing, clinking and smashing, it can’t just be the bottles hitting each other, ‘sins, oh yes, sins,’ and then I see suddenly, pressing my hands to my temples and my ears, suddenly I see through the crashing and splintering that’s getting louder and louder, I see the small blue car at the edge of the road, I see my van, the wine running onto the asphalt, red and white mixing to rosé, I see the man with the long, thin neck stumbling out of the car, a woman caught in the windscreen, not wearing her seat-belt I guess, and she’s red, all red, her hair, her face, her clothes. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I call out and throw the bottle away, just a few sips of Schloss Reinhartshausen, Hattenheimer Wisselbrunnen during the drive, I hear the bottle shattering somewhere, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ and the man with the long, thin neck kneeling in front of the car, it’s smashed beyond recognition on a slant in the ditch by the side of the road, and it looks as if he’s praying.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ I say over and over and I want to lean over to him and ask him why he’s on the same train as me, why he didn’t recognise me, but the man’s disappeared, only broken glass on the seat and a large crack in the window pane, and I look out into the night, and there are all these people standing around me, ‘Just went crazy … threw it right at the window …’

I’m bleeding, or is it just wine? I want to get up, the broken glass crunching beneath my feet — where’s the man? — but someone’s holding onto me. I’m a wine rep.

He fills his pipe. He chooses his favourite pipe with the straight mouthpiece. He fills the bowl slowly with the tobacco, pressing it down with his thumb. Then he sits down by the window and smokes. A hen runs across the yard. He has to catch it but that’ll be hard; it can smell the others lying in the shed. No one wanted to take his chickens. The few people still living in the village have enough hens of their own. And the really old ones don’t have any animals any more, only cats and dogs. What’s he to do with his dog? Call the vet from the next village to put him down? No. He’s had that dog for twelve years, for twelve years Kurt’s been sitting in his kennel by the gate, keeping an eye out. Kurt can sense something’s not right; he won’t stop howling and whimpering. The hen races past the window again and he gets up, his pipe between his teeth, and goes to the door.

There’s a willow basket on the bench. He picks it up and walks to the shed. He hears the dog howling and collects the hens’ bodies and heads in the basket. The sawdust and the sand by the chopping block are dark with blood. His pipe’s gone out, and he taps it out against the axe handle and shoves it in his breast pocket. The bowl of the pipe is still warm. His apron’s lying in the corner like a clump of black and red. What a crying shame, he thinks; all those lovely chickens. He could have asked around in the neighbouring villages but he didn’t want that — they’d only have asked him why he wanted to give his hens away. And they’re his animals; he doesn’t want them to end up somewhere else. He has to take two trips to lay all the hens in the little pit he’s dug in the garden. He looks over at the fields behind the garden; he’d leased them until two years ago. But he’s glad enough that he hasn’t got the cows any more; what would he have done with the cows? Behind the fields and the meadows he sees the dilapidated halls and barns that once belonged to the agricultural cooperative. He shovels earth onto the chickens, a few white feathers left next to the pit, and then he goes back to the house.

The hen’s still running around the yard. It’s slowed down now but the old man’s tired and he doesn’t want to catch it. He walks over to the kennel. Kurt’s disappeared inside, not howling any more, and the old man knocks on the roof. ‘Kurt,’ he says, ‘my boy, my old boy.’ The dog pokes his head out and the old man strokes his grey muzzle. He doesn’t want to look at him and he strokes him and looks out at the road and the houses, most of them empty. ‘Kurt,’ he says, ‘it’s going to be a long day for the two of us.’ It’s only midday and the sky’s blue and the sun’s shining after a whole week of rain, and the old man asks himself if he ought to wait until it gets dark, or go for a walk with Kurt in the evening sun. It’s not far to the woods, but perhaps it’s better to stay by the house. He thinks of the sea, which isn’t far either, twenty minutes in the car — but what does he want with the sea? He never used to go to the sea often; that was for holidaymakers. They just used to go for a meal in the old harbour tavern in town every couple of years. What was it called again — The Dancing Sailor? No, that was somewhere else; wasn’t it the Seaman’s Heart? He’s not sure any more.