Andres Neuman - Traveller of the Century

And that’s how this creature ended up with me, the organ grinder said, caressing the wooden box. And do you know what? That was my last trip, I was a very young man in those days, but I’ve never been out of Wandernburg since. (And those landscapes on the sides, said Hans, did you paint them yourself?) Oh, they’re nothing much, only what you see from the cave in spring, I painted them so it would get used to the breeze from our river, which is as small and melodious as the organ itself is (some credit should go to the hand, shouldn’t it? Hans said with a smile, you saw what a mess I made of it), well, it’s not so difficult, it’s a question of having the right touch, touch is the important thing. (Hans, who was toying with the idea of bringing a notebook with him to the cave, persisted: Tell me more.) My dear fellow, you talk like a detective! (Almost, said Hans, I’m a traveller.) Well, this is how I see it — every tune tells a tale, nearly always a sad one. When I turn the handle I imagine I’m the hero of that tale and I try to feel at one with its melody. But at the same time it’s as if I’m pretending, do you see? No, not pretending, let’s say that even as I’m getting carried away I have to think about the end of the tune, because I know how it ends, of course, but maybe the people listening don’t, or if they do they’ve forgotten. That’s what I mean by touch. When it works nobody notices, but when it doesn’t everyone can hear. (So, for you the barrel organ is a box that tells stories, said Hans.) Yes, exactly! Goodness, what a way you have of putting things, playing the barrel organ is like telling stories around the fire, like you the other night. The tune is already written on the barrel and it may seem like it’s all done for you, a lot of people think you just turn the handle and think of something else. But for me it’s the intention that counts, just turning the handle isn’t the same thing as really applying yourself, do you see? The wood also suffers, or is grateful. When I was young, because I was young once like you, I heard many organ grinders play, and I can assure you no two tunes ever sounded the same, even on the same instrument. That’s how it is, isn’t it? The less love you put into things the more they resemble one another. The same goes for stories, everyone knows them by heart, but when someone tells them with love, I don’t know, they seem new. Well, that’s what I think, anyway.

The organ grinder lowered his head and began dusting his barrel organ. Hans thought to himself: Where did this fellow spring from?

Light snow had begun to fall outside. The old man finished tuning his instrument. Excuse me, he said, I’ll be back. He went out into the snow and lowered his trousers, unembarrassed. A slow light shone through the leafless poplar trees bordering the river, entangling itself in their branches before filtering through the other side and onto the organ grinder’s scrawny buttocks. Hans stared at the old man’s urine melting a hole in the snow, his meagre excrement. Common or garden shit, plain old shit, shitty shit.

How beautiful you look this morning, daughter, said Herr Gottlieb, taking Sophie by the arm as they stepped into St Nicholas’s Church. Thank you, Father, Sophie smiled, there’s still hope I’ll return to normal by the afternoon.

The parishioners had formed a queue along Archway, opposite the entrance to the church. St Nicholas’s Church was set back from the market square, shielded by a small park with some wooden benches. The church was Wandernburg’s oldest and most peculiar building. Looked at from nearby, from where the parishioners were now gathered, the most striking thing about it was its brown brickwork, which looked like it had been baked by the sun. Besides its main portal, which fanned out into pointed arches within arches, it had numerous side doors shaped like keyholes. Stepping back a few yards and examining it as a whole, what most stood out were the church’s asymmetrical steeples. One ended in a sharp point like a gigantic pencil, the other, more rounded, housed a toneless bell in a tower with such narrow openings that the wind could barely pass through. And yet what most bewildered Hans was the facade slanting perceptibly towards him, as though it were about to topple forward.

Since his visit to Herr Gottlieb’s house, Hans had continued to be friendly towards him. What worried Hans was that, despite greeting him warmly and stopping to chat with him when they met in the street, Herr Gottlieb had not extended him another formal invitation to the house. For the moment he was content to drop vague comments such as “How nice it was to see you” or “Let’s hope we bump into one another again”, courtesies too casual to justify Hans’s turning up at the house unannounced. Hans therefore had been discreetly loitering in Stag Street for days, hoping to force a meeting with Sophie. He had succeeded on a couple of occasions, but she had seemed rather enigmatic. Although she answered him with unswerving abruptness, the way she looked at him made him tremble inside. She never drew out their conversations, nor laughed at his jokes, and yet when she stopped to talk to him she stood at a distance that would have aroused Hans’s suspicions had he not felt so unsure of himself. Determined to keep trying, and having learnt that Sophie accompanied her father to Sunday matins at St Nicholas’s Church, Hans had risen early that timidly bright Sunday, in order to go to Mass. When Frau Zeit had caught sight of him in the kitchen at eight o’clock, she had frozen, knife in mid-air, her mouth gaping wide like the cod she was about to fillet.

As he entered the church Hans had felt more like an outsider than ever. Firstly because it had been years since he attended Mass. And secondly because no sooner had he set foot in the dark interior than he felt himself the object of everyone’s scrutiny. The young girls peered at him curiously from their pews; the older men frowned as he walked by. Hat off, snapped one woman. Without realising it, Hans had walked into St Nicholas’s Church wearing his beret and looking as though he were a tourist. The church smelt of candle wax, oil and incense. Hans advanced along the central nave. A few faces looked familiar, although he was not sure where he had seen them before. He scoured the congregation, but could not see Sophie, despite having thought he recognised her from a distance. The far end of the nave was almost in darkness, the heavy stained-glass windows letting in only a trickle of light, a fine white dusting. As the liturgy had not yet begun, Hans kept walking towards the front pews. When he reached the end of the murmuring voices he had a clearer view of the high altar with its imposing crucifix, a pair of three-branched candelabra on either side, four altar candles and a grim altarpiece adorned with acanthus leaves. The altarpiece was decorated with two angels seemingly struggling to hold up an oval, perhaps because on top was a chubby third angel clinging on as though suffering an attack of vertigo. To the left of the oval was a snake coiled around a stick and to the right a thorny creeper entwined in a tree. It would only have been possible to see from quite high up, from over the plump little shoulder of the third angel, for example, how close in fact Hans was to Sophie, to predict the moment when he would catch sight of her, and even to appreciate how kind fate had been to provide a vacant seat in the opposite pew, on the men’s side.

Theoretically, the central aisle and the strip of light running along it separated the two sexes. In practice, this division only stimulated everyone’s interest, giving rise to a series of coded exchanges. As Hans searched for a seat, he glimpsed gestures, winks, handkerchiefs, messages, sighs, grimaces, frowns, nods, half-smiles, fans, fluttering eyelashes. The diversion was abruptly cut short by the booming first chord rising from the organ, whose grandiose prow towered above the main entrance. The congregation stood up as one. The boys’ choir began to chant a slow, high note. Various figures emerged from the shadows and circulated among the pews collecting alms for the parish. At that moment, an altar boy, a slightly cross-eyed censer-bearer, and a deacon who shuffled along knees bent, filed out, followed by Father Pigherzog, parish priest of St Nicholas’s and head of the Catholic Church in the principality of Wandernburg in the absence of the archbishop. Hans sat down on the first available seat in the nearest pew. The holy procession approached the altar, the four men kneeled before the tabernacle, and Hans squeezed himself in between two stout men. Father Pigherzog kissed the altar and made the sign of the cross. Hans cleared his throat, and one of the men looked askance at him. The boy swung his censer to and fro over the altar, and Father Pigherzog began intoning the Introit and the Kyrie. There! There she is! Hans realised with a start. And there indeed was Sophie, serene and graceful, as though sitting for a profile portrait, her eyes fixed somewhere above the altar.