Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

They drank to dancing.

To stirring up trouble.

To Sterni beer.

The garage drank. To one of the old boys, one of us, Burkhardt Imboden, known as Imboden.

THE VIXEN TAKES THE LONG WAY ROUND THROUGH the rough terrain of the fallow field. There’s not much land left like this between the old forest and the human houses, land that human beings don’t change with their powerful, noisy diggers and cutters. Nature lashes out on the fallow field, untamed. Grasses, tough bushes reach for the vixen, hundreds of aromas swirl in wild confusion in front of her nose, thorns bite into her pelt. She is happy to go that difficult way — no humans are ever there, and the thick undergrowth gives her cover all the way to the first buildings.

From the tallest of those buildings iron strikes against iron — again, again, again, echoing far over the land. The vixen knows that sound, the regular rhythm of it. She also knows the pigeons who sleep up here, and the little old man who sometimes feeds the pigeons and sometimes drives them away.

The iron chimes sound different. Louder, less regular than usual. The iron hesitates, drags. Gets into difficulty. The vixen crouches low to the ground, makes herself inconspicuous. Something that isn’t rain or chiming iron is lurking in the clouds above the tower. Lurking like men lying in wait for game in the old forest.

The last iron chime hangs like a cloud over the land, echoing away, away, away. The wind brings nothing to the vixen. She’s not used to smelling nothing. Smelling nothing means she must be on her guard. Everything could be hidden in nothing.

She thinks of the hunt, her concern for her cubs is aroused. She wants to stand up — and can’t. Can’t turn her head or even prick up her ears. The last iron chime lies heavy as iron itself in her paws. A raindrop hovers in front of her nose. Drops don’t do that. Don’t do nothing. It ought to go on falling, but something stops it.

The vixen knows she ought to run on, but something stops her.

Something stops the world.

—

The long iron chime dies away. All is so still around the vixen that she can taste the silence. When it is so still, the silence tastes of everything all at once. There! Firm and bright and enormously loud, the Up Above discharges an arching light so bright and large that the vixen feels the tingling of its power all the way to the tip of her brush. She whines, the raindrop speeds up, falls.

The vixen runs as fast as the field will let her. Only gradually does her instinct come back — she scents a human. In the building closest to the field, where there haven’t been any chickens to be found for a long time, and hardly anything to eat at all, a human female is standing at a lighted opening. The vixen has known the female since it was a cub. She has learned that the human female is no danger. It has a sweetish smell of fear. Maybe it knows of something up above that is hidden from her down below?

The vixen turns and trots under wild, branching shoots toward the human lights.

Anna, at her window, doesn’t know there is a fox in the field. Anna stands there composed at the window, as thunder tears the silence like hands tearing paper. In the lightning flash the field opened an eye, but Anna kept calm.

She closes the window. Rain beats wetly against the glass. Tights, windbreaker, cap, headlight, Anna is ready for her last run. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. The finely branching lightning is etched into her eyelids.

ON THIS DAY THE NIGHT WEARS THREE LIVERIES: What Was, What Is, What Is Yet To Be.

THERE’S A STONE ON THE SPORTS FIELD, BETWEEN the clubhouse and the disused bowling alley. Nice and square, nice and practical, two meters high. It could have been made for commemorative plaques. It’s what they call an erratic block. An erratic commemorative block. At the moment the erratic block isn’t commemorating anyone. The holes from the last commemorative plaque on it are still left. There’s a cigarette end stuck in one of them.

The sports field and the erratic block are both in Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse, and the last commemorative plaque on the erratic block in Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse was put up there for Ernst Thälmann.

Ulli’s garage is on the other side of the sports field. He threw the men out earlier than usual this evening because of tomorrow. Lada helped him to clear up. Ulli stood him a drink. Now they are sitting on the piles of tires outside the garage smoking, drinking and looking at the clouds. Looking up and down Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse. Ulli shakes his head.

Lada’s orange Shell overalls glow. Somehow or other they positively glow. Ulli is in a denim jacket, jeans and a white T-shirt, and he is nervous. Because of tomorrow.

“I’ll open early tomorrow,” he says.

“Mhm,” says Lada.

“The men will fancy a little nip before the Feast gets going.”

“Mhm,” says Lada.

“I was thinking of asking Krone to let me have one or two platters of cold cuts from his stall. He has good salami-type sausage. A little something for people to nibble.”

“They can nibble anywhere tomorrow. Open at eleven or whenever, they’ll start nibbling.” Lada spits.

“Stop that.”

Lada looks at Ulli. Lada rubs the spit away with the sole of his shoe. Drinks to Ulli, who waves the gesture away. They drink.

The bells are ringing. The bells sound strange. Lada and Ulli would look at the church if the new buildings weren’t in the way. There’s a loud roll of thunder.

“Hey, it’s the forest fairy.” Ulli looks at the clouds. Lada looks at the clouds. Raindrops begin falling.

Ulli points his bottle at the sports field. “Know it, do you?”

“Know what?”

“The stone.”

“The Hitler stone?”

“That was all done away with long ago.”

“Yup, you can see it was. Something’s left, all the same.”

“Know why it lost its little mustache and its parting?”

Lada pushes out his lower lip. Stands up and strolls over to the erratic block. “Because it looked good? Here? It looks like a face anyway.” He traces the outlines of a forehead and nose on the block. Tap-tap-tap over the stone.

It’s very quiet after the thunder. Only now that Lada is playing percussion with a bottle of Stierbier on a boulder five hundred million years old do we notice how quiet. It’s as if, all of a sudden, only one sound would be possible.

Ulli joins Lada. Puts his hand on the cheek of the erratic block.

“It’s not that,” he says. “Until ’95, there was a plaque here in memory of Thälmann. Know him, eh?”

“Not personally, nope.”

“Very funny.”

“GDR, right?”

“Exactly. And do you know what this place was called until ’45? The Adolf Hitler Sports Field. And there was a different name on the plaque, guess whose?”

“Makes sense.” Lada spits.

“Right. And whoever painted it on knew that.”

“Mhm.” Lada nods.

“And before him, before Hitler, we had a plaque on this stone here,” says Ulli, tapping the erratic block’s forehead, “commemorating the Crown Prince.”

“What Crown Prince?”

“What Crown Prince? How would I know? The Crown Prince. They were all called Wilhelm. The oak trees at the railway station were planted in his honor too. That was before the First World War.”

“My father planted a birch tree in my honor when I was born, but later he couldn’t remember where.” Lada grins. Lada spits.

Ulli walks round the erratic block. “Back in those days we were well off. People came on purpose to settle here. Can you imagine that? Someone coming here on purpose to open something in this place?”

“That woman came to open the china shop. And there’s the guy from Magdeburg wants to open a shop selling old books.”