Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

He shouldn’t go down there; he does go down there. A long corridor, with the large door at the end of it standing open. The light is coming from the room beyond the door. The Archivarium. Ma is always talking about her Archivarium. It would break her heart if someone—

Johann knows the room from the 700th anniversary celebrations, when it was nearly empty. Now it is stuffed full of books, standing on shelves and on top of other books, with stacks of papers everywhere. In the corner there is a fine pair of antlers. In the middle of the room there is a table with writing materials, a magnifying glass and even more paper on it.

Best of all is the leather: four gigantic leather wall hangings or whatever you’d call them, made up of separate pieces of leather. Johann runs his fingers over one of them; it is cool. There are signs on it, barely legible characters. A date: September 1636. Each single piece making up one of the four hangings is written on and dated. It is as if the room had a skin made of leather and writing.

A mouse makes Johann jump as it scurries through the room, disappearing behind a chest. Should he phone Ma, or call the cops at once? But he can’t get reception down here. Maybe it was only the wind that broke the window upstairs. But then why is the door here open?

A gigantic folio volume lies on the reading desk, its finely decorated pages charred. Johann takes a photo of the book. The lovely old writing. He really wanted to make sure that the bells were all right. But since he’s here. .

The village was sitting underground, all in a long row, and the earth was cold, and when a chicken began clucking comfortably Barth the blacksmith wrung its neck, and no one said a word .

Suddenly there’s a sound like fine sand trickling down. Oh shit. Johann turns round. There’s light in the corridor again, a shadow outside the door — he runs toward it — but it closes as he drums his fists on it, shouting.

The display on the electronic lock changes from green to red.

EARLY IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1594, THERE CAME a wondrous procession to Fürstenfelde. Several Carts drawn by Horses and Oxen stopp’d outside the Prenzlau Gate, whereupon men and women jumped down from the said Carts, danc’d and sang and all rac’d about freely, but some lay in Cheynes howling and screaming pitifully, or speaking in strange Tongues.

From out of their turbulent Midst two Men stepped out before the assembled Village, one being tall and one short, both with long Beards and strange forreyn Clothing of fine Fabrick in Motley Hues. Without beating about the Bush, they offered a strange Trade: let the Village bring them, before Morning, all its Dullards, Lunatics, the Feeble-Minded, Fantastics, Deranged and Demented, all those possess’d of Devils and assail’d by Despair, that they be brought to the Northern Sea, where a great sea-going Vessel waited to take them Aboard, as was the Custom, for ever and a Day, the cost being ten Thalers for one such Person.

After this a great Silence fell, into which the Smaller Man cried: We know it is not an Easy Thing to part with your own Kin, yet surely your Lives would be greatly Eased thereafter. See them now making merry, and well cared for, with their own Ilk. And when you think you may fall into Despair yourselves, picture the delightful Sea Voyage they are making!

The Village assembled and debated what were Good and Christian to do. They could not tell, and each made his own Decision.

There was no Peace that Night for the screaming of the Lunatics and the playing of all Manner of Lutes and the like Stringed Instruments. In the Morning the Procession went on, and some, aye, some of us with it.

And if you ever be faring in a Ship on the High Seas, then know that you may at any time meet with a Ship of Fools.

O praise the unfathomable Mercy of God.

THERE IS A SMALL TV SET ON THE CHEST OF DRAWERS beside the visitors’ toilet in the Homeland House. The TV has an integrated video recorder. We think that is a good, practical idea, and we are surprised and sorry that such combi-sets are not so common these days.

What the TV shows confuses us. The TV transmits exclusively the horoscope section of the Breakfast TV program on Sat 1. Frau Schwermuth records it every morning and keeps it running nonstop until it’s time to close the Homeland House. The horoscope lady is called Britta Hansen. The village has known Britta since she was that high.

We’re confused because the TV is on now, at this time of day, with Frau Schwermuth doing knee-bends in front of it.

Britta Hansen says: Think of every star sign as telling its own story. You are the hero or heroine of that story as you move past the signs .

The color adjustment can’t be regulated any more. Britta Hansen’s jacket, which is very red anyway, looks as if it were blazing brightly as she thinks out loud about our star signs.

After reaching the Homeland House, Frau Schwermuth first locked the Archivarium properly. At least that meant Jochim the Tinker was in his proper place and couldn’t do any damage. Then she sorted the papers on her desk and stuck a newspaper over the broken window. And now she is doing exercises and wondering how to proceed as Britta Hansen, in a very red dress and shiny nylons, devotes herself to the subject of Libra, the Scales.

Venus, forever in love, gives you an unexpected romantic and emotional adventure. Take what she offers, and who can tell, you too could know the magic of eternal love .

A cardboard notice above the TV set says: THE STARS WITH BRITTA HANSEN. Hansen is a qualified astrologer. She draws conclusions about people and their feelings from the position of the heavenly bodies in the sky. The universe is an open book; Britta Hansen translates it into German.

Hardly anyone goes to the visitors’ toilet without stopping to look at the stars. That’s what happens when there’s a flickering screen in a dimly lit corridor. Visitors — people who used to live in Fürstenfelde, old folk, tourists wallowing in homesickness — stare at Britta Hansen’s bright red jacket. Many children, seeing the set, have lost interest in the horse-shoeing demonstration in the yard, and have had to be rescued from the nonstop horoscopes by their ambitious mothers, who didn’t bring them on a two-hour journey to watch TV but to see a horse shod.

Visitors from outside the village don’t know what to make of their encounter with Britta Hansen. Most of them don’t like to talk about it. Some think the TV set is part of the exhibition, an everyday item from the GDR, but that’s wrong, the TV set is an everyday item from Czechoslovakia in 1988. Very few venture to ask what horoscopes have to do with Fürstenfelde or the Homeland House. It could be that they’ve failed to understand something, that something has escaped them, and if that something is also to do with the GDR, people often feel very uncomfortable about it. Frau Schwermuth gives the braver visitors one of Britta Hansen’s business cards. You can get Britta to describe your own interior landscape for a fee of 100 euros.

This weekend the Sun meets Neptune, there is magic in the air, enough to amount to divine providence .

Even Frau Schwermuth doesn’t always understand everything she says.

The soap dispenser in the visitors’ toilet hasn’t been refilled for two years. If people from the village go to the visitors’ toilet they may stop and say, “Ah, there’s Britta,” to the TV set. But the vast majority don’t talk to it.

Britta Hansen’s hair is red, although just how red isn’t clear. Frau Schwermuth likes it when Britta wears her cowboy hat with a denim shirt and cowboy boots. She is surprisingly often right when she says what will happen in the next few days.