Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

She wants to tear herself away, must get to her cubs, the chickens are close, she catches an enticing scent of one of her own kind from the largest dome: a fox, a dog fox. She scents his survival, beginning on the moor in a long-gone Before, how his mother vixen disappears, how two young human males feed him, one of them tall, one short, how he follows them without fear, and they follow him. They hunt together, and he entices a vixen, then another vixen, lives in caves and with the humans in human buildings, and he dies in something made of wood and iron that gives him great pain. The vixen learns with him, conquers with him, fears for him — finally runs away from his lifeless existence.

We are confused. Three bells stand on the bank of the Deep Lake. In the middle is the Old Lady, dark and sturdy. The twins flank her, bright and slender, the two moons of a dark planet. A slight sound is the only illusion; the bells are real. A kilo of copper sells for 5.32 euros. The takings wouldn’t have been bad.

WE ARE SUSPICIOUS. FOR ABOUT THE LAST THREE weeks a young man has been hanging around the village from late at night until dawn. As soon as Frau or Herr Zieschke opens the bakery he comes in to order orange juice and a yeast pastry with vanilla filling. At the tall counter in the corner where you can stand to eat, he folds his hands as if in prayer.

Frau Zieschke, behind the till, straightens her back.

Herr Zieschke leafs through yesterday’s paper.

Not until he has gone do they go into the back of the shop to make sandwiches or do whatever bakers do at the back of their shops.

He wears Adidas tracksuits. A white one with black stripes and a blue one with yellow stripes. Dark dirt clings between the stripes. The shoulder of the blue tracksuit was torn one day, and the skin under it bloody and abraded. Pale, a pale man. His watery eyes are reddened and almost never blink.

Adidas man, people call him.

We know about awkward characters. We know about ruins. We’ve seen dilapidation before and the shame that goes with all that. But we always know what happened before, and talk about why. Now here comes someone in an even worse state, and he stays out until dawn and no one knows who he is, he gives us nothing to talk about.

Orange juice and yeast pastry with vanilla filling.

After eating his breakfast, he sometimes presses his fist into the palm of his other hand, and his whole torso trembles. Sometimes. He. Rolls up. His. Sleeves. Above his elbows. As slowly as that.

One day it gets too much for Zieschke, who asks him a question. He wants to know something about the young man’s past history, maybe a name, a place. The Adidas man reads from the board, hesitantly, like a child.

“We bake. With. Natural. Sourdough.”

He divides his filled pastry into small pieces with his fork. He closes his eyes as he chews.

We don’t know where he comes from.

We don’t know where he’s going.

We know what he likes to eat.

After a while the injury to his shoulder has healed up.

BEFORE THE ANNA FEAST IN THE YEAR 1722 A MOST terrible tragedy occurred. The people feared that flax put out to dry would be stolen, so the unwise custom prevailed of shutting up servants or children in the ovens, which still contained the warm flax, and letting them sleep there overnight. That was done with the Geher children, Anna and Andreas. Of the pair, the girl was found dead in the morning, the boy severely injured. The matter was all the more tragic in that the same girl had warned us, the evening before, of vagabonds seeking to steal our bread.

The mother wanted all to be summoned nonetheless to the Feast. It was, however, the saddest we ever held, full of mourning and wrong and not dancing and song.

All honor was paid to the girl.

O mighty and terrible God.

O foolish, foolish Man.

AND HERR SCHRAMM, FORMER (ETC.) — THEN (etc.) — now (etc.) — and also, because he can’t make ends meet by (etc.) — is standing in front of the cigarette machine for the second time tonight. On average, ex-smokers are slimmer than smokers. The opposite is commonly assumed. You get fatter if you stop smoking, that’s what is commonly assumed. Sigmund Freud’s nephew thought up that notion, and you know how good the Freuds are at influencing people. But it’s a fact that smokers are more inclined to stop smoking later in life if their bodies stop keeping naturally slim. That undermines the statistics. Getting fat, then, has nothing to do with not smoking, it’s a case of an exhausted metabolism. Herr Schramm was never slim and never very slim. Herr Schramm was always the sturdy sort.

Coins in one hand, Anna’s identity card in the other, Herr Schramm is thinking about those common assumptions.

“What do you think?” he asks, putting the first coin in the slot. “Do people put on weight when they stop smoking?”

“Smoking is good for the digestion, isn’t it?” Anna holds the umbrella over Schramm.

“That’s commonly assumed,” says Herr Schramm, pressing the button for Pall Mall Red. “In reality it makes no difference. In reality you’re fat because you eat a lot, not because you don’t smoke much. Or else it’s genetic.” He hesitates with the ID card, scratches the back of his neck with it.

Anna puts her finger to the “In” slot on the machine. Herr Schramm puts the card through the slot intended for it. Nothing happens.

Herr Schramm thinks of things intended to work other things. He thinks of the duty crew of his rocket unit. The man responsible for firing was intended to give the command to fire the rocket. The crew responsible for servicing the starting ramp were intended to service the starting ramp. The C item was part of the A item. The personnel took up their firing positions in the place intended for them. The command to stand down from attention was intended for the close of the maneuver. “Class solidarity and military alliance with the Soviet Army. . protection of the air space of the GDR. . the utmost discipline and initiative. . at the word, stand down!” Everyone was in the clear about his intended task at any time. The wives of the personnel cannot be praised too highly. In the mid-1980s the regiment was severely cut. Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm protested, but what can you do? Rocket technology was mothballed. The main task now was guard duty. My God, guard duty. If Schramm wanted to do it himself, all the same he didn’t have to. The last parade on the parade ground was in 1990.

Herr Schramm presses the Lucky Strike button. No result.

Herr Schramm wonders how he is going to get rid of the girl if this cigarette business fails to work again. He presses the West button. No result.

“Why did you want to kill yourself?”

Herr Schramm presses the Camel button. He grits his teeth, his jaw muscles stand out. Still no result.

“I ask you,” says Herr Schramm.

Herr Schramm presses all the buttons, one after another. The opponent you best like to beat, so Herr Schramm firmly believes, is yourself. He clenches his fist. Anna’s raised eyebrows express alarmed curiosity. He strikes out, stopping a millimeter before he hits the metal of the machine.

When he was in the army, Herr Schramm often went swimming. Early in the morning, over to the Güldenstein and back. On the way out, swimming fast and furiously. Touch the Güldenstein, breathe deeply. On the way back, swimming slowly and thoughtfully.

“Have you done something bad?”

“Seems to me I’ve never done anything, ever, but get hold of cigarettes.”

The machine shows the amount of money fed into it. Maybe the bullet harmed the electronics. It’s always the electronics. Herr Schramm presses the button to get his money back. No result.

“You were a soldier, weren’t you?”