Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

The fox came back. Durden watched him. The fox slunk round the enclosure in broad daylight, provocatively slowly. The rooster led his hens into the henhouse. One of them stayed outside it. The fox put his nose up against the fence here and there. Scraped the ground a little with his paws. Then went away without success. The goat was standing somewhere else now.

Would the Mayor have intervened if the fox had got in? We’ll refrain from making assumptions. Next day Durden gave the chickens away to the others in the Small Animal Breeders’ Association, keeping only the hen who had stood her ground.

Ditzsche said: if a chicken is fearless, that doesn’t make it brave.

After the fall of the Wall, Durden wanted to join the Free Democratic Party and stand for Mayor again. When Ditzsche heard about that, he went to Blissau’s and told people there about Heinrich Durden’s letter to Hans Modrow. Ditzsche was landing himself in the soup. Because how did he know about that? And then again: it surely wouldn’t have been the only letter he had opened. The informer’s revenge on the local politician. Some of them at Blissau’s sounded almost flattered to think an informer could have been spying on them. Ditzsche said he wasn’t an informer. He didn’t say he hadn’t read the letter.

In his letter, Durden had fulminated against the Church and argued for the continuation of the Stasi in another form. He was saying all that, he claimed, on behalf of the village. Although the village didn’t know the first thing about it. What else was in the letter hardly mattered. No one writes letters in our name. Durden never stood as candidate for any post in Fürstenfelde again.

Ditzsche lost his job. To this day we don’t know whether it was only Durden’s post that he read, or everyone else’s too.

When you have put up your chicken run, prepare the chickens for battle. Arm them with iron spurs overnight.

Heini “Tiny” Durden died in 2005. The inscription on his gravestone says: His Star Is Extinguished . The Schliebenhöners have come back and are living in the big house again. The chicken run is also inhabited. Not by pedigree fowl, by good healthy chickens with golden plumage. The vixen prowls round the cherry tree. And beside the chicken run, a wheelbarrow stands.

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1618, UPON THE NINETEENTH day of May, six suns were seen in the sky here.

JOHANN IS KEEPING HIS COOL AGAIN. BUT SERIOUSLY, who wouldn’t have screamed (briefly, anyway), on finding himself locked up in the cellar? A few minutes later Ma turned up. Again, he should say; Ma turned up again. When he heard her voice, of course he was relieved at first. And then she didn’t let him out.

Ma. Honestly.

Ma misunderstood everything that Johann said, or ignored it, and asked him questions that he couldn’t answer through the door. Who was behind the break-in, where were the others? In the end she threatened to take Johann’s top hat away if he wouldn’t cooperate. Johann thought that was almost funny.

So then she went away, and he shouted after her, but the leather skins swallowed up the sound of his voice.

Ma called him Jochim. Johann knows who Jochim is: a character out of those folk tales. Ma read him the story of Jochim when he was little. And he read it to her when she was depressed.

Johann runs his finger over the booklets on one of the shelves, pulls one out, leafs through it. The Tinker’s Ring. Jochim turns invisible, people are scared, he decides against invisibility in spite of its terrific plus points, The End . Hmm. Ma tells it differently. Jochim stays invisible and annoys the people who always used to make fun of him.

Ma scared Johann more than being locked up here.

But Johann is keeping his cool again. He climbs on the chest and reaches his arm, with his phone at the end of it, up to the ceiling. No network. He clears books away and pushes the chest over to the opposite wall. Still no network.

Johann is keeping his cool again. He has time. There’s light here, there are books, and under the table is a can of Cola Light, still half full. Johann starts reading.

AFTER PRACTICING INIQUITY MANY A TIME IN THE Uckermark with their Attacks, Robberies and rascally Conduct, doing heinous Deeds against God, the Law and all that is Meet, Right and our bounden Duty with evil Intent, causing Uproar and manifold Violence, and last of all, in the village of Lychen, turning a Church into a Stable, keeping Beasts therein, moving the Altar and the sacred Vessels into that same Stable and forcing the Priest to preach there, those notorious Thieves, Deceivers, Agitators, Smugglers and Footpads Hinnerk Lievenmaul and Kunibert Schivelbein, the latter being otherwise known as Long-Legged Kuno, were taken and deliver’d up to the Uckermark High Court in Prenzlow, on Saint Andrew’s Day in the year of Our Lord, 1599.

The presiding Judge was His Worship Justice Joachim von Halvensleben.

Lievenmaul and Schivelbein spoke in their own Defense.

Besides the well-known Case that had come before the Chamber not long since, concerning the Matter of whether the Flight of the aforesaid Rapscallions were an unpunished Crime or no, on this Occasion a new Plaintiff, Count Poppo von Blankenburg, accused the Defendants of stealing nine Thalers from him in a false Game while attempting to abstract a Barrel of Beer from his Cellar.

Lievenmaul and Schivelbein let it be known, firstly, that there had been no False Game, Blankenburg himself being False through and through, more particularly his Hair, which much resembled a Besom Broom — but by all that was holy, the Count play’d a very poor Game.

The Defendants were reprov’d by His Worship for such scurrilous Talk.

Secondly, the Defendants could not, said they, have stolen the Thalers from the aforesaid noble Lord, as they did not belong to him. Rather, the Thalers were the property of the town of Fürstenfelde, as laid down by Law in the Ruling of 1514 whereby one Thaler per Cartload of Crayfish — nine in all this Year — was to be paid into the Town Coffers, and not therefore into the Coffers of Herr v. Blankenburg, albeit that Noble Lord took the money Year after Year. A second Verdict had indeed been given, but by a Court so influenced by Herr von Blankenburg that the Trial had turned out in such a way that not just the Plaintiff, but also the Judge, all seven Jurors and every other Person attending the Courtroom were involv’d. The People of Fürstenfelde had to accept this outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, they being threaten’d with Guns and other Engines of Murder, and not wishing to end like the Mayor of Göhren, who defended himself and was beat to Death in Unexplain’d Circumstances. They — Schivelbein and Lievenmaul — swore before God and the Court that they had returned the Thalers and the Beer, save perchance for two Pitchers of the latter, to the folk of Fürstenfelde.

And as for all the other noxious Deeds with which they were charg’d before the Court, they would plead guilty to only one, namely running away from the Tower in Prenzlow after they were condemned to Death the previous Year, but this could credibly be seen as the Work of two Desperate Men.

All their Talk, however, was in Vain, likewise Schivelbein’s plea that they had never hurt any Person corporeally. Sentence of Death was therefore pass’d on these incorrigible and habitual Offenders.

His Honor acceded to their request to determine the Place of Execution themselves, intending no doubt to placate the Common Folk, with whom the Condemn’d Men stood in High Regard, since they reliev’d only those who, they thought, deserv’d it of their Possessions. So the Condemn’d Men chose to die in their Birthplace of Fürstenfelde.

AND THE VIXEN LEAPS, TAKING OFF FROM AN OLD idea, on such a night as this the chickens are making a noise in the henhouse, her first leap is not enough, again, again, and again, she does it but she lands hard and clumsily, limps, the vixen limps to the henhouse, the chickens inside are scraping the ground with their claws, there is no gap in the wood of the henhouse, the vixen scents that a human was at work on it, she scratches at a little metal thing with her left paw, the wood opens, gets inside, a tunnel, her right paw hurts, it’s cramped, she can hardly get round the corners, the warmth of the chicken, droppings, little feathers, blood, the walls are closing in on the vixen, it’s so tight she can’t turn round, zigzag, can’t manage the corners, this will give her nightmares, and the vixen sneezes. The vixen sneezes, and somewhere inside the nightmare labyrinth a chicken sneezes too.