Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

Beyond the front gate there is a spacious interior courtyard. Beyond that you go through the former barn with its hayloft (which can be hired for events, hay and all) and you reach the apple orchard. Among the trees there is an old kayak, there’s a swing for the children of the wind, and the cat is now exploring among the trees.

The dwelling house is on two floors. The rooms are bright and warm, the walls plastered with loam and love, as the saying goes. All the materials were local. Nothing artificial, instead you catch a glimpse of pine cones, pebbles and other natural things that have made their way into the materials, some ideology as well. Visitors like to pass their hands over the walls, and Frau Reiff likes to see that.

Frau Reiff has three children. Three girls or three boys?

A broad staircase leads up to the first floor. The steps are paler and lower in the middle than on the outside; that comes of the weight of time. Halfway up the staircase there’s a circular window looking out on the interior courtyard where Frau Reiff entertains the participants in her raku workshop. Depending on the group dynamic and the air temperature, they sometimes sit out here until late at night, and sometimes someone points at the circular window after noticing movement on the stairs.

Those are the children. They climb up the outside of the steps, because the old wood complains more loudly in the middle. That’s on account of the weight of time. The calm and restless children of the exiles who found shelter here. The strong and restless daughters of the last smith to work here before the war. The thin and restless sons of the Fahrin and Besekow farming families who owned and cultivated their own fields. Before them others; we don’t know about them any more. At night all children are thirsty.

If a guest asks whether Frau Reiff has any children, Frau Reiff says either: yes, three sons, Janek, Karol and Izydor; or: yes, three daughters, Martha, Anna, Elisabeth; or: yes, three sons, Albert, Georg, Lennart. She has become used to it, it makes conversation so much easier, and she doesn’t have to explain what she can’t explain. It’s true, as well: in a way they are all Frau Reiff’s children, they live under the same roof. Frau Reiff leaves a glass of water out for them at the foot of the stairs in the evening.

You can deny only what exists.

Frau Reiff’s workshop is in what used to be the servants’ room of the smithy. The smell of clay and smoke clings persistently to everything. The unfinished pottery and the ceramic dust remind most women visitors in their fifties of a film with Patrick Swayze — we can’t remember the title at the moment — in which Swayze and his great love make a vase before she dies. Or after she has died?

A visit to the workshop also increases the likelihood that the following remark will be uttered: I’d have loved to learn how to do something with my hands like that. Or: I’d love to learn, etc. Or: one of these days I’ll learn, etc. Frau Reiff’s pottery courses are booked up well in advance, anyway. People come from all over the German Republic north of Kassel. When the students stop for a break, they like riding on the swing in the apple orchard when there’s a couple taking the course, or when two of them have come a little closer to each other in the workshop. Someone always asks about the kayak. Frau Reiff doesn’t know the answer. The kayak has always been there, she says, and she likes having a kayak in an apple orchard.

Others like the dry-stone wall round the garden. Frau Reiff tells them that whenever something worries her, she goes out into the fields until she finds a stone, it must be roughly the same size as her worry, and then she brings it here, puts it on the wall, and her worry immediately gets less. The lady who is the archivist here, she says, has told her that a smith did the same thing hundreds of years ago. She likes to think that her own worries are stacked on top of the worries of a man who lived in this place so many years before her.

Frau Reiff has made the stable into a showroom. Pale blue vases, pale blue dishes, pale blue mugs standing on small pedestals, monuments to the skill of her fingers. Sometimes there’s a price on them, sometimes there isn’t. Much of what she makes is not for sale. We could claim that those are the most filigree pieces. But what do we know? Perhaps Frau Reiff just likes them, and it’s a good thing not to let what you like go.

Sometimes Frau Reiff sits at the foot of the stairs, and the children come down to drink water. Their fingers slide through the glass and close in a gesture of drinking, with nothing in their hands. Frau Reiff offers them bread as well, but they all leave the bread alone, except for a girl with greedy hands that can’t catch hold of anything. Finger by finger, then her arm, then her foot, the girl eats herself instead.

Frau Reiff’s apple cake tastes all right. If mankind were on the brink of annihilation and had to rely on homemade dishes, the people of Fürstenfelde would all survive, you’d be surprised, but you wouldn’t be surprised for very long because we’d survive you.

Frau Reiff comes from Düsseldorf, which of course is a very long way off geographically, but in other respects as well she’s not one of us. We may distinguish between those who come here from outside and the old inhabitants, as people do everywhere; the difference is that we make no secret of it. Those from outside have to take part in the life of the village, must commit themselves, must make their mark, although not with too much enthusiasm, because that in turn makes us skeptical. They must show concern and not just want to live their own nice, comfortable lives.

Frau Reiff did nothing at the old smithy without letting the village know. She sits on the parish council, and is in favor of street lighting and movement sensors. That could save us a good deal of money. Like us, she thinks windmills are beautiful, and like us she thinks wind turbines are ugly. Frau Reiff has made her mark all right.

Among other entertainments at the Feast, there will be African harp music at Frau Reiff’s. Everyone will be there, apart from Rico and Luise. If she wasn’t one of us, only casual customers would come to hear the harp music.

On the other hand, if you think about it for any length of time, those children can’t be the children of exiles. None of them stayed in the village and died here, and if one thing is obvious about the subject of ghosts, then it’s that they are not necessarily known for haunting places where they spent a few months once as children.

There’s a plow stuck deep in the ground among the apple trees, as if it had fallen from a great height. The steel roller attached to the plow is a little rusty. The village asked what the plow was for. Frau Reiff said everything was staying put.

There were mud floors in the house in the old days, heating was by means of a ceramic stove. Polish forced laborers slept on the floor in front of the stove, and later on German refugees. All of them caught and cooked pigeons. They were put in the same camp in Fünfeichen, not far from here, but at different times. They slept under the same roof, separated only by a little time and history.

Frau Reiff doesn’t know the life story of the plow.

She has a long day ahead of her. After the children have had their drink of water, she sees to the cat. He scurries out of the garden and into the house. Frau Reiff takes the last apple cake out of the oven; she has made six for the Feast. She drinks tap water from the hollow of her hand. The cat winds round her legs, purring.

A characteristic of raku pottery is the fine cracks that form at random as the glaze cools. They never run the same way. Like breaks and cuts in our life stories that become a part of them. The glaze of raku pottery melts at 800 °C to 1,000 °C. Frau Reiff is experimenting with mixed colors, but pale blue predominates.