Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

ON THIS NIGHT THERE ARE MISDEEDS ON THE roads but no injustice. Error but no mistakes. A court of law but no verdict. A wind still blowing but no rain falling now.

It is Anna who asks questions once she has calmed down a little. Nothing surprises Herr Schramm any more. Frau Schwermuth is sniffling, her pale forehead furrowed with anxiety. She has wedged the spiked helmet under her arm. Her answer to the first question was that she wants to get back to the Homeland House as quickly as possible; she’s afraid she has locked her son up in there. And to the second she replied that of course she knew what the matter with her was, but she couldn’t explain why it was so bad tonight of all times. It was the stories’ fault. They kept her awake when her medication made her tired and fat. But the medication kept the lid on the stories. The stories and the characters populating them.

Anna stares at Frau Schwermuth as hard as she has been staring at Herr Schramm all night. She thinks of the field on Geher’s Farm. Of the characters populating it. Of those she imagined in the field as a child when she couldn’t sleep. Anna says she can imagine how Frau Schwermuth feels. Frau Schwermuth says that’s nice of her, but no one can imagine what she can imagine, no one. Then Frau Schwermuth says: I am empowered to call the night by its name.

Anna asks no more questions. Herr Schramm thinks about that “I am empowered.” And how he has never said a sentence beginning “I am empowered.”

The name of this night is tide, flood tide, now it is ebbing, let’s see what has been washed up. We will go walking among the flotsam and jetsam, taking care not to step on anything! Frau Schwermuth has such long, beautiful eyelashes, and when she blinks waves of darkness break.

Frau Schwermuth goes into the cellar first. She quickly taps in the code and opens the door. Faint light. Books, notebooks, paper, on the shelves and in stacks. Thick folio volumes, loose pieces of parchment, the leather skins.

“Aha,” says Herr Schramm. Herr Schramm is not all that fond of reading.

There is a little light up near the ceiling, the machine beeps, regulating the temperature. It’s cold. The leather on the walls shimmers and moves. It’s a skin of stories growing on us.

Johann is sitting on the table with his feet on the chair, a fat book on his lap. Beside him is his bell-ringer’s top hat. Johann is freezing. Frau Schwermuth drops the helmet, swerves neatly round the mountains of paper, clasps Johann’s legs, sobs. Johann puts his hand on his mother’s back.

“Come on, Ma.” He doesn’t sound cross. It does no good when Ma is in this state. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

So much paper, and not a handkerchief anywhere. Frau Schwermuth touches Johann’s cheek. Is everything really all right? No, but it will be. And how about her? No, and it probably never will be.

The pages of the book on Johann’s lap are finely decorated, the print is like the print on the label of the Unforgivingenergy drink. Johann closes the book.

Frau Schwermuth utters a short, sharp scream. “Johann! Haven’t you been wearing gloves?” She has her voice back. “Heavens, don’t you see what that book is?” She conjures a pair of white gloves out of the air, takes the book away from Johann and puts it carefully on the desk. The cover is charred at the edges. She opens it, her pupils wander from left to right, thunder rumbles in the pages.

On the 23rd Day of September 1613, the Spire of the Church here was struck by a Thunderbolt with a most dire and dreadful Noyse, so that a Bell in the said Tower was split in Twain, and two Houses and a Barn full of Grain caught Fire and were Burn’t to the Ground .

Frau Schwermuth closes her eyes, breathes in and out. She has sat here hundreds of times, reading and digging under what once was for signs of today, indicating plans that the past has made with us, with her.

Johann takes her hand. Frau Schwermuth opens her eyes. She looks round at the visitors: Schramm and the girl — both deep in the leather. They are searching too. Herr Schramm is caught up in the 1970s, Anna in the more recent past. Frau Schwermuth wipes away her tears. She wants to go home.

Herr Schramm speaks first when the quartet are back in the fresh air. “Listen, Johann, got any cigarettes?”

And Johann might even have some if Ma wasn’t here. She is standing by the broken window that she has covered up with newspaper. And naturally there is something that we can only hope Frau Schwermuth doesn’t notice: almost all the broken glass is lying outside, almost none of it inside.

“What shall we do about the window?”

Herr Schramm says, “I’ll see to it.”

“The Feast mustn’t be spoiled.”

“Johanna, I’ll do it. We’ll take you home.”

That isn’t necessary, says Johann. Frau Schwermuth nods, and links arms with her son. Anna and Herr Schramm watch them go: Johann thin as a stalk of maize, and with his hair cut to match, standing out to left and right like, well, maize leaves. And she — she’s Frau Schwermuth.

As they walk away she says, in a rather subdued voice, “Jo, you must do a few things for me tomorrow. I can’t.”

“What are they?”

“First there’s the anti-Fascist bike ride at twelve.”

That’s when he has his bell-ringing exam, says Johann.

“Oh.” Frau Schwermuth stops. “I don’t think anything will come of that. I know it sounds funny now, but your bells are down on the banks of the lake. .” And so on, we don’t have to listen to it all, we know those two are safe together.

We take a historical interest in Frau Schwermuth and those like her, those with her kind of head. She’s had her hair done specially for the Feast. Now it’s been flattened by the spiked helmet. She puts the helmet on again. Johann puts on his top hat. They turn the corner and leave our night.

AT THE ANNA FEAST IN 1929, THE SHOOTING GUILD was photographed outside the house of the new champion marksman, Herr Werner Schramm. Unfortunately the picture is not a success. You can’t tell one face from another, our uniforms look like dressing gowns, in fact it is a disaster, that bastard Schliebenhöner who took the photograph ought to be horsewhipped out of the village. The photograph, plus frame, costs five Reichsmarks.

ON A CHIPBOARD SURFACE SURROUNDED BY human earths and dogs’ dreams, the vixen crouches in front of the container which, she knows, holds eggs. Her pelt is sticky with rain, she tastes her own blood, her paw hurts.

The vixen touches the container with her paws.

The vixen scratches its sides. Its top.

The vixen bites the container. The vixen jumps on the container, makes herself heavy, jumps and jumps and hurts herself landing, jumps and jumps and jumps. The vixen pushes her forehead against the container like a little bull. She can’t get any purchase on the wet surface.

On top it is paler. She bites the pale part. The pale part moves, the dark part doesn’t. The vixen waves her brush. The vixen tugs at the pale part of the container. When she lets go, the pale part snaps up. The vixen pushes her muzzle under the pale part. She lifts her muzzle, and the pale part rises. The vixen gets the idea.

The vixen is not alone.

Two male humans are leaning against the rock opposite, watching her tussle with the egg box. The vixen stops, one of them comes closer, is so close that he is within arm’s reach of her, nearly there, but the vixen can’t pick up any scent, no, couldn’t say where he came from or went. He and his friend are loners, but they have no aromas. She stays put. The other young male human gets into the metal box that carries humans overland, a box, a box faster than any fox. Rhythmic sounds swing through the air. The vixen waves her tail in time with them, can’t help it.