Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

But we’d like to talk about mills. There were four of them here. One was demolished in 1930, only the lower part of another still stands and is used as a second home at weekends by a married couple from Hamburg. The third dates from the sixteenth century. The feudal lord, Count Poppo von Blankenburg, was not at all happy about the flour it produced, and sent miller after miller packing. Finally he decided to try his luck as a miller himself. He took on three young miller’s men to help him, gave the priest living quarters in the mill to protect it from the Devil, and also hired a wise woman who promised to drive away mealworms and any ghosts haunting the mill (§ 109 of the Procedure for the Judgment of Capital Crimes, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s statute introduced in 1532, made it easy to distinguish between harmless and harmful magic). Finally he gave orders for three virgins to be brought to him. History does not relate what they were meant for.

The result was disastrous.

The priest and the wise woman went for each other first metaphysically, then physically. The miller’s men seduced the virgins, or vice versa, and when the village had no flour left at all, not even bad flour, its people assembled outside the mill to ask what was going on. The Count appeared at a window, shivering and shouting. How, he asked, was a man to get anywhere with a mill that felt like a human being and just didn’t fancy grinding flour?

“Talk to it kindly,” called a small voice from down below through his ranting. “Be nice to it.” The speaker was a girl with blue-gray eyes and short blonde hair. The nobleman fell silent, and the farmers, the laborers with their pitchforks, and a fox who had come to see what there was to be seen here were surprised too. But then the people agreed with the girl. Perhaps they really thought it would help, but more likely they just wanted to hear how their Count went about beguiling the mill.

And he did it, too. He immediately turned to the mill’s shutters and began praising them lavishly. What beautiful shutters over its windows, whether they were open or closed! And its sails! So large and useful. And so on, although here we must point out that no one would know the story today if Frau Schwermuth hadn’t discovered it.

In the place where Poppo von Blankenburg spent a day flattering a windmill, bewitching it, whispering sweet nothings to it, until in the evening he heard a sigh — perhaps it was the mill, perhaps it was the wind — whereupon he found that he could grind such fine, pure flour that at the Anna Feast, which was soon celebrated, the villagers hardly touched any meat once they had tasted the bread; in that place a wind turbine stands today.

The fourth mill, the one on the postcard, was demolished by Belorussians in the last days of the war. It then occurred to them that flour wasn’t a bad idea, and they put the mill back in running order. The bread, which had a sour flavor, tasted wonderful to anyone who could get hold of any. We can still hear the grinding sound of the mill. We remember Alwin, the miller’s man here in the war. He had crooked teeth and could do conjuring tricks, he made the coins brought by servants coming to collect the flour disappear, and days later they found a coin in their bread, what a surprise! Alwin had to stop that game when matters of hygiene were taken seriously. After that he always guessed which card was the King of Hearts. The Belorussians shot him outside the mill. His name was Alwin, he had crooked teeth, and he could do conjuring tricks.

The mill itself had a name, but it got lost among the rubble.

It was demolished in 1960 and carried away, bit by bit, to our gardens, our walls, our cellars.

4. The Promenade : lined by ash trees as it still is today, so there’s not much change there. The lake on the left, the town wall on the right. A bench between them. Shady. Shade is the theme. A young woman and a young man are sitting on the bench, holding hands. She is in white, with a brooch on her collar, he is trying to follow the fashion for mustaches. The year is 1941. Hardly anyone wishes you “Good day” now. Either it’s “Heil Hitler” or you don’t give a greeting at all, but in a public place like the promenade no one would like to appear discourteous.

An ordinary sort of couple. Not too good-looking, not too elegant. Hands perhaps a centimeter or so apart. We say they are a couple because we know how it turned out; they almost held hands that day; there was a wedding, and nine months later along came Herrmann. Only they weren’t in love. Not on the promenade, not in the bad times that were coming and fired up many a relationship. They stayed together, yes, and they didn’t bother each other. You could say they behaved to one another all their lives like their hands on the postcard, just about to touch. If you look closely, you can see that the young woman on the promenade is suppressing a yawn.

Two people under the ash trees on the promenade. Two people who wouldn’t have spent their lives together but for the promenade. If Herr Schliebenhöner hadn’t stopped them separately and asked them to pose for a photo on the bench, they’d have passed each other a little way up the promenade with a shy “Heil Hitler,” and that would have been it.

You would have been able to see the ferryman from the promenade. And the women in Frau Kranz’s first painting. Three bells are resting under the ash trees beside the lake. Perhaps they like it on the promenade.

That well-lit promenade. That subsidized, undermined promenade. Ah, those mice who scurry over the tarmac. A little refuge for those who may be in love, a forum for proletarians, a place for Anna to run when she goes running, a country road for satnav devices. That eternal promenade. Our promenade.

ANNA COMES UP FROM THE PROMENADE, RUNS past the new buildings, past the Gölow property, turns along the former railway embankment, puts on a spurt at the dilapidated railway station where, as we remember it, the morning train from Prenzlau let off the first guests coming to the Feast.

Anna approaches the fallow field. Not even the oak tree has survived such a night as that intact. Anna is tired. She would be home in two or three minutes, but she wants to look at the oak tree. The tree slants up into the mist, its branches touch the ground to left and right as if they were growing straight from the soil. Anna climbs over the fence and makes her cautious way through the bushes. The field doesn’t care about caution, she can hardly move along, gets her clothes caught in the undergrowth, does not get impatient.

Lightning has split the oak tree, breaking it open from inside. It is white; white timber. Let’s imagine that the air smells of smoke. The ground is churned up, a narrow grave as if the lightning had turned the soil. Or as if someone had been digging.

Two pale skulls lie in the earth. The yellowish-white of hungry teeth. Anna has only a few meters to go, in a week’s time her term begins, she’s going to study marine technology in Rostock, she wants to design ships; she’d like the ships that she designs to be built so that other people can steer them over the seas. She bends over the skulls, is going to pick one of them up, puts a twig into its eye socket, and a hand comes down on her shoulder.

We would scream. Anna keeps calm. The skull slips off the twig and is caught by a stranger’s hand in mid-flight through the air.

“Good catch in this light,” says the tall, handsome one, grinning at the skull.

“They never had a Christian burial rite,” says the small, sturdy one, crouching down at the side of the grave. They are Anna’s rescuers from earlier in the night. Anna takes a deep breath and shakes the hand off her shoulder.

“What are you two still doing here?” As long as you can say the right words in a firm voice, you have nothing to fear.