Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

“We thought we wouldn’t go before telling ourselves hello,” says Q, examining the skull and cleaning soil out of the holes in it with his forefinger. Henry plucks leaves off his companion’s coat. They have cigarettes with them, and cans of beer. Anna declines to drink with them — oh, come on! No.

Q gives Henry a light; the flame shoots out of his thumb. Henry dips his hands into the grave like a surgeon into a patient’s body, bones clatter, he brings out the second skull. Q holds his to his cheek, as if he wanted to show Anna the likeness.

“The oak tree,” says Anna. “Frau Schwermuth once told me people were hanged from it.”

“We come into the world innocent, we may go to our death sinners.”

“The rope showed that we weren’t always winners.” They laugh. Anna doesn’t. They clink the skulls together. To the dead! They drink. Henry offers his skull a sip too.

“Who—” Anna hesitates. “ What are you?”

Q takes off his coat and puts it round her shoulders. Henry walks over to the grave, rhythmically opening and closing the lower jaw of the skull he holds with a clatter, Q joins him, they are actors now, and this is the last act. Not Anna but the grave is their audience.

They speak in unison, thoughtfully: “We — we are what you would be: worldly-wise, carefree are we. Power, a dig at you as we’re leaving, honest avengers wanted for thieving. We are the fury of ancient songs, wild as we go about righting wrongs.” Softly at the end: “We are two who will endeavor, with our necks in the noose, to sing for ever.”

Henry puts his cigarette between the jaws of the skull. The field crackles, as if familiar with fire.

The cigarette goes out. They put the skulls carefully back in the grave. Pile the earth over them with their bare hands. Anna takes Schramm’s pistol out of the pocket of her jacket, and lays it in the grave too. Helps them.

They escort Anna to the farmhouse, take off their caps, bow politely to her; their farewells do not take long, and then they are off, two dissimilar figures going cross-country through the Uckermark, one tall and slender, the other short and strong.

WE ARE EXHAUSTED. THE BIRDS HAVE NO CONSIDERATION for us. The dawn twilight, the tiles, the stones in the fields: all clammy. Suzi takes a detour along the side of the lake. Mist hovers over the water. Frau Kranz is packing up her things. Suzi offers to help her. No. The old woman wades through the reeds. She shows Suzi the painting. Her lips are bluish. His glance wanders from left to right. He goes closer. Frau Kranz wants to know his opinion.

Suzi points. “I — artist — not.” Suzi smiles.

Frau Kranz points to herself. “Artist — not.”

Suzi, slightly embarrassed, shakes his head.

Below the ruins of what was once Schielke’s farmhouse there’s a fridge stuck in the muddy ground, with a can of tuna still in it. Suzi smiles. Seen from here, no Fürstenfelde exists. Of course the mist will lift, the weather will be fine for the Feast, but at the moment there is no village, there are no stories, no wonders and marvels. There’s Suzi and a path along the bank of the lake, lined with blackcurrant bushes.

That Suzi — blonde as a child, black-haired as a man. Back straight, Suzi. His father drank the bitter blackcurrant juice. Back straight, Father. His father’s life before the new buildings went up: herding sheep. Many incomplete sentences at breakfast. We’ll leave him out of it for now. Suzi smiles.

Magdalene von Blankenburg does yoga under the linden tree on the bank in the morning. It may be too wet today. Yoga trousers, best trousers. Suzi can make out the hunting lodge behind the bushes, the little turrets rise into the mist like something in a fairy tale, that’s what things look like when a blue-blooded aristocrat says what he wants. Suzi combs a strand of hair back from his forehead.

Suzi’s father took him to work with him. They drove around. Father in uniform, a tank like a diver’s on his back. Little Suzi waiting for his father in strangers’ living rooms. His father always taking everything people offered.

Silent Suzi climbs the fence. He puts his arm cautiously into the bushes. Waits. Spider on the back of his hand, tiny spider. Suzi’s father caught flies out of the air. Suzi pees in the lake. It is getting warmer under the blanket of mist.

Any good-looking woman looks even better with a Baroque hunting lodge behind her. The sight of Magdalene: compensation for dragging things about at Eddie’s. Blonde, her eyes blue-gray. Could be one of us. The lake is buzzing. Insects guessing something. Guessing storm. Yoga mat. Yoga trousers. Yoga braid. Yoga book. Not a yoga book, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Magdalene does the greeting to the sun. Suzi doesn’t know that is what it’s called. The mist disperses. The only complete sentence his father said to Suzi was: “Now, tell me the whole truth, Suleyman, no lying.” The last image: his father in a denim shirt, jeans and camouflage rucksack, with the bitter, loving smell of blackcurrants coming from his mouth. Money for maintenance arrives now and then, sometimes a letter. All okay. Suzi smiles; the sun is here.

Magdalene ripples softly in the sun. Suzi forgets his mother, forgets Gölow, Lada, Father, Suzi is the main owner of all the time in the world. Magdalene is reading now. Pretending to be reading. The air still isn’t warm, but pleasant enough. Suzi takes off his sweater, sits on it. In his undershirt. Magdalene knows about Suzi. All those times he goes fishing here. When they once meet by chance in the ice cream parlor she says hello, but he does not reply.

Suzi is whistling, barely audibly. A mouse comes out of the reeds, nosing around. Suzi puts a jelly bear on the grass. The mouse snaps it up.

A minnow jumps in the lake. Something glittering lies in the reeds. Two mice scurry from there to here. Suzi smiles. Gives them another jelly bear. Whistles. They bring him the glittery thing. It is slightly bent, a little crown like those the beauty queens wear. Only prettier. Prettier, of course, because it is Magdalene’s.

Good.

The mice have gone away.

Good.

Suzi goes over. Gives Magdalene the tiara. Magdalene reads aloud to him. Between sentences he feels her gaze on him, on his undershirt, his dragon, his hands, his cheeks and his temples. Now and then he closes his eyes to feel it on his eyelids too, along with the sun.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal smiles.

FRAU KRANZ WAS WELL EQUIPPED, BUT THE CHILL of the lake and the cold wind have seeped into her old bones, slowly freezing her hands and her memories. Frau Kranz is frozen through, remembered through, and in a bad temper, and it is not surprising that she is dissatisfied with her picture.

And now here’s Frau Zieschke into the bargain buttonholing her outside the bakery, in an elated mood. Lord almighty, it’s much too early for cheerfulness, but Frau Zieschke is one of those whose emotional streaks reach out in all directions. She is waving the Nordkurier like a soldier with a banner after victory in a battle: Frau Kranz is in the paper, a whole page! With a photo! In the photo Frau Kranz is smiling, although now she can’t remember any reason for smiling and surely Frau Zieschke isn’t going to read it all out loud to her in the street! Frau Kranz pushes the baker’s wife back into the bakery, and there a way to calm the woman down occurs to her: she shows Frau Zieschke last night’s painting. Yes, that, she says, is how it will be for the auction. It works: Frau Zieschke’s enthusiasm disappears.

“Oh,” she says.

Frau Kranz takes the newspaper and asks the baker’s wife to make her a hot milk. She does feel a little curious. She skips the introduction with her biography and career, because she knows all that. She merely skims the central part, with the description of her hairstyle and the way she smokes a cigar. She shakes her head over the lavish praise of a picture she can’t even call to mind from its description. She reads only the conclusion properly.