Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

At this point we ought to make it clear, anyway, in case anyone gets the wrong idea, that strictly speaking it is a preventative anti-Fascist bicycle ride, because while racism etc. has been known not so far away, of course, here it hasn’t had any public profile since the war, except maybe at Ulli’s recently, when Özil didn’t sing the national anthem again, and some people thought that meant they can’t be glad when Özil scores for Germany: only a man who sings his country’s anthem can score for his country. And we think they think they really aren’t glad, but that’s not so, because they were definitely glad when things were close and Podolski decided the game.

Anyway, Frau Schwermuth had the idea of the anti-Fascist bicycle ride, and expected twenty participants. At twelve noon there were eighty waiting outside the Homeland House. There was whistling, an IG Heavy Metal banner brought along by a joker, several people who came cycling especially from Prenzlau and Woldegk.

At five past twelve Frau Schwermuth still isn’t there. We don’t expect her to turn up. But then a bicycle bell rings, and Frau Schwermuth has exchanged her spiked helmet for a cycling helmet and zooms down Marx-Strasse, laughing: “No braking, come on, everyone, follow me!”

On the whole we can say that the anti-Fascist bicycle ride was a success, but also not entirely a success, and not because after three rounds of the village it was over, but because Rico and Luise weren’t even awake at twelve.

The Templin Cycling Group joined in the third round. They did a time trial in our honor, Templin — Fürstenfelde — Templin. General ringing of bicycle bells by the anti-Fascist cyclists, general waving by the time-trial cyclists, because they don’t have bells, every gram of weight is one gram too many, Frau Schwermuth briefly got into the slipstream of a sporting cyclist. Everyone was happy.

The event finished at the parsonage. Frau Schober had baked three cherry cakes for the cyclists, which of course was nothing like enough cherry cake to go round. Hirtentäschel made a speech lasting half an hour about the anti-Semitism lurking in the midst of bourgeois society, often in the guise of criticism of Israel. At the end of his talk Hirtentäschel gave three sentences as examples of how to criticize Israel without— intentionally or unintentionally — saying anything anti-Semitic.

Frau Schwermuth is happy. Happy about the cakes, the cyclists, the applause for Hirtentäschel. But however often, like her, you don’t eat cake, you still don’t snap at friends and guests, and you don’t leave an occasion that you’ve organized yourself early — unless you’re not really happy and don’t want other people to be worried.

Out in the road, tears come to Frau Schwermuth’s eyes. People are out walking, opening the open doors of the craft shops, clattering the lids of biscuit tins. The village asks itself questions, the village shows its talents. She just wants to get home quickly. Frau Schwermuth passes her hand over her eyes.

The day smells bitter of coffee brewed for too long, sweet with the cinnamon dusted over apple cake, and bitter-sweet of horse dung. Outside the Homeland House the blacksmith is patting a horse, trying to calm it down. The two of them are surrounded by a fierce group of about a dozen girls. The girls want the big man and the big animal to do something fascinating, they’ve been promised that will happen.

Someone calls Frau Schwermuth’s name. It is Zieschke at the window of the Homeland House. He looks harassed, sounds grateful. “My word, Johanna, good to see you,” and can she take over for him there? They all want something from him, and he doesn’t know his way about the place very well. He also has to prepare for the auction.

Frau Schwermuth blinks her tears away.

It is very busy in the Homeland House. A Californian pensioner is in polite competition with a party on an excursion from Neubrandenburg for the use of the only table. He wants to spread out his ancestors in their Leitz file folders, they want to spread out their picnic wrapped in silver foil.

Frau Schwermuth sits down. Her desk, her timetable, her own Leitz file folders. The Californian pensioner asking, “Are you the one to help me with my ancestry?”

Breakfast TV is there. It didn’t like Ditzsche’s inner courtyard as much as the courtyard of the Homeland House, with its old ceramic stove and the well, so the TV show asked Ditzsche to bring one of his chickens and be filmed here. It’s all the same to Ditzsche; he has shaved, put on his smallest shirt and tucked it into his trousers.

It was not entirely all the same to Zieschke for Ditzsche, of all people, to be giving an interview in the Homeland House, but there you are: TV is TV, and this is the “Travel Fever” slot of the program. Maybe someone will come out with a case of Fürstenfelde-fever, anything that sets it off is fine by us, even if it comes from Ditzsche and his chickens.

Frau Schwermuth doesn’t hear what Ditzsche is saying at this moment. She closes the cellar door behind her. There was only one possible answer to the Californian pensioner’s questions: “We have that in the basement, let me get it for you.”

Silence is requested in the inner courtyard. The camera is running, and Ditzsche can start talking, with his hen in his arms. The woman presenting the “Travel Fever” slot of the show smells of shampoo, and that calms Ditzsche down, because he thinks he too smells of shampoo, so they have something in common. At the end of the interview he asks to make a private remark to viewers; it is about letters and the Stasi, and he may think it is being transmitted live, but the program won’t go out for a couple of days, when Ditzsche will be seen for all of five seconds, plus another three for a close-up of his hen. The private remark, thank God, will have been cut, and all that’s left will be, “My name is Dietmar Dietz, and here we have a German Dwarf Reichshuhn, color: black and white Columbia.”

However, the horoscope slot went out live. Britta Hansen greeted viewers from her own part of the country, and closed the horoscope this time with a quotation from Schiller: “He who does not venture beyond reality will never conquer the truth.”

No cellar here is so deep that you don’t hear the sound of our bells. Soft and harmonious — the Old Lady seems to be in a good mood — their chimes tower above Fürstenfelde. Your son is ringing them, Johanna, and we know he will pass the exam, or rather we don’t know it but we would like him to. After all, it’s fabulous to show how you can excel in the field of useless activities. We ought to think not about why we do them, but about just doing them — and as for being useful, who can judge what is and what isn’t useful anyway?

Take the example of the anti-Fascist cyclists and their helmets: they have now assembled in the church forecourt, Hirtentäschel is showing them his angels and telling them his story, and Frau Steiner is making eyes at Herr Hirtentäschel, she has her own way of doing that kind of thing, Hirtentäschel can’t concentrate properly, and anyway many of the cyclists are still wearing their cycling helmets, because once you’ve put a cycling helmet on there is no important reason to take it off until you go to sleep, unless the straps are rubbing you. And many people may say, what’s all this about the cycling helmets, they’re no use if you’re not riding your bike! Well, that is the parallel with the bells, because it’s a fact that the cyclists paid no attention to the bells at first, but now their heads in the brightly colored helmets are raised, and a powerful, hard, then fine melody peels away from the traditional chimes — yes, all right, melodies don’t peel, they peal, but do listen, Johann is just playing something, a little tune, his little tune, and the cyclists are immediately enthusiastic, and what, may we ask, is more useful than something that makes people enthusiastic? Johann is ringing all three bells on his own, which is difficult, you really need a ringer for each bell, but the boy has paid attention, and likes doing it, and generally that’s all you need to be successful, and Johann’s hands aren’t soft any more, he is wearing his bell-ringer’s top hat, that’s the way to do it. Lada and Suzi are up there with him, eating jelly bears. Lada looks down at his village, and then Lada spits out a jelly bear, it flies through the air, and there, now you see what we mean: it can sometimes be useful to wear a cycling helmet even when you’re not riding a bike.