Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

Karrenbauer crawled out, and Trunov kissed Schramm on the mouth like a brother. He insisted on visiting Schramm’s department, so Schramm took him to see the anti-aircraft rockets. The workforce came to the reception. The General pinched everyone who had a bare neck affectionately on that bare neck. There was a state flag, a national anthem and a one-pot lentil dish. The anti-aircraft station at 123 Wegnitz ate lentils and drank for five days. The General wasn’t interested in the rockets and rocket technology. The General was interested in the soil. He had a hole dug one meter deep, smelled the earth, climbed happily into the hole and said they must plant a vegetable garden there. Peppers, he wanted them to grow peppers. Comrade Trunov was interested in cultivation. And culture, he wanted culture every evening. The Radar Combo II played for dancing. Trunov taught the musicians a song from Uzbekistan. The workforce danced awkwardly at first, and then more casually. The Adjutant played a solo on the double bass. The General sang. The General danced with Schramm, whispered into Schramm’s ear that Trunov wasn’t his real name, and the only fear he had in the world was fear of those who appointed themselves judges of names. He slept in his boots, and the Jew shaved him while he dreamt. The anti-aircraft station at 123 Wegnitz had forgotten what it was like to be sober. The fifth night was hot. The garrison members on active duty undressed. There was dancing on the starting ramps. The battery commander, the loading gunner and several artillerymen wanted to fire at something, never mind what, but Schramm stepped in, and Trunov punched them all and then told them how once he had climbed the great cold-blooded Tian Shan mountain range on his stallion All My Prayers without dismounting. He asked the rockets if he could use them for that kind of thing, and the rockets whimpered, “No.” He asked the soldiers what their lives were worth, but no one could say. In the light of dawn General Trunov was seen getting on a tractor with two young peasant girls and driving it east, with the Jew in the trailer, a typewriter on his lap, on which he was hammering out everything Trunov had ever said, even in his dreams.

Herr Schramm takes three steps back and shoots the cigarette machine.

JOHANN SLAMS THE DOOR. COULDN’T STAND IT at home any longer, Ma watching her soap opera again, and when he said he must go out at midnight to ring the bells she carried on a bit.

It’s cold now. He’d been chilling out in the sun beside the lake today, winter’s coming. Maybe he ought to call for the master bell-ringer? He always turns up late. It’d be kind of nice to ring in the midnight bell for the Feast at midnight itself.

Johann puts on his headphones (The Streets), goes past the old smithy. It once belonged to his ancestors (so Ma tells him, and she’s boss of the village history, so she should know). Right sort of sound for that, the song he’s listening to now. About ancestors. The unlikely way some of them have survived over centuries — wicked! Started life going and now you’re part of it yourself. Johann Schwermuth, sixteen, virgin (working on changing that status), trainee (in retail trade, another year then he’ll earn the basic wage), fantasy role-player, church bells, hip-hop.

He stops outside the church, wonders whether to go right up there, take a look at the village. The few lights in the landscape aren’t so great, it’s the darkness in between, the Kiecker Forest, the fields. What he likes best is seeing the promenade and the boathouse for the ferry light up for a while, then there’s nothing for some time, and after that you get to see a few lights from Weissenhagen and Milbrandshagen again. The black bits in between are the lakes. Two holes in the world (threatening, yup, you bet).

That guy the ferryman: wicked! Done for, you might think. Big hairy terrorist-type beard, fingernails and all that. But he wasn’t really done for, not like a few others around here. If he said anything, then either you understood something that hadn’t been clear to you before, or you didn’t even know what he was talking about. Lada says there was a guy like that used to sleep under the bridge in town. We don’t have a bridge here. People liked the ferryman and at the same time they were scared of him. Specially the passengers on the ferry. He somehow didn’t seem to belong here. It wasn’t that he didn’t belong in the village, Johann thought, he didn’t belong in this time. The Middle Ages would have been a good time for him, all got up in leather armor, a sword, or magic, something like that.

Anyway.

Johann wonders what his own ancestors were like. It’ll be the song making him think of it. What they talked about, what sort of clothes they wore when they came to church here in the such-and-such century or whenever. He gets an idea what they looked like from the role-playing.

Johann once read that folk liked to build churches on hills so as to look up at God. Johann likes looking down. Johann doesn’t believe in anything. Ma reckons they’re all atheists in the Vatican, otherwise how would they be allowed to get so rich?

And then the Great Fire in 1740. One of his ancestors survived that, a miller called Mertens. But otherwise almost everything burned down. The church bore the full brunt of it. How something made of stone can burn Johann’s never really understood, but okay. It was soon rebuilt. The chronicle and the old church registers and books and stuff were all gone. A pity, really. Ma has typed out the chronicle for after 1740. You can see it in the Homeland House. (Great for role-playing if you want to work in something about witches or child-murderers or robbers or suchlike.)

The church was renovated in the 1990s. Since then it’s been brick. Brick doesn’t really look churchy. Not seriously. A brick fireplace, okay. A brick garage, okay. Brick buildings in Hamburg, okay (class outing there last year, still a virgin all the same). But an altar? Ma says the 1990s were a crime against architecture and music, all that stuff ought to be locked away now, except for Nirvana.

And thinking of Nirvana: there’s a Grüneberg organ in the church. Johann knows that, because he had to learn about it for his bell-ringing exam. It’s great. Not that he can really judge, but if a thing has the name of the person who made it, like Grüneberg who built the organ, then it’s better than one without a name. A Ronaldo free kick is always on principle going to be better than a plain old free kick. Even if Ronaldo misses the goal.

Johann hears something crack, like wood, somewhere up by the church. Sounds almost like it comes from the tower. The bells are impatient. .

Tomorrow’s exam isn’t entirely official, like the apprenticeship isn’t official, like the profession isn’t official, and Johann doesn’t get any pay and there certainly “won’t be any future in it” (says Ma. That’s why she was shouting just now). But that doesn’t mean he (and the Master) don’t take the exam seriously. Johann liked church bells even before he was born. When they rang, says Ma, he kicked inside her. So there’s something in you, she says. In others it could be regional features, or hands (for instance with mass murderers).

He’s already passed the theory part (history of the church and of bells, casting of bells, techniques of ringing bells). The practical part is ringing for prayers at twelve and at six. That’s no problem, he does it on his own anyway, the Master hardly has the strength these days. And at twelve he must also ring his own little composition. That’s not really a custom or suchlike, Master just likes it. He’s ninety or more, and he likes to be called Master (though he’d never admit it).

Johann shivers. Cold is really good for you, he read on the Steel Muscles forum. Stimulates the circulation of the blood. He likes Internet forums on abstruse hobbies. Like role-playing. Easily the best is the GDR Bunkers forum. Hundreds of guys traveling around the area looking at bunkers and discussing their photos. Right nearby, on the old rocket base in Wegnitz, there’s two of them. And one here in Fürstenfelde behind the old folks’ home. Its wallpaper is the same as in the old folks’ home. Wallpaper in the bunker!