Before the Feast Page 3

  Then again: the ferryman owed Gölow money. Not a lot of money. Not a lot for Gölow. Presumably a good deal for the ferryman. And Gölow goes and buys him a coffin. He specially asks for a comfortable coffin. He spends two evenings doing research into coffins on the Internet. Barbara gets impatient: why comfortable, what difference does it make? Gölow says the ferryman had a bad back. Some of the movements you make when you’re rowing, when you’re pulling on ropes, never mind whether you’ve been doing it right or wrong for years, in the end you need a comfortable coffin.

  Gölow had known the ferryman for ever. He was already an old man as far back as Gölow can remember. Recently he went out with him several times, taking the boys with him. At last they’re at the age when you can tell them scurrilous stories and they don’t start blubbing, and the ferryman could tell stories that would really unsettle them. Kids love to be unsettled.

  Gölow grinds out his cigarette. He smokes a lot without enjoying it. He always has that little tin in the front pocket of his dungarees, the one with the Alaska logo on the lid. He walks past the pigsties. Making notes; Gölow is making notes. With the pen that he found in the mud. We trust him to pick the six best pigs. Obama always pardons a turkey before Thanksgiving.

  Obama; Gölow isn’t very keen on him. Talks a lot of hot air. Out of all those American presidents, somehow, Clinton was the only one he liked. They sent him a letter once: the Yugos, Barbara and Gölow himself. That was in ’95. Gölow had a Bosnian and a Serb working for him, and he had no idea exactly what the difference was. Then he found out that they didn’t really know either. They both hated the war. They argued only once about the question of guilt, because there’s always a one-off argument about questions of guilt, but they settled the question peacefully and then decided to watch only the German news from then on, because on that channel everyone was to blame except the Germans—they couldn’t afford to be guilty of anything for the next thousand years, and the two Yugos could both live with that.

  The two of them had been pig farmers at home, and knew a lot about keeping pigs. At least, they’d said so when they first came along. Pretty soon Gölow realized that they hadn’t the faintest idea of pig-farming, but they were happy with the pay, and at the time Gölow couldn’t pay all that much. On the black market. Of course the black market or it would never have worked, on account of the visas. Tolerance was the name of the game, they were tolerated here.

  It’s years since Gölow thought of the two Yugos, but on such a night as this. . . Anyway, the letter to Clinton. All the horrors had just come to light, the mass graves, the camps. And then the Serb said: they’ll have to bomb us Serbs. If they only ever make threats it’ll never come to an end. Only not the civilians. No one likes to think of bombed civilians. The Bosnian had no objection to that idea. Well, and then Gölow said: let’s write the President a letter. They both agreed at once, although it was meant as a joke. The Serb dictated it, the Bosnian’s German was better, so he translated it into German, then Gölow tried to guess what it meant and Barbara wrote it out in English. This went on until late at night, and in the end they hugged and wept and posted the letter, addressed to the White House. As sender’s address the Serb had given his own before he got out of the country, to lend emphasis to their request. Next day he thought that was probably a mistake, because if they see that it’s a Serb writing, he said, that’s the place that they’ll bomb first.

  Gölow doesn’t think anyone ever read it. But soon there was bombing, and then that died down.

  We hadn’t been too happy about the Yugoslavians. So soon after the fall of the Wall. Lack of work, and anger, and he goes giving them jobs. These days, it shouldn’t sound the way it does. The village was surprised. His own father, old Gölow, formerly a pig-breeder himself, privately and collectively, was surprised. They’d always taken Gölow for a man who thought locally. Maybe he thought too locally. Of himself. But anyway, now he’s made it to where he is. Employs thirteen men. Now, for the most part, Gölow is doing well.

  Gölow in his office. Air like old socks. He puts the note with the six numbers into silent Suzi’s locker. The lad can get those pigs out when the kids arrive in the morning.

  A poster of Alaska on the door. All blue, blue mountains, sky, water, polar bears. Gölow would like to go to Alaska. Money wouldn’t be the problem these days, but where would he find the time? And Barbara might—perhaps a long journey like that might not be good for Barbara at the moment.

  A farm in Alaska would be quite something. With modern air conditioning you could even live on the moon. Kayaking, salmon-fishing, and the snow-covered mountains reflected in everything that can reflect them. Blue. Blue seclusion, peace and quiet. Lovely, all of it. Sleigh dogs. But that’s not what attracts Gölow. There’s kayaking here, too. There are other reflections. Reeds, there are reflections of reeds, and brown seclusion and peace and quiet.

  It’s the gold. The days of the gold-diggers. The new finds only recently, in an old gold-rush village called Chicken. What the Yanks call old is a joke to people in our parts. Chicken died out, like the gold-diggers’ hopes of wealth. Seven people live there now, it’s all but a ghost village. And then a Japanese finds twenty ounces near it.

  Gölow as a gold-digger in a hat, on the Klondike River. When he was a child, he read Jack London. Of course that comes of childhood. He’d never set up as a farmer there. The rents and cost of living are much higher than ours here. Those Dutch people have offered Gölow half a million. It’s ages since he had any time for reading.

  We don’t mourn the dead animals.

  We don’t complain of missed chances. Ghost chances.

  The doctors say that Barbara’s chances are fifty-fifty.

  Gölow has been pardoning a pig before the Feast ever since he took over the farm in ’92. The chosen pig isn’t slaughtered later, either, it dies a natural death. Although what does natural mean for a pig bred for slaughter? In fact it dies an unnatural and improbable death. Also, pardon sounds as if pigs were criminals. Whereas the opposite is true. An animal, as Olaf Gölow knows, is always innocent; the laws of Nature don’t understand the idea of punishment. An amnesty, more like.

  With her wig on, Barbara looks a bit like that woman Governor of Alaska. And they both have greasy skin. Gölow likes that—Barbara’s skin shines. He can’t understand why she tries to correct it, but he doesn’t interfere. However, why is shiny hair thought beautiful but not shiny skin?

  The pigs snore. Gölow would have liked to be the auctioneer himself tomorrow. But that lot on the Creative Committee wouldn’t hear of it. Cliquish, that’s what it is. The auction has been Zieschke’s business for years. Not that he’s particularly bad at it, but the jokes. . . charming, yes, charming, but salacious too. Women, politics. The sort of joke you can make in private, perhaps, but not in front of guests! The laughter then isn’t kindly laughter, it’s the laughter of superior people and Gölow doesn’t like it. He doesn’t care for that kind of humor.

  And just because Zieschke was already the auctioneer before the fall of the Wall. That’s no argument. Why does everything have to be traditional? Gölow gives work to thirteen people. Zieschke gives work to two. Gölow trains his employees, Zieschke collects old recipes for bread.

  Gölow crosses the farmyard, hands in his pockets. It’s a quiet night except for the distant rumbling of thunder. Gölow imagines nights in Alaska as soundless. Simply imagining that sometimes helps him get to sleep, but not tonight.

  We look forward to Olaf Gölow’s contribution to the auction. It always turns out to be something surprising. Last year he raised mini-pigs in secret. He gave his boys one each, but he also gave one to the auction. They were so cute, the bidders were beside themselves. Three hundred and sixty euros and applause, the mini-pig went to a hotelier from Feldberg. Our own bidder retired after 100 euros.

  Gölow wants to suggest two weeks in Alaska to Barbara. He will organize it all. The flight, good accommodation, a jeep with four-wheel drive. A b
it of driving around and sightseeing, eating salmon, feeding sleigh dogs, looking for gold.

  Gölow isn’t going to sell up. Not while Barbara is alive, and certainly not to those Dutch people.

  He slips into bed under the covers. He hears Barbara breathing. Gölow’s thoughts circle in a blue silence, circle in his sleep.

  AND HERR SCHRAMM, FORMER LIEUTENANT-Colonel in the National People’s Army, then a forester, now a pensioner and also, because the pension doesn’t go far enough, moonlighting on the side, rubs the coin over the place on the cigarette machine that others have rubbed before him. He sniffs his fingers. They smell of lukewarm money-rubbing.

  Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom.

  The machine, beige with big black buttons, stands outside the Pension Alpschnitter. The building used to be the dairy. It was sold at auction in the early 1990s. Herr Schramm had thought of bidding for it. But foreign visitors? Not in his line. He’d been able to offer hospitality now better, now worse, depending on the guest. Homemade jam for breakfast was probably on the worse side. The Alpschnitters are from these parts. Industrious folk. Rudi smokes. Herr Schramm could ring the bell. There are no lights on.

  Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom. Herr Schramm mops his brow. He’s sweating. He feels hot in the wind.

  Leipzig, ’82. In the sauna after the officers’ training course. Pear schnapps in the outlet of the sauna. A dozen officers relaxing on the steps of the sauna like pears in a display window. None of them saying a word. They could have made harmless small talk. Someone could have said, “How long do we have to sit around here before we get good and sozzled?”

  Herr Schramm fishes his small change out of his jacket pocket. He pushes the coins back and forth on the palm of his hand with his forefinger. Doing that makes him sad. He tries a different one-euro piece. It comes back out.

  Herr Schramm leans his forehead against the cigarette machine.

  The top man in the sauna was General Trunov. The only one sitting upright, showing everything, his Uzbek prick wreathed with strong hair. He was naked except for a sword belt with a cavalry saber stuck in it. The blade lay against his thigh. Maybe cool, maybe hot. His adjutant, a pale Jew, kept pouring iced water and schnapps on the hot stones, and whipping the hot air through the room with a towel.

  Herr Schramm kicks the cigarette machine.

  “Hell,” says Herr Schramm.

  General Trunov wanted war. Because war called for battles. Because battles called for soldiers, because soldiers called for men like him to lead them into battle. Trunov was a devout man and made no bones about it. And like every devout man he knew what was his and what wasn’t his but ought to be. He intended to defend the former and get his hands on the latter.

  General Trunov wanted war, but judged by the modes and methods of those days he was a pacifist. He loathed nuclear weapons and chemical warfare, he didn’t even really like artillery, nor diplomacy either. Man against man in the open field, that’s what Trunov wanted. He wanted to sink submarines with his own hands. Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm was sure he could do it, too.

  Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom.

  He had been sitting next to Trunov in the sauna. If he turned his head he could smell Trunov’s shoulder. General Trunov’s shoulder smelled of the successful defense of a bridgehead against an enemy three times superior in strength. Schramm smelled the grass of the steppe and horses’ flanks, smelled Afghanistan, smelled dances with Uzbek village beauties.

  Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom. Herr Schramm gets his pistol out of the car.

  After ten minutes Captain Karrenbauer stood up and groped his way, dripping sweat, toward the exit. Karrenbauer, the fattest man in the sauna. Dark curls, though. Skin and fingernails infuriatingly well groomed. Karrenbauer always wheezed as he breathed. Trunov jumped up, had already positioned himself between the exit and the Captain, hand on the pommel of his saber. The Jew dunked the towel in the drain outlet and began working the General over with it vigorously.

  “Where you go, soldier?” called Trunov. He wasn’t looking at Karrenbauer. He was looking over Karrenbauer’s massive head, through the sauna wall, out to the interrogation cell, the Albertina library and on, far beyond Leipzig, through mountains, over plains, and as he didn’t spot an enemy to look daggers at anywhere he finally saw himself in his bitter native land, riding along the cotton fields, through the valley of the River Surxondaryo, on his stallion whose name was All My Prayers.

  He wanted to go out, Karrenbauer nervously replied.

  “So tell me, soldier, why I let you out?”

  Karrenbauer stammered, “I-I c-can’t take it any more. M-my heart. I’m n-not supposed to. . .”

  “You joking? I not ask about your anatomy. And I not ask why you no stay. I ask why you worth I let you out. Convince me you important, soldier!”

  Herr Schramm is an upright man with poor posture. Herr Schramm puts his pistol to the temples of the cigarette machine.

  In the new Federal German states people are more inclined, on average, to repair defective items themselves, whereas the people of the old Federal German states think first of buying a new item, then of finding an expert to repair the old one, and very few of doing the job themselves.

  It did everyone in the sauna good to sense the heat of Karrenbauer’s fear. Because it was the fear of a man who was as bad and as good as themselves, and because it was his fear and not their own.

  Karrenbauer fell to his knees.

  Trunov drew his saber.

  Herr Schramm dries the coin on his trousers. Stands still like that, one hand on his pistol, the other, holding the coin, close to the slot. He looks along the main road. From here he could reach the outer perimeter in fifteen minutes. Anti-aircraft rocket station Number 123 Wegnitz. Stationed there for seventeen years. In the “jam factory.” In the “textile mill.” In the “milking shed.”

  Once mushroom-gatherers came. Schramm had just finished doing his round, and there they were by the fence: mother, father, child, another child, dog, mushroom baskets, weatherproof clothing. They’d ignored the warning notices, had wandered through the woods in the no-go zone for hours without being stopped by the guards and patrols, and now they were gawping straight at the installation. You could see half the firing position from there. The anti-aircraft battery. The starting ramp. The technology. They were confused, who wouldn’t be? You go looking for chestnut bolete mushrooms, you find anti-aircraft rockets.

  Schramm goes over. Afternoon. Mmph. The fence between them. So what have you got to say for yourself?

  Says the father, “Looks like we’ve got a teeny little bit lost.”

  Schramm picks fluff off his uniform.

  Says the mother, “I suppose we can’t go any farther.”

  Schramm raises his eyebrows.

  Says the little girl, “Are you a soldier?”

  “No, I’m a forester,” says Schramm, giving the girl a fairly friendly tap on the finger she’s putting through the fence.

  Says sonny boy, pointing to the starting ramp, “Is that a rocket, Comrade Forester?”

  What do you say now?

  Says you, “I’ll ask you to vacate the grounds of the Wegnitz jam factory.”

  Schramm never again met such a vital man as Trunov, a man so much at peace with himself and the world. The smell of his shoulder. Trunov didn’t let the Captain go out. Tapped the wooden partition between the sauna and the interrogation cell with his saber in time with Karrenbauer’s heartbeat. “Tell me what you worth, soldier!” He put the sword blade behind the captain’s ear.

  “I’m—I can’t—please, Comrade General. . .” Karrenbauer was sweating well, sweating phenomenally, his best visit ever to a sauna, the Jew swiped him one with the towel.
Over the last few days they had all been drinking schnapps before and during and after lectures, had drunk from the outlet before the sauna, but when Trunov put back the arm holding his saber no one was drunk any more. Schramm jumped up and looked into the General’s left eye with its little broken veins.

  “Leave the man alone,” he said. “You can’t learn anything from a man sliding about on his knees.”

  Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine. The machine gives a satisfied click. It digests the coin, the display shows the amount of credit and the information, “Tobacco sold only to age 18 and over.”

  Herr Schramm says, “That’s right.”

  The display says, “Proof of age required. Insert EC card with chip.”

  “No,” says Herr Schramm. “No.”

  Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm escorted the mushroom-gatherers to the outer perimeter. There were plenty of mushrooms beside the path, but now they didn’t know whether it was all right to pick them. So Schramm made a start and put a porcini mushroom in the little girl’s basket. Then it turned out not to be a porcini after all. The mother took it out of the basket again without a word.

  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.