Before the Feast Read online

  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!

  Anyway.

  The thunder’s coming closer. Goosebumps. Hardly a light on anywhere. In the parsonage, where Hirtentäschel is busy not smoking pot. The roads are empty except for the lady who paints. Going down to the lake. Ma once said she’s definitely all right, but something about her is definitely all wrong too.

  Johann sets off to collect the bell-ringer. Since the beginning of human history every single one of his ancestors has survived, every single person on his mum and dad’s side has successfully passed on life, and now it’s autumn and when Johann next rings the bells he will firmly believe that they, his ancestors, can hear his bell-ringing.

  WE HAVE THREE CHURCH BELLS. THE TWO SMALLER ones are twins: Bonifatius and Bruno. Johann calls them “the Bees.” They’re still young, two slender, playful lads, ringing with a bright sound, in C sharp and E sharp. They were cast in 1926 as replacements for two bronze bells that had been called up to go to war ten years earlier.

  LET HEATHENS ALL WITH FURIOUS IRE

  ATTACK ME HERE WITH SWORD AND FLAME

  says the inscription on the metal casing of Bonifatius,

  I’LL RING THEM DOWN INTO HELLFIRE

  AS I CAN WELL DO IN GOD’S NAME

  says the wording on Bruno’s casing.

  Our main bell doesn’t have a Christian name. The bell-ringer just calls her “the Old Lady.” A massive, almost black chunk of metal, with a mighty clapper, year of casting unknown.

  The twins sound good with each other. The Old Lady gets on best with silence. You can tell that from looking at her, the way she broods in the eternal twilight of the belfry, the lazy way she begins to swing, the dry, lingering resonance of her note. We guess that she could sound louder, deeper, somehow more, but she doesn’t have the right audience for that. Or a good reason. Or the strength.

  She has no ornamentation, she doesn’t tell us the name of the man who cast her or the donor who gave her to us, as bells sometimes used to do. Only an inconspicuous inscription inside her rim tells us:

  BE PATIENT IN TIME OF TROUBLE

  The bell-ringer and Johann don’t often persuade all three to ring together with a sound like cymbals. The bell-ringer rings the Old Lady, his apprentice rings Bonifatius. If the Old Lady happens to forget herself, all Fürsten
felde down below pricks up its ears. People can hear: there’s something up.

  Frau Schwermuth tells two stories about the Old Lady. In the first, the black bell is ringing in the middle of the night. This is sometime in the sixteenth century, and as the bell won’t stop, more and more people assemble in the church. But there’s no bell-ringer there, no one is pulling the bell ropes. The people are feeling afraid of this bell with a mind of its own, when a storm suddenly sweeps over the village, destroying houses, burying men, women and children under trees, injuring dozens. Those who made their way to the church, however, are unhurt.

  The second story runs like this: in 1749 the black bell rings again in the middle of the night, and as it won’t stop, more and more people assemble in the church, once again there’s no one pulling the bell ropes, etc. Then the rural district shepherd tells those present the first story—about the black bell calling the people to take refuge from the storm in the house of God. All of a sudden screams are heard outside; the village is burning! Several people hurry out to rescue those who didn’t leave home, most of them stay in the nave of the church, thinking themselves safe from the sea of flames. The fire burns everything down. Many, many people die, including those who stayed in the church. The black bell is left enthroned on the rubble, looking even darker than before.

  We like the idea of a shepherd appointed by the rural district council.

  We trust the old stories, and we believe in the value of copper.

  WE’RE NOT WORRIED. ELECTRIC FLASHLIGHT, RAIN cape, gumboots and her umbrella: Frau Kranz is well equipped. In her little leather case, cracked, on its beam ends, a thousand and one expeditions old, are her watercolor paints, brushes, the old china saucer for mixing paints and some loo paper. For provisions: a cigar, a thermos flask of rum with some fennel tea in it, a sandwich. She carries her easel over her shoulders—Lada has built a little light into it specially for tonight. She has all you could need when you set out to paint on a night when it looks like rain.

  “Does rum in fennel tea taste nice?” That’s the journalist. He’s been visiting Frau Kranz this week to write a column about her ninetieth birthday, for the weekend supplement, under the heading “We People of the Uckermark—the Nordkurier Introduces Us,” and he’s been firing off all sorts of other exciting questions, one H-bomb after another: homeland, hobbies, Hitler, hopes, Hartz IV social welfare benefits, in no specific order. “Yes, I’m afraid I really must have a photo, that’s non-negotiable; right, not in front of a tree, no, it wouldn’t be so good taken from behind; yes, I’d love some juice.”

  Frau Kranz is hanging out laundry in the garden. The journalist sniffs at a sheet.

  “Let’s begin at the beginning. Your homeland and how you left it.”

  “Good God.”

  “I’d be interested to know how you felt, young as you were then, going here and there all over Europe in the confusion of wartime.”

  Frau Kranz smokes a cigar, drinks rum tea with some fennel in it, has a little fit of coughing and takes the journalist round her house. Canvases all over the place. Fürstenfelde everywhere. Small pictures, large pictures, serious, gray, brown, empty, post-war, festive, collective, rebuilding, new buildings, in the past, back at a certain time, a few years ago, today, at every season of the year. Since 1945 Frau Kranz has been painting exclusively Fürstenfelde and its surroundings.

  “Paysage intime,” the journalist remembers. He spent a year studying the history of art in Greifswald, before he abandoned the course for being “too theoretical.” He sips his elderberry juice and makes a face. “Wow. Is it homemade?”

  “It’s elderberry juice.”

  “So you are originally a Danube Swabian.”

  “I know.”

  “Or to be precise, a Yugoslavian German.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Can we talk a little about that?”

  “About the accident of birth?”

  “We could talk about the Banat area. I’ve seen photos of it. Flat, rural, like the Uckermark. Did the similarity of the landscape help you to get used to living here?”

  “No.” Frau Kranz makes very sweet elderberry juice.

  “Right, and thinking back now do you sometimes feel homesick?”

  Without a word, Frau Kranz leads the journalist into her bedroom, where a huge painting of nothing but rapeseed in flower shines all over one of the walls. The journalist, forgetting his question and also forgetting himself, delivers his verdict: “Like yellow rubber gloves for cleaning the loo, only prettier, of course.”

  At last something on which he and Frau Kranz can agree. She pours him more elderberry juice; he puts his hand over his glass just too late.

  We’re worried now. Frau Kranz walks down to the lake with a firm tread. We’re not happy about the evening dress she is wearing under her cape tonight. It doesn’t suit the night, it doesn’t suit her work, although it suits Frau Kranz herself very well indeed.

  Last time she wore that dress was in 1977 in Schwerin, when she was given a certificate for artistic services to the Schwerin area in the category of painting, sub-category “The land and its people.” Frau Kranz went up on the platform, but she didn’t make a speech, she sang a song in bad Croatian. It was called “Polijma i traktorima” (In praise of fields and tractors), and one thing soon became clear: Frau Kranz does not sing well, but she does sing at the top of her voice, and what with that and the loudspeakers being turned up, and what with her ignoring the planned program of events, and a few men made more and more aggressive by the crude Croatian language and wanting to escort Frau Kranz off the stage after seven or eight verses when it looked as if the song was going on for ever, but some other men didn’t like their attitude and tried to protect Frau Kranz—well, what with all of that, there was a scuffle as background to the music that sounded like the roar of a rutting stag, and thinking it all over you can hardly imagine what a crazily wonderful evening that was for Frau Kranz in Schwerin in 1977. The certificate is hanging in her kitchen, rather yellow now from all the steam.

  Why has Frau Kranz dressed up like that tonight, when she usually goes painting in the Fürstenfelde Football First Eleven tracksuit? On arriving at the ferry boathouse, she unloads her stuff and stands at the water’s edge. The ash trees breathe in her perfume. They know the smell of her. Frau Kranz unscrews her thermos flask, raises it to the boathouse, drinks and closes her eyes.

  IMBODEN WANTED TO TELL A STORY OF THE OLD days, but the garage interrupted him and only then took the piss a bit. Nothing can be taken seriously at the garage unless someone answers back. Things are serious enough at home and at work. So there was some teasing, which is only right, and Imboden let it all wash over him, which is only right too, so that a good feeling of peace could come back sometime, respectfully, which is right as well, when an old man who doesn’t usually say much, sitting with a cold beer in his hand, a Sterni, like a jester holding his bauble, says something that begins like this:

  “A brawl doesn’t make any Feast better unless it saves the day. And it’s not true that we had better Feasts in the old days. Times were even worse then. The worse the times, the more important the Feasts are. Hairstyles and shirts were clearly worse, but the dancing was much better.”

  By “the old days” Imboden, like everyone else, always means the entire time before the Wall came down. In theory, “the old days” could mean the darkest Middle Ages, but definitely not the time when Gerhard Schröder was Chancellor.

  In concrete terms, Imboden meant an Anna Feast in the early 1960s. He meant a tombola, singing, a variety show, and then dancing in Blissau’s restaurant—when did Blissau’s actually close down? The early 1990s, when else? Was it where Gitty now has the kiosk with the neon ad over it? Well, not really an ad, it just says “Open” when Gitty opens it. Gitty is Blissau’s granddaughter. Gitty, Gitty, Gitty, what about her? Four kids, or is it six? Hardly any teeth left, otherwise she’s fine, her character too—yes, and now you see how easily the garage
goes off at a tangent when someone features in a story and they know everything about that person.