Under a Changing Moon, page 3
On top of the hill, the street became wider, and the vast sky stretched moonless and milky. The sharp early-morning wind coming down the valley buffeted him as though it had been lying in wait for him, stung his cheeks, and made his eyes water. The broad street led straight to the portal of the cathedral, along the wall of the graveyard. “Anyone who runs past the graveyard wall is a coward,” Georg had said when Adolf had gone with him once in the Christmas holidays. And “I won’t run,” he said to himself under his breath now, but involuntarily, he quickened his pace, looking straight ahead. How could you know what you might see if you looked to the left, where at this hour the crosses loomed up as darker blurs in the misty darkness and morning haze and night shadows held their ghostly dance between the graves? Babett had often enough told stories of terrifying meetings that people had had when they were going past the graveyard at night. And who should know better than old Babett, who talked to the spirits of the dead as though they were still alive. The Poor Souls who still languished in Purgatory would often wake the old woman out of her light sleep and not give her peace until she had prayed an Our Father for them. Not a night passed but they made their presence known by knocking on the bedstead and making rustling sounds in the beams. “I’ve so many friends among them,” said Babett. “If I help them now, they’ll help me later.”
Adolf had now reached the narrow door behind which the ropes of the early bell hung. The key was in a niche in the wall, hidden in the folds of a stone saint’s coat. Adolf quickly unlocked the door, felt for the tinder and candle, and as the wick took light and the flame flickered upward, all the terrors he had felt outside were left behind. Once on consecrated ground, he was safe. It was good to feel the rough hemp of the bell rope in his hands, hear the bell answer to his pull; clear and beautiful its note resounded from the tower. Above him the crows and, in the town below, the people awoke at the sound. Adolf knew how to do it. He had more than once rung the bell under the supervision of his older brothers, but today he was doing it by himself for the first time. The watchman Michel Anderwand, who lived high up in the tower, with only the crows and the sky for company, would listen to judge if it were properly done. He was old and plagued by rheumatism, so after his wife’s death two years before, the dignitaries of the cathedral chapter had allowed him to find a substitute for the morning ringing. Michel knew the Amtmann and his five sons well. Occasionally, the Amtmann would climb the many stairs up to his room to have a bird’s-eye view of the world. “It helps to get things in perspective,” he said to Michel, who knew every roof in the town and every human soul beneath it. He rang the bells for christenings, weddings, and funerals. For close on forty years, he had kept watch over the town from his eyrie. His choice for a boy to ring the morning bell had fallen on the quiet and reliable August. Georg, who never rested until he could do everything his brother did, took turns with him the second year. And now Adolf was allowed to share the honor and the early rising with his older brothers. He had been surprised when they finally gave in to his pleas. Since making his lonely way today past the graveyard in the dark and cold, he was much less surprised.
Three times three double strokes of the bell with a brief pause between them, as though the world were holding its breath at the angelic greeting—then the bell’s jubilant morning song. The ringing gave Adolf a happy feeling, but as he walked over to the sacristy, he felt somewhat ill at ease. Father Müller was a strict, relentless man who chalked up every black mark against you. Adolf had had him for three years as a religious instructor and as a confessor. A holy terror the boys called him. You needed to miss only one single question from the catechism and you had to stay in. In addition, there were three raps with the ruler on your fingertips and sometimes a thrashing with the hazel rod, which always stood by the desk. Adolf sighed. Georg had told him that, after Christmas, Father Müller would be saying the early Mass in the cathedral.
But when Adolf came into the sacristy, a strange young curate was kneeling there at the prie-dieu, reading his breviary. His hands and the tip of his nose were blue with cold. Adolf felt an enormous sense of relief and crept around on tiptoe so as not to disturb the young priest at his prayers. He took out the Mass vestments and laid them ready; the amice, alb, and cincture, and the white chasuble. Then he slipped into his own red cassock and white surplice and went into the cathedral to light the candles on one of the side altars. A few women were already kneeling in the front benches; the fringes of their long shawls hung down right to the stone floor, where the light from the sanctuary lamp made a red pool. As they whispered their rosary, their breath rose like curls of white smoke into the cold air.
The curate was waiting already vested when Adolf came back into the sacristy. “Good morning, Father,” he said. “I’m Adolf from the courthouse.”
“Good morning, Adolf,” replied the young priest, as warmly as if he were greeting an old friend. “You must be called after the Duke?”
“Yes, the Duke is my godfather, but I like my other godfather, Uncle Adolf Waterloo of Montabaur, much better.”
“Well, even godfathers are a matter of taste. I am Kaplan Knodt, the new curate. Give your parents my regards and say that I shall be visiting them shortly. The Eisenberths and the Knodts are related. You are twelve, I should guess, right?”
“I’ll be thirteen in August.”
“In the seventh grade?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then I’ll be your teacher for religion from now on and probably I’ll be taking your class in Latin, too.”
“Good for us! But what about Father Müller?”
“Father Müller has gone to Wiesbaden. Now, Adolf, let us give our attention to holy Mass.”
The boy picked up the missal and carried it to the altar in front of the priest. It was big and heavy for a twelve-year-old; and he could hardly see over the top of it. He had to be careful not to trip over the altar steps, as he had once done when serving Mass at the Pallottine convent, but he had only been ten then. Some of the schoolgirls had giggled and told their brothers about it afterwards, and Adolf had never heard the end of it until he gave the two biggest bullies, Emil Muller and Sebastian Meckel, a good licking. He felt a contented glow at the memory of his sweet revenge. But then he remembered what the curate had said and made a real effort to think of the sacred ceremony.
“Dear God, I thank you for giving us a new religion teacher,” he prayed. He liked the curate. He moved with such measured solemnity that it was really beautiful to watch, and he spoke so clearly that you could understand all the Latin words and make the right responses. This is what his brother August would be like celebrating Mass, thought Adolf, if he did become a priest. But probably he had no such intention: his head was full of secular history. Under his leadership, the brothers and their friends had run through the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans and almost every period of history in their summer games. They all agreed that this was far more fun than the everlasting games of cops and robbers that had been the fashion for years among the schoolboys. Even famous robbers like Schinderhannes could become boring after a while. But when August was by turns Alexander, Theseus, Hannibal, or Caesar, a victorious general leading the entire gang of neighborhood boys to India or Crete, over the Alps or into Gaul—man alive, there was nothing boring about that! The cliffs running down from the cathedral heights into the garden of the courthouse could substitute for any mountain range in the world and the River Lahn for each one of the seven seas. Adolf’s favorite period was the medieval age of chivalry. He often dreamed of being Walther von der Vogelweide or Tannhäuser, riding from castle to castle with his harp and his sword, singing songs and telling ancient tales; jousting at tournaments in the cause of the innocent; overcoming dragons that demanded maidens as their prey; winding his way through endless forests with a falcon on his wrist. How lucky people were to have lived then! Now everything was so awfully modern that it was enough to drive any boy with a spark of adventure to despair. Oh dear, his thoughts had run away with him again! Thank goodness, he at least hadn’t made any mistakes in the Mass.
“You did very well, Adolf,” the young curate said approvingly when they parted afterwards, and Adolf blushed with pleasure. But now he was in a hurry to get home to his breakfast. Dawn was gray over the valley, with the first hint of daylight. Something was scurrying along at the foot of the graveyard wall, and in spite of his hurry Adolf stopped, bent down, and felt for it with his hands. It wasn’t something scurrying but something flapping. A bird? A bat? Yes, it was a bird, injured or half frozen and unable to fly away. Adolf pulled off his mittens and reached for the animal. Carefully but firmly, he put his hands around the bird. One of its wings was hanging limp. A sharp beak snapped at his thumb; a pair of talons clawed his hand. Adolf felt suddenly warm in spite of the cold. A bird of prey! Could it be a falcon? Oh, Lord, let it be a falcon!
“Don’t make such a fuss.” He soothed the wild thing as he licked the blood off his hand. “Silly! If I leave you lying there, the cat will get you and the crows will pick your eyes out.”
He pushed the bird under his jacket and held it firmly with one hand, so that it wouldn’t do itself further harm by its furious efforts at resistance. Then he went bounding down the steep narrow alley as fast as he could. In one of the empty stalls in the stable was the old cage that had belonged to Aunt Stina’s parrot. He put the bird into it. It snapped once more, malevolently, at his hand and then sank down onto the floor of the cage to lie there exhausted.
When Adolf went into the house, a man was already sitting on the bench outside his father’s office, a dark, thin fellow who didn’t look up when the boy said good morning. He must have been the one spending the night on the makeshift bed under the stairs. Holwein was lighting the stove that heated all the official rooms from the hall; at the same time, he kept a watchful eye on the sinister stranger.
Aquarius came down the stairs to greet his master; however short their separations, there was always the same wild joy when they were reunited, as though the dog could never be quite sure that Adolf had not disappeared from his life for good.
The family was already sitting in the living room, which also served as the dining room. Only the aunts were absent; in winter they had breakfast in bed, so that they didn’t need to come out of their room before the house had warmed up. Adolf quickly sat down at his place, and the dog slipped under his chair. He had learned long ago that he was only allowed in the living room on condition that he kept absolutely quiet.
“How did you get on?” asked Mama. “Did you do everything right?”
“Perfect,” said Adolf. “And what do you know, the new curate is called Knodt and says he is related to us and will soon pay you a visit. We’re going to have him as our teacher for religion and perhaps for Latin, too. Say, aren’t we lucky to be rid of old Müller?”
“Of whom?” asked Father.
“Reverend Father Müller. He’s gone to Wiesbaden.”
The brothers wanted to know more about the new curate, but Adolf could only say that he was nice and tall and lean.
Papa sat there at the head of the table, clean-shaven, in his high stand-up collar and wide black stock. Other fathers wore cinnamon or plum-colored tail coats, but the children had never seen their father except in black. Only when he went to court did he put on the dark blue, gold-embroidered coat of the ducal councilors, with the stars of two orders on his breast, the small tricorn hat under his arm, and the short sword at his side. There was yet no trace of white in his thick dark hair, although he was nearly sixty.
Their mother sat at the other end of the long table. In front of her, she had a pile of sturdy bread slices, which she buttered one after the other, spreading the butter fairly right to the edges but skillfully gliding over the holes in the home-baked bread so that the expensive butter did not stick in them. The children could have either butter or plum jam on their bread at breakfast—to have both was a treat reserved for Sundays and feast days.
Adolf thought of nothing but his bird as he ate his bread and drank his hot milk. Would he be able to mend its broken wing?
“Eat up and don’t dream, Adolf,” said Mama when he had been staring into space for quite a while. “What have you done to your hand? It’s bleeding, isn’t it?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Adolf, and luckily Mama’s attention was distracted.
“Paula, Karlchen has finished his milk,” she admonished her daughter.
Paula hurried to fill the beaker that Karl held out to her. She kept on forgetting that she had to look after the two little boys at table and thought, anyway, that Karl could have asked for more himself: he could speak up well enough at other times.
“Could you send Paula to me for an hour later on to do some writing?” asked Papa. He suffered from writer’s cramp, and she was the only one of his children who wrote a clear hand. The brothers all had a terrible scrawl. Paula liked nothing better than being able to escape from the turmoil of the household for a while into the quiet of her father’s room.
“As soon as she has finished the bread, Jacob,” said Mama. “It must rise now, then go into the oven. While it is baking, she can make the beds and dust her aunts’ room.
The Amtmann nodded. “I’ll send the man to you in the kitchen after I’ve had a word with him.” Evidently, this was the continuation of a conversation they had had earlier in the morning.
“Did Wittich really have to wake you up in the middle of the night because of that tramp?” asked Mama.
“Indeed he did. Wittich couldn’t take the responsibility of locking up a sick man in the tower. If he hadn’t come across him in the hayrick behind the mill, the fellow would have frozen to death in the night. It was ten degrees below freezing last night. He coughs a lot and seems to be injured. He needed a drop of brandy badly. Give him a decent breakfast and a glass of hot milk with honey.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll see. In any case, I have no intention of sending him to the workhouse in his present condition, and I don’t want to shove him over the border either.”
“Yet those are surely the two courses prescribed by law in the case of tramps, unless I’m mistaken.”
“You’re not mistaken,” said the Amtmann good-humoredly. Nothing amused him more than his wife’s occasional remarks on legal matters. “But the law was made for man, not man for the law. The fellow must have a roof over his head for the winter. He’s a mere boy, nineteen at the most, a gypsy I should think. Probably he’s been cut off from his clan for some reason or other.”
The boys pricked up their ears. Their mother remained silent.
“You’re always complaining that Holwein never has time to help with everything that needs doing in the house and in the yard. Well, the stableboy’s room at the back of the stables is empty, and once he’s got his strength back, the gypsy will almost certainly be willing to make himself useful. As long as he has a roof over his head for the winter and enough to eat, he won’t need to steal, and that’s a lot to be thankful for. It does more harm than good to put such a young lad in prison. I know I can rely on you, Margarete.”
Mother stood up and smoothed down the folds of her full skirt. There was suddenly a twinkle in her eyes, which was reflected in Father’s as though in a looking glass.
“Your time’s up, boys,” she said, “unless you want to be late on the first day back at school. Paula, they have a roll and apple each for their break at ten o’clock. Make sure the two little ones have clean handkerchiefs and then put your bread in the oven. First, hold a piece of paper in the oven. If it turns light brown, it’s the right heat.”
“Yes, Mama.” Paula looked tired. Adolf stroked her smooth hair quickly as he went past. “I’ve something to tell you,” he whispered in her ear. He would have loved to have another look at the bird before he went. As yet, he had said nothing to his brothers about it. He was always unwilling to broach anything of importance in the presence of Georg, who had a way of chiding him that drove him mad. Would the bird perhaps have been able to fly away if he had not caught it, he thought desperately? No, the cat would have gotten it, he answered the accusing voice of his conscience. So what? replied the voice. Perhaps a swift death would have been more merciful for a bird of prey than imprisonment.
Aquarius ran to school with the brothers. Every morning it upset the dog when Karl and Ferdinand separated from their big brothers at the first corner. They went to the primary school, the older ones to the high school. Aquarius would look at his master inquiringly to see whether or not he should follow his sheep dog’s instinct and keep the flock together. It was so easy; he just needed to nip the legs of the deserters a little and they would know they had to stay with the others. But Adolf shook his head. “Come on, Aqua; leave those two.”
It was nearly a year now since Adolf had rescued the dog from the river when it was in flood. He had seen him being carried past the garden of the courthouse clinging to the remains of his kennel and whining piteously in the muddy waters of the River Lahn. It had been a cold, windy March day, and all the tributaries of the Lahn had been swollen by the snow melting in the mountains and by heavy rains. Without a moment’s thought, Adolf, fully clothed, had waded into the raging water, which had swept over the path by the river, swum as he got out of his depth, and finally brought the dog to land. The brothers supported the escapade from the bank with encouraging shouts and good advice: “Watch out or you’ll get caught by that beam. More over to the right. Yes—now you can get him. Slip his collar off. Easy, boy! That’s it!” Long poles and helping hands were outstretched as he struggled up the slippery bank, dragging along the spluttering animal. Since then, the dog would have gone through fire for him—though not through water. For that, he had an invincible distaste ever since his adventure. For Adolf, it meant accepting a thorough beating, chiefly for ruining his clothes but also for endangering his life so foolishly. But what risk had there been for a boy who had grown up by the water and could swim like an otter? And you would have to be a miserable coward to let a poor dog drown before your very eyes!
