Читать книгу A Piece of Me - Beatrix Ost - Страница 18

It was always Adi who had to cope with difficult tasks. Heroic, fearless, even-tempered, never moody, she was sent into action, or sent herself.

Once again we were in a tricky situation. My mother prepared herself.

Please, please, Mami. Can I come with you?

It was already getting dark. Umer had hitched up one of the four Arabians to the gig, our small carriage. My mother took the reins; I clambered up and sat next to her. Off we lurched toward the moor. The knotted willows along the dirt road thrust their fists into the shroud of fog. The horse obediently trotted along. It felt creepy. I concentrated on the horse’s hindquarters; the play of its muscles distracted me from the blurred twilight world, from the vague outlines that gave wings to my fantasy. A knight with his sword was leaning over there on the tree trunk. An elf was springing up the embankment. A dark animal scurried across the road. The clip-clop of hooves and the creaking of wheels sounded out through the stillness. Here lived the Nightschratz and his helpers.

We reached the moor. Narrow paths between canals. The fog crept along the waters. Here small rectangles were cut out of the moor, stacked atop one another, dried in the wind. The towers of peat, for winter heating, looked like a village of huts. In the fog they were floating above the land, suspended on a gray, airy foam, swinging hither and thither like my thoughts. Anything was possible. Startled awake by the clatter of the hooves, the spirits from German fairy tales stepped forth from their pages, thrust themselves in front of reality, which had long since cleared out and made room for horror. Horror was practiced as an educational method. I’ll teach you what horror means. A threat, casually tossed off.

I clung to my mother. There stood the elfin king. His spirit garb swam in the foam of fog. Doubtless he would carry me off through the night air any minute now.

Mami, where are we going?

To Hyacinth, she said, tapping the horse’s back with the whip. To Hyacinth, our shepherd.

The horse snorted and tore at the bit. The carriage creaked. In my terror I forced myself to think about the peacock egg in the chicken coop. The egg, a present from the neighbor, was packed up for us in wood shavings and brought in a crate. Now a mother hen sat on it, believing it her own. Her three eggs in turn lay silently under an electric bulb in the peacock-egg box in the kitchen. The shavings make a beautiful nest, I thought, and concentrated with utmost precision on recalling every detail. The lamp has to hover over the center. If the power goes out there will be a catastrophe. The egg could not survive it.

I looked up at my mother: squinting, her body tense, leaning into the misty vapor. She gripped the harness with both hands, held it so tightly that the white of her bones peered through the skin of her hand. Consumed with fear, I meditated on my sins. Never again will I snort back snot. It makes you dumb, Grandmother says. Just take your handkerchief and blow your nose properly.

The horse pulled; my mother drew the reins tighter. The stillness was so still one could hear it. Noise came only from the carriage, the snorting horse, the trip of its hooves: in the fog chamber every sound was thrown back twofold.

Suddenly the road curved. We drove between rows of trees. Off flew a lone crow: caw, caw. I trembled and swallowed a scream. But then I felt my mother’s calming strength next to me, and I started to feel a little better.

And there it was! The shepherd’s cart materialized out of the mist. Slowly we rolled closer. The sheep’s heads bobbed behind their sheepfold like little balls on water: toward us, away from us, here, there. A figure detached itself from the cart. Hyacinth. A breeze swelled his loden cape as he moved toward us. He reached out his hand to my mother, taking the horse by its halter. The dogs whined all around us.

Do you have it? my mother asked, gesturing with her chin toward the sheepfold.

Hyacinth nodded, signaling wordlessly.

The sheep behind the fence danced and jostled each other nervously, first into one corner and then into another. Dogs circled the flock.

The transaction went quickly, like a well-rehearsed pantomime. While Hyacinth went off toward a cluster of rosebushes, my mother opened the flap beneath the seats. He returned carrying a heavy load: one dead sheep slung over his shoulder, plus two more, one in each hand.

Hyacinth unloaded his cargo into the gig; each landed with a thud. He pushed them close together and covered them up with the flap, pulled a kerchief from his trousers, wiped his brow, and gave my mother a small smile with a farewell nod.

And off we went with a jolt. It almost hurled me from my seat. Hyacinth, his white hair, the cart, the sheep, the dogs—everything disappeared, reclaimed by the fog.

I clung to my mother’s arm, so strong and calming. Yes, from restraining the beasts. She also had another strength, the strength that allowed her to drive off into the moor, the strength with which she ­rebuffed my father’s grim premonitions, took away their inevitability and fatefulness, simply lent them a different coloring. For her there were no catastrophes. Everything was just an event that had to be dealt with.

Lately, there had been much whispering at the dining table: procurement methods, sources, deals. Meals were the constant theme of conversation at meals: where to get them, from which hat one could pull the rabbit, how best to preserve meat. How to make marmalade without sugar, like using sugar-beet syrup. Conversations and remarks, arguments behind closed doors in the house, in corridors, in rooms. Outside in the courtyard, at the little bridge, side glances, whispers behind the backs of hands, high fives.

The household was once again without meat, putting my father in a bad mood—hence, our meeting with Hyacinth. The foggy, dreary night was perfect for this secret adventure.

We turned onto a gravel road, broader and safer. The wheels ground on the pebbles to the steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves. Suddenly I felt my mother’s body tensing. Right before us, a figure on a bicycle emerged from the mist.

The stranger pedaled alongside us. He wanted to hold on to our carriage, he said. What a piece of luck that we had come along, in this weather, and so late at night. He just wanted to hitch a little ride.

Yes, sure, said my mother. Just grab hold. What else could she say? There was no choice. But when she looked back, she noticed to her horror that blood was seeping out from under the flap where the sheep were lying. The man could be a black-market informant. He could turn us in, or worse: the price of his silence could be an entire sheep.

The stranger shifted his grip between my mother’s seat and the curved board that blocked the spray of mud from the wheels. His head danced back and forth like the heads of the sheep. I felt my mother’s uneasiness, fear and tension in the tone of her voice, her nervous laugh.

So where are you coming from at this time of night? she asked.

Yeah, I hardly see nuthin’. And you with the rig and all, where d’you come from? What you got back there? he brashly asked. And then, with a broad smile: This horse see in the dark?

Yes, my mother said. It knows the way. Horses have instincts.

Yeah, animals got the jump on people. Sure is shitty weather for you all to be out in, he kept drilling.

We’ll be home any minute, and someone’s coming on a motorcycle to meet us, my mother lied.

On a motorcycle, aha! And a mean, sly smirk lit across his ragged face. Oh yeah, yeah. So long, then. See ya next time.

The stranger pushed off from the carriage. He swung onto a little path and gave a final tap on his cap. For a moment we still saw him sketched in gray, then the fog swallowed him.

My mother cracked the horse’s rear with her whip. It took off at a fast gallop. I hid my face in her coat.

For God’s sake, she said. Let’s get out of here.

The fog laid itself across the horse’s hide like cold sweat. Behind us drizzled blood, the clue linking the deed and the scene of the crime to the perpetrator and his hideout. But we had gotten away with it.