The Dark Meadow (2 page)

*

Afra takes a deep breath. Why can't every day be as carefree as yesterday? Then she gets up, dresses herself quietly so as not to wake Albert, and goes into the kitchen.

Day is beginning to dawn at last outside the window. She hesitates: should she put the light on in the kitchen? With her hand already on the switch she decides not to, and in the dim light she goes over to the cubbyhole where
kindling is kept beside the stove, takes matches, paper, twigs and pieces of wood, opens the stove door and gets the fire going. Then she lifts the wooden bowl down from the shelf and goes into the pantry. The earthenware basin of milk set out to curdle is standing on the windowsill. Afra ladles curds out of it into the smaller wooden bowl. Fills it to the brim. Carefully, making sure she doesn't spill any, she goes back into the kitchen. There she puts the bowl of curds for breakfast on the table, with some bread to break into it. Afra takes a spoon out of the table drawer and puts it down beside the bowl. She sits there waiting. Her father or mother could open the kitchen door any moment now. She can imagine what it will be like when they come in. Her mother will be telling her off again for not going to church yesterday, and not to Evensong either, saying how ashamed she felt in front of the whole village and their relations. Her father will tell her to sit like a good girl and say a morning prayer of thanksgiving with him.

She will feel bad. Ever since she was little they've made her feel she has done something wrong, or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She can't do anything right in her parents' eyes. She knows how hard her mother takes it if she doesn't say prayers and go to church. But she doesn't want to, she won't. Is she supposed to feel grateful for
having to fight for the simplest things all over again every day? Who is this God of theirs who forces such a life on her? She hates the poverty, the cramped conditions here. But most of all she can't stand her parents' slavish regard for authority. All that, ‘What will people say, child? Haven't you brought enough shame on us? Why can't you tread the straight and narrow road of righteousness?'

Angrily, she pushes the bowl aside with a jerk, ignoring the curdled milk slopping over, and stands up.

At that moment her father comes into the kitchen. Afra doesn't look at him, doesn't wish him good morning, makes her way past him.

‘Where do you think you're going? Doesn't anyone say good morning in this house any more? This is a place where decent people still live!' he calls after her.

She replies quietly, without turning to look at him, ‘Oh, get lost, you old fool.'

They hadn't let him go. He ought to have known, it was like that other time, back then. He'd spent his whole life trying to be God-fearing and respectable. Just like before, they'd taken him away and wouldn't let him go again.

That boy, he'd always been getting underfoot, he was always in the way. And as for her, she'd spoilt him. It hadn't been right of her. Hadn't been right.

He paced up and down the cell, he couldn't sit down. He couldn't think straight, either.

Take up thy cross daily and follow me. The only difference was why. When it happened before, it had been his faith. He wouldn't abjure it. He had stood firmly by his God.

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death … though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …'

How did it go on? He couldn't remember.

There was so much he couldn't remember any more. It annoyed him, why was he suddenly so confused these days? He was beginning to mislay things, or find himself somewhere without knowing what he wanted to do there, or even where he was. Then he sat down and waited until it came back into his mind. Maybe they were right, and it had been him, but he wasn't crazy. He stood up and went on walking around the cell.

*

They'd kept him for eight weeks that other time, and in the end they'd let him go. He hadn't abjured, he had held fast to his faith. Ever since the day when he made his vow he had stood firmly by it. He could remember that, he wasn't forgetful, and didn't that prove it? It was all there, every detail, clear and distinct as if it had been only yesterday. He'd joined the Third Order even before the First World War. He'd been a young fellow at the time, and he had sworn to himself to lead a God-fearing life. Ever since then, he had worn the cord around his body as a sign of his membership of the Order. In the last year of the war he had married Theres. Her brothers had
all fallen fighting, and her father and mother were long dead. She had no one now, and it was time he looked for a wife. Love comes with marriage. From then on they went through life together. She was no beauty, small, always too thin, but she was devout and modest. She'd already had four children before Afra was born, none of them survived more than two days, one was born dead before its time, another died while she was in labour. He began to doubt whether it had been right for them to marry, because they were blood relations, although at some distance. When they neither of them still expected God to give them a child, Afra came into the world. And then, from the first day on, it seemed as if the Lord wanted to test their faith by giving them a child like Afra. Afra had ideas of her own, she told lies, she went on lying even when he caught her at it. She brought him nothing but trouble. Was flirting with the boys from the neighbourhood at an early age. He beat her to make her stay on the straight and narrow path. She didn't care, shook herself like a wet dog, and he suspected Theres of comforting her behind his back. As soon as Afra had finished school she went away. She very seldom came home, and if she did, it wasn't for long. But she couldn't have stayed in the house anyway. They had nothing, only just enough to live on. He worked on the railway, Theres sat
at her sewing machine until late at night making edgings and braid for the farmers' wives' Sunday-best clothes. Although he thought poorly of their addiction to finery, customers came from all over the place, and they could do with every pfennig.

*

He walked and walked, he didn't want to stop. He couldn't remember the rest of the psalm, which made him furious. Why did it go out of his mind just now? He had always followed the path of righteousness. Always followed the straight and narrow path, all his life. He had prayed and worked, tried to be a good man and bring up his daughter in the fear of the Lord. He always knew his place, only once had he refused to obey authority, and he'd paid for that. Just after that brown-shirted gang came to power. He'd felt abandoned at the time, even the priest in the pulpit parroted what those folk said. But he went on reading the Bible every evening with his wife and child, so he couldn't keep his mouth shut, he stood up before everyone and openly contradicted the priest, in front of the whole congregation. He had said that no upright Christian could be glad of what was happening, they'd all be led into misfortune, the priest and the bishop couldn't allow it.

They came the very next day and took him away. He could remember Afra, still a small child at the time, standing beside her mother in the doorway. He could even say what clothes they were both wearing then. Yes, he remembered Theres stroking Afra's head as the two of them stood there, watching him being taken away in the car.

They had taken him away and questioned him.

After eight weeks they'd let him go again. He survived the beatings, the mockery, the hunger and all the rest of the harassment, because the Lord God was with him. Before they let him go, he had to sign something saying he wouldn't breathe a word to anyone about what he had seen, what he now knew, or they would come for him again, and this time they'd never let him go. And he hadn't said a word about it to a living soul. Not even his wife. He forbade himself even to think of it, he rooted it out of his memory, for fear they might come back for him again. He kept his mouth shut, he learned never to protest, never to rebel again.

*

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …'

He couldn't remember. However hard he tried, the memory was gone. As if he had a big, black hole in his
head, and if he didn't watch out, even for a moment, it would swallow up all his thoughts and memories. He went on walking up and down, bracing his mind against oblivion.

Three years ago almost to the day, in the summer of 1944, Afra had returned to her parental home. There she was at the door with an old bicycle and her few possessions. She had turned up, just like that, without previous warning. They hadn't seen her at home for years. At the age of fourteen, right after school, she'd left. First she worked as a kitchen skivvy, then as a maid and a waitress. In all those years she went home three or maybe four times at the most, only to leave again as soon as possible. She wasn't homesick, not even at first, and she never wanted to go back. But then the day came when she had to leave her job in a hurry. Her employer had thrown her out in disgrace, and she went like a beaten dog.

‘And you just be glad to get off so lightly,' he had called
after her as she left. ‘A tart sleeping around with Frenchmen and foreigners! A dirty whore, that's what you are, a slut! I can't be doing with the likes of you here.'

He'd even kept back a large part of the wages still owing to her.

That was the same evening as she had found the letter, although she couldn't really be said to have ‘found' it: she couldn't possibly have missed it, since the upright and honest folk of the village had nailed it to the inside of her bedroom door. So when she closed the door and was going to hang up her overall on the nail behind the door as usual, the hate letter instantly met her eyes. They'd hang her from the nearest tree, it said, she ought to creep away from here, right away would be best. She was a disgrace to all honest German women whose husbands were fighting in the war, it said. She was a dirty whore, and she'd better watch out, because they'd be waiting for her, and then God help her.

Afra tore the scrap of paper off the door and ran down to the taproom. Trembling all over with rage, she threw the note down on the bar, smoothed it out flat with both hands and held it down as if a gust of wind might blow it away. She wanted to ask the landlord if she hadn't always worked hard and conscientiously.

‘Haven't I worked like a horse here? What's the idea of this?'

But he cut her short and simply grunted, ‘They'll be right, those folks. A cow like you ought to creep away. And better today than tomorrow. Understand? Better for us all that way, I can't have a tart like you in my house. The disgrace of it'll rub off on me, or they'll lock me up for not reporting you. No need to look so fierce. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not taking no risks for a girl like you – I could end up in a camp. Got to look out for number one, me. I can't manage without them Frenchies, but I can do without a tart like you. I need everyone who can lend a hand on the land or in the house. A man that's not afraid of hard work. It don't make no difference to me where he comes from, and that Frenchman costs as good as nothing. So now off you go, and I don't want to find you still here in the morning.'

With these words he turned round and left her alone. Afra went up to her room, packed all her possessions, and left. The landlady threw some money at her feet when she asked about her wages. Coins rolled all over the taproom floor. She scrambled around on her knees, picking up the money. The landlord himself had refused to see her. And they burned the letter she had left for the Frenchman that same evening. Why hand it over? When the foreign workers were brought in tomorrow morning Afra would be gone, and everything could go its usual way again, much better for everyone.

She spent three days and two nights on her journey. She cycled until she was exhausted and then pushed the bike, and when she couldn't go any further she stopped for a short break on the outskirts of a wood or by a spring of water if she happened to pass one. She rented a place to sleep the first night at a little inn, and set off again as soon as the sun rose. She found a place in the hay on the second night. And then, late in the afternoon, she suddenly saw Finsterau ahead of her. Her parents' house was even smaller and shabbier than she remembered it. Two bedrooms, one even tinier than the other, a kitchen and the pantry. The windows were draughty holes, and even in summer the place had a damp, musty smell. Water had to be pumped up from the well in the yard and carried indoors, and the outside lavatory was next to the dung heap. The sewage system hadn't yet reached the outskirts of the village here, and even if it had her parents couldn't have afforded it, not before the war when times were better, still less now. At least electricity cables had been laid at the beginning of the twenties, just after Afra had been born. Her mother was so proud of it that she sat at her sewing machine all night. Sewing on spangles to earn a little on the side, since Afra's father worked on the railways, first as a day labourer, then as a platelayer. Earning too much to die on and too little to live on, as they say. They were poor cottagers. She'd
wanted to get away from all that poverty, she had run away from home back then, only to return now. So she stood there in the yard looking around. As usual, the door of the house was wide open, and the white bucket with the ladle stood beside the door. Since her earliest childhood it had been her job to fill the bucket with fresh water from the well. Nothing had changed, nothing was going to change, time had stood still in this place.

‘For ever and ever, amen.'

And, as if she had never been away, Afra picked up the bucket and went over to the well.

In April '45 the war reached this part of the country, and then it ended in May, and Albert was born only a little later. She hadn't noticed that she was pregnant by the Frenchman until she was back at home. For her strictly devout parents he was a disgrace, a child of sin. And as if to emphasize his birth out of wedlock even further, that afternoon a storm broke out of a clear sky, making the day into night. Her mother put the black storm candle in the window and prayed fervently and in a loud voice for God to avert the storm while her grandson was being born in the next room. At first Afra still believed the Frenchman would come back for them after the war was over. After all, in her goodbye letter she had told him where she was going, but when her hopes came to nothing the memory
of him steadily faded. While at first she could still remember every detail, the images in her head turned pale, like clothes that had often been washed, and finally disappeared entirely. First his face went. One day she found herself unable, with the best will in the world, to say what colour his eyes were, although only recently they had still been present in her mind. His mouth, his nose, everything disappeared, and in the end only a pale, empty surface was left. Then she also forgot the sound of his voice, the way he held himself, the way he walked; it was as if he had been extinguished. The smell of him lingered longest, but one day even the memory of that was gone.