The Dark Meadow (3 page)

If it hadn't been for Albert, she would never have wasted another thought on him, just as you forgot the dream you had in the night even before you woke up next morning. But Albert was here, and their situation in the house became more intolerable every day.

From the evidence of the police officer Hermann Irgang, now retired, eighteen years after the events concerned


First thing I'd like to say is this happened almost twenty years ago – if I say something then that's the way I remember it, but I can't tell you every detail, not now. At the time I was first on the scene of the crime, with my colleague Weinzierl.


Their neighbour, Schlegler, came to us at the station at the time and said, ‘There's been an accident in the cottagers' house out there.'


Schlegler couldn't say what exactly had happened, because the old man had come to him talking all confused stuff. All he could make out was that something was wrong with
Afra and the child. He, the neighbour, was supposed to run and fetch the police. Zauner himself went home again.


We village policemen didn't have a police car in those days. It was just after the war, and we all went about on bikes. You couldn't do that nowadays.


Weinzierl was new to the force, he'd applied to join only a few months before. I thought I'd take him with me, so as he'd learn something and get to know the people and the district better. So we went together by bike.


From outside the place looked quite normal. Washing was hanging on the line beside the house. I still remember that washing vividly because there'd seemed to be a storm brewing all morning, so I was surprised no one had taken it off the line yet.


When we were in the kitchen I thought Zauner looked suspicious right away. He was standing there bending over the washbasin. He hadn't even turned his head to the door, although he'd heard us coming. His body was scrawny, sinewy – you could see he'd worked
like a horse all his life. He just stood there in his undershirt and trousers. His braces were hanging down on both sides, his undershirt was dirty and sweaty. He was holding a wet rag. Only when we came closer could we see that it wasn't a rag at all, it was his shirt. It was soaked with blood and water. It was clear to us he'd been trying to wash the blood out. There was no other explanation.


I'd expected the old man to be upset and agitated, from all we'd heard from Schlegler. But he just stood there in the kitchen like it was nothing to do with him. He was splashing the water about; he didn't stop until I told him to sit down. He went over to the chair and sat down without a word. Sat there with his legs apart, looking stubborn. I took the shirt from his hand. He didn't register that, just went on staring ahead of him. Zauner wasn't shedding tears, wasn't desperate. Nothing. He just sat there looking at his hands as if nothing had happened.


If my daughter and my grandson had an accident, I wouldn't stand there at the basin
washing, would I? That's not what any normal person does.


As a village policeman you get to hear this and that, and we'd heard from all over the district that those folks in the shepherd's cottage didn't get on well together. The old man and Afra, they were like cat and dog. He'd always been quarrelsome, and it got worse every year.


The child in particular was a thorn in his flesh. Right, so it's a disgrace for her to have a child out of wedlock. But she wasn't the first to have a bastard, and she wouldn't be the last. To this day I don't know how you can fly off the handle about it like that.


Afra slips into the clogs standing beside the door of the house and goes out into the yard. The tub of bleached laundry is standing on the bench outside the house. She picks it up with both hands and carries it over to the well. There she rinses the whites again in the open air. Her hands soon turn red in the cold water, and hurt at every movement. Item by item, she wrings them out as well as she can on the rim of the stone trough. Then she puts them in the basket. From time to time she straightens up, dries her hands on her apron, and tries to warm her stiff, cold fingers by rubbing them together. As she does so she glances at the door, and sees her father come out of the house. He doesn't even look her way. There is just one sheet still lying in the water, she rinses it through,
and when she has wrung out this last item and put it in the basket, her mother too comes out of the house and goes straight over to Afra.

‘I have to go over to Einhausen, and then to the Müllers. You'll be here alone with your father most of the time.'

And without waiting for any reply, she goes on, ‘I'll see that I get back early in the afternoon. I've just looked at Albert, he's lying in bed asleep still, but it won't be long before he wakes up. Your father has gone to mow the meadow beside the railway embankment. Mind you don't go quarrelling with him again when I'm not here – the neighbours can hear you arguing the whole time, no need for the rest of the village to know as well. I couldn't get a wink of sleep last night, it takes so much out of me. I want an end to the hostility in this house at last.'

‘It won't be my fault if there isn't, Mother.'

‘I don't care whose fault it is. I want some peace and quiet, and that's that.'

She turns without another word, goes over to her bicycle, jams her basket on the carrier, and just before she rides away she calls to Afra again, ‘Your father will be back in two hours' time – you must get him his mid-morning snack. He's hungry when he comes home from mowing, so mind you think of that and don't forget it!'

Afra stands there with the laundry basket in her hand, and says in a quiet voice with a bitter undertone, more to herself than anyone else, ‘Oh no, I won't forget it.'

She goes past the house to the larger wooden shed. She puts up the washing line from the back wall of the shed, stretching it over to the house. Takes the laundry out of the basket and hangs it on the line. When she has finished she leans the laundry basket against the shed, goes to the smaller shed, which is the chicken house, opens the door and lets the fowls out into the garden. She watches as they scurry over to the fruit trees or disappear under the currant bushes. She loves standing here and looking at the garden. The sight of the trees in blossom in spring is her favourite, especially when the wind blows the white petals over the meadow like snowflakes. As a child she made herself a camp under the bushes in the other corner of the garden. Whenever she could get out of the house, she would sit here behind the bushes, playing. Afra goes over to her old hiding-place, and she thinks she sees something glinting in the grass. At first she isn't sure, wonders whether she was mistaken, but then she sees it again right at the end of the garden, something lying in the meadow close to the stinging nettles. Once she gets to the place, she can't find it at first. She bends down, wraps the fabric of the apron round her hand, and carefully parts the stinging
nettles. The small hoe lies there in the grass in front of her. Her absent-minded father will have left it there, and when he next looks for it and can't find it he will blame her for losing it. He is becoming forgetful, and says the same things all over again, three or four times running. At meals, he often finds it hard to carry a spoon to his mouth without spilling the soup in it. If Afra or her mother tell him not to act like that he gets cross and picks a quarrel. Recently he has been flying into a rage about everything and nothing, with a degree of violence that surprises and at the same time alarms everyone. Afra reaches for the hoe, picks it up, and goes back to the shed. The wet, heavy sheets hang from the washing line, moving back and forth lazily in the slight breeze. A white wall of fabric, bellying out and then collapsing again.

All that Johann Zauner could remember later was Afra lying face up on the sofa. Her eyes were open, and broken glass was scattered over the floor. He had trodden on the glass – even long afterwards he remembered the noise when he did that. The crunch as he ground the glass under the soles of his shoes. He stood there, and didn't understand what had happened. He saw that her hair was beginning to go red with the blood that was slowly seeping into the sofa. With a trembling hand, he touched her forehead, passed his hand tenderly over her lids and closed her eyes.

It was only then that he heard the whimpering. He felt as if it were abruptly rousing him from a dream. He looked around enquiringly, and finally he found the child
lying on the floor, half covered by the chair that had fallen over. He pushed the chair aside, awkwardly helped the little boy up and held him tightly. Very tightly, not the way you hold a child, more like a bundle of rags when you have to take care not to let any scraps of fabric drop out.

‘Don't be scared, it will be all right, it will be all right,' he kept saying again and again.

He spoke only to hear a calming voice, and so as not to feel alone.

*

With the whimpering child held to his chest, he went out into the yard. Both arms firmly round the bundle, he set off to go over to the neighbour's house. He had gone half the way before he noticed something wet and warm running through his fingers and down his arms. And when he stopped and looked down at himself, he saw the blood. He didn't know what to do, and waited a moment. He took a few steps forward, then a few more in the opposite direction, and finally he turned and went slowly back to the house.

In the kitchen, he pushed the broken glass and the hoe lying on the floor aside, and laid the child carefully on the floor beside the sofa. He didn't want to put the boy down beside his dead mother, there wasn't enough room, and he was afraid that he might make an incautious movement,
fall off the sofa and hurt himself. And he couldn't bring himself to touch Afra again. He fetched the old woollen shawl from the bedroom and covered the child with it. He was afraid the little boy might catch his death of cold, lying on the floor like that.

At some time he must have gone over to the neighbour's. They said he had called to him over the fence, telling him to get in touch with the police. Or at least, that was what the police officers told him later. He didn't remember it himself. If memory is a vessel full to the brim with what you had experienced, then his was broken like the pieces of the glass bottle in the kitchen that he had trodden on. His memories were fragments, with gaps between them that couldn't be filled; on many days he could no longer distinguish between what was real and what he had only dreamed. There'd been more and more quarrelling recently. It made him furious, he felt he was being unfairly blamed for doing or not doing things that he couldn't remember any more. In the end he was almost sure that his wife and daughter were hand in glove against him, hiding things on purpose and saying he'd done this or that, just to make him look like a liar and thus infuriate him.

From the evidence of the police officer Hermann Irgang, now retired, eighteen years after the events concerned


Like I said, I told Zauner to sit down. He was crouching there in silence, clutching the shirt tightly in his hands. The liquid ran out of it, dripped on the floor and formed a puddle there. Half the kitchen was already awash. I went over, took the knotted fabric out of his hands and put it beside the sink. The whole time, old Zauner just sat there without moving.


Then we went over to the sofa. Afra was lying there with her eyes closed, but there was a gaping wound on her forehead, right on the hairline. Her hair was reddish with blood, and her hands were cut and scratched
as if she'd tried with all her might to defend herself. There must have been a terrible struggle between them before he overpowered her and threw her on the sofa. All the same, she looked very peaceful lying there. I'll never forget it. It was as if death had come as a release, and yet dying like that must have been so cruel for her.


Weinzierl and I both stood looking at the corpse without a word. Out in these parts folk don't get murdered, not by friends and certainly not by their own fathers. When you die, you die in your own bed, of sickness, in childbirth, of consumption, or of old age because it's simply time for you to go. Very occasionally someone dies in an accident or at work. In the woods or the fields. The only violence we see around here is a bit of brawling in the pub, or quarrelling over girls at the fair on the anniversary of the consecration of the church, when the lads throw tankards at each other's heads. But they're always dead drunk by then, can't hardly keep on their feet. It's surprising enough they can
even attack each other with the tankards in that state, without losing their balance. And afterwards there's always a lot of talking, they all get worked up, they shout and accuse each other of starting the fight, and some of them begin crying like babies.


But here? Old Zauner sat on his chair and never moved, no weeping nor wailing. Me, I felt sure that if I'd been in his place, and it was my daughter lying there in her own blood, it would break my heart. I'd be pacing around the room mad with grief and pain, accusing God of making the world such a bad place and not stopping what I loved best being taken from me. But the old man just sat there as if it were nothing to do with him.


We didn't see the little boy until later. He was lying under a shawl beside the sofa, crying quietly.


I knew there was no helping Afra now. But when we found the child under the woollen shawl and he was still breathing, I hoped if I got him to the doctor right away then
the little mite could be saved. So I lost no time, I put him in a basket, and I cycled off to Dr Heunisch with it as fast as I could go.


I told young Weinzierl to watch the suspect and never take his eyes off him, not for a moment, until I got back with the doctor and the murder squad.