The Journey (19 page)

Thick and sticky is the ghost train that stands in the road. Locusts surround
them that can’t be chased off. What good does it do to try to shoo away an irritated swarm? No good at all, and so be patient and wait for the locusts to disperse on their own. That can take forever, especially when the clocks refuse to tell the time and time no longer wants to exist. There is no order for the hour, everything has come to a stop, despite there being no cease-fire for the weapons that are thrown with increasing fury against the unknown in combat. And so you must wait, wait, until the locusts destroy themselves. Perhaps then time will exist once more and the town clock will once again have mercy and move its exhausted hand so that the hour will announce itself, and as it strikes will say with a clocklike voice,
a quarter past, half past
.

But when will the hour finish striking? No one knows, not even if time exists for you again, because no one has any insight into anything. In vain you strive to achieve real insights. But nowhere can you find them. Which is why
The Leitenberg Daily
has to form them for you. The printing presses no longer work, the gears are rusted, the rollers no longer turn, the ink is dried up, rows of type have been turned over by Mutsch the cat, the letters lost. The filthy paper is scratched to bits and stinks. The editor’s office is occupied by unknown animals that have nested there and armed themselves with brushes and scissors in order to let no one in. The publisher’s office has turned into an odious dump. Someone has forgotten to chase away the young lady who sits at the window where the classified ads are delivered, which is why she still sits in her chair, though she’s gone completely mad and says that she is following policy and is strictly authorized to accept only obituaries. The millimeter-high printed line that has been shrunk eight times costs an amount that has been raised eight times over as well. Every now and then the young lady shouts and demands the money needed for a new obituary, yet no one comes. Perhaps the cost is too high for those who remain behind, or the citizens are too proud amid their grief to announce it publicly. The Leitenbergers gnaw away at grief, perhaps because they don’t want grief to gnaw away at them, or rather, maybe it’s just because they have nothing left to eat. Mutsch the cat and her troupe have polished off everything.

Only the local reporter Balthazar Schwind still works. He is tireless. He is capable. He draws his pointed dagger and writes. He first came into his own at the start of current events. He rides a wobbly bike that traverses
every impediment with ease and easily maneuvers with every ghost train and locust swarm. On the fly he reaches the middle of the market plaza. He quickly scrambles up the steps that lead to the gilded aura of Saint Rochus that crowns the column erected as a memorial to the plague. The reporter has already endured numerous battles, and his sharp eye and even sharper camera don’t miss a thing. Herr Schwind has survived the end of time, and for him it still exists, and he still records it as one of its new creators. Which is why Schwind will also survive this battle in which he will be the only one to lift himself out of the rubble that he will cling to and glorify for all of eternity. He lifts his convex lens toward the sins and photographs the downfall of time. Herr Schwind sits at the apex of the end of history and is happy. Any reporter would be happy to be there and be able to see it all happen. Something beats in the reporter’s breast, and that’s the heart that beats
a quarter past, half past
, though it never strikes the full hour.

Still the stony old witnesses stand by unharmed, left, right, not stuffed full with shrapnel, not eviscerated by a bomb. The holy cathedral, the town hall, the old guildhall with its green cupola, the baroque townhouses with their ornamental arches and attendant porticos. The reporter looks on at the disappearing order whose undisturbed framework waits and waits, revealing to him the town’s history, which he knows all too well. For him, who still has time, the past has also not disappeared. He doesn’t need the folios full of brittle documents, nor does he require the yellowed chronicles in which are depicted those years gone by when men and things still maintained a comprehensible relation and everything was joined one to another and augmented everything else. Schwind knows it all, yet in the face of imminent death it all threatens to disappear, even as a memory that cannot be preserved. No one will know how it all was born and passed on, because soon the stones placed one on another will no longer hold together, even though it won’t require a brutal conqueror to bring them down. The stones and bricks will separate from one another by themselves, and no mortar will hold them together, nothing remaining but rubble broken to bits and pulverized, and no one will be there who can save the town archives from Mutsch the cat.

Balthazar Schwind greets the antiquities across from him, lifting his right arm and smiling, and all the buildings send back earnest and cheery greetings in return, towers and tin roofs bow deeply and display a dazzling
and glinting array of decorative lights. Today marks the celebration of the eight-hundredth anniversary of the founding and incorporation of the venerable town of Leitenberg. For this a special edition of
The Leitenberg Daily
should appear, but because of present circumstances it must be forsaken. There is not enough paper, as well as contributions, and the local reporter can’t do it all himself. In the end it becomes obvious that the town fathers and the citizens have at the last moment forgotten this memorable day. Schwind sat himself on his bike and set out to find people willing to talk. After a quick greeting he told them that he was from the daily paper in order to overcome the grim silence of the grown-ups and the timid fear of the little ones. Then he posed his questions.

“Excuse me, what do you think of the eight-hundredth anniversary? What do you think of the past, present, and future of Leitenberg?”

These questions were met with surprise, if not even disturbance. Mayor Viereckl needed to excuse himself for an important council session in which new emergency measures would be discussed, and therefore said:

“I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a loss for words. I have no idea how old the town is. I thought it was always just there and has hardly changed over the years. Similarly, I expect it to change slowly in the future, our best hope being for an end to the war, which the clear and imminent emergency measures will bring about, making even more certain the victory that we already anticipate today.”

After this forthright explanation, which Viereckl had barely comprehended on the margins of his own understanding, he collapsed into himself and wearily fended off the earnest and somewhat confused reporter with skillful parries by dropping useful bits of news, out of which Herr Schwind could only extract the words
emergency decree
, after which the intrepid newspaperman undertook a further investigation and climbed some steps to land at the office of the town’s archivist. The archivist greeted him with a friendly face and responded to the reporter’s every wish.

“You know your way around the archive much better than I do, because I hardly ever bother with the past these days, mainly because of the way the present presses at us. You know how I am ready to help you with any information at my disposal, though you must understand that you’ll need to find what you need for your article by yourself among the old papers. Right now I have no assistants. Because of this I also need to ask that,
should you pull out a file full of documents, make sure to dust it off yourself, and after you’re done, place it back in the same spot in order that things here don’t descend into total chaos.”

The high school principal was so busy running the school that it took a series of long explanations before he understood what the reporter wanted. However, when the principal understood just what he wanted, his interest was sparked by the visit. “How wonderful that you thought of us when it comes to the pride and honor of this town. I can only tell you that our high school is nearly three hundred years old. It’s no surprise that so many young men have graduated from here. You also went here, Herr Schwind. We have inhabited the present buildings some fifty-seven years, a long, lovely time. I’ve been the principal here for some eighteen years and will most likely retire after next year, if the war has been victoriously concluded by then.”

“But the town, dear principal, the town!”

“Yes, of course it’s much older, no doubt of that. But I don’t know much about it. I wasn’t born in Leitenberg, but what I’m referring to are the noble ideals that have turned our young boys into able men, a venerable tradition that can still be found within every single member of the faculty that stands behind me and with whom I share the same unified spirit.”

“Permit me, please, to press a bit further …”

“The town, my young, impatient friend, certainly existed long before the founding of the high school, and I can imagine how poor the education was here before a Latin school was erected.”

Schwind, however, was not allowed to see the bishop. Only a canon received him and explained with professional courtesy that the present leader of the diocese was the seventeenth Bishop of Leitenberg.

Schwind winced at the poor results of what he found out from asking educated professionals, but when he asked the common folk, he encountered equally meager results. The reporter met a portly man of roughly fifty on Bridge Street, who, yawning, had just emerged from his house.

“Forgive me, but I’m from
The Leitenberg Daily
.”

“Fine, fine, but who cares?”

“I wanted to ask you some questions about our town.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“But wait until you hear the questions first! You don’t even know what I want to ask you. What is your name? Your occupation?”

“Are you from the police?”

“No, I’m from
The Leitenberg Daily
.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you anything. I only have to answer to the police.”

“But I don’t want to interrogate you. I’m a reporter. It will be in the paper! People will read about you! Just imagine, the special edition! It’s supposed to be thirty-two pages. It will be a huge edition. If you could just tell me your address—I assume you live in this beautiful house—then you’ll get three free copies. So what’s your name, please?”

“Ambrose Budil.”

“How old?”

“I was fifty-two in June.”

“Occupation?”

“Accountant for the electric company.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“Two sons in the army, somewhere on the eastern front.”

“Very good, Herr Budil, very good! Everything is going to work out fine! The future belongs to us! What do you have to say about the eight-hundredth anniversary?”

“Pardon?”

“The coming celebration. The town is celebrating its eight-hundredth birthday.”

“My gosh, the town is that old? I never would have thought so. The time, it goes so quickly.”

“It’s been written about in
The Leitenberg Daily
. Aren’t you one of our readers, Herr Budil?”

“Yes, I read it all right, but I didn’t see anything about a birthday. So
The Daily
covered it, you say.… How interesting! Everything can be found in the paper. In my occupation I hardly see anything. We’re also talking about a long time. I know for sure that my grandfather, whose name was Vincent Budil, no, not Vincent … that was my great-uncle’s
name. My grandfather was called … wait a minute, I’ve almost got it, he was called … he was called …”

“That’s perhaps not so important, Herr Budil. Anyway, your grandfather …”

“I’ve got it now, he was indeed called Vincent; my great-uncle was Anton, I’m always mixing them up. Anyway, what was I saying …?”

About your grandfather …”

“I know now. My grandfather was born in Leitenberg in 1824. But his father, or so he always said, came from Ruhenthal, the town that they’ve now closed off. Over there. You know what I mean. He would have been amazed to see that today you’re not allowed to enter it! The times sure have changed. Moreover, what an outrageous scandal, for even though there’s a shortage of apartments everywhere, they’ve turned over an entire town to the civil service and the inmates who have been brought there! Are there no penitentiaries? Or can’t those crooks build barracks for themselves? You need to appreciate the fact, my good sir, that I have to look on every day as these loafers are led by a military honor guard along Bridge Street right past my nose.”

“That’s another matter altogether, Herr Budil. What I want to know is what do you think about the past, present, and future of our town?”

“Me? I don’t have anything to say to that. I have nothing to do with it, I have no say whatsoever. Leitenberg is certainly old and beautiful, but there’s a war on; who knows what tomorrow will bring? I’ve no idea, my good sir, none at all! You’ll have to ask other folks. We all just have to grit our teeth and hope that everything comes out all right. It has to!”

Then Balthazar Schwind spoke to a street sweeper, who, after having just taken a bit of a break, pulled a red handkerchief out of his pocket and blew into it hard. He found it easy to get Johann to talk.

“My goodness, eight hundred years already! That’s almost too many to count! But things have always been good here. We’ll soon see how it all comes out. Then our great-grandchildren can say how it is after yet another eight hundred years.”

With such similar responses the reporter could do very little, it soon becoming obvious that there was little else that could be used as well. Therefore there was nothing left to write about except the flight of Saint Rochus atop the column, who had guarded the town since the plague of
1680. Rochus had also endured the cholera epidemic of 1866, but the people of Leitenberg had not erected any more columns dedicated to saints. Amid the old buildings, Rochus towers upward out of the ruins in lonely fashion. The reporter sits above and cannot take any photographs, and is saddened when he begins to worry whether or not he can develop his pictures. There is still a darkroom, but hardly any more developing fluid, and there most likely won’t be any more anytime soon. Undeveloped rolls of film are like unborn children. All too briefly does light touch them, then they must rest in their dark containers until they are brought to life under the shimmering red, though it still takes a bit longer as the new pictures bathe in the flat pans that are gently rocked back and forth. Then they at last see the light of day. Only hopes and silent wishes accompany them in the urge that they fulfill what today is nothing more than a dark promise.