Anarchistbanjo's World

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Nevertheless no one seemed to pay any attention
to the ugly one but I. And sometimes it seemed to me, as if a
chirping and whistling sound as of mice came out from his
bulging satchel. Not infrequently he rolled his squinty eyes
toward me and laughed impudently at me, as if we were old
acquaintances. I racked my brains, in fact, to find out where I
might have seen this mask before, but as hard as I tried, I could
not think of it.
After a while, a beautiful carriage stopped in front of the
inn, and several handsome merchants entered the drinking
room, and were very courteously welcomed by the innkeeper’s
wife and the barmaid.
Then I thought that it was now time for me to go, and
crept out of the door.
But when I found myself on the wet street in the roaring
dew wind, I held my fluttering rags with my hands to cover the
worst of the bare spots, there was such a shrill laugh right next
to me, that I collapsed. The man with the hunter’s hat walked
next to me, as if he had been my companion all his life, and
looked at me piercingly from the side.
“Well, your Baronial Grace,” he grumbled, “what
peculiar garb I must find you in again. The new, lavender-gray
little coat suited you better that day, when you were watching
with your strict father, as the magistrate cracked Heiner’s rough
bones.”
I looked up, now I knew where I had seen him. It was at
Zotenbock, where he had been hanging around in the linden
trees, eavesdropping at the market place.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Me? I’m just Fangerle,” he replied, suddenly quite
humble. “I’m glad when, with much toil and trouble I fill my
blue satchel so that my master, who is called the Highest-
Lowest, can be content. I now have an extremely annoying job
and would be really happy if someone wants to take some of
the work off my hands. It is nice money to be earned. Don’t
you feel like it, your Baronial Grace?”
“Listen,” I said, raising my ash stick. “I am in great
distress, but if you have come with your gallows face to mock
me, then I will show you that even in rags I can still be a
gentleman, if need be.”
He ducked his head as if he were afraid, and asked me
not to be rude. He was a joker by trade, he said, and as such
earned a lot of money at peasant weddings and funeral
banquets. And whether I got angry if he said it now – it is a
disgrace that one of the house of Dronte is in such an outfit,
when it would have been no trouble to earn a bare hundred
thalers in a few moments. And before I could reply he reached
into his satchel with his crooked fingers and pulled out a
handsome canvas pouch, in which it clinked.
“A full hundred,” he whispered in my ear. “Hihi – hoho!”
he laughed, and it was as if an echo came down from the skies.
But it was only a great train of crows and Jackdaws,
which moved with Krah and Kjak in the sky, and when I
looked up, a crow detached itself from the flock, swooped
down and fluttered very low above our heads, so that I saw
how it moved its cunning, black ball eyes. At that the thin man
straightened up and called out to it:
“Black Dove, go and tell the Highest – Lowest, that
Fangerle is on the way and to take the quiet one his
consolation!”
“Krah – Krag!” cried the bird and shot after the others.
“What are you chattering about?”
I prevailed over my uninvited companion, who was
jingling his money bag.
“What are you talking about?”
“This?” he gave in reply. “One of my jokes, nothing else.
Remember: If you’re riding in a wagon and there is a barking
mutt, like your master father’s black Diana, following behind,
you need only turn and tell the animal where to go. Then it will
leave you immediately. This and nothing else I have done with
the raven. Otherwise Master Hämmerlein’s songbird would fly
with us.”
My eyes were glued to the clinking money bag, and I
thought of how I could equip myself with a hundred thalers and
become a human being again.
There was another strange squeaking in his satchel.
“What do you have in it?” I asked, pointing with my
finger, “that it squeaks like that?”
“There in the blue satchel?” The merchant made a face.
“It’s little animals that I’ve caught and bring them to their
place.”
“What kind of little animals?” I pressed him.
“Soul mice, tiny soul mice that I’ve been gathering
around there.”
“Soul mice?”
“It’s just a word,” he laughed, reaching into the sack and
quickly pulled out a small, shadowy-gray thing that wriggled
and screamed. Quickly he hid it again, and although I had not
been able to see what it had actually been, a violent shudder
ran through my body.
Then came a howling gust of wind and almost pulled me
down. The money bag fell out of the old man’s hand. Flashing,
brand-new thaler pieces rolled out. He quickly picked them up
from the ground and threw them back in with the others, and
once again my desire for all that money awoke.
“What must I do to make the money mine?”
He stopped, rolled his eyes, and muzzled his mouth.
“In a moment, my boy, my brave boy, just be patient until
we reach the two Ka- Ka -“
A fit of coughing almost tore his throat.
I followed the direction of his outstretched hand and saw
a chapel by the road, not far from the village I was walking
toward. I hurriedly strode and the merchant, who suddenly
seemed to get sour from walking, only followed with difficulty.
When we came to the little church, he stopped, bent over
and scratched himself with his nails behind his pointed ears,
with his mouth hanging down.
“Now you will tell me,” I said angrily, “or do you think
you can continue to mock me?”
Then he became completely submissive, bowed to me
and said softly and almost shyly:
“Baron Dronte, I am a coward, and I am afraid of many
things that a brave soldier does not fear. There is one lying in
there, and he’s dead, so he can’t bite. In his hands are two
wooden sticks, one long and a shorter one, which I must take
from him for all the world. It is only a handle and a hitch, so he
must leave them.”
“That would be robbing a corpse,” I stammered, startled.
“That would be the gallows.”
“Many names exist for the businesses in which there is
much to earn. And there are many gallows, but most stand
empty.”
Under his broad hat, his eyes glistened like St. John’s
beetles.
“I’d love to,” he croaked hoarsely, “but I can’t touch such
sticks. Everyone has their own characteristics. Like, for
example, many a man would rather die than touch a toad with
his bare hand. “
“What kind of sticks are they, for which you have such a
great desire?”
“Don’t need them,” he hissed crossly. “Only that the one
in there shall be free of them.”
Again there was a clang and a sound. My wound hurt.
The water stood in my pierced shoes and bit open my frostbite.
“I’ll do it,” I said, and reached for the door handle. He
looked at me like a hawk. It dawned heavily. The wind rumbled
over the steep roof of the chapel. The trees rustled.
I entered.
In the middle of the whitewashed room, in the corners of
which the darkness was already eerily stretching, there was a
coffin in front of the altar on the collar. A single light flickered
at its head end. A guard sat on the floor and slept. Next to him
glittered an empty bottle.
In the open coffin, however, lay an old, distinguished
man with a face in which life had drawn furrows and wrinkles.
He was dressed in a new coat made of black, watered silk; also
the vest, the leggings and the stockings were black. A white,
well coiffed state wig framed the wax-yellow, smartly pinched
face. In his folded hands he held a small wooden cross.
I had seen many dead people and even had to help bury
them. I didn’t feel much at the sight of lifeless bodies that were
left to decay. But this old man with his wise and so unmoving
face, in which countless joys and sufferings had been marked,
this defenseless man, whose guardian lay there in deep
drunkenness and left him defenseless and exposed to
everything that might befall the lonely church. I took pity on
him. And what was I supposed to steal from him?
Then I recognized it: It was the death cross, which his
hands were holding tightly. I was supposed to snatch it from
him.
This should not be difficult. I took hold of the cross. Who
sighed there? I almost fell to the ground from fright. But then I
got hold of myself, remembered that the dead are dead forever,
and reached out my hand again.
But I lowered it. What did it matter to the merchant with
his disgusting eyes of a bitch, whether this deceased was
brought under the lawn with or without his cross? And now he
would give me a talking to, the barnacle-eyed fellow with his
thalers.
I went toward the door. It was only two steps, but I
looked back at the dead man. He was lying quietly and
peacefully, and as if in great fear, the pale fingers closed
around the cross.
I had to think of the despicable guy who had hired me.
How could this madman or villain think that I would take the
cross of a lifeless man away from him?
What had he been chattering about, how the ravens
flew over us?
“To take the silent man’s comfort -?”