Anarchistbanjo's World

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

A muffled shot woke me up, which was answered by a
loud scream. A wild noise began, shots rang out, people
shouted and screamed, cursing, wailing loudly and pleading in
piteous tones. Muffled blows, which fell down, and stifled
whining, plus the angry yipping and growling of dogs, who had
something between their teeth, startled me. I jumped up and
wanted to go out the door. It was locked.
But soon the key turned in the lock and a small, gasping
and excited boy of about eight years rushed in and stuttered:
“The mayor wants you to come!”
As I stepped out into the open, in the light of torches and
lanterns, I saw the old man in the middle of a bunch of well-
armed peasants and in front of him, cruelly tied up with ropes,
a beardless frizzy head with a flat nose and powerful jaw bones.
“Step forward!” commanded the white-haired peasant
and beckoned to me. “Well, Frieder, look at him. Do you know
this man?”
He turned to the bound robber.
“How could I not know Dietlieb?” smirked the villain,
glad to be able to exercise his malice on a blameless man, and
thrust his chin at me. “He is the only one of my good
journeymen, whom I sent on a scouting mission and who has
not yet been massacred by you. You will have to die now,
Dietlieb!”
A shudder ran through me at so much wickedness. A
threatening murmur rose around me, gun barrels flashed,
pointed at my chest. I wanted to speak, but a gesture of the
mayor’s hand commanded me and everyone else to silence.
Nevertheless, one of them shouted out, that I should be struck
down and not allowed to speak.
“Shut up, grocer!” the mayor thundered at him, and
immediately there was a deep silence. He pointed at me.
“When did you go out on business?” he asked Frieder.
When did he join your gang?” he asked Frieder. “Can
you swear that he was with you?”
“By the blood of St. Willibrord, he was there!” cried
Frieder and looked at me with diabolic lust. “As we marched
toward the village, after the clock struck nine, I sent him ahead
with the lump for the dog.”
“He’s lying!” shouted one of the bunch. “The one with
the lump of poison in a copper box lies behind the dunghill.
Old Kolb has burned it down!”
“And I say it before God’s throne: He was with and must
now also go with me to the tower and then on to Master
Hansen’s dance floor,” seethed Frieder.
I could not speak for horror.
“Enough!” the old man ordered Frieder. “Wicked,
devilish, damned sinner, you who want to bring innocent blood
to the gallows with you! Know that the gentleman has been
sitting with me in the inn since the noon bell, and gave honest
warning about the signs on the wayside shrine. So now follow
your companions into eternal darkness!”
The robber laughed uproariously, and saliva ran down his
chin.
“Only time will tell, you poisonous, teething, sheared
peasant’s knoll! I am deprived of the fun of the honest donkey,
whom I have never seen, as a companion on the straw, so it is
also just and my malice must remain without sugar. And now
holla, you peasant steeds, lead me with proper reverence into
your little cottage and deliver me tomorrow in the right way to
the tower, if you don’t mind the journey.”
He added a laugh and neighed like a horse, to mock the
country folk, who had listened to his insolent speech with their
mouths open. Then, however, they looked expectantly at their
chief.
The mayor stepped up to the prisoner like a black,
looming shadow and said in a firm voice:
“Friederich Zabernikel, as you are called by your right
name, we do not need a city court and no tower. You may say
one Lord’s Prayer and then you hang. This is your verdict.”
Then Frieder let out a terrible roar, so that his eyeballs
popped out of their sockets. raced in his fetters, stamped in the
snow and bent raging under the horny fists that held him. They
waited quietly until he became still and gazed fearfully around
him.
“You do not have the right of the sword, you may not
deny anyone’s life,” he stammered. “Where is your tripod?
Think well of what is right.”
“We know,” said the sheriff gravely, “bad deeds justify
some things that are not written in the law of the land. Will you
pray, Friederich, do it soon, for thy time is up.”
“No need to pray, and no Lord God,” cried the frightened
one wildly. “If you want to murder without right, then murder. I
have also helped many a one over! That were a plague in your
coarse stomachs -”
“Shame!”
A heavy sooty blacksmith’s hand moved threateningly in
front of the man’s pale face.
“Do you have another request?” asked the old man. Then
Frieder laughed, almost merrily.
“Because Schinder-Susel has told me, that I would have
to kick the air on an apple tree once and because I now have to
do it after all, she shall be wrong. I want to do the last hop on a
pear tree-“
“In Zeitler’s garden,” said one of them half aloud, and so
the procession set off with crackling torches. Behind them ran
the women and children. The firelight went red over the
glittering snow. With weak knees I followed.
In a large orchard they threw the rope over a warty trunk,
tied the noose and picked up the bound man.
“Pray – pray -” he gasped, then they let go.
Frieder distorted his face hideously and cackled:
“May Beelzebub hear me, that you bastards and your
filthy brood may perish, shrivel up, and be swallowed up with
leprosy, pestilence and -“
By then they had already put an end to his blasphemies.
His feet twitched and kicked wildly in the air, flapping back
and forth, until two boys tied them and hung on to them. When
they let go, the legs stretched still from the body, on which the
head with the red cap stood crooked and dark, through the thin
line of the vine cord tied to the gnarled branch.
“You see it, Heiner,” said one fellow to the other. “She’s
always right! This is an apple tree, and over there is the pear
tree, which you wanted to point out to us.”
“So Schinder-Susel, of whom we were told, can do more
than cook mush,” he laughed back. “Tomorrow in the first gray
we’ll scrape him and the others in.”
“So, squire,” spoke the mayor close beside me, “now
come and sleep away the haunting. Tomorrow no soul will
know any more of Frieder and his brotherhood, and for you it
will be good to keep silent about what you have seen.”
I merely nodded and walked beside him toward the inn.
But then I suddenly stopped, grabbed the mayor by the arm,
looked him in the face and said.
“How did you know how to interpret the signs on the
statue?”
Bright light fell from the windows, singing and laughter
sounded.
The man stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. His
gaze sank deeply into mine.
“Friend,” he said, and a bitter smile crossed his wrinkled
face, “you have a right to ask that question. Well then – perhaps
I have been through the same school as you yourself. Perhaps I
have often put my ear to the mouth of a poor sinner who was
lying on the rack, or once I slept with a poor sinner who
blabbed at night what her red mouth concealed during the day.
It also happens that an innocent person is put into chains and
has to listen to what the gallows birds tell each other of tricks
and intrigues. There you have plenty of food for thought about
me. And if I put it right into your hands, written what I have
learned as an old man in my younger years – that would not
help you either.
Remember: One knows nothing of the other, and even if
the other were his brother in the flesh. – Come, I will show you
your berth.”
At last, with the money I had found, I was once again
dressed as a cavalier, I had reached home and stood before the
gate, through which I as a boy had often gone in and out and
through which my mother, my father’s father and Aglaja had
been carried away.
I stood and stared. What did the person who opened the
door to me say?
-That the Baron of Dronte ate grapes for dessert the
previous summer and was stung by a wasp and died a painful
choking death from a swollen throat.
He had constantly demanded with gestures that he be cut
with a penknife, where he pointed out the throat below the
thrush but no one had dared to do this. So it had been inhuman
to look at and to hear, how he, with his hands around himself
and rolling his eyes terribly, rattled, strangled and whistled for
several hours, until at last there were no more gasps or wild
tossing and turning of the body, the soul was gone. But the
house and farm had now become the property of the Lord of
Zochte, but was not yet occupied. The Noble Foundation, to
which everything fell, had agreed to the sale of the inheritance
to Zochte.
The man did not know me, but thought I was a former
guest of my father, and when I asked about the son Melchior,
he shrugged his shoulders and said that the young gentleman
after all kinds of bad pranks had fallen into the hands of the
recruiters and was either buried somewhere in the ground or
had decayed and evaporated. No one had heard of him.
I asked with anxious curiosity about Phoebus. He had
remained as an imperial standard bearer squire. I received the
answer that he had stayed in front of the enemy.
And who had arranged the legacy of the old Baron’s
estate? That was the Notary Mechelde, inside the city.
I turned my horse and rode slowly past everything, the
wall with the roof tiles on top, which surrounded the park, the
old trees, which rustled as before, the fish pond and the
forester’s house and saw from afar the arbor and cypresses of
the cemetery.