The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
And when I thought of it, it shook me coldly. I quickly
went up to the sleeping mortuary attendant, grabbed him by the
shoulder and called out:
“Wake up, man! Robbers are outside –“
The peasant, who was wearing a coarse shillelagh,
jumped up and looked at me in alarm.
“Where?” he slurred.
“Outside,” I said again and closed the door behind me. I
heard him quickly slam the heavy latch shut.
As soon as I stood outside in the breeze, crooked fingers
clawed at my tattered coat, two eyes shone like brass, and from
a black gaping mouth he bleated:
“Throw them away; throw them away from you all at
once!”
“What do you mean, cursed one, that I should throw
them away?” I shouted in his face.
“Our Lord Christ’s cross -?”
Fangerle bent back as if I had struck him in the face,
twisted and turned like a worm and began to run, cross-country.
The wind raced behind him, whistling and whirled up his
coattails, and as he was carried away into the twilight, it
seemed to me as if instead of him a giant bird with black wings
soared over the furrows, just as owls fly. I stood without money,
abandoned and damp from the dew on the lonely road.
But then I remembered the satchel with the soul mice.
Who was screaming so miserably in the hunting bag of the evil
one -? The evil one!
A paralyzing fright crept into my legs. Calling on the
name of God a hundred times, I went towards the next place
and did not dare to look around.
The gypsies, with whom I had long been walking, the
brown Romi, as they called themselves, had wandered back
across the border, and I had to separate from them, if I did not
want to be married by the provost to the rope maker’s daughter.
My misery was boundless. Here and there I found some
work and food in the farms, I even received a damaged piece of
clothing that was even better than my rags, but most of the time
I was starving and freezing to death. One day I was lucky and
found half a loaf of bread on a country lane, which had been
lost from a cart. And when I saw the ruins of a castle on a
mighty, wooded hill, I decided to light a fire in a hidden place
in the walls, so that I would not have to spend the icy winter
night without the comfort of close warmth.
After some climbing around in the rocks I soon found a
still fairly preserved vault, on the whitewashed wall of which
still the remains of Al Fresco paintings could be seen. Among
other paintings also the wedding of Cana was depicted (as I
could see from the remains of clothing and heads, as well as
the large, ancient wine jugs), and when I saw the mural, which
was in a bad state of disrepair, I noticed that one of the wine
jugs bore the barely legible inscription:
“Hic jacet”, or “Here it lies”.
Perhaps it was a joke that the painter made for himself,
telling the thoughtful observers that in these jugs and in the
wine that fills them, in fact something lies and rests, namely
the spirit that enters into the body of man with the drink and
gradually unleashes all passions, which overwhelms and rapes
the mind, through intoxication; but perhaps it was also said that
all gaiety slumbers in the round belly of the pitcher and after
drinking the drink, it would froth up in laughter, cheerfulness
and songs. About this and the like, I pondered until the lack of
the warming fire made itself violently known and forced me to
tramp up and down in the spacious vault for a while, in order to
warm myself and to let my stiff hands be used for starting the
fire.
When passing the unfortunately only painted brown jug,
I could not help but tap the thick belly of the vessel with a bent
forefinger, even though its rounded appearance was only the
skill of the painter, who through the distribution of light and
color had achieved a high degree of plasticity. But when I
playfully tapped at the seemingly round curvature of the
drinking vessel, I felt as if it had a dull, wooden, and hollow
space. I knocked again, and two or three more times. The
sound gave way at the place where the Latin words were
written; it differed from the sound of the walled environment.
Following a sudden impulse, I peeled off the paint and
the lime with my blunt knife, dug a little and immediately came
to a wide, rotten storage cache. I increased my efforts, and soon
the old wood was crumbling away in brown flour and damp
splinters, exposing a small niche in which lay a round,
greenish-white mold covered sphere.
After some hesitation, in which I saw that the object was
a decomposed human head, I plucked up my courage, reached
in and pulled out a completely decomposed leather sack, which
made a fine sound when I lifted it out. It was heavy with
metallic contents.
Then I made a fire, probably also for this reason, to calm
my hammering heart by doing an indifferent work. When the
little fire was burning and flickering merrily, I proceeded to
examine the leather container, which the inscription on the
wine urn had advised. Those, to whom this sign had once been
made because of the danger of forgetfulness, had been dead
and gone for many years, perhaps buried under the rubble of
the castle.
The bag offered little resistance. It fell apart as I carried it
to my fire, and its contents rolled ringing on the damaged stone
floor.
My breath was taken away by the sheer joy of it.
Doubloons, sun-crowns, guilders rolled out of the greasy,
wet bag and flashed in the glow of the dancing flames.
I laughed, shouted, and leapt around the fire. I let the
blessing run through my unwashed fingers, shook the coins
into my hat, stroked them, and twisted individual pieces
between thumb and forefinger so that they reflected the embers,
paving the floor with them and throwing ducats in the air to
catch them again or to search for the unrolled ones among the
debris.
But then reason prevailed. How easily the firelight, my
foolish shouting and stamping could attract passersby and
betray me and my refuge! In great haste and yet cautiously I
tore my sweat-glued shirt and produced by knotting and
folding a kind of money bag in which I concealed the not
inconsiderable number of gold pieces and hid them on my bare
body. When I was finished with everything, I pulled the
smoldering wood apart and thoughtfully descended the hill of
ruins to reach the next town in broad daylight. This I succeeded
in doing and after a short time of sneaking, searching and
cautious questioning, I found the store of a junk dealer.
I told him that I was a runaway soldier and that I needed
clothes, linen, shoes and a warm coat. Fortune demanded that I
had come across a reasonably honest man, who, though not
cheaply, did not cheat me for inordinate profit, and even had a
bath prepared for me against good money and an ointment that
freed me from the torment of the vermin. The only thing that
bothered me was the hurry, with which all this had to proceed,
and the visibly growing restlessness of the man, as daylight
gradually began to fade.
At last, however, his insistence became tiresome to me,
and I asked him gruffly whether the chosen people practiced
hospitality in such a way, and how he seemed to hold it in low
esteem that I had willingly let him earn a nice piece of money.
For I was well aware of the price at which worn clothes and
worn linen and clothes were traded. Nevertheless, I would have
paid what I had received without question as if it had just come
out of the workshop of the tailor and garment maker. Then the
Jew laughed and said:
“The gentleman has probably also been rendered a
service so that he may have cleaned and equipped himself in all
secrecy, so that the bailiff does not even look after him, when
he crosses the street. If the gentleman were a Ben Yisroel, one
of my people, it would be a pleasure for me to house him. But
because the gentleman is from the others, it must not be so.
Because it is Friday evening, which we Jews call Eref Shabbiss
and it is against our custom, to suffer strangers in our festive
house. May the Lord forgive; I know well that he is a Purez, a
distinguished man, who has suffered from the Balmachomim,
and may he go his way in peace and forgive that it cannot be
otherwise!”
Thereby with a deep bow he tore open the iron door of
his store and politely beckoned me to leave.
Only when I was standing outside on the street did it
occur to me that in his way he had acted honestly toward me.
For it would have been easy for him to keep me in his house
and betray me to the king’s troops lying not far away in their
winter quarters. Despite the armistice, they could have picked
me out and abducted me, and with some skill the Jew would
have not only had a reward, but also the money hidden on my
person, which would have not gone unnoticed to his quick eyes.
Thus it was not by my cleverness, but by my good fortune, that
I had escaped the greatest danger to my life.
For the sake of safety, I decided to wander deeper into
the country and far away from the border to make use of a mail
coach.
So I trudged on my way in the thick snow and strove
towards a village in which I intended to spend the night.
At the entrance of the respectable and, judging by the
clean houses that were spared from the war, prosperous
location stood an artwork, the sorrowful mother with her son in
her lap. The base of the sandstone had been freshly plastered,
and so I immediately noticed a few figures and strokes on the
white surface drawn with charcoal which I knew as “marks”, as
the country and traveling thieves call their secret signs. When I
was with the gypsies I had learned such science, which is
useful for everyone to understand.
But these signs on the wayside shrine were about murder
and burning and I shuddered when I deciphered their meaning.
Undecided what to do with them, by no means to
carelessly disregard the threatening message for other people I
stopped.
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