The Dark Meadow Read online

  They came the very next day and took him away. He could remember Afra, still a small child at the time, standing beside her mother in the doorway. He could even say what clothes they were both wearing then. Yes, he remembered Theres stroking Afra’s head as the two of them stood there, watching him being taken away in the car.

  They had taken him away and questioned him.

  After eight weeks they’d let him go again. He survived the beatings, the mockery, the hunger and all the rest of the harassment, because the Lord God was with him. Before they let him go, he had to sign something saying he wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone about what he had seen, what he now knew, or they would come for him again, and this time they’d never let him go. And he hadn’t said a word about it to a living soul. Not even his wife. He forbade himself even to think of it, he rooted it out of his memory, for fear they might come back for him again. He kept his mouth shut, he learned never to protest, never to rebel again.

  *

  ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …’

  He couldn’t remember. However hard he tried, the memory was gone. As if he had a big, black hole in his head, and if he didn’t watch out, even for a moment, it would swallow up all his thoughts and memories. He went on walking up and down, bracing his mind against oblivion.

  Afra

  Three years ago almost to the day, in the summer of 1944, Afra had returned to her parental home. There she was at the door with an old bicycle and her few possessions. She had turned up, just like that, without previous warning. They hadn’t seen her at home for years. At the age of fourteen, right after school, she’d left. First she worked as a kitchen skivvy, then as a maid and a waitress. In all those years she went home three or maybe four times at the most, only to leave again as soon as possible. She wasn’t homesick, not even at first, and she never wanted to go back. But then the day came when she had to leave her job in a hurry. Her employer had thrown her out in disgrace, and she went like a beaten dog.

  ‘And you just be glad to get off so lightly,’ he had called after her as she left. ‘A tart sleeping around with Frenchmen and foreigners! A dirty whore, that’s what you are, a slut! I can’t be doing with the likes of you here.’

  He’d even kept back a large part of the wages still owing to her.

  That was the same evening as she had found the letter, although she couldn’t really be said to have ‘found’ it: she couldn’t possibly have missed it, since the upright and honest folk of the village had nailed it to the inside of her bedroom door. So when she closed the door and was going to hang up her overall on the nail behind the door as usual, the hate letter instantly met her eyes. They’d hang her from the nearest tree, it said, she ought to creep away from here, right away would be best. She was a disgrace to all honest German women whose husbands were fighting in the war, it said. She was a dirty whore, and she’d better watch out, because they’d be waiting for her, and then God help her.

  Afra tore the scrap of paper off the door and ran down to the taproom. Trembling all over with rage, she threw the note down on the bar, smoothed it out flat with both hands and held it down as if a gust of wind might blow it away. She wanted to ask the landlord if she hadn’t always worked hard and conscientiously.

  ‘Haven’t I worked like a horse here? What’s the idea of this?’

  But he cut her short and simply grunted, ‘They’ll be right, those folks. A cow like you ought to creep away. And better today than tomorrow. Understand? Better for us all that way, I can’t have a tart like you in my house. The disgrace of it’ll rub off on me, or they’ll lock me up for not reporting you. No need to look so fierce. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not taking no risks for a girl like you – I could end up in a camp. Got to look out for number one, me. I can’t manage without them Frenchies, but I can do without a tart like you. I need everyone who can lend a hand on the land or in the house. A man that’s not afraid of hard work. It don’t make no difference to me where he comes from, and that Frenchman costs as good as nothing. So now off you go, and I don’t want to find you still here in the morning.’

  With these words he turned round and left her alone. Afra went up to her room, packed all her possessions, and left. The landlady threw some money at her feet when she asked about her wages. Coins rolled all over the taproom floor. She scrambled around on her knees, picking up the money. The landlord himself had refused to see her. And they burned the letter she had left for the Frenchman that same evening. Why hand it over? When the foreign workers were brought in tomorrow morning Afra would be gone, and everything could go its usual way again, much better for everyone.

  She spent three days and two nights on her journey. She cycled until she was exhausted and then pushed the bike, and when she couldn’t go any further she stopped for a short break on the outskirts of a wood or by a spring of water if she happened to pass one. She rented a place to sleep the first night at a little inn, and set off again as soon as the sun rose. She found a place in the hay on the second night. And then, late in the afternoon, she suddenly saw Finsterau ahead of her. Her parents’ house was even smaller and shabbier than she remembered it. Two bedrooms, one even tinier than the other, a kitchen and the pantry. The windows were draughty holes, and even in summer the place had a damp, musty smell. Water had to be pumped up from the well in the yard and carried indoors, and the outside lavatory was next to the dung heap. The sewage system hadn’t yet reached the outskirts of the village here, and even if it had her parents couldn’t have afforded it, not before the war when times were better, still less now. At least electricity cables had been laid at the beginning of the twenties, just after Afra had been born. Her mother was so proud of it that she sat at her sewing machine all night. Sewing on spangles to earn a little on the side, since Afra’s father worked on the railways, first as a day labourer, then as a platelayer. Earning too much to die on and too little to live on, as they say. They were poor cottagers. She’d wanted to get away from all that poverty, she had run away from home back then, only to return now. So she stood there in the yard looking around. As usual, the door of the house was wide open, and the white bucket with the ladle stood beside the door. Since her earliest childhood it had been her job to fill the bucket with fresh water from the well. Nothing had changed, nothing was going to change, time had stood still in this place.

  ‘For ever and ever, amen.’

  And, as if she had never been away, Afra picked up the bucket and went over to the well.

  In April ’45 the war reached this part of the country, and then it ended in May, and Albert was born only a little later. She hadn’t noticed that she was pregnant by the Frenchman until she was back at home. For her strictly devout parents he was a disgrace, a child of sin. And as if to emphasize his birth out of wedlock even further, that afternoon a storm broke out of a clear sky, making the day into night. Her mother put the black storm candle in the window and prayed fervently and in a loud voice for God to avert the storm while her grandson was being born in the next room. At first Afra still believed the Frenchman would come back for them after the war was over. After all, in her goodbye letter she had told him where she was going, but when her hopes came to nothing the memory of him steadily faded. While at first she could still remember every detail, the images in her head turned pale, like clothes that had often been washed, and finally disappeared entirely. First his face went. One day she found herself unable, with the best will in the world, to say what colour his eyes were, although only recently they had still been present in her mind. His mouth, his nose, everything disappeared, and in the end only a pale, empty surface was left. Then she also forgot the sound of his voice, the way he held himself, the way he walked; it was as if he had been extinguished. The smell of him lingered longest, but one day even the memory of that was gone.

  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 mornin
g. 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

  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.

  Johann

  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 ab
ruptly 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.