Stern fell silent, looking me right in the eye. I said, “You mean to tell me they all fell to their deaths of their own accord?”
“I’m telling you what old Stern told me, that’s all.”
“But what’s that got to do with the foxes?”
“Wolves, foxes, they’re more or less cousins. Family. Maybe man isn’t the only animal that thinks too much.”
Stern’s pipe had gone out. He relit it, grabbed the little ferret, which was now trying to get inside his jacket, and filled our wineglasses.
A great silence passed over us. I don’t know what Stern was thinking about, but I was busy trying to make what he’d just told me jibe with what old Limmat had said. I got nowhere. Nothing was clear; there was nothing I could incorporate into a Report that an official in S. would have accepted without scowling at it and thrusting it into the stove.
Stern fed the dying fire a few bundles of dried juniper twigs. We spoke for perhaps an hour longer, about the seasons and the winter, about game and woodcutting, but concerning foxes no more was said. Then, seeing that the light was beginning to fade from the sky and I wanted to get home before night, I bade Stern farewell. He accompanied me outside. The wind had risen and was agitating the tops of the tall firs. This caused the branches to shed some large clumps of snow, but the gusting wind broke them up into fine powder, which covered our shoulders like frozen white ash. We shook hands, and then Stern asked me, “How about the Gewisshor? Is he still in the village?”
On the point of asking Stern what he was talking about, I remembered that some people had referred to the Anderer like that — the Gewisshor, the “Learned Man,” the “Scholar”—probably because that was the impression he made. I didn’t answer right away, and suddenly I was cold. And I thought that if Stern was asking me that question, then he didn’t know anything, and on the famous night of the Ereigniës, he wasn’t in the inn. So there were at least two of us with no blood on our hands. I didn’t know what to say to him.
“He went away…”
“Then wait,” Stern said and went back into the cabin. When he came out again a few seconds later, he was carrying a package, which he handed to me. “He ordered that from me. It’s already paid for. If he doesn’t come back, you can keep it.”
The package contained an unusual kind of soft hat, a pair of gloves, and a pair of slippers, all in handsome marten fur, beautifully dressed and sewn. I hesitated, but I ended up sticking the package under my arm. That was when Stern looked me in the eye and said, “You know, Brodeck, I don’t think there are any foxes anymore. They’re all dead. They’ll never come back.”
And as I made no reply, not knowing what to say, he shook my hand without another word, and after a few moments’ hesitation, I started off down the trail.
XV
—
s I’ve already related, at the moment when the Anderer first arrived in the village and passed through the gate with his animals, night was approaching, creeping down like a cat that’s just spotted a mouse and knows she’ll soon have it in her jaws.
It’s a funny time of day. The streets are deserted, the encroaching darkness turns them into cold, gray blurs, and the houses become shifty silhouettes, full of menace and insinuation. Night has the curious power of changing the most everyday things, the simplest faces. And sometimes it doesn’t so much change them as reveal them, as if bringing out the true natures of landscapes and people by covering them in black. The reader might shrug off everything I’m saying here. He might think I’m describing childish fears, or embellishing a novel. But before judging and condemning, one must imagine the scene: that man, come from out of nowhere — for he really did arrive from out of the blue, as Vurtenhau said (now and again Vurtenhau enunciates a few truths amid a great mass of idiocy) — anyway, as I was saying, one must imagine that fellow, dressed like a character from another century, with his strange beasts and his imposing baggage, entering our village, which no stranger had entered for years, and moreover arriving here just like that, without any ado, with the greatest of ease. Who wouldn’t have been a little afraid?
“I wasn’t afraid of him.”
That’s the Dörfer boy, the eldest, answering my questions. He was the first person in the village to see the Anderer when he arrived.
Our conversation takes place in Pipersheim’s café. The boy’s father insisted that we should talk in the café rather than in the family home. He must have figured he’d have a better chance here of downing a few shots in peace. Gustav Dörfer’s a small, drab creature, always bundled in dirty clothes that give off an odor of boiled turnips. He hires himself to the local farms, and when he has a few pennies, he drinks them up. His wife weighs twice as much as he does, but the size disadvantage doesn’t keep him from beating her like a dusty rug when he’s drunk, after trashing the premises and breaking a few of the remaining dishes. He’s given her five children, all of them puny and glum. The eldest is named Hans.
“And what did he say to you?” I ask Hans. The kid looks at his father, as though requesting an authorization to speak, but Dörfer couldn’t care less. He has eyes only for his glass, which is already empty, and he contemplates it, clutching it with both hands and gazing at it with a look of painful melancholy. Pipersheim’s watching us from behind the bar, and I signal to him to refill Dörfer’s glass. Our host puts a hand to his mouth and removes the toothpick he’s constantly sucking, the cause of his punctured, bleeding gums and distressing breath. Then he grabs a bottle, comes to our table, and pours Dörfer another drink. Dörfer’s face brightens a little.
“He asked me the way to Schloss’s inn.”
“Did he know the name, or were you the one who said it?”
“He knew it.”
“So what did you say to him?”
“I gave him directions.”
“And what did he do?”
“He wrote down what I said in his little notebook.”
“And then?”
“And then he gave me four marbles. Pretty ones. He took them out of a bag and said, ‘For your trouble.’”
“‘For your trouble’?”
“Yes. I didn’t understand at first. People don’t say that here.”
“How about the marbles? You still have them?”
“Peter Lülli won them off me. He’s really good. He’s got a whole bagful.”
Gustav Dörfer wasn’t listening to us. His eyes were riveted on his glass and its liquid contents, which were disappearing too fast. The boy drew his shoulders up around his ears. His forehead bore bruises and scabs and bumps and little scars, some fading, some brand new, and his eyes, when you managed to catch and hold them for a few moments, spoke of blows and suffering, of the wounds that constituted his harsh, inalterable daily lot.
I recalled that notebook, which I’d often seen in the Anderer’s hands. He wrote down everything in it, including, for example, the directions to an inn located only about sixty meters from where he was standing. The longer his sojourn among us lasted, the larger his little notebook began to loom in people’s minds, and although his producing it on every possible occasion had at first seemed like nothing but an odd compulsion, a comical tic good for smiling at or gossiping about, it quickly became the object of bitter recriminations.