At the time Hauer had just lost his wife. It was easy for Barbara to seduce the man. The “old fool,” as she called him, swallowed her story with eager passion. Barbara had to laugh out loud. It was easy to pull the wool over a man’s eyes.
Matters didn’t become difficult until Hauer urged her to marry him. She must find out where Vinzenz was and sue for divorce, he said. Or even better, get him declared legally dead. These things could be done, he knew “the right people,” everything was possible for cash down.
She made more and more excuses, until she finally broke up with him.
The man gave her no peace. He stood outside her window for nights on end. Knocking, begging to be let in.
He even lay in wait for Barbara, urging her to come back to him.
Barbara was repelled by the man. Just as she had always been repelled by her father. The older she grew, the less she wanted to be a good daughter. Her abhorrence of her father and men in general grew greater all the time.
They were all the same in their greed, their nauseating lust.
With the years, she had learned to make her father dependent on her. She loved it when he begged for a night with her, even went on his knees to her. She had him in her hands. The relationship had changed. Now she called the shots.
He must pay for his forbidden passion. Pay with the farm. He has transferred the farm over to her, on her conditions. She dictated the agreement to him. Now he depends on her and her favor.
Of course she wanted to buy forgiveness with her donation. She wanted to be free, and free also of a sin that she would never have committed of her own accord.
Time passes very slowly. The minutes and hours crawl by at a snail’s pace.
Mick is still on the alert. The house isn’t quiet yet.
He is waiting for his moment to arrive. In his mind, Mick goes over the plan once more. He’s going to wait until the house is quiet and then go down into the barn.
The fire-raising trick. He’s often done it before. It’s easy.
The people who live in the farmhouse are lying in their beds. He starts a fire in the barn.
The cry of “Fire! Fire!” would be enough to wake Danner and his family abruptly. Drowsy with sleep, they’d run to the barn to save what they could.
What with all the panic now breaking out, he’d have plenty of time to get into the house. The Danners would be busy getting their cattle out of the sheds to save them from the flames. In the ensuing chaos he’d find and purloin all the ready cash in the farmhouse. The Danners would be much too busy keeping the fire under control and raising the alarm to stop him.
Afterward, no one would be able to say who first spotted the fire. His own tracks would go up in flames along with the barn, and he’d have disappeared into the woods by the time the blaze was out.
Mick leaves his hiding place in the loft. The moment seems to have come. It has been quiet in the house for some time now. Carefully, he makes his way forward to the suspended ceiling of the barn. To the threshing floor there. He pauses. Hears his heartbeat, hears his own breathing.
A rustling beneath him. A thought flashes through his mind: there’s someone down there in the barn! Why didn’t he see him coming? How could he have made such a mistake? No point thinking about it now. Whoever’s down there must leave before Mick can strike.
A second person comes into the barn. Mick hears a woman’s voice. He knows that voice. It’s Barbara’s.
He doesn’t recognize the man’s voice. It’s not Danner anyway, Mick is sure of that. What are they talking about? Mick can hear the voices, but he can’t make out what they’re saying.
He lies flat on the floor. Now he can peer through the floorboards.
The exchange of words is turning into a quarrel. The voices grow louder, the woman’s rises, hysterical, shrill. The man takes Barbara by the throat, choking her. It all happens fast as lightning.
For a moment Mick turns his head aside. Tries to get a better view from another position.
When the two below are back in his field of vision at last, the man is raising a pickax above his head. Bringing it down on Barbara, who collapses without a sound. Lies on the barn floor. Her attacker goes on striking the defenseless body on the floor in mindless rage. Brings the pickax down again and again. It is some time before he leaves her alone.
Mick lies on the suspended ceiling of the barn, hardly dares to breathe, to move.
He’s killed old Danner’s daughter, the thought goes through his mind. Killed her like a mangy cat!
The unknown man bends over the battered body, lifts it. Tries to drag the lifeless form away from the door, further inside the barn. Away from the light, into the darkness.
Suddenly there are steps, a voice. Old Frau Danner is standing in the doorway. Mick holds his breath.
“Barbara, where are you? Are you in the barn?”
The old woman is struck down even before she has really entered the barn.
Mick turns over on his back, can’t grasp the horror of it.
He’ll kill me if he catches me, he’ll kill me too, he thinks. Tears are running down his cheeks, he’s frightened to death. He puts both hands over his face. Presses them firmly to his eyes. Tries to control his breathing, which is coming out of him in ragged gasps. Eyes closed, he lies there. But the madman down below doesn’t hear him. Blind to everything in his frenzy, he strikes again and again.
How long Mick lies like that he doesn’t know. One after another, they fall into the butcher’s hands below him. First old Danner, then his granddaughter, too. They all step out of the light and into the dark. Even before they can notice or even guess at the danger, they are struck down.
As they lie on the floor of the barn the murderer brings the pickax down again and again on his victims, frenzied, raging.
Lying on his back Mick doesn’t have to watch the crime with his own eyes. He just hears it, hears the footsteps of the victims, hears them call for their family, hears the little girl call for her mother. Hears the pickax coming down, coming down again and again.
After an eternity there is silence. The silence of death.
It is another eternity before Mick notices the silence. He works his way slowly, almost soundlessly, over toward the steps down from the loft on his stomach.
The barn beneath him is empty. The murderer must have gone through the cowshed and into the farmhouse.
Mick has just this one chance of getting away unseen and saving his own life. He takes a deep breath and climbs down the steps. Down the steps, out into the open air.
He runs breathlessly, runs on and on. His legs can hardly carry him. The cold night air burns his lungs. Every breath he takes burns them. He runs until he falls over and stays lying there on the bare ground. Gasping. The darkness has caught him. He doesn’t know where he is. He has lost all sense of direction. He runs on from the house in wild panic. He wants to get farther and farther away from the house, the farm, the horror.
He sits there with his face turned to the window. His blank gaze staring into the distance. He sits there on his bed in his bedroom, sees things without perceiving them, looking inside himself, not out.
Behind him is his wife’s bed. It has been covered with a linen bedspread since her death three years ago. He doesn’t have to look at it, yet he sees it all the time. It stands in the room like a coffin. Warning and reminding him. Day in, day out. He can even catch the smell of death. That smell still lingers on, drifting through the room like gossamer. His wife is ever present in this room. Overpowering, like her slow sickness that seemed as if it would never end.