When he has unlocked the door, stale and slightly musty-smelling air meets him. Just before entering the house he turns and looks in all directions. He goes in, locking the door again after him.
He follows the corridor through the house to the kitchen. Opens the kitchen door and goes in. Gets the fire in the stove going with the wood left over from this morning. Fills the steamer with potatoes just as he did first thing today. Feeds the animals and gives them water. Milks the cows and sees to the calves.
This time, however, he doesn’t leave the house as soon as he has finished work in the cowshed. He goes out to the barn, takes the pickax he has left there ready, and tries to dig a hole in the floor at the right-hand corner of the barn.
He loosens the trodden mud floor with the pickax. But just under the surface he meets stony, rocky ground. He tries in another place. No luck there either. He gives up his plan.
Tamps down the loose earth again and scatters straw over it.
He goes back to the kitchen. Hungry after his strenuous work, he cuts himself a piece of smoked meat in the larder. Takes the last of the bread from the kitchen cupboard. A sip of water from the tap, and he leaves the kitchen and the house.
Kurt Huber, mechanic, age 21
It was on the Tuesday, yes, that’s right, Tuesday March 22, 195 . . .
Old Danner, he’d phoned us at the shop a week before, said it was very urgent.
But it wasn’t the sort of weather when you’d want to spend forty-five minutes cycling out there. It kept on snowing, raining, too, now and then. Filthy weather, it was. And we had plenty of work on hand in the firm.
I’ll tell you straight, I don’t like going out to those people at Tannöd.
Why not? Well, they’re kind of funny. Loners. And tightfisted, too. So mean they’d begrudge you every bit of bread, every sip of water.
I’d had to go out there to repair the engine of the machine that slices roots for animal feed once already, that was last summer, and they didn’t even offer me a snack when I took my break. Even though I’d been working away on that engine for over five hours, screwing and unscrewing parts. Not so much as a glass of water or a cup of milk, never mind a beer.
But then again, to be honest, I couldn’t have swallowed a drop they gave me. The whole place was so grubby, really mucky. I can’t stand that kind of thing.
When I washed my hands at the faucet in the kitchen I took a closer look around the room. I mean, how can anyone live like that? I couldn’t, not me.
Old Frau Danner in her mended, dirty apron. Her little grandson, always with a snotty nose.
You’d think she might have wiped the child’s nose for him. The little boy was crawling around on the kitchen floor, picking something up now and then and putting it straight into his mouth. Old Frau Danner saw him do it and never said a thing. When the little boy started crying, the old woman put him on her lap and gave him his pacifier. She’d licked the dummy first and dipped it into the sugar bowl standing on the table. Licked it and then dipped it into the sugar. Can you imagine that? It was all sticky, the bowl was crusty with spit and sugar.
I mean, I can’t understand it. I really couldn’t have swallowed a morsel, but they might have offered me something all the same, if you ask me it’s the thing to do. Only right and proper, wouldn’t you say?
Well, so when I was told to go and repair the engine, I wasn’t all that keen on cycling out there again. In such weather, at that.
Then old Danner made another phone call, complained to the boss, so there was no avoiding it, I had to go. I set out to cycle there around eight a.m. on the Tuesday, after I’d picked my tools up from the firm.
When did I get there? Oh, around nine, I guess that was it. Yes, just before nine, around about then. I was sweating by the time I reached their farm. I went right ahead through the garden gate and up to the front door, but the door was locked. First it’s so urgent, they’re in a tearing hurry, I said to myself, and then there’s no one home. Oh well, maybe they’re around behind the house.
So I pushed my bike around the farmyard. On the way I passed the two windows of the sheds on the back of the house. And I looked in through one of the windows. Couldn’t make out anything, though. I mean, one of them could have been in the cowshed with the cattle. But no one was. I looked through the kitchen window as well. Still didn’t see anyone.
Then I didn’t really know what to do. So I leaned my bike up against a fruit tree and waited.
How long did I wait? Oh, it must have been about ten minutes, I’d say. I lit a cigarette and smoked it. That takes around ten minutes.
Someone ought to come along soon, I thought to myself. And after a while I did see someone. Don’t know if it was a man or a woman. Some way off, standing in the fields out there.
At first I thought, ah, there comes old Danner now.
I called and I whistled. But whoever it was in the fields didn’t hear. The figure didn’t come any closer, disappeared as suddenly as it had come.
I waited a while longer. I was feeling really stupid. Didn’t want to cycle home without repairing the engine, neither. I’d only have to go out there again in a couple of days’ time. An engine like that isn’t going to repair itself, is it?
So there was nothing for it, I went to the shack where they kept the machine. It’s around behind the barn, or rather behind the barn and the cowshed, they’re built right next to each other.
I knew where to find the root-slicing machine from last time.
How late was it then? Oh, around nine thirty. Yes, the time would have been nine thirty.
The door had a padlock on it. I looked around to see if I could find the key to the padlock anywhere.
Some people hide keys very close, you see. For instance under a stone or a bucket, or on a hook at the side of a building just under the overhang of the roof. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen. They do it so they won’t misplace the key and it’ll be easier to find. It’s crazy, it’s downright irresponsible. Might as well leave their doors wide open. But that’s how some folk are. It really makes you wonder.
But the Danners hadn’t left the key anywhere, not under a stone nor hanging from a hook. My bad luck. I wanted to go home, like I said, but not without doing the job first, and my next job for a customer wasn’t until the afternoon, that was for the Brunners over in Einhausen.
So on impulse I fetched my toolbox from the carrier of the bike. I took out a pair of pliers and very carefully bent aside the little wire the padlock was hanging from. That way I just had to take the padlock off.
I felt like a housebreaker or a thief. But there you are, I didn’t want to cycle out again, and if anyone had come along I could have explained.
No one did come along, though. There was only the dog; I heard it barking its head off. Didn’t see it anywhere, though. You could hear the cows mooing, too. Not loud but all the time, I remember that now.
When I’d taken the padlock off and opened the shack door, I could finally fix the machine. I’d already wasted a whole hour as it was. No one pays you for wasted time, certainly not a penny pincher like old Danner.
A man like that, he watches every minute, anyone would think it was you who owed him something; he’ll starve to death yet with a bit of bread in his mouth. It was the cylinder-head gasket had gone; I’d thought that was the trouble all along. Changing one of those takes time. Back in summer I’d already told old Danner if he wanted to buy a new machine, we’d take the old one as a down payment. It was a prewar model at that, but no, the old skinflint didn’t want to, even though that’s the usual thing to do these days.