They had gone outside to watch the sunset. Wrapped in woollen blankets, they had sat like a pair of sentries at the cave entrance. Through the poplar trees, in the gaps between the trunks, the light formed into red knots. The organ grinder fell silent for a long moment, but suddenly he went on talking as if there had been no pause: And what are sounds? he said. They are, they are like flowers within flowers, something inside something. And what is inside a sound? I mean, where does the sound of the sound come from? I’ve no idea. Michele Bacigalupo — you remember Michele? — he used to say that with each sound we make we are giving back to the air everything it gives us. What does that mean? I’m not really sure either. I think music is always there, do you see, music plays itself and instruments try to attract it, to coax it down to earth. How strange, Hans said, I have a similar idea about poetry, only horizontally. (Horizontally? the old man said, looking puzzled.) I think poetry is like the wind you enjoy listening to, which comes and goes and belongs to no one, whispering to anyone who passes by. But I don’t think the sound of words comes from the sky. I imagine it more like a stagecoach travelling to different places. That’s why I believe in travelling, do you see? (Franz, said the organ grinder, stop that, stop biting his boots!) Yes, stop that, Franz. Deep down, people who travel are musicians or poets because they are looking for sounds. I understand, said the organ grinder, but I don’t see the need to travel in order to find sounds, can’t you also be very still, attentive, like Franz when he senses someone coming, and wait for sounds to arrive? My dear organ grinder, Hans said, placing an arm around his shoulder, we’re back to the same idea — should we leave or stay, be still or keep moving? Well, the organ grinder grinned, at least you agree we haven’t budged from that point. You win! said Hans.
They had fallen silent, shoulder-to-shoulder, absorbing the closing phrase of evening. Through the breaks in the pine trees beyond they could see the windmills. Hans heard the old man mumbling. Wait, wait, I don’t think so, said the organ grinder, I don’t think so (you don’t think what? asked Hans), sorry, I don’t think it’s true (what’s not true? Hans persisted), about being stuck at one point. I said the idea is always the same and that’s true. But we also like to reflect on it, turn it over in our minds, like those windmills. So maybe we aren’t so stuck after all. I was looking at the windmills, and suddenly I thought, are they moving or not? And I didn’t know. What do you think?
In the midst of the crowd in the streets around the market square, Frau Pietzine was watching the Christs, Virgins, Mary Magdalenes go by, and with each new step of sorrows and tears she realised she felt better, a sense of comfort pulsed through her, this shared piety absolved her for something she perhaps had not done. With each beat — boom! — of the drums, with each beat — boom! — she clasped her rosary beads and — boom! — half-closed her eyes. Every Maundy Thursday — boom! — Frau Pietzine would venture out with heavy heart to see — boom! — the processions and recall — boom! — with sadness, all the other Thursdays — boom! — when her husband — boom! — would escort her to the stand opposite the town hall. It was no doubt loneliness — boom! — that had changed the meaning — boom! — of that crowd for ever — before it had been a kind of landscape, a distant backdrop — boom! — which she could ignore provided her faith and prayers were sincere, but for the last few years — boom! — Frau Pietzine would hurl herself into the crowd — boom! — letting it engulf her, and discover in its murmur — boom! — a frantic companionship. When she remembered — boom! — the touch of her deceased husband’s bony fingers — boom! — Frau Pietzine instinctively sought the frail hand of her youngest son in order — boom! — to clasp it in hers, offering the protection she could now only give — boom! — but never again receive. God give you health and strength, my beloved son — boom! — Frau Pietzine muttered, and no one could have denied — boom! — that hers was the most sincere prayer of all those uttered — boom! — that whole week in Wandernburg.
On the far side of the square, on the corner of Archway and King’s Parade, the Levins were also watching the processions at a distance from the main crowd. Mortified by her husband’s indifference, Frau Levin did her best to counteract the impression they might be giving to those beside them, by standing bolt upright in an uncomfortably rigid posture that suggested rapt attention. Worst of all, she thought, was not her husband’s radical ideas. It was the smirk on his face that betrayed his differences and, in the end, his contempt. A contempt which, due to his pride, condemned them to the most humiliating margins of Wandernburg society. Why would her husband not yield even an inch, if only for the sake of appearances? If his beliefs were as solid as he maintained, why this insistence on having nothing to do with popular religious conventions? Were they not mere conventions, poppycock, expediencies as he kept saying? Why, then, did he continue to repudiate them? Herr Levin, in the meantime, wearing the same fixed smile, was thinking the exact opposite — of the humiliation of having to accompany his wife year in, year out, as a gesture of goodwill, to see this grotesque display of opportunistic penitence and sham religious devotion. Herr Levin was equally if not more dismayed by the dreadful, jarring bands — each time he heard the trumpets’ piercing, metallic blast — tara-tara! — his nose wrinkled instinctively. What is the point, he said to himself, of pretending we are what we are not? Tara! And what was the point of converting to something else — tara-tara! — if at all events they, the others, would never accept them as one of their own? Tara! If we came here to suffer exile, to grow and return — tara-tara! — what meaning was there in trying to escape fate? Tara! This was precisely the thing that most angered Herr Levin about his wife’s behaviour — tara-tara! How could she be so naive as to imagine they would accept her if she obeyed their rules? Tara! And if she were to obey anyone, wasn’t it more reasonable that she should do as he said? Tara-tara! Besides, reflected Herr Levin, the idea of God — tara! — is not reached through theatre. If all these people devoted the Easter week to studying theology — tara-tara! — astronomy or even arithmetic, they would be closer to faith than they were now — tara! — or did these bigots really believe all would be revealed to them one fine day, just because? Tara-tara! I hope, Frau Levin thought at that very moment, we shall be going to church today at any rate — tara! I hope, her husband thought simultaneously, that on top of everything else she’s not planning to attend Mass. Tara-tara!
Not far from the Levins, Hans stood craning his neck, exasperated and curious. Even though he detested crowds, he had been forced to join in because every street in the city centre, including the street where the inn was, had been besieged since early that morning. He had been woken up by blaring bugles, and, after trying to ignore the din or bury himself in a book, had gone downstairs to have a look. How peaceful it must be in the cave now, he reflected, smiling to himself. As he weaved his way between elbows, wide-brimmed hats and parasols, he had the impression of witnessing a dual spectacle — the faithful taking part in the procession and the neighbours who had come out to watch them. No matter how much that gregarious display seemed to him like a mixture of the Inquisition and pagan spring worship, he had to admit he found it fascinating. After watching the most celebrated floats go by, Hans was in no doubt — the most ornate of all, the one that had stood out as it rolled down Border Street, had been the carriage belonging to His Excellency Mayor Ratztrinker, with its exquisite lines, folding hood and towering driver’s seat upholstered in velvet.