Tidings. Ernst Wiechert

without his horses he was still indispensable to these “young masters” whose hair was gray or already white, but who sometimes were as children at his knees, just as in times gone by, when he had sat on the oat bin and had given them the fruits of his life’s experience: a serving life, poor and within narrow limits, but through serving his life had become so rich that there was not its equal in the manor house.

      Now the two “young masters” lived up here, and they were as poor as he was. But Christoph saw very well that poverty did not oppress them. For the real aristocrat, poverty was neither a burden nor a disgrace. But he saw very well, too, that they were sometimes afraid. He did not know how great or how small this fear was, nor what they were afraid of – his eyes were too simple for that. But he realized that they were afraid like children. No wisdom was needed to console children. They only needed a pair of old hands which put the glowing cinder on the tobacco in the pipe, quietly and without trembling, even if the outside world came to an end.

      He felt, too, that they were not afraid of the things that humble people feared. They were too noble, too high-born, and he knew well what that meant. They were afraid because their door was no longer locked, the door to the room where they could be apart. Because the door was forced, and because everybody could step over the threshold: the military police or a cattle dealer or a farm hand who asked for higher wages; afraid because they were still living in an aristocratic world and now suddenly nobody was obliged to wipe his shoes before stepping over their threshold. Not that they had ever asked anybody to wipe his shoes before entering their door, but they expected that this should be done in honor of the world in which they lived; a stately room perhaps, furnished with books and pictures. Or in face, their narrow, reserved features which were only in part their own, the other part belonging to the noble family whose name they bore and whose honor they had always upheld.

      So Christoph was not surprised when Baron Amadeus asked him one evening by the fire whether he was afraid.

      Christoph took the pipe from his mouth and bent down a little to the fire.

      “When I was a small child, Herr Baron,” he said, “so small” – and he held his hand with the pipe a little above the floor – “I was afraid as children are afraid. At that time we were still told of the Man in Black, the Corn Woman, and the Moor Witch. At that time the wood owl hooting in the oak tree predicted somebody’s death. At that time little lights were to be seen on the peat bogs, and Queen Mab made plaits of elflocks in the manes of the horses. Perhaps it is still so today, and I believe it is so. But my eyes see it in a different way, Herr Baron, do you understand? My eyes are full of faith now, and he who is full of faith is not afraid. Our Heavenly Father can send the Man in Black to you, for he can send everything, but the Man in Black does not exist for his own sake, do you understand? Our Heavenly Father holds him on a thin thread and pulls him back, when it is enough.”

      “And our Heavenly Father?” asked Amadeus. “Would you not be afraid of him, if he were standing at the threshold?”

      “Why should I be afraid, Herr Baron? If he should say: ‘Are you there, Christoph?’ I would put my pipe down on the hearth and answer: ‘Come in, O Lord, here I am. But stoop a little, because the door is so low.’ Do you think that it can give him pleasure to frighten me, Herr Baron? An old man with white hair? Who never stole any oats from the oat bin and has never lost his whip?”

      “But if it were not our Heavenly Father who stood on the threshold, Christoph, but a human being? A friendly-looking man, but one whose clothes were transparent and you could see the knife around which his hand had closed in his pocket? Or you could read on his lips the words which he would speak before the court, lying words and words of betrayal? Or if you knew or believed that any man whom you know, everyone indeed, could stand before your threshold like that?”

      Then Christoph raised his left hand which trembled a little and put his finger tips cautiously and gently on the folded hands of Baron Amadeus. And with a kind, quite beautiful smile he said, “Can you believe, Herr Baron, that Christoph could stand like that before your threshold?”

      “No, not you, Christoph, not you. But . . .”

      “And even if it is only your old coachman who would not stand there, sir,” said Christoph, “is it not always true that our Heavenly Father would have room to stand there? You see, sir,” he went on gently after a while, “we, too, have had fathers, grandfathers, and forefathers. Many of them in far-off days were fettered and were whipped and some were whipped to death. But we do not carry it as a burden anymore, sir. Our Heavenly Father has taken the load from us. He has even taken to himself those who used the whip. I believe that he was more grieved about them than about those who shrieked in pain. Do you think, sir, that his hand is so small that there is no room for you in it – even though you are a baron?”

      He sat quietly thinking for a time, then he took a cinder from the hearth and put it on his pipe.

      “If God crucifies,” he said gently, “he must take into his hand the one who is crucified. He does not stretch out his hand in vain, sir. He does not trifle, not he.”

      The fire died down, but the last crimson glow was still reflected on their faces.

      “I am going to tell you something now, sir,” said Christoph after a while. “When everything had come to an end at that time, we drove westward. We could not bury the dead, because the earth was frozen a meter deep. Snow had already covered them, when we had harnessed the four horses. We drove only by night; by day we camped in the woods and lit a small fire.

      “We drove around the villages, because there was death in the villages. Once under the full moon we came to a village which was burned and deserted. It lay low, where there were only woods and lakes and marshes. One could think that it was the world’s end.

      “But it was not altogether deserted, for a dog was howling around the chimneys which were left standing. It was terrible to hear it, Herr Baron. The sky was crimson all around, and there was no living being on the earth, not a vestige of life. Only the dog was howling. The echo resounded from the wood and you might fancy that another, a second dog was howling there. And these two were all that God had left alive.

      “We had no more oats for the horses and I left the others on the outskirts behind a wall and went into the village. I and my shadow – a big shadow, for I was wearing the wolfskin coat. I thought the shadow was too big for myself and for the burned village. I was afraid of my shadow.

      “I found nothing; all was burned down to the foundations – except the church. It stood a little off the road on a hillock and was not burned. Perhaps they had not had time to climb up the hillock.

      “I went up there. I had not found the dog, it always crept away when I came near. It may have been afraid of my big shadow.

      “The church was built of wood, and I stopped in front of the door which lay in deep shadow.

      “Then I got a shock, sir, yes. I was frightened to death. For somebody was sitting on the threshold. So wrapped up that I could not recognize whether it was a man or a woman. But it was a woman. At least it had been one. Now she was nothing but a ghost. She held something in her hand that looked like a child’s toy, a rattle or some such thing. She raised this hand toward me. I believe lepers must stretch out their hands like that.

      “But she was not a leper. She was only distraught. Something had crushed her, and she had been left lying in the snow. I only saw something white where her face was. I did not know whether she was alive, and yet she had raised the hand with the toy.

      “I asked her many questions, but at first she did not answer. Then she told me everything. She may have been afraid of my coat, until I told her who we were.

      “She told me everything. ‘I am the only one left,’ she said, ‘I alone, I and the dog. We had done nothing to them. They killed men and women. The women screamed before they were killed. I heard them, because I did not scream. The girls had poisoned themselves beforehand. The doctor had given them poison. We had a great doctor in our village. He defended himself and they shot him dead.’

      “ ‘And the children?’ I asked.

      “