Brodeck (21 page)

The soldiers kicked in the door of our house shortly before midnight. Not long before that, the men who’d participated in the meeting of the brotherhood had gone to see Captain Buller and given him the two names. Diodemus was there. In his letter, he says that he was crying. He was crying, but he was there.

Before I had time to realize what was happening, the soldiers were already in our bedroom. They grabbed me by the arms and dragged me outside while Amelia screamed, clung to me, tried to beat them with her weak fists. They didn’t even pay attention to her. Tears were running down Fedorine’s old cheeks. I felt as though I’d become the little lost boy again, and I knew that Fedorine was thinking the same thing. We were already in the street. I saw Simon Frippman, his hands tied behind his back, waiting between two soldiers. He smiled at me, wished me a good evening as if nothing were wrong, and remarked that it wasn’t too warm. Amelia tried to embrace me, but someone pushed her away and she fell on the ground.

“You’ll come back, Brodeck! You’ll come back!” she screamed, and her words made the soldiers burst out laughing.

XXXII

————

don’t feel any hatred toward Diodemus. I bear him no grudge. As I read his letter, I imagined his suffering more vividly than I remembered my own. And I understood, too. I understood why he’d been so assiduous in taking care of Fedorine and Amelia, visiting them every day, constantly doing things for them, and helping them all the more after Amelia entered into her great silence. And I also understood why, once he got over his initial astonishment, he greeted my return from the camp with such an explosion of joy, hugging me, making me dance, spinning around with me in his arms, laughing all the while and wheeling me faster and faster, until in the end I passed out. I had returned from the dead, but he was the one who could finally live again.

Brodeck, all my life I’ve tried to be a man, but I haven’t always succeeded. It’s not God’s forgiveness I want; it’s yours. You’ll find this letter. I know if something happens to me, you’ll keep my desk, and that’s why I’m going to hide the letter in it. I know you’ll keep the desk because you talk about it so much—it must be lovely to write at that desk, you say, and I write all the time. So sooner or later, you’ll find this. And you’ll read it, all of it. All of it. About Amelia, too, Brodeck. I’ve uncovered everything; I owed you that much
.
And now I know who did it. It wasn’t only soldiers—
Dörfermesch
, men from the village, were in on it, too. Their names are on the back of this sheet. There’s no possibility of a mistake. Do what you want with this information, Brodeck. And forgive me, Brodeck, forgive me, I beg you …

I read the end of the letter several times, bumping up against those last words, unable to comply with Diodemus; I couldn’t turn the page over and look at the names. The names of men whom I necessarily knew, because our village is very small. Amelia and Poupchette were sleeping only a few dozen meters from where I was. My Amelia, and my adorable Poupchette.

I remember telling the
Anderer
the story. It was two weeks after I’d come upon him sitting on the
Lingen
rock, contemplating the landscape and making sketches. I was returning home from a long hike I’d taken to check the state of the paths connecting the pastures in the high stubble. I’d left at dawn and walked a lot, and now I was hungry and thirsty and glad to be back in the village. I encountered him just as he was leaving Solzner’s stable, where he’d gone to visit his donkey and his horse. We greeted each other. I went on my way, but after a few steps I heard him speak: “Would this be an appropriate time for you to accept my recent invitation?”

I was on the point of telling him I was exhausted and eager to get home to my wife and daughter, but all I had to do was look at him as he stood there expectantly, a broad smile on his round face, and I found myself saying exactly the opposite. My response seemed to make him happy, and he asked me to follow him.

When we entered the inn, Schloss was washing down the floor, using a great deal of water. There were no customers. The innkeeper started to ask me what I was having, but he changed his mind when he realized I was following the
Anderer
up the stairs to his lodging. Schloss leaned on his broom and gave me a funny look, and then, seizing the handle of his bucket as if in anger, he violently flung the remaining water onto the wooden floor.

A suffocating smell of incense and rose water pervaded the air in the
Anderer
’s room. Some open trunks stood in one corner, and I could see that they contained a quantity of books with gold-embossed bindings and a variety of fabrics, including silks, velvets, brocades, and gauzes. Other fabrics hanging on the walls hid the drab, cracked plaster and gave the place an Oriental flair, like a nomad encampment. Next to the trunks were two big, bulging portfolios, each apparently containing a great deal of material, but the ribbons binding them were abundantly knotted and the portfolios’ contents invisible. On the little table that served as his desk, some old, colored maps were spread out, maps that had nothing to do with our region; they depicted elevations and watercourses unknown. There was also a big copper compass, a telescope, a smaller compass, and another measuring instrument that looked like a theodolite, but of a diminutive size. His little black notebook lay closed on the table.

The
Anderer
invited me to sit in the only armchair after removing from it three volumes of what I thought was an encyclopedia. From an ivory case, he took two extremely delicate cups, probably of Chinese or Indian workmanship, decorated with motifs of warriors armed with bows and arrows and princesses on their knees. He placed the cups on matching saucers. On the headboard of the bed was a big, silver-plated samovar with a neck like the neck of a swan. The
Anderer
poured boiling water into our cups and then added some dry, shriveled, very dark brown leaves. They unfolded into a star shape, floated for an instant on the surface of the water, and then slowly sank to the bottom of the cup. I realized that I’d watched the phenomenon as if it were a magic trick, and I also realized that my host had observed me with a look of amusement in his eyes.

“A lot of effect for not much,” he said, handing me one of the cups. “You can fool whole populations with less than that.” He sat facing me on the desk chair. It was so small that his broad buttocks hung over both sides of the seat. He brought the cup to his lips, breathed on the brew to cool it, and drank it in little sips with apparent delight. Then he put down his cup, rose to his feet, rummaged around in the largest trunk, the one that contained the biggest books, and returned with a folio volume whose worn covers gave evidence of much handling. Among all the volumes in the trunk, all the books gleaming with gold and brilliant colors, the one in his hand was easily the dullest of the lot. The
Anderer
held it out to me. “Have a look,” he said. “I’m sure it will be of interest to you.”

I took a quick peek, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The book was the
Liber florae montanarum
by Brother Abigaël Sturens, printed at Müns in 1702, illustrated with hundreds of colored engravings. I’d searched in all the libraries of the Capital without ever finding it. Later I’d learned that only four copies were believed to be in existence. Its market value was immense; many rich literary types would have given a fortune to possess it. As for its scientific value, it was inestimable because it listed all the flora of the mountain, including the rarest and most curious species that have since disappeared.

The
Anderer
obviously perceived my confusion, which I made no effort to conceal. “Please,” he said. “Feel free to examine it. Go on, go on …”

Then, like a child who’s just had a marvelous toy placed in front of him, I took hold of the book, opened it, and started turning the pages.

It was like plunging into a treasure trove. Brother Abigaël had taken his inventory with extreme precision, and the extensive notes on each flower, each plant, not only recapitulated all the known lore but also added many details I’d never read anywhere else.

But the most extraordinary part of the work, the primary reason for its reputation, was to be found in its illustrations, in the beauty and delicacy of the plates that accompanied the commentaries. Mother Pitz’s herbaria were a precious resource that had often helped me to revise or complete my reports and sometimes even to focus and direct them. All the same, what I found there had lost all life, all color, all grace. Imagination and memory were required to envision that entombed, dry world as it once had been, full of sap and suppleness and colors. Here, on the other hand, in the
Liber florae
, it seemed as though an intelligence combined with a diabolical talent had succeeded in capturing the very truth of flowers. The disturbing precision of lines and hues made each subject appear to have been picked and placed on the page just a few seconds before. Summer snowflake, lady’s slipper orchid, snow gentian, healing wolfsbane, coltsfoot, amber lily, iridescent bellflower, shepherd’s spurge, genepy, lady’s mantle, fritillary potentilla, mountain aven, stonecrop, black hellebore, androsace, silver snowbell—they danced before me in an endless round and made my head spin.

I’d forgotten the
Anderer
. I’d forgotten where I was. But suddenly, the spinning stopped short. I turned a page, and there before my eyes, as fragile as gossamer, so minuscule that it seemed almost unreal, its blue, pink-edged petals surrounding and protecting a crown of golden stamens, was the valley periwinkle.

I’m certain I cried out. There in front of me, in the ancient, sumptuous volume lying across my knees, was a painting of that flower, a testament to its reality, and there was also, peering over my shoulder, the face of the student Kelmar, who had spoken so much of the valley periwinkle and made me promise to find it.

“Interesting, isn’t it?”

The
Anderer’s
voice drew me out of my reverie. “I’ve been looking for this flower for so long …” I heard myself saying, in a voice I didn’t recognize as my own.

The
Anderer
looked at me with his delicate smile, the otherworldly smile that was always on his face. He finished his cup of tea, set it down, and then said, in an almost lighthearted tone, “Things in books don’t always exist. Books lie sometimes, don’t you think?”

“I hardly ever read them anymore.”

A silence fell that neither of us sought to break. I closed the book and clasped it to me. I thought about Kelmar. I saw us getting down from the railway car. I heard the uproar again, the cries of our companions in misery, the bawling guards, the barking dogs. And then Amelia’s face appeared before me, her beautiful, wordless face, her lips humming their never-ending refrain. I felt the
Anderer
’s kindly eyes on me. And then it all came out of its own accord. I started talking to him about Amelia. Why did I speak of her to him? Why did I tell him, whom I knew not at all, things I’d never confessed to anyone? No doubt I needed to talk more than I was willing to admit, even to myself; I needed to relieve the burden that was weighing down my heart. Had Father Peiper remained the same, had he not turned into a wine-soaked specter since the end of the war, would I perhaps have confided in him? I’m not so sure.

I’ve suggested that the
Anderer’s
smile didn’t seem to belong to our world. But that was simply because he himself didn’t seem to belong to our world. He wasn’t part of our history. He wasn’t part of History. He came out of nowhere, and today, when there’s no more trace of him, it’s as if he never existed. So what better person for me to tell my story to? He wasn’t on any side.

I told him about my departure, about being led away by the two soldiers, while Amelia lay on the ground behind me, weeping and screaming. I also told him about Frippman’s good humor, his heedless assessment of what was happening to us and of what would be our inevitable fate.

We left the village that same evening, bound by the hands to the same tether, walking under the watchful eyes of the two soldiers on horseback. The journey took four days, during which the guards gave us nothing but water and the remains of their meals. Frippman was far from despair. He kept talking about the same things as we trudged along, doling out advice concerning sowing, the phases of the moon, and cats, which, he declared, often chased him through the streets. He told me all this in his gobbledygook, a mélange of dialect and the old language. It was only over the course of those few days I spent with him that I realized he was simpleminded; before, I’d just considered him a bit whimsical. Everything filled him with wonder: the motions of our guards’ horses, the sheen of our guards’ polished boots, the glint of their uniform buttons in the sunlight, the landscape, the bird-song. The two soldiers didn’t mistreat us. They hauled us along like parcels. They never addressed a word to us, but they didn’t beat us, either.

When we reached S., it was in chaos. Half the city had been destroyed; its streets were filled with rubble and charred ruins. For a week, we were penned up in the train station with many other people of all sorts—men, women, children, entire families—some of them poor, some still wearing the symbols of their past riches and looking down on the others. There were hundreds of us. We were all
Fremdër—
in fact, that name had become our name. The soldiers never called us anything but that, indiscriminately. Little by little, we were already losing our individual existences. We all had the same name, and we had to obey whenever that name—which wasn’t a name—was spoken. We didn’t know what was awaiting us. Frippman stayed close to me, never leaving my side, sometimes holding my arm for many long minutes at a stretch, squeezing it between his hands like a frightened child. I let him do whatever he wanted. Facing the unknown is always better when you do it with someone else. One morning, the camp authorities carried out a selection process. Frippman was put in the column on the left, and they assigned me to the one on the right.