Obabakoak (32 page)

“From now on we will be one and the same person, Margarete,” he murmured.

These were, of course, words uttered out of the depths of insomnia and exhaustion, but they were, nonetheless, a true reflection of what Heinrich was feeling. From that day forward, he would be a woman.

“I will never forget you, dear sister,” he added. And with that promise his earlier decision was sealed.

He sat down again at the table and wrote two notes. In the first, which he signed as Margarete, he informed the director of the port of the death of Heinrich Wetzel and begged him to send her any outstanding wages due to her brother. The second note was a list of all the things, beginning with lipstick, that he would have to buy the following day.

Before going to bed, he stopped by the window. The city was still sleeping, but there were already signs that day was dawning: the rays of light slicing through the clouds, the yellow reflection of the sun in the windows of the tallest buildings. It would not be long now before the alarm clocks in the bedrooms of all the houses would begin to sound. After that—everyone, men and women, young and old—would rush out into the street.

He sighed. For the first time in his life, he felt a desire to mingle with other people.

Such was the joy this change had brought to his life that not even a shadow of a doubt crossed his mind. He trusted in the future, or rather, he imagined it as radiant. He was convinced that Margarete’s spirit would act as a guide who—like a fairy godmother—would always take him to beautiful places, to welcoming houses where he would find good friends.

It seemed, moreover, that this future in which he had placed his trust was ready to go along with him, that it wanted to give him everything he had dreamed of. One day, he went for a stroll through the city streets and ended up dancing at a party held in a mansion full of magnificent rooms; on another, he went to a pub and got an invitation to spend the weekend at a country house; on yet another day, he received an affectionate letter.

His diary, until then empty, grew fuller by the day and was soon crammed with names and telephone numbers. Barely a month after the day that he had first tried on his sister’s dress, he was accepted at the Atropos, one of the best private clubs in the St. Pauli district. Sometimes he even got up on stage and sang.

One day, while he was at the Atropos, he was introduced to Walter, a forty-year-old teacher. He was tall with very dark hair and eyes and he wore a red silk neckerchief.

“Would you like to share a bottle of champagne with me?” asked Walter.

“I’d be delighted, though I don’t usually,” replied Heinrich.

“I’m so pleased I met you. I feel happier than I have for a long time. Really.”

Walter’s dark eyes smiled.

Heinrich spent two days unable to get that smile out of his mind. On the third day, Walter phoned him. On the fourth, while they were walking in a park, they decided to embark on a stable relationship.

For Heinrich it was the happiest period of his life. Walter was his first love, and, perhaps because of that, it was a love outside of time, exclusive, a love that absorbed his whole being. Nothing existed beyond those dark eyes.

“So how’s life treating you?” Walter asked him one day, after writing a dedication to him in the book he had just published through the university. They were dining at the D’Angleterre, drinking French champagne.

“Very well indeed, since I met you.”

“I know that but what else, what’s your life like?”

And Heinrich replied: “Like that of a character in a novel.”

“Good for you! Novels are much more fun than essays,” laughed Walter, pointing to his book.

But Heinrich was mistaken. His life was very far from being a long novel, composed of fifteen, twenty, or forty chapters. Instead it was but a brief story that was hurtling toward its denouement. And this was perhaps his own fault because by then, absorbed as he was in his love affair, he had utterly forgotten that only sister of his, Margarete, thus calling down on himself—according to the harsh law that fairy tales apply to people who fail to keep their promises—an exemplary punishment at the hand of fate.

The cloud, the same cloud that wrapped about him and on which he had built his life, began to evaporate one night after a play he had gone to with Walter. Walking through the silent streets, they were making their equally silent way home, when suddenly a long whistle cut across the whole city.

“The train,” commented Walter and went on walking.

But Heinrich remained rooted to the pavement and a shudder ran through his whole body. That penetrating whistle was just a signal, a message with a rather anodyne meaning; but for him it was a song, a piece of dark, powerful music.

“Why have you stopped?” asked Walter, coming over to him.

“I want to hear it a second time,” he replied faintly.

And that second whistle came, filling Heinrich’s eyes with tears.

“Whatever’s wrong? Why are you crying?” said Walter, frightened. He took Heinrich’s face in his hands.

“It’s nothing. It’s just that suddenly I remembered something sad,” and, saying that, he buried his face in his friend’s chest.

Then, once he had pulled himself together, Heinrich linked what had happened with the circumstances surrounding the death of his sister.

“That’s why it affected me so deeply. Because it made me remember my sister. I haven’t thought about her for ages. It won’t happen again,” he added.

But that eminently sensible way of explaining the facts—even Walter agreed with him and recounted several similar cases—proved inadequate.

For, very soon, Heinrich had acquired the habit of spending all night walking the city streets, like a sleepwalker, with no other aim but that of hearing the train whistle, again and again. And he performed that ritual every night, not caring what or whom he had to leave to do so. Whether he was at a party or at Walter’s house, he always had to leave in the end. He could not resist the pull of that song.

The joy of those first days no longer glittered through Heinrich’s life. He grew taciturn.

“It’s true. I’m going through a bad patch,” he confessed one day when Walter came to visit him. He no longer went to the Atropos.

“And what about my house? You don’t even go there anymore. Can’t you bear to be with me either?”

“I will come, but later on, once I’ve got myself out of this hole.”

“Have you met someone else?” said Walter, lowering his eyes.

“No, that isn’t it. I just need to be alone.”

Walter wept, but in vain. Heinrich’s decision was absolute.

Winter came and the city grew even more desolate. When night fell, the drunks at the station seemed to be the only creatures alive in the city. Some, most, drank and got into brawls on the platforms; others tried to pick up the only woman who ever went there.

“Don’t stand there looking at the train wheels. Look at us,” they would say to her.

But Heinrich didn’t even hear them. He was waiting for the trains to arrive, waiting to hear the whistles blow; he did this punctiliously, drawing ever nearer. His whole life depended on it.

Shortly before Christmas, he received an official letter. The Bavarian judge wrote to tell him that Margarete’s death could not possibly have been murder.

“Therefore,” he stated, “we must assume that she committed suicide.”

Heinrich tore up the letter and threw it in the wastepaper basket. He didn’t need that fact confirmed. Then, perhaps for the last time, he headed for the station.

I, JEAN BAPTISTE HARGOUS
, a soldier since my thirteenth year, left my native city of Nancy on the fifth day of December in the Year of Our Lord eight hundred and sixty-seven and went off to fight against the Norman army under the blue and white flag of Lorraine. For the Normans had sacked both Blois and Orleans, cities with which we had the closest of ties, and Count Lothaire, lord of the realm and of our lives, a man of little patience, decided against remaining within the shelter of our city walls. And so, as I have said, on the fifth day of December we left, being in number two thousand men and seven hundred horses.

But it soon became clear that either Our Lord had chosen not to enlighten the Count or the Count had chosen not to listen to Him, for it was a bitterly cold winter; the winds were icy, the rains flooded the roads, and the snows covered the roofs of houses and the tops of trees. And although we prayed for the sun to come out again and for the sky above our heads to grow brighter and milder, the winter refused to relent and instead treated us ever more harshly.

After some ten days, when we were already far from the borders of our beloved land of Lorraine, and having lost along the way some forty men and more than twenty horses to sickness or ill fortune, we received the first news of our enemies, the Normans, from the lips of pilgrims.

“They are cruel and powerful,” they told us. “They’ll kill you the way dogs kill crows, and then they’ll burn your flag.”

And as we were weary and in a strange land, spirits fell, especially among the younger soldiers, and everyone longed to turn back. But Count Lothaire was either unaware of our wishes or else, knowing of them, chose not to grant them, for he ordered that we continue onward and march to the battlefield. He laughed as he said this, as if he were certain of victory and could already see the red blood of Norman soldiers spilled on the snow. But no one else saw what he did and the farther along the road we marched, the greater the impression our enemies’ reputation made on us. Women came to their windows when we passed and, with heartfelt sighs, begged us to withdraw; some came out of their houses and pleaded with the captains not to lead so many young soldiers to certain death. And when we stopped to rest at a monastery, the monks looked at us as if we were lambs on their way to the slaughterhouse and they prayed for our souls as if we had already died.

But Our Lord God never truly deserts us and even in the midst of the greatest misfortune He is able to offer us a little happiness, and, in His great bounty, that is what He did for me that winter. For He gave me a good and loyal friend: Pierre de Broc.

I saw him for the first time in the guest quarters of the monastery of St. Denis one night when I was unable to sleep. Pierre was alone in the empty room, sitting next to the burned-out fire playing the rebec and singing, and such was his skill in those two arts, it seemed a shame that, given the men’s weariness and the great cold, there was no one else there to hear him.

“Why are you singing? Why aren’t you sleeping, like all the other soldiers?” I asked him.

“Because I’m afraid,” he answered.

“So am I. I can’t sleep either,” I in turn confessed.

“Then let’s sing together.”

“We’re afraid because we’re so young. Not because we’re cowards.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen I think.”

“So am I.”

We embraced in that empty room and then found much consolation in the songs of our beloved land of Lorraine.

There are those who are friends for only a moment, friends with whom we share our food, and friends who appear at our side only in times of prosperity and joy. But the friendship between Pierre de Broc and I, Jean Baptiste Hargous, was different, for from that first moment on we became brothers and companions on the road and companions too in misfortune and in weariness, we always comforted and consoled each other and hoped never to be parted.

Forty days after we left Nancy, when the winter was at its height and the fields were deep in snow, we reached a village called Aumont. A Jew fleeing Orleans spoke to one of the captains and told him that the Norman army was less than fifteen leagues away and that, despite the bad weather, a man on horseback could easily reach them in an afternoon. Count Lothaire ordered us to set up camp and sent a scout on ahead to spy on the Normans. The count wanted to know how many men were in their army, how many horses they had, and how confident they were of their strength. The scout galloped off, his horse’s hooves kicking up a cloud of white snow, and Pierre and I sat down in the tent to play the rebec and to sing.

But one day passed, then two, then three and the scout did not return and when a week had gone by we all gave him up for dead. And it was then that the head cook spoke out, saying that he refused to believe what he heard. He said that the scout had not died but deserted and he accused the scout chosen by Count Lothaire from among his best men of being a traitor and a coward and that was when a captain, a friend of the other man, slew the cook with his sword. The more experienced soldiers protested at so severe a punishment and time soon proved them right for from that day on the food grew steadily worse.

The second scout sent by Count Lothaire returned two days later. I didn’t see him with my own eyes, nor did Pierre, but those who did said he rode into camp bearing all the marks of sickness and of death. He was pale, his eyes glazed, and flies buzzed about his head, in itself remarkable in such a severe winter. And that second scout was of no use to Count Lothaire either for he talked only nonsense, like a man in the grip of fever. Then the Count called us all together and asked for three volunteers, saying he would bestow many privileges and favors on anyone managing to find out anything about the Norman army.

A captain, the one who had killed the head cook, and two other soldiers declared themselves willing and left at once. But our spirits did not lift because of that and the first desertions took place that day as soon as the scouts had left. Some said it was twenty men and others that there were many more and that at least a hundred horses had gone missing from the stables.

The captain and his two soldiers took their time returning and some ten days passed before we saw them riding back along the edge of the wood and we were all surprised to see how they laughed and joked and larked about among themselves as if they were children.

“They’ve gone mad, Jean Baptiste,” Pierre whispered in my ear.

“But what is it that the scouts see?” I asked.

“They see the Normans, Jean Baptiste.”