Brother of Sleep: A Novel (14 page)

Elias sat silently on the seat.

He was simply far too shy. That was what her dear mother said. A man must stride boldly and confidently through this vale of tears. That was what her dear father said. And there was a curse on his brother's line; all Seff's children had been frail in constitution and unstable in spirit. That might be hereditary, her dear father said. Nevertheless, she believed, he would definitely be a faithful husband to her. You could never know for sure, but she believed it. If only he did not have that weird mark on his eyes. And he would simply have to be stronger and more resolute in life. Then, long since, she would secretly have hinted to him–as women can–that she wanted him. Thank heavens Lukas was quite different. What she had experienced with him after the fair–how thirsty it had left her! Like the others, she was nothing but a wretched woman and had only a wretched woman's feelings. But this one understood nothing of that. No, Elias Alder was not a man. She could see that, sadly.

Elias sat silently on the seat.

It seemed to her that he simply wanted to live without a wife. He could certainly become a spiritual leader, a prelate, or finally even a bishop. If it came to that, she would go to his ordination, even if she had to go to Feldberg on foot. Then she would kneel before him, kiss the ring on his hand, and say quietly to herself, “That is Elias Alder. He was my friend.”

While she was passing the time with such thoughts, she suddenly found herself strangely out of breath. Three times she gasped open-mouthed for air, then her face grew sepulchrally white and she fell forward in a faint. Elias, who awoke with a start, just managed to grab her by her hair. And her head cracked sharply against the rim of the box. Elias dropped the reins, pulled the girl up lest she fall under the wheels, threw her arms around his neck, and, with all his strength, pressed the lifeless body to him. He was about to cry, She is ill! but he had no time to do so.

For the second and last time in his life Elsbeth's heart lay on his heart and Elsbeth's heartbeat entered his own, as perfect and as at one with his as when he had lain, as a five-year-old, in the bed of the stream. Then Johannes Elias Alder once more uttered that
terrible bellow, as if he were about to die, fully con­
scious. And his cowardice was refuted, and hope surged within him, and he cried into the deep blue of the heavens that he could not live without Elsbeth. Oh, how could he ever have doubted that Elsbeth had been predestined for him by God?

He held the girl's hand in his infinitely gentle hands, and when she awoke he diffused her confused
questions with a calming “It's fine, Elsbeth. Every­
thing's fine.” Then he laid her down on the coarse sack of groats he had brought for the oxen, turned around, and set off homeward, being careful not to drive into a hole or over a stone or a root. While he was driving this way, he wondered whether it might not be good to break his oath and cautiously hint to the girl, once she had recovered–and over a very long period of time– that he loved her and wanted her for his wife. He actually considered this, for his courage was great.

Some ten weeks later, on a sultry July evening when everything in Eschberg smelled of dry hay, Peter crept to Seff Alder's farm and threw gravel at the boy's window. He had urgent matters to discuss with his friend, he cried. Elias bade him enter without further ado. Then Peter revealed to him that Elsbeth was pregnant by Lukas Alder and it was her personal desire for Elias to play the organ at their wedding. He had come to tell him in his own words, before Elias heard it from other mouths.

But in truth Peter had come to see the light in Elias's eyes and what glow it would assume at this news. And Peter saw the light go out for several moments.

Now Elias had the irrefutable certainty that his hopes had been meaningless. Now he acknowledged that God had deceived him his whole life long. He decided to spend another night in the little church in Eschberg. He went there and, crying with all his might, he killed God within himself.

GOD FEARS ELIAS

THE
church door thundered shut with such violence that the noise transferred to the iron chandeliers and set them singing. Or was it the echo of his pain-racked laughter that set the chandeliers in motion? When he had locked the door behind him his suffering knew no bounds, and he laughed as terribly as the devil might laugh over his final conquest of this world. His heart was as dark as the nave itself, and the Light of Hope that trembled anxiously in the gallery was, for him, just a cold, broken wick.

He dipped two fingers in the font and licked his fingers and dipped them in once more and licked them again. Then he walked forward with wild, heavy steps, jumped over the carved hip-high balustrade, and stood in front of the tabernacle. He had not stopped laughing when he suddenly felt he was not alone in the church.
He immediately fell silent and turned around fearlessly,
and his eyes pierced the black nave. He stood motion­
less like that, listening with half-open mouth, watching, but he could neither hear anything nor discern anyone. He turned back, drew his tinderbox from his coat pocket, and lit the altar candles and then all the candles that could be lighted in the little church. It had to be bright, so God could see him if he wanted to speak to him. When he had lit the candle of the last Station of the Cross, he returned to the tabernacle, touched the carving with both hands, caressed his face with his hands, and stood still for a long time. Then his face
grew darker and darker, and the veins stood out be­
neath his brow.

“God, where in my life are you?” The words burst from his lips, and he cried and cried and went on crying that question. And when he had cried himself hoarse, his fingers rose, clenched together in a perverted par­ody of prayer. He fell on his knees, and only now could he speak more quietly.

“Great and powerful God,” he began, in a husky voice, “Creator of all men, of the beasts, the world, and all the stars. Why have You created me, Johannes Elias Alder? Does it not say in the scriptures that You are perfect? But if You are perfect and good, why did You have to create misery, sin, and pain? Why do You revel in my grief, in the deformity of my eyes, the sorrow of my love?”

His gaze lingered on the mother-of-pearl inlaid door of the tabernacle. “Why do You humiliate me? Have You not made me in Your image? Then You are humiliating Yourself, You Anti-God!”

He cast his eyes to the ground. “I have nothing more to lose, and what I have lost I never possessed. And yet You have breathed something into my soul that seemed very paradise to me. You have poisoned me. Why, You great, powerful, and all-knowing God, why can it please You to refuse me the joy of my life? Are You not a God of love? Why do You not let me live? Why must my heart flame for Elsbeth? Did You think I had decided on Elsbeth of my own free will? It was You who led me to her. I obeyed You, for I thought it was Your will. You powerful God! What? Can You delight in my going astray?”

The gleam of evil fury returned to his eyes. He got up from the floor, went closer to the tabernacle, and began shouting again. He could not feel the pain in his throat.

“I didn't come to curse You! I came to finish with You! You are not a loving God! Love alone was not enough for You! You had to create hatred, You had to create evil! Or did You, perhaps, not create the angel Lucifer? You planted the seed of evil in him! The angel had to fall because it was Your eternal plan!”

“So,” he said, with bottomless contempt, “hear what I have to say to You,” and he bent close to the door of the shrine. “If You in Your magnificence have given us men free will,” he whispered, “then I, Johannes Elias Alder, wish to taste that freedom. Know that I will not accept my misfortune. Know that I shall not cease to love Elsbeth. Know that I am resisting Your fate. Know that You cannot visit any greater suffering on me than You have visited already. From now on, Your power will cease to work in me. And if I, Johannes Elias Alder, should perish, it is my will, and not Yours!”

Having spoken these words, he suddenly thought of taking his own life. Not a single desire had been fulfilled in his wretched existence, he raged. He had had no childhood; his parents had been afraid of him and had rejected him for that reason. When he had precociously entered manhood, they had not allowed him to learn to write music in Feldberg. He had had to enjoy his love of music in secret, to sit at the organ at night like a church thief, in constant fear that someone might discover him. How often had he begged his Uncle Oskar to teach him music. That wish, too, had remained unfulfilled. He would willingly have put up with all this, had God not so cruelly deceived him in love.

While Elias was talking, something strange happened. We cannot say whether only his vividly hallu­cinating mind saw this strange thing or whether it existed in reality. But he suddenly felt that someone was near him in the nave of the church. He felt a vague strength, a kind of living warmth, even heat, which spread evenly on his neck and shoulders and finally
radiated all the way down his back. At the same mo­
ment a gentle but ghostly sound arose. A soft carpet of countless sounds filled the nave, and Elias felt as though these sounds were blowing from a single mouth. The mouth fell silent and the sounds faded, and the mouth started again, and the air was set in endlessly gentle movement once more.

Someone was playing the organ. Elias Alder turned around. When he saw what was happening in the nave of the church, his heart stood still.

Certainly, the phenomenon of the mysterious so­norities might, in retrospect, have had a reasonably plausible explanation. The last time he had played the organ, Elias had in fact forgotten to put the stops back. In addition, the north-facing gallery window was open, and so a strong gust of wind could have forced its way into the wind chest and set the columns of air in the pipes in motion. But we cannot explain what Elias saw.

“Who are you?” he breathed with chalk-white lips, and stared helplessly into the middle benches on the gospel side. “Who are you?” he breathed again, and his lips trembled with fear. The soft moans of the pipes rose up again and ebbed, and the elongated shadows of the Stations of the Cross vacillated in the moving light of the candles. “Where have you come from?” asked Elias in a hoarse voice, in which there was a note of mortal terror.

A pale yellow light passed over the child's bound head and fell upon its narrow naked shoulders, for its coarse-woven jacket was torn and tattered.

“Whoever you are, I'm not afraid of you!” said Elias, his eyes glaring. His heartbeat gradually returned
to its true rhythm. When he had pulled himself to
­gether again, he went over to the Easter candle, took it from the chandelier, climbed over the balustrade, and cautiously approached the pew where the ragged child with the bound head was cowering. He saw that the child was holding something in its hands and playing with it. When it briefly lowered its head, Elias thought he could see marks on his temples as big as fists. The closer he came, the greater was the warmth that seemed to emanate from the child. It was a mysterious warmth that came from within, that made him inexplicably happy and brought a wonderful peace to his soul. Elias did not dare move a step farther. He raised the candle a little, and now he could see the apparition in its entirety.

He saw a child whose face he had never seen in Eschberg. It was sitting in the pew playing with a missal. It was flicking through the pages, feeling the rough paper with curious little fingers, letting the pages fly, bringing the book to its mouth, biting the leather cover with its little teeth, and then letting the pages fly once again. Elias watched this in silence and felt an inexplicable peace within himself. He looked at the child's head. It was wrapped in a tight linen bandage, and on its left temple was a large black stain that looked like dried blood. Elias looked at the child's defenseless body, covered with brown rags. He saw the body trembling with cold and knew it was consumed by its injury. Then he discovered a mysterious feature: The child had no navel.

“Are you God?” he asked, having found his voice. The child raised its head to Elias and looked at him.
The light that came from the child's big dark eyes enveloped Elias in a hypnotic serenity. And Johannes Elias Alder recognized the child. “Lord, give me eternal rest,” Elias stammered, dumbfounded, “and may the eternal light shine upon me.”

He felt an inexpressible longing for the beauty radiating from the child's mysterious eyes, and he wanted at least to be able to touch its little bare feet. But when he stretched out his hand, the child's body tore open. Its mouth opened in torment, tried to speak, and could not. And Elias had to watch the black stain on the child's temple begin to glitter, and a wet halo spread around the stain. The wound had begun to bleed. The child was still in torment. It tried to speak but could not. And when it had finally closed its mouth, blood burst from between its lips. Elias stretched his hand out to the child again, slowly and with an unusually tender gesture. Again the child's body tore apart, and again its mouth tried to speak.

Then Johannes Elias Alder realized he could not touch the child. He suddenly lost all the strength of his body and collapsed, faint with longing.

He lay there between the pews until Charcoal-burner Michel shook him awake in the morning. When Elias opened his eyes, a shrill cry escaped from Michel. His irises had lost their color. A dark green had replaced the bright yellow, a green like the pastures when it rains
from black overcast skies. In fact, the color had re­
turned to Elias Alder's eyes, but Michel could not have known this.

That night–Seff's wife, overjoyed, would later tell her son–his half-paralyzed father had suddenly woken. He had stood up, and suddenly he had been able to speak again. The whole thing had lasted half an hour. And she swore by God and all the saints that it had not been a dream vision.