with a lace-edged handkerchief. “What is a count and what is a baron?” he asked gaily. “Whether the count has seven leaves to his coronet or nine – what is the difference? When a stag has six branches on his antlers and they say that it is a stag of eight branches – that is a mistake. But when I address you as a count, that’s not a mistake. For even without a coronet you are a count.”
“Ah, Kuba,” replied Aegidius, pouring out a mug of coffee for him, “you want a ring or a bracelet, that’s why you do not mind about the leaves on the coronet.”
“If I want a ring,” said Jakob, “I wish for gold, and when I want politeness in conversation I say count.”
“We can’t give you anything today, Kuba,” replied Aegidius. “Call again in a week.”
“The gentlemen have a visitor,” said Jakob, glancing at Amadeus. “You will have to do business again, for the gentleman, your brother, must also eat and drink and have an American cigarette. The gentleman your brother has his hair cut short?”
“Our brother was in a camp for four years,” said Erasmus.
“The Holy One, blessed be he,” said Jakob in a hushed voice and raised his cap. “Now I must say prince, and not only count.”
“Leave it alone, Kuba,” said Aegidius.
Jakob drank his coffee in silence and got up. “Next time I shall bring a bottle of Scotch whisky,” he said, lost in thought. “I shall not bring it for gold, I shall bring it for nothing.”
He took off his cap and glanced at Amadeus. “If an old man is allowed to speak,” he said in a low voice, “this old man would like to say this: he would kindly beg the gentleman to let the Lord our God live in his face and not . . .”
“And not what?” asked Amadeus.
“And not the dead, sir,” replied Jakob.
“Thank you, Kuba,” said Aegidius.
Jakob bowed, put on his cap, and went away.
Later, when Erasmus carried the crockery into the living room, he found a box of American cigarettes on the window ledge. He gave it to Amadeus, saying, “That’s a lot for Kuba, really a lot.”
“I shall go out for a while now,” said Amadeus when they had washed and dried the crockery. “I want to have a good look at everything. It may be evening before I come back, but I shall come back.”
“We know that, dear brother,” said Erasmus.
Amadeus took only some bread and a field-flask of coffee with him. He walked toward the west so that he had the sun on his back, and he thought of walking all around the peat bog. These were high moors, just as in his homeland, with stunted pines and birches between the flat expanses of reed and water, and it took a couple of hours to walk around it. At the edges the woods thinned out, everywhere the basalt rocks lay in the moss, and lizards were basking on the warm stones. The sky was high and blue, small white clouds sailed over it, and flights of birds were traveling northward. There was complete calm – not even his shoes made a sound on the soft earth. Only when he passed over dry peat did his footsteps ring a little hollow.
But he did not think of death now. It was as if his brothers’ hands had covered death, as Grita had covered the blood. He felt that things were easier since he had spoken. In four years he had scarcely said a word. Nothing was changed, but he felt as if he had climbed out of a cellar.
He no longer knew what it was like to walk without goal or purpose. To have nobody behind who carried a whip or a revolver with the safety catch released. He had forgotten that there was an earth which one was not forced to dig or cart away. Earth which lay there quietly resplendent with the sun, which gave space for his feet willingly and without guile.
And now he could walk across the earth in all directions of the compass, and he could stand still and stroke the smooth stems of the reeds with his hands. He could breathe deeply without feeling a load on his shoulders. He could sit on the dry turf and wait until the lizard came out of the grass again.
In the distance the cranes still called, as they had called in his homeland. He shaded his eyes with his hand, but he could not see the birds. He could only see the sky, the space, the unlimited, silent, marvelous space. Grita would have said that on such a morning one could see God’s feet resting quietly and sacredly on a blue footstool.
He got up again and walked on, his hands folded behind his back. This too was something lovely, because for four years he had not known that one could hold one’s hands in this way unless they were fettered. Time after time he separated them and laid them together again. It was marvelous to feel how they moved.
Then for a while he thought of his home. Much was lost: the books, the music, the lovely little bricks with which one built up one’s day; and the feeling with which the roots of the heart reached down into the cool, damp depths of the familiar soil over which he had run as a child.
That was lost now. Fate had lifted him, at that time, as the wind lifts a seed pod, and some time it would drop him. If there was still life within him, he would take root, even in a foreign soil. Perhaps life was immortal, as evil was immortal. He walked on and on. His shadow was no longer behind him but at his side. The distant mountain chains in the east and west became clearer and clearer, but his eyes scarcely skimmed along their crests. All that was close to him made him happy: the waving grasses, the little pools where the clouds were mirrored. The lapwings circled round their damp hatching places, and he stood for a long time to watch their flight and to rejoice in their wailing cry. He had not seen any birds for so long.
Sometimes he thought of his brothers, but not of the victors nor of his country. No general thoughts existed for him so far. His country drank the bitter dregs of the cup, and that was right. Others had drunk them for twelve long years, and with them, bitter death.
“And not the dead, Herr Baron,” Jakob had said. Jakob’s people had been most numerous among the dead; his people had gone through the most terrible ordeal since the creation of the world. It was surprising that he could say such a thing. It was more than the small box of cigarettes which they found on the window ledge – much more.
But he, Amadeus, would have to go on carrying his dead. He who did not love could not carry the living. They need love, which carries all.
At noon he was lying at the edge of the moor. Beyond the empty, dazzling plain he could recognize the dark roof under which his brothers were now sitting. They, too, carried the trace of the years, a hard, deeply engraven trace. Aegidius was the only one of them who was not bowed down. That much Amadeus knew. Probably because he had driven the plow. He also was the only one who had been willing to sacrifice himself. He knew that the clod must be turned over. He was far ahead of them. They would never catch up with him. They were no longer enclosed together in the panels of the triptych. They had stepped out. They still held each other’s hands, but their eyes no longer looked up to God’s brow together. One of them was called by voices which died under the rolling iron wheels. The other called for the field which had been taken away from him. The third did not call, nor was he called. He was only there. The surging sea had thrown him up on the shore and there he lay, breathing heavily, and the water of the deep dripped down from him.
The dappled flecks of sunshine played between the trees. There was a smell of resin and of deserted country all around, and Amadeus’ eyes closed. His hands lay open in the warm moss, and he moved his fingers slowly to and fro. They felt neither the moss nor the earth. It was as if they felt nothing but
