in the sunshine.
After two hours Amadeus got up and walked on. The light above the moorland had changed, the shadows fell differently, but it was still the same earth. An earth without human beings, without question or answer, nothing but space which opened willingly to harbor him. The red kite still built its nest in the high pine tree between the rocks of basalt, and the reed warbler called from the bog where it was deepest. They alone had preserved the burning earth from complete ruin. They alone, not mankind. There was no recurrence for them, nor any change. For them everything was still beginning: the first day, the first fear, the first love.
Amadeus walked on and on; he felt as if he were walking into eternity. He would never get tired of walking over this soft, noiseless earth as long as grass and birds were there, the light breeze, and the vast sky. As long as there were no human beings, no victors and no vanquished. Men always demand something and always stretch out their hands toward the body or toward the heart. But grass and birds did not demand anything from him. They remained in their world. He could walk through them as through water. The water closed behind him and no track was left. And thus without leaving a trace he wished to walk over the earth from now on.
The sun was setting when he returned. His brothers sat on the doorstep waiting for him, as they had done in their childhood. They had to be together before night could fall. The stars had to wait for their meeting.
He sat down at an angle opposite them and looked back over the darkening moorland. He sat on the sawn trunk of an alder tree and supported himself with both his hands on the warm bark. He was tired now and looked forward to his bed before the smoldering embers of the hearth.
“I have not met a soul,” he said. “It was beautiful.”
“Nobody passes here,” replied Aegidius. “None of those who once cut peat here has come back. If any of our people should arrive, they can start at once; peat is nearly as precious as bread.”
“Do you still think that anybody will come, brother?” asked Erasmus.
“Yes, I think so, but it’s a long way, and probably all their shoes are worn out, or they are going barefoot.”
The cuckoo was still calling and the first mist rose slowly. The evening star quietly appeared in the twilight. The frogs woke up. The nocturnal earth began to breathe gently.
“Dear brother,” said Aegidius, “we have made up our minds to do what I am going to tell you now, and we beg you to leave it at that. We understand that you must be alone for a while, and it will do you good. We have moved to the forester’s house today, it’s only a ten minutes’ walk. It belongs to us now, and they have two nice, perfectly quiet rooms upstairs. They are very comfortably furnished, better than this, and they take us in very willingly – as a sort of protection. Probably you do not know that the forester Buschan has been arrested. He is in a camp, and I think he played a more or less important part hereabouts. He was a law-abiding man, but he has probably put one foot into the swamp, and he will not get out of the mess for some time.
“We thought that we would come to see you for a while in the morning or evening. You must get used gradually even to us. You can eat with us or alone, just as you like. If you will give me your papers, I will notify the police in the village, and you will get your rations all right. The Americans look after all that.”
“You’re doing this for my sake?” asked Amadeus.
“Yes, of course, brother. But it is not hard for us to do it, you know. We shall manage very easily, and we don’t want you to sleep always on the floor. The most important thing is that you should sleep alone after all these years. We ought to have understood that at once.”
“But why do you go there?” asked Amadeus.
“It is near you, brother, and where else should we find any room? The woman was so happy that you had come back.”
“Was she?” asked Amadeus.
“Yes, really, I think she was always different from the other two. In their so-called politics, I mean. Only the daughter is difficult.”
“The daughter, of course. I forgot – what is her name?”
“Barbara.”
“All right, she ought to have been called Brunhild. But at that time one did not know all about these things.”
“Don’t you like the people, brother?”
“I know them so little. The daughter once beat me on my hand with an osier switch. I thought I would never be able to move it again. She hit with all her might.”
“Oh, but why?”
“She had a picture of the ‘great dictator’ in her hand. One of those cheap post cards, and she asked whether I had ever seen anything more beautiful in the world. Of course, I smiled, and then she hit me. I held the post card on my hand and on that hand she hit me. She was thirteen or fourteen at that time.”
“Yes,” said Erasmus, sighing. “The girls were the first to lose their heads.”
“At least she does not side with the victors like most of them,” said Aegidius. “I think she would gladly poison the whole lot in the castle. Don’t worry about it, brother. So far you have seen little of what is happening here now. And Buschan has got his punishment. The camps are no paradise, from what one hears.”
“I hope not,” replied Amadeus.
He walked with them to the edge of the wood, and then his eyes followed them. The shadow of the trees and the wisps of mist enclosed and covered them. It looked as if they would never return.
Amadeus walked back slowly and sat down again on the doorstep. The small room lay in darkness behind him. Nobody was there. He need not hear the breathing of any human being. The peat fire on the small hearth was glowing as it did last night, and as it always would from now on. It was his fire; he need not share it anymore.
He leaned his head against the warm post and clasped his hands around his knees. The evening star was now high above the horizon, and the constellations of early spring gradually appeared over the moorland. An owl hooted in the darkness and a dog barked in the distance.
He was alone; the time had now come when he would learn how to be alone. Horror had taught him how lonely he was. All those who had protected him so far had fallen to dust; gone was all comfort, all security. Man had shown what he was capable of doing when he abandoned himself to the depths of his depravity. Man had become a murderer without passion, without even being at all worried about it. A careless, smiling murderer – and the victims stood on the other side. And in between there was nothing. They might talk and write for years now about guilt and atonement, about freedom and the rights of man. But he who got power again would always do the same, even more carelessly and perhaps more thoroughly. But he who had no power was alone. Gone was the period of childhood, when one stretched out a hand to grasp another hand, that of a mother or that of the law or that of God. You could still stretch it out, but you stretch it out only into empty space. All the victims of these years had stretched out their hands to the last second while they screamed or prayed under the gallows, under the ax, under torture. Nobody had grasped those outstretched hands. Even in death they remained outstretched, open, twisted, alone.
He, Amadeus, would now remain here for a while before this hearth which warmed him, under this starlit sky which shone down upon him as it shone down on the grass and the stones. He had two brothers, and
