Tales from the Underworld Read online

  The carpenter’s plane in the workshop suddenly stops. Utesch opens the door and asks: ‘Did you call, Martha?’

  Slowly she turns her face to her husband, and she is far away when she says: ‘No. It wasn’t anything. It was just the swill was too hot, and I scalded myself.’

  He stands in the doorway, looking. The light of the oil lamp gives her hair a golden sheen, and the delicate pink of her face deepens to red. ‘Really, Willem, it wasn’t anything,’ she says again, and she gets up, grabs the buckets and runs to the two pigs in the sty. She empties the swill into their trough, and they start slobbering and smacking right away.

  I must have lost it grubbing in the earth, she thinks. There’s no point in looking for it, it could be anywhere, I will have pressed it into the earth with my knees, and it’s well and truly buried. What can I do? There’s a chance it might surface later when we turn the ground, but who would ever see a little thing like that? What am I going to do?

  She picks up her buckets, turns to the door, puts them down again.

  Willem must never know. He wouldn’t believe the ring was in the ground somewhere. The shepherd in Zülkenhagen had said a charm over the ring, and that was what had cured Willem of his jealousy. ‘As long as you wear the ring, you’re mine. If someone else finds it, you’ll be his. Never take it off, not even for a second.’ He believes in that. Just as well it’s in the ground somewhere, maybe I’d believe in it too otherwise.

  Her face looks still more downcast.

  I’ll have to get a new one made. It won’t be easy. The price of the gold, and then a goldsmith to work on it, discreetly. It was hand-crafted …

  She’s back in the kitchen. The plane is making its whining noise again next door. She picks up the hatchet and starts chopping kindling. The plane stops. Wilhelm asks: ‘Are you chopping wood now?’

  ‘It’s all sopping wet,’ she says. ‘Bloody awful weather.’ And the hatchet again.

  How clumsy Martha’s being, thinks Utesch. She’s not normally this clumsy. And he sees a hand, reddening, reddening. Blood everywhere.

  ‘I cut myself,’ says Martha, looking white. With trembling mouth she looks at her hand, which is a mess of blood.

  He leaps over to her. ‘Why start chopping wood at night? Couldn’t I do that?’

  ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ she screams, and runs to the bedroom. ‘I can bandage it.’

  Then they are sitting over supper. Wilhelm keeps staring at her hand, which is thickly bandaged. ‘You won’t be digging any more potatoes with that. Too bad, we could have used the money.’ Then, after a while: ‘What about the ring? Did you take it off?’

  Martha laughs. ‘No, that’s on! I won’t be taking that off any time soon. That’s on. Here, feel!’ And she guides his fingers over the thick bandage.

  3

  The Utesches are asleep. Frau Utesch was wandering through the rooms of a dream, led by someone she couldn’t see, someone she was afraid of. Suddenly her guide was gone, she sensed he wasn’t there any more, she was all alone in a purple void, and her fear grew.

  All at once she heard a voice calling, wild, random cries into space. The world assembled itself. In the red light of dawn the first mattock flashing among the sodden potato tops, and there was Wrede standing on the cart, grumbling and shouting and bellyaching away.

  Martha was awake. ‘He’s got the ring! It’s him!’ she whispered, and she listened out into the night, to check that she couldn’t hear him shouting. Silence. But the dark silence seemed to swell and swell, the silence called and called.

  Martha Utesch got up, she stopped at the door to listen to her husband asleep, and again on the silent village street, and then she made her way up to the big house.

  ‘He’s got the ring! It’s him!’

  Strange walking through the starless night. The telegraph wires are humming and humming away at one tuneless melody. The wind rustles through the turning leaves, and the words rustle: ‘He’s got the ring! It’s him!’ Someone is walking ahead of her, she can’t see him but even so he’s leading her, and she’s afraid of him.

  Suddenly she sees the old shepherd from Zülkenhagen again. He is charming the ring, he cups his old, bent, liver-spotted hand over hers. ‘This ring owns your body. As long as you keep it, you will keep yourself. Give it up, and you give yourself up.’

  And again night, and the humming wires in the blackness.

  4

  Wrede isn’t sleeping either. He has cleaned the ring and inspected the mark, and he’s thinking how best to sell his lucky find. To send it to a friend would be too risky, the post office madams are all too nosy, and everything would be found out. And to go into town, even if he had the day off, would be too expensive.

  At any rate, it’s his now. He flashes the beam of his torch over it, and the reddish gold flashes mildly, he hits the ring against the marble top of the nightstand and listens enraptured to the bright ching! that only gold makes.

  He too begins to dream. These few grammes of gold to the value of thirty or forty marks seem to open the doors to all the world. He pictures himself far away, in Berlin, bowling up to the best hotel, the porter wishing him a good afternoon, sir, and the waiters all bowing. He is standing in his hotel room, his luggage piled up in front of him, the soft leather armchairs and sofas draped with exquisite, colourful dresses, a barman is mixing drinks, the room is like an aviary, full of twittering women’s voices and laughter. Someone knocks.

  Someone knocks …

  Wrede gives a start. He drops the ring, it rolls away, rolls and rolls, curls to a stop somewhere in the dark. One more sound, then none. ‘Who is it?’ A rap on the window. ‘I said, who is it?’ Nothing. He is afraid. Could it be the police already? In a shaky voice he asks: ‘Is it you, steward? Is one of the animals not well?’

  A faint voice calls back: ‘It’s me.’

  He stands there listening. Suddenly he understands, he yanks open the window and yells: ‘What do you mean it’s me? Who’s me? Everyone’s me! Stuff and bloody nonsense.’

  The quavering voice: ‘Give me back my ring, Herr Wrede. Please.’

  ‘Who’s that? Is that Marie? Girl, leave me alone. It’s not May time. Not even the cats are courting now.’

  ‘Please will you give me my ring back, Herr Wrede.’

  ‘Well, well, it’s Martha Utesch! Now, Martha, does your Wilhelm know you go knocking on strange men’s windows in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Give me my ring back. There’ll be trouble otherwise, Herr Wrede.’

  ‘Well, if you must, Martha. Hop up, one leg on the sill. I’ll pull you up. Don’t be shy.’

  His sweating fingers reach for her face, he can feel it, her warm shoulder, her breast. ‘Come on, Martha!’

  Silence. A long silence. Then very quietly: ‘All right, I will, if you promise to give me back my ring, Herr Wrede.’

  Then a silence from him, and finally a rather deliberate blustering: ‘Ah, give over. Either you will or you won’t. I’m going to shut the window now.’

  ‘I’ll buy the ring off you. I’ll give you fifty marks for it.’

  Swiftly: ‘Have you got it on you, fifty marks?’

  ‘Only twenty. I’ll bring you the rest next week.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘First the ring.’

  ‘Give it here!’

  ‘There …’

  He feels the banknote, and takes it. He laughs. ‘Crazy bloody women! They’re even paying me now! Whatever next.’

  The window clatters down. Despairing walk home through the night.

  5

  By the time the night was over, Wrede had decided to make it all a dream. If anyone asked, he would deny all knowledge. He thought about what had happened, and what was certain was that the woman wasn’t a tough nut, she was butter-soft. And butter wants churning. Why sell a ring he might as well hang onto? Let her pay and pay!

  Even so, it bothered him not to see Martha Utesch with the others on the potato
field. Why had she stayed home? Had she spoken to her husband? Or was she afraid? Whichever, he was determined not to loosen his hold. If she didn’t come to him, he would go to her, the nights were long enough and dark enough. The flash of the ring would be enough to get anything he wanted out of her.

  He listened out. The potato-diggers were talking about Martha Utesch too. They knew why she wasn’t there. She had been out at night, her husband had woken up and found the bed beside him empty. There had been a noisy quarrel between the woman coming home and the man, and if the neighbours hadn’t exactly heard what words were exchanged, they were more than happy to make them up. What was sure was that the man had realized that his wife was going with young Nagel. She hadn’t been willing to admit where she’d been, but she couldn’t pull the wool over the eyes of her besotted husband any more. After all, hadn’t young Nagel been spoony on her before the wedding? Utesch just needed to give her a right old seeing-to, but of course men were far too soft nowadays. A proper thrashing, that would have taken care of things.

  Wrede too regretted that there had been no beating. Even if the husband would have only softened up his wife for him. The more difficult the circumstances, the higher the price he would get for the ring. In fact, he wasn’t at all sure that if he did give it to someone, it would be to the wife. Perhaps the husband would make the better purchaser. Couldn’t he have got it from Nagel, say, who had found it on the ground? And then once you had the money you called it quits, and skedaddled. Let everyone else beat their brains out, it wasn’t hard to see that the one who copped it in the end would be the woman anyway.

  Next to the desire for money, and a lot of it, it was a desire to be avenged on the woman that drove Wrede on. He felt the softness of her shoulder again, she had hesitated about coming to him. Even the high price of the ring seemed to her – reflexively – like a small price compared to her revulsion for him. And the fact that he saw such a nocturnal visit as nothing out of the ordinary made him indignant about such a fuss. Martha – what was Martha Utesch anyway? Was she too good? Or he not good enough? Let her sweat it out.

  That evening he pressed his face against the lit-up panes of the carpenter’s house. Through the lace curtains he could see a lonely shape sitting there motionless. Was it her? Was she on her own? Or was it the carpenter? And she on her way out to the estate again?

  A hand tapped him on the shoulder. ‘If it’s Utesch you’re wanting, Foreman, he’s in the pub. But he’s probably pretty far gone by now.’

  Wrede jumped. The person speaking to him was the saddle-maker Hinz, the village radio as he was known. ‘Yes, I’m looking for Utesch, I’ve got a job for him to do. Far gone, you say. Well, I’ll see, maybe it will be possible to speak a reasonable word with him. He’s not normally a drinker, is he?’

  The saddle-maker trotted along beside him. The story apparently had a new twist. The carpenter had wanted to take the ring away from his wife because she had brought disgrace to it, it wouldn’t come off, and he had cut it off using a carving knife. The woman’s screams had been something to hear. She had bandaged up her hand. No one knew what was going to happen next. Things weren’t over yet.

  Even though the invention in the story was plain to hear, Wrede was a little spooked. He could imagine her screaming. Her voice, when she asked him for the return of her ring, had been hesitant, timid, small. Now she was screaming. And the ring, always the ring. Even in that tissue of lies, its traitorous gleam. For a moment he was overcome by a false sympathy for the woman. He thought of turning back, giving her the ring for nothing. But he couldn’t do that, not with Hinz walking along beside him. The old gossip walked with him all the way to the bar.

  6

  The bar was dark and all but empty. The grumpy landlord was wiping beertaps with a towel at one end of the bar, later he took himself off. In a corner, barely lit by a weak bulb, a solitary customer sat with a bottle of corn brandy, his head in his hands, motionless: Wilhelm Utesch.

  ‘I’ve just been round to your house, Master. Wanted to know if you had time tomorrow to come up to the estate. We’ve got something for you to look at.’

  ‘Time? Time? I’ve got all the time in the world.’ The red eyes looked up, saw the bottle. Awkwardly Utesch poured himself another glass, looked across the table, made a pouring motion, stopped. ‘Will you have one yourself?’

  ‘I won’t say no. Hey, Päplow, a glass for me.’ Wrede took the bottle, helped himself. ‘Well, cheers, long necks for our children.’ They drank. Straight away Wrede refilled his glass.

  The drunk sat quietly, fixing the chequered tablecloth. Finally, he began: ‘Well, ’s late to be still out. Young people nowadays …’ He whistled, his mouth twisted into a miserable smile. He spoke hastily, unclearly, leaning across the table to the other man: ‘I’ll tell you this much, foreman, you can’t blame them for it. What’s there to keep them. But once a man’s married, then I say: enough!’ He cracked his knuckles.

  Wrede said: ‘Absolutely. Workhorses belong in the stable when the day’s done, not out on the meadow.’

  ‘I agree with you there, right enough,’ said Utesch in sudden animation. ‘That’s gospel to me.’ He collapsed into himself again.

  ‘Let’s have another!’

  Wrede poured himself another glass.

  The drunk whispered: ‘But when a woman’s married, and goes out at night and comes home, and you ask her where she’s been, and she just smiles at you, then that’s betrayal, foreman! That’s what I’d call betrayal and adultery.’

  He stopped, as though he’d frightened himself, his look alert and fixed on the man opposite. ‘You know everything, Foreman. Of course you know everything. Only I know nothing.’ And very slowly now: ‘Where did my wife go, I’m asking you, Foreman, where did my wife go at two in the blessed morning?’

  ‘I don’t know, Master. I don’t listen to people’s chit-chat.’

  ‘You know. Everyone knows. If only somebody would tell me …’ He stopped pensively, his face was lit up by an idea. ‘Let’s drink!’ – ‘And another.’

  ‘It’s not too much for you?’

  ‘How could it be too much, young man? I’ve already polished off a bottle by myself, and I can drink another without getting drunk. So, let’s drink!’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Wrede, and drank, while it dawned on him that the carpenter had the ridiculous idea of getting him drunk, and making him talk.

  But then he was off again. ‘The last evening, she cut her hand with the hatchet, chopping wood. Blood flowed over the ring. What’s the significance of that? I’d need to know what that signified. And I don’t know anything.’

  Then the foreman thought of something. He reached into his waistcoat pocket. He pulled his hand out. ‘Let’s have another.’

  And the carpenter echoed: ‘Another!’

  They drank. ‘Where was my wife, Foreman?’

  ‘I don’t know, Master.’

  ‘You don’t know. How could you know. No one knows. Every man’s on his own. And every man does everything for hisself.’ Utesch staggered to his feet, slowly and gropingly he walked to the door, stopped. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’ And he walked out.

  Wrede took a look around: the bar was gloomy and deserted. A late fly took off with some élan, buzzed for a while and stopped. Wrede took the ring out of his pocket and looked at it cupped in the hollow of his hand. It was broad and heavy, made from fine old ducat gold, beaten with a thousand hammer taps, for a man who still believes there’s a meaning in things.

  Wrede took an end of string out of his pocket. He tied it to the ring, tied the other end to a waistcoat button and put the ring back in his pocket. He got up and walked around. When Utesch came back, he was sitting down again.

  The night air had made the carpenter even drunker. He was barely able to find his chair and sit on it, and could no longer speak, only babble. Wrede poured.

  ‘It’s a clear night, Master. D’you think there’ll be a frost?’

  And
the echo: ‘there’ll be a frost!’

  ‘Let’s drink,’ said Wrede.

  ‘Less drink,’ said the other, and didn’t move.

  Then Wrede reached into his pocket. He placed the ring on the edge of the table, and his hands some way away from it. ‘Let’s drink, Master,’ he said again, and he knocked over his glass. It struck the bottle. The dull eyes sought to find what had caused the noise. Instantly, he was awake. He saw the little gleaming round, the unmistakable pledge to him of all troth. Drunk as he was, the carpenter lurched across the table. Everything fell over. The ring on its string jumped back inside Wrede’s jacket. There was nothing to look at.

  ‘What’s come over you, Utesch?’ yelled Wrede. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘The ring,’ breathed the man quietly, ‘that was the ring.’

  ‘What ring are you talking about? Where has it gone?’

  The carpenter stood in front of him. He was still in a state of shock. He looked piercingly at Wrede. ‘The ring. I saw it, on the edge of the table. You’ve got it. I’m telling you, it’s on you.’ He took Wrede by the scruff, but was pushed away, hard.

  ‘You’re babbling. What would I be doing with your bloody ring.’

  The carpenter caught himself, pulled himself upright. Stammering, he said: ‘You’ve got it! Everyone’s got the ring. Only she doesn’t.’ He stood there, musing. Suddenly he yelled out: ‘Now I know: she doesn’t have it.’

  Utesch ran over to the door, pulled it open and disappeared into the night. Suddenly alarmed, Wrede shouted across the village square: ‘Master, come back. You’ll get your ring.’

  Silence. No one came. No one heard.

  7