SOMETIMES the Master sent his men out on errands, in pairs or in small groups, to give them a chance to use the arts they learned in the Black School. One morning Tonda went up to Krabat. “I have to go to the Wittichenau cattle market with Andrush today,” he said. “The Master says you can go with us if you like.”
“Good!” said Krabat. “It’ll make a change from all this grinding of grain!”
They took a path through the wood that joined the road beside some houses near the Neudorf village pond. It was a fine, sunny July day. The jays were calling in the branches, they could hear the tapping of a woodpecker, swarms of honey bees and bumble bees filled the wild raspberry bushes with their buzzing.
Krabat noticed that Tonda and Andrush looked as merry as if they were off to the fair. It couldn’t be just the fine weather. Andrush, of course, was always a cheerful, good-tempered fellow, but it was unusual to hear Tonda whistling happily to himself. From time to time he cracked his ox whip.
“Are you practising to do that on the way home?” said Krabat.
“What do you mean, on the way home?”
“I thought we were going to Wittichenau to buy an ox?”
“On the contrary!” said Tonda.
Just at that moment Krabat heard a loud “Moo!” behind him, and when he turned around, there was a fine ox standing where Andrush had been a moment before. It had a smooth, reddish-brown coat, and it was looking at him in a friendly way.
“Hey!” said Krabat, rubbing his eyes.
Suddenly Tonda too was gone, and in his place there stood an old Wendish peasant, wearing felt shoes, linen trousers with cross-gartering from ankle to knee, and a smock belted with a cord. He had a greasy fur cap, its brim rubbed bare.
“Hey!” said Krabat again. Then someone tapped him on the shoulder and laughed. When he turned, there was Andrush back again.
“Where did you go, Andrush? And where’s that ox—the one that was standing here just now?”
“Moo!” said Andrush in the ox’s voice.
“What about Tonda?”
The peasant turned back into Tonda before Krabat’s very eyes.
“So that’s it!” said the boy.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Tonda. “Andrush is going to show his paces in the cattle market.”
“You mean you’re going to sell him?”
“Those are the Master’s orders.”
“But—but suppose Andrush gets sent to be slaughtered?”
“No fear of that!” Tonda assured him. “Once we sell Andrush as an ox, all we have to do is keep his halter. Then he can turn himself into any shape he likes, any time he likes.”
“Suppose we lose the halter?”
“You dare!” cried Andrush. “If you did that I’d have to stay an ox all my life, eating hay and straw—just you get that into your heads, and don’t do any such thing!”
Tonda and Krabat created a great sensation in Wittichenau cattle market. Their ox was much admired. All the dealers came hurrying up and surrounded them, and a few of the townsfolk, and some farmers who had already disposed of their pigs and bullocks, joined the crowd. It wasn’t every day you saw such a fine fat ox; they all felt they’d like to get their hands on it before anyone else could snap up such a splendid animal from under their noses.
“How much?”
The cattle dealers showered Tonda with questions, shouting at the tops of their voices. Master Krause the butcher, from Hoyerswerda, offered fifteen guilders for Andrush, and lame Leuschner from Koenigsbruck went one better and offered sixteen.
Tonda merely shook his head. “Not good enough,” said he.
“Not good enough?” said they. He must be crazy, they assured him. Did he take them for fools?
“Fools or no,” said Tonda, “I suppose you gentlemen must know that best yourselves!”
“Very well, then,” said Master Krause from Hoyerswerda. “Eighteen!”
“Eighteen! Why, I’d rather keep him myself!” growled Tonda. He would not let Master Leuschner from Koenigsbruck have him for nineteen guilders either, or young Gustav Neubauer from Senftenberg for twenty.
“The devil take you and your ox, then!” cried Master Krause angrily, and Master Leuschner, tapping his forehead, said, “I’d be a fool to ruin myself. Twenty-two, and that’s my last word!”
The bargaining seemed to have reached a deadlock when a fat, shapeless man, puffing like a grampus at every step he took, pushed his way through the crowd. His frog-face with its round goggle eyes was shiny with sweat, he wore a green tailcoat with silver buttons, a showy watch chain over his red satin vest, and there was a fat purse at his belt for all the world to see.
Master Blaschke, the ox dealer from Kamenz, was one of the richest and probably the shrewdest of all the cattle dealers for miles around. Pushing Master Leuschner and young Gustav Neubauer aside, he shouted in his loud, blustering voice, “How in heaven’s name did such a thin fellow come by such a fat ox? I’ll take him for twenty-five!”
Tonda scratched his ear. “Not good enough, sir,” said he.
“Not good enough! Did you ever hear the like of that?”
Blaschke took out a big silver snuffbox, snapped open the lid and offered it to Tonda. “Want a pinch?” He let the old Wendish peasant take snuff before he took a pinch himself.
“A-tishoo—that’s the right stuff and no mistake!”
“Thankee, sir!”
Blaschke blew his nose on a big checked handkerchief.
“The devil take it, then—twenty-seven! Hand him over!”
“Not good enough, sir.”
Master Blaschke went scarlet in the face.
“What do you think I am? Twenty-seven guilders for your ox, not a penny more, or my name’s not Blaschke of Kamenz!”
“Thirty, sir,” said Tonda. “You can have him for thirty.”
“It’s daylight robbery!” cried Blaschke. “Do you want to ruin me?” He rolled his eyes and wrung his hands. “Have you no heart? Are you blind and deaf to the troubles of a poor fellow trying to make an honest living? Don’t be so hard-hearted, old man—let me have your ox for twenty-eight!”
Tonda stood firm.
“Thirty, and that’s that! This ox is a fine specimen, worth every penny! You’ve no notion how hard it is for me to part with him. Why, it couldn’t be worse if I was selling my own son!”
Blaschke realized he was getting nowhere, but the ox really was a beautiful animal. Why waste more time with this pigheaded Wend?
“Hand him over, then, in the devil’s name!” he cried. “This is my day for being soft-hearted—anyone can just wind me around his little finger! It’s a weakness of mine! All because I have a kind heart and I’m good to the poor . . . well, give us your hand on it, then. Done!”
“Done!” said Tonda.
Taking off his cap, he made Blaschke count out the thirty guilders into it, one by one.
“Did you count them too?” asked Blaschke.
“I did.”
“Come here, then, my Wendish ox!”
Blaschke took Andrush by the halter and was about to lead him off, but Tonda grasped the fat man’s sleeve.
“Well, what is it?” asked Blaschke.
“Why, now,” said Tonda, acting embarrassment, “it’s a little thing, nothing much . . .”
“Come on, out with it!”
“If you’d be so kind as to leave me that halter, Master Blaschke, I’d be very grateful . . .”
“The halter?”
“As a keepsake,” said Tonda. “You must know how hard it is for me to part with my ox, Master Blaschke! I’ll give you another halter instead, Master Blaschke, so you can take my poor ox away now he’s not mine anymore . . .”
Tonda untied the cord he was wearing as a belt, and Blaschke, shrugging his shoulders, let him exchange it for the ox’s halter. Then the dealer went off with Andrush, and he was hardly around the corner before he began to grin broadly. Maybe he had paid thirty guilders for Andrush, and that was a pretty steep price, but he could easily sell such a fine ox for double that in Dresden, maybe more.
Tonda and Krabat sat down on the grass in the outskirts of the wood, behind the village pond and the houses, to wait for Andrush. They had bought a piece of bacon and a loaf of bread in Wittichenau, and they ate some of it.
“You were really good!” Krabat told Tonda. “You should have seen yourself—the way you squeezed the money out of that fat fellow! ‘Not good enough, sir, not good enough . . .!’ A good thing you remembered the halter in time. I’d have clean forgotten it myself!”
“You’ll soon learn,” Tonda reassured him.
They put a piece of bread and bacon aside for Andrush, wrapping them both in Krabat’s smock, and then decided to lie down for a while. Well fed as they were, and tired from their long walk, they fell asleep and slept soundly, until a “Moo!” woke them, and there was Andrush, back in human form and sound in wind and limb, so far as anyone could see.
“Hey there, you two—folks have been known to sleep themselves silly before now! I hope you’ve at least left me a crust of bread!”
“Bread and bacon too,” said Tonda. “Sit down, brother, and eat it up! How did you get on with Blaschke?”
“Why, how do you suppose?” muttered Andrush. “It’s no fun to be an ox, I can tell you, and trot across country for miles, breathing in all the dust, especially when you’re not used to it! Well, I didn’t mind at all when Blaschke turned in at the alehouse in Ossling. He and the innkeeper there are cousins, you see, and they do a lot of business together too. ‘Look at that!’ cries the innkeeper, when he sees us coming. ‘If it isn’t my cousin from Kamenz! How are you keeping, then—how are things with you?’ ‘Not so bad,’ says Blaschke, ‘not so bad at all, if it wasn’t for the thirst this heat gives a man.’ ‘We’ll soon see to that,’ says the innkeeper. ‘Come along into the taproom! There’s plenty of beer in the cellar—even you couldn’t finish it inside of seven weeks!’ ‘How about my ox?’ the fat man asks. ‘That ox cost me thirty guilders!’ ‘We’ll put him in the stables and he can have all the water and fodder he likes!’ Fodder for oxen, he meant, of course . . .”
Andrush speared a big chunk of bacon on his knife and sniffed at it before stuffing it into his mouth.
“So they put me in the stable,” he went on, “and the innkeeper calls for the girl who helps with the horses. ‘Here, Kathel,’ says he, ‘see to this ox—he belongs to my cousin from Kamenz, and we don’t want him losing any weight!’ ‘Very good, sir,’ says Kathel, stuffing an armful of hay into my manger right away. That was enough for me; I was tired of being an ox! I didn’t think twice about it, I can tell you, I just said in my own voice, in human words, ‘You can eat your hay and straw yourself! Roast pork is what I fancy, with cabbage and dumplings, and a mug of good beer!’ ”
“And then what?” cried Krabat.
“Oh, well,” said Andrush, “at that the three of them were so frightened their legs gave way beneath them and down they all plumped! They shouted for help as if they were being roasted alive. I mooed at them again, just to say good-by, and then I turned into a swallow and flew out of the door—cheep-cheep, and I was gone!”
“What about Master Blaschke?”
“The devil take Master Blaschke and his cattle dealing!” Andrush reached for the ox whip and cracked it hard, as if to lend his words force. “I’m glad to be myself again, pockmarks and all!”
“I’m glad of it too,” said Tonda. “You played your part well, and I daresay Krabat has learned a lot.”
“I have indeed!” cried the boy. “I know what fun it can be to work magic now!”
“Fun?” The head journeyman sounded serious all of a sudden. “Fun? Well, you may be right . . . it can be fun at times!”