The broken pieces of the vase are lying in the bedroom all over the place, including under the bed. Afra bends down and sweeps them up with the little brush. In her thoughts she is still with the child in the kitchen; she is afraid that in spite of her prohibition he might get up and run over to the stove. She keeps one ear open for any sound.
Where can her father be? It’s late, he ought to be home any time now. She hears footsteps in the corridor, a little rustling, and then the kitchen door is opened. Afra is sure she recognizes her father’s footsteps. She is relieved; that means that Albert isn’t alone in the kitchen, her father will keep an eye on him.
Suddenly she hears the child crying. She leaves everything where it is and runs into the kitchen as fast as she can go. Hand still on the door handle, the door half open, she sees the little boy crouching on the floor beside the bench in the corner. Snot and tears are running down his face.
‘What’s the matter, Albert? Have you hurt yourself?’
Afra hurries towards him, bends down to comfort the crying child. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the person who is in the room with them. It is not her father. She turns her head to one side, sees the other travelling journeyman standing with his back to the dresser, the young fellow who reminded her of Albert’s father yesterday. Afra doesn’t understand what is going on, she thought she had recognized the sound of her father’s footsteps, and then she sees the open doors and drawers. She straightens her back, stands up, takes a step towards the young man.
‘What are you looking for there? Go away, go on, get out of here!’
He doesn’t seem like someone caught out in a guilty act; he is calm, he even grins at her.
‘What do you think I’m looking for? Money, something to eat, and whatever else I can find.’
‘There’s nothing to be found here. We don’t have anything.’
Afra plucks up all her courage and goes on walking slowly towards him.
He moves a little way aside, and for a moment Afra thinks he is making room for her. Only then does she see the knife. He is holding it in the hand that had been hidden behind his back.
‘If I were you I’d sit down on the bench here in this kitchen and keep quiet. Then nothing will happen to you or the child either.’
He says it with a smile, but his eyes and his voice are cold.
Afra hesitates, but then she goes on walking slowly his way.
‘Put that knife away. You don’t frighten me, I’ve dealt with worse than you before.’
She quickly darts at the young man, trying to seize his arm. He turns away, pushing her back with his shoulder. Afra tackles him. He takes her hair in his free hand. She tries to scratch him, bite him. He moves to fling her off. She clutches him, kicking out and trying to hit his shin. Finally she gets a grip on his arm.
For a moment they are both holding the knife in their hands; the young fellow won’t let go and is trying to wrestle Afra to the floor. They collide with the kitchen dresser. The china in the cupboard clinks, the dresser doors slam back against its frame. Albert is screaming and crying. He scrambles up and runs to his mother. She finally succeeds in getting the knife away from the young man, cutting his hand as she does so.
‘You just get out of here!’
Afra clutches the knife in both hands. She stands with her back to the kitchen door, never taking her eyes off the young man, holding him in check. Meanwhile, Albert is clinging to her skirt, a heavy weight.
‘The bitch stabbed me! Look, I’m bleeding! You just wait, I’ll show you!’
The journeyman is hardly more than an arm’s length away from her. All she hears is Albert crying, she doesn’t notice the second man until he swings back his arm and hits her over the head with a bottle. The knife falls to the floor. Afra staggers, is just in time to catch hold of the table. She tries to get back on her feet, struggles up, but then a second blow strikes her. The child’s voice is breaking desperately as he tries to get closer to his mother. One of the two men grabs Albert, pulls him away, flings him carelessly into a corner like a rag doll, and he lies there whimpering. Afra clutches her attacker’s legs. He kicks out at her, pushing her away. Strikes her again. With the last of her strength, Afra drags herself over to the sofa, clings to it with both hands and tries to pull herself up. Blood is running down her face.
She sees it only dimly when one of the two attackers pushes her down on the sofa and hits her yet again. Then everything goes black in front of her eyes.
From the statement of Matthias Karrer, pedlar and knife-grinder, eighteen years after the events concerned
When I realized that Wackes had escaped the police, and there was only Otto and me left to take the rap, the whole thing rankled. I resented that Frenchman. First he talks big, then he dumps us in the shit. Makes off because he knows what’s what – the hell he does! And a man like that talks about the Legion day and night, and how we need guts! I told Otto what I thought of his friend, I thought he was a bad lot, a windbag, not an ounce of honesty in his body.
‘He let us down when we needed him, that’s not right! That’s a rotten thing to do.’
That’s what I told Otto.
At first Otto wouldn’t listen, told me to keep my mouth shut, but after a while he let out his own resentment of Wackes. He started telling me other things he’d done along with the Frenchman, how it wasn’t the first time they’d climbed in somewhere, and how glad he really is to be rid of him.
‘Wackes is a bastard. Tell you what, though, it has its good side that they caught me now, or I could have ended badly. So he’s gone off, but you have to watch every word with him, every damn thing he says. He’s fine one minute, the next he has a knife in his hand. You weren’t the first to find that out.’
That’s what he said to me.
And then, bit by bit, he told me about everything, all the time he was going around with Wackes. At first I didn’t quite believe him, because when you’re in the clink you hear all kinds of stories, and most of them aren’t true.
We were in the same cell, see, and in the night, when Otto couldn’t sleep, he kept on talking, telling his stories, specially the one that wouldn’t let him rest, and that’s how I found out all about it.
‘Before we met you we came to that house, and that’s where it happened. Over in the neighbourhood of Finsterau. At first it was like what we’d always done. I went into the house and asked if we could wash at the well out in the yard, and whether we could have a bite to eat. Of course I really went in to see what was to be had there. I’d be lying if I didn’t say as much. So I went in on a pretext, to see who was in the house. But there was only the young woman and the child, I told Wackes, and then he went in after me. He still thought a woman like that is easy to intimidate, and if they had anything he’d get hold of it. Only he had to work fast in case anyone came along.’
Otto himself, he’d been supposed to wait outside the house by the well and keep watch in case anyone came. He didn’t go in until he heard the noise they made scuffling.
‘The child was yelling as if he was on the spit, and the woman stood there with the knife in her hand. Wackes had shouted that she’d cut his hand. So I didn’t hesitate, I got hold of an empty bottle and I hit her with it. What else could I do? She dropped the knife and she just managed to catch hold of the table. Then Wackes took two or three steps towards her and pushed the knife away. But she kept going, she staggered up again, and then it all went very fast and Wackes hit her again. First with the bottle – he’d snatched it out of my hand – and then with a little hoe. How he came by that hoe so fast I can’t say. I just stood there, I didn’t move. Until Wackes yelled at me to get out and keep watch. Because if someone else comes along now, he says, we’d be for it. I went out into the yard and packed up our things. A couple more minutes and the Frenchman was out of there again, and we were off.’
Later, he said the Frenchman told him he’d fucked the woman again. And he hit the child with the hoe.
‘On account of he wouldn’t stop whining and whimpering.’
But Otto didn’t want to hear that.
It wasn’t worth it either, all they brought away was a dried sausage, a few marks and a pocket watch. He’d found the money and the watch in the bedroom after he hit her.
I couldn’t forget that story. I wanted to know whether there was any truth in it, and if so what, or was it just all rubbish? And I wanted them to go looking for that bastard Wackes. That’s why I told one of the warders about it. But he didn’t believe me, he thought I just wanted to make trouble for someone else the way folk do, thinking I’d look better myself and have better cards to play when the bakery case came to court. And Otto, what a coward, of course next minute he said he knew nothing about it. He wouldn’t even have owned up to knowing his own mother if they’d asked him. If he’d told all he knew he’d certainly have been for it.
When I got out of prison I hadn’t thought of it again for years. How was I to know whether the story was true, or whether Otto had just made it up? I only found out later it was true, and only by chance on the road because I was in the Finsterau area. A customer told me about it, and it was from him I got the old press cutting.
And when I wanted to report it again nobody would believe me. They all said the ‘real’ murderer had been condemned to prison. Wackes was in the Legion, I suppose, and Otto, he never could cope with anything. Later he got stabbed in a tavern brawl. At least, that’s what I heard.
But I never could forget the story of the young woman and her child.