Candles illuminate the sanctuary. Scaffolding constructed from paint-splattered boards conceals the commissioned image. There are paintbrushes, paint and jugs everywhere.
The painter lays the boy down on a pew, pushes a blanket under his head, dips rags in some water and places them on the boy’s forehead. The child is talking in his delirium. He raises his hands to ward off blows that he is dreaming about, of which he has had more than enough in his life. And he talks, pleads and begs of the women in the village – Gerti, Ursula, Inga – he begs for some bread, for a kind word.
The painter clenches his fists in anger. He drinks one schnapps after another as he keeps stroking Martin’s hair, as if he were trying to brush the bad dreams out of the child. How the painter hates the villagers! The men are one thing. But the women! The painter is furious and spits in disgust.
There is something so wrong about the fact that the boy, who has nothing but also shouldn’t have to do anything, possesses the greatest sense of decency, while the villagers make their rules and regulations on a whim, and are so content with themselves and their false lives that it’s downright obscene. How they warm one another by cackling and joking, gossiping, relishing a communal wallowing in the mud like pigs. The painter knows these women, who will run to the neighbours faster than a weasel to make fun of anyone who doesn’t conform, because, just like the boy, his mere existence calls their piggy-like complacency into question. They are presumptuous. They lie and cheat. They are actually stupid, but also canny, in a bad way. How is the child supposed to survive, how is morality supposed to endure between these conceited men and poisonous women? And only the child clings to the good paths, remains steadfast even when taunted, remains good even when the neighbour’s watery eyes scrutinise and judge and hate him because he has seen how she keeps taking advantage all the time and everywhere while preaching modesty.
The painter drinks more schnapps and talks his visions into the boy’s delirious dreams. Now and then he brings a ladle of water to Martin’s lips and talks, talks himself into a rage for hours, rants and raves. At some point he jumps up and finishes the painting.
When Martin wakes up, grey light is beginning to seep into the church. He sees the canopy of black basalt of the vault above. As always, the rooster is by his side. He spots the painter snoring on a blanket.
Martin clambers off the pew. He is unsteady on his feet. Slowly, he approaches the altarpiece. Some parts are still hidden by the scaffolding, but Martin can already perceive the splendour. The heavens with golden clouds, and the tree of sorrow over there. The thieves have been moved into the distance, the boyish Jesus brought forwards.
Martin wakes the painter.
‘Are you going to leave now?’ he asks him.
The painter raises himself up on one elbow and is pleased that his care has helped the boy get back to health. But his head is pounding. He nods.
‘Then you’ll take me with you,’ Martin says. The painter nods once more. Of course he’ll take him. And he sits up quickly – a mistake, because now yesterday’s schnapps wants out. In a moment, he feels better.
He quickly packs up his bundle and is still slower than Martin, who has nothing to pack; the rooster is always with him, and all his clothes are on his back.
Now the scaffolding. Nimbly, the painter moves hand over hand up the timbers, which bob under his weight. He needs to work quickly, because the scaffolding is only stable as long as all the boards support each other. As soon as the top one is removed, all the others want to collapse, and the painter needs to disassemble them more quickly than he can fall. He doesn’t manage it without swearing, but the altarpiece is finally exposed. He kicks the last supports aside and overturns the table, quickly gathers up the colours and shoulders the stool. His glance tells Martin to move. They push the door open and leave it like that. The village is quiet. Are they really all still asleep? Martin doesn’t want to say goodbye, but he would have liked to see Franzi one more time. He says as much.
‘Franzi.’
Very quietly. The painter pauses.
‘Not possible,’ says the painter. ‘She will understand,’ he adds consolingly.
Martin nods. ‘I will fetch her,’ he says. ‘I will come back and fetch her.’
The painter shrugs his shoulders and does not say that he will never return. Nor does he say that Franzi will soon be married and pregnant, and then toothless within a few more years.
He leads the way with big strides. Martin, weakened by fever, stumbles along behind him, distancing himself step by step from the place that none of his relatives has left for generations, and now he is leaving, the last of them, and it might well be that the plague carries off all the villagers tomorrow or that they kill each other; he will be elsewhere. But they won’t forget him.
You might expect the villagers to be relieved that the boy with the feathered devil is finally gone and that they can have their peace. But that is not the case. When the villagers see the church with the open door, they hesitate to go in, but eventually they do, and stand in amazement. The altarpiece is finished, and they have had to wait quite a while for it.
A strip of light falls in through the church window and hits the picture at the spot where Jesus hangs on the cross, raising his head heavenwards in pain and grace. Of course, the painter has observed the effect of the light on sunny days and has arranged his portrayal of Jesus accordingly.
So they step closer, and the closer they come, the more uncomfortable the villagers feel, because in the faces – is it a coincidence? Surely not – they recognise one another.
This ugly mug here is yours.
And the nasty guard looks like you.
And then it dawns on them: Franzi is Mary, heavens, what sacrilege!
But worst of all, and no one mentions this, is Jesus. The painter has given him Martin’s features. And now the child’s dear face hangs in front of the villagers’ noses for eternity.