When Godel arrives, Martin is ready at once. He has slept in his clothes. He takes the rooster and places it on his shoulder.
‘Does it have to come?’ Godel says.
‘It’s coming,’ the boy says.
‘You are carrying the potatoes to the market.’
‘Yes.’
‘It would be easier without it.’
Martin smiles.
‘You’re going to get a hump from carrying it,’ Godel says. They always have the same conversation on market days, and the boy cannot be dissuaded from bringing the creature.
They walk for a good two hours – Godel, her daughter and the boy. The trees are frozen. The landscape looks dead.
Although Godel doesn’t say a word to him as they walk, and also forbids her daughter from speaking to him, Martin is still in a good mood. He likes the daughter.
He walks about ten paces behind Godel. He carries the rooster and the sack of potatoes. His wooden clogs clatter on the hard ground. His ankles stick out from his trousers; his hands from out of his sleeves. His breath comes in clouds. The rooster claws into his shoulder. Godel is holding her daughter’s hand, leading a goat on her right and carrying a baby in a sling across her chest. The hem of Godel’s skirt is dirty and drags across the muddy ground. Martin takes in the dragging sound until it fills his entire head.
Then he feels a rush of air – but it is only when something hits his head that suddenly it all happens: the thundering hooves of a horse, the snorting, the horseman’s cloak that strikes his cheek.
In his dreams, he still feels the rush of air. The deed will haunt him from now to the end of his days.
One second, the horseman is galloping past Martin, the next he is level with Godel, lowers his hand to the girl, picks her up as if she were nothing and stuffs her beneath his cloak, this piece of darkness in the milky frost. Somewhere in this darkness is the child, who has not uttered a single cry. It all happened too quickly. Her mother’s hand is still hanging in the air, feeling her daughter’s warmth. And then she is gone.
The horseman has picked her like an apple; a moment later he is on the ridge. His black horse rears up.
A scream escapes from Godel. She starts running. The mewling baby swings in front of her chest. Martin runs after her, catches up, overtakes her and chases after the horseman.
The horseman. All his life Martin has known the tale of the horseman in the black cloak who snatches children. Always a girl and a boy. And they never return. And now he has encountered him and is running after him.
The horseman in turn looks back and sees the boy with a rooster dancing around his head like a crazed shadow. The horseman shudders. He has heard about the devil in the form of a rooster. That he lives up here. He crosses himself and thinks, I have snatched a child from the devil. God Almighty! He rams his heels into the horse’s sides. The horse hammers its hooves through the air. The next moment the horseman charges off, down the other side of the hill.
Martin is panting. The air tastes of blood. He falls to his knees. He knows that the girl is lost.
Godel catches up with him.
Tears are pouring down her cheeks. Martin sobs when he sees her crying. Then the rooster on his shoulder gives an ear-piercing crow. A high lament sent out into the world.
And only then does silence descend on the path.