“IT WAS AROUND this time that my mother died. She wasn’t old but in a lot of pain. The funeral left me devastated. Jarmila slipped away to see me. This time her silvery hand didn’t hold any wretched watch which had been broken deliberately.”—I noticed how cautiously he pronounced the word ‘silvery’, as though trespassing. “Instead she had come as if to comfort me! Though as it turned out I had to comfort her: she couldn’t live without me, she said, the child was a constant reminder of our past. When awake she’d think of me, in sleep she’d dream of me. And I believed her because I still loved her and felt that from now on I needed to love her differently, even more, needed to love her as my mother too, and, above all, as the mother of my child! Once again we started meeting in the feather loft. Yet it was no longer the same place. The mice had vanished for Jarmila’s husband had bought some cats whose green eyes startled us in the dark. An icy draught reached us from below. I wasn’t sure where it came from but I assumed it was because the Oom-Pah had laid the storage room with flagstones. Admittedly it made it easier to keep the place clean … And for a while things continued like this. But Maruschka, my bride, knew nothing of it. I would tell her to wait. I would tell her I was still saving up but I assured her she had my word. That’s all she had, for I was faithful to Jarmila. One night Jarmila said to me, ‘Touch my body. Can you feel how hard it is? It is not swollen yet. That won’t happen until the sixth month. It’s like the first time round, do you remember? But I know now my second child is on its way, and this one will be ours at last, yours. Do you understand?’ Playfully she pinched my ear with her strong rough fingers but when I flinched with pain, she shuddered too and gave herself to me with a violent and increasing passion. I had never experienced her like this before, so at odds with our country girls’ ways … As she was sitting up afterwards, breathing heavily and staring with a brooding expression ahead, her hands clasped beneath her bosom, I said, ‘I’ll set off for Harlem, via Hamburg or Bremen. I’ll wait for you there and send you money for the voyage.’ She shook her head. I could clearly see her fair hair shining in the darkness of the loft. ‘I won’t let you!’ she said. ‘Why should you be hers? You’re my little darling, aren’t you!’—‘Don’t joke, and don’t call me that,’ I said, ‘What I do is my business.’ She fell silent and let go of my ear which she had grabbed again. She trembled and sobbed. ‘I have to go back now, the boy is all alone and I think I can hear the creaking of a cart in the distance. It might be my husband returning,’ she said. ‘Just one more month, be faithful to me, forget about Maruschka. Four weeks, that’s all! Then we’ll discuss everything!’—‘But what will have changed in just one month?’ I asked her. She quickly turned her head away as if expecting a blow. Yet I hadn’t hit her for over a year. She didn’t want to answer my question. In fact she couldn’t, as there was someone calling her. She may have won the full support of the two farm-hands, mostly due to their hatred for the mean-fisted Oom-Pah. He rationed their food, scrimped on wages, not to mention beer or tobacco. However, I now realised I had to give her up to him. What can a man do when he has got the law against him? The next day I ran into the schoolmaster. On seeing me he grew pale with anger, for people had started to talk about Maruschka, his pretty sister-in-law. You know how it is, girls never leave a man in peace, even if they are still virgins. It bothers them more than us. More intensely, more quietly. The schoolmaster summoned me to the inn that evening and, coward that I was, I turned up and swore to marry the girl. I needn’t have. But I didn’t want to love so desperately any more, nor did I want to be Jarmila’s slave, nor wait for another four weeks having already waited a month. The schoolmaster was delighted … But do I really have to mention what happened three nights afterwards and as often as possible after that? All I knew was that I had a new enemy: an intelligent, sober, crafty one. Soon the whole village turned against me, but also against the married couple: they did all they could to spite Jarmila. But she was proud and didn’t let it get to her. She just gave a frivolous toss of her beautiful blonde hair. There wasn’t much they could do to me: I was strong and the schoolmaster would have landed in a heap in the corner had he laid a finger on me. Maruschka couldn’t hurt me either for she was a virgin and virgins hold no sway over men. So their easiest prey was the grey, fat old spouse, and the whole village rose to this with small-minded malice. Being more of a feather trader than a farmer he didn’t have many good fields, but there was one large and lovely meadow not far from his house, and in summer its grass was mown twice. The second mowing produced especially luscious hay which was then stored in the upper reaches of the feather loft. In recent years he had needed help with the mowing and the drying: the work had become too cumbersome for him and he wanted to spare Jarmila. As anywhere else, the village needed work and money. But although he had put out word of the work three times no worker showed up. In the recent unsettled weather he couldn’t get the work done quickly enough by himself, not even with the help of his two farm-hands, one of whom (the better one of course) had just been admitted to hospital. He inquired about their reasons, and while they wouldn’t say: ‘Listen, Oom-Pah, we won’t work for you because your wife is a whore, and your second child will be a bastard too,’ they still would hint at it ever so clearly … He returned home in a blind rage. Jarmila, who normally wasn’t burdened with many chores, was put to work with rake, sickle and hay-fork without delay. In the evenings I would see her just for a moment, for she was pale and tired. We exchanged a quick embrace between the house and the feather store, not far from the geese coops. We pressed together for no more than a second, yet it was wonderful for the child was alive inside her. ‘Just six more weeks! You can wait, you’re young!’ ‘Yes, I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘I’m happy, I hope we’ll be content together over there.’ ‘Content?’ she said, finally kissing me with her warm little mouth, ‘Only content? No, rapturous! Overflowing with happiness!’ If only she hadn’t said that! It was too beautiful, too much. I didn’t trust her. I wanted to leave. ‘Wait awhile,’ she said, pressing up as close to me as was possible in her condition. ‘Will you set off from Bremen or Hamburg? Which is it? Which is nearer? What about the cost? We have to consider everything.’ But she didn’t want to consider anything at all, all she wanted was me, and I shied away from her for I was afraid it might harm the child. Don’t laugh, but I felt it might dirty my child. She sensed my reluctance and rebuffed me in turn. ‘On your way, then!’ she said, ‘You’d best travel ahead to Hamburg and then straight to America, you have money enough, haven’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. I’d inherited something from my poor old mother and had been saving all the while. ‘Well, are you going or aren’t you? When? When? When?’ she asked. ‘No, I won’t go yet. I have to wait for it. I can’t leave you on your own. Your husband might well be on to us: he is not very good to you, he is working you hard, you’re made to till the fields day after day. And then … no!’ ‘And when? No?!’ she whispered, and so she had her way, for how could I resist … ‘No!’ she uttered once more, almost imperceptibly as we took each other, I don’t know quite how, but with such a burning fury, with a force as though she were tearing at me and all my blood was rushing to the surface … How could I leave her? From then on I often waited for her, in vain. The Oom-Pah didn’t let her out of his sight. The first child, my child, my Jaroslaus, was teething. He wasn’t exactly unwell, but he was grumpy and wasn’t drinking, whatever. I didn’t get to see my beloved. He, her husband, was her daily bread, of course, lawful husband that he was.
The Oom-Pah once met me by the shrubs next to his house. He glared at me, but neither of us said a word. He made his way to the feather store; he had tools and nails with him and something else hidden between his belly and his old apron. He climbed the outer staircase to the barn that I had descended ten minutes previously, but he only started hammering about a quarter of an hour later, as if on a secret mission. As it was time to store the hay in the upper loft I assumed he was nailing the trap-door shut to prevent any accident. That’s how little I read his intentions. In fact I couldn’t read either of them, not him nor his wife! While all this was going on I boldly took my chances and visited Jarmila. She blushed crimson, but allowed me nevertheless to kiss my child who all of a sudden refused to know me, turned pale with fright and started screaming angrily …”