Krabat Read online

  KRABAT

  OTFRIED PREUSSLER

  TRANSLATED BY

  ANTHEA BELL

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  The First Year

  CHAPTER ONE: The Mill

  CHAPTER TWO: Eleven and One

  CHAPTER THREE: No Bed of Roses

  CHAPTER FOUR: A Dream of Escape

  CHAPTER FIVE: The Man with the Plumed Hat

  CHAPTER SIX: The Ravens’ Perch

  CHAPTER SEVEN: The Sign of the Secret Brotherhood

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Remember I Am the Master

  CHAPTER NINE: The Ox Dealer from Kamenz

  CHAPTER TEN: Military Music

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Keepsake

  CHAPTER TWELVE: No Pastor or Cross

  The Second Year

  CHAPTER ONE: The Custom of the Guild

  CHAPTER TWO: A Mild Winter

  CHAPTER THREE: Long Live Augustus!

  CHAPTER FOUR: An Easter Candle

  CHAPTER FIVE: The Tales of Big Hat

  CHAPTER SIX: Horse Trading

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Wine and Water

  CHAPTER EIGHT: The Cockfight

  CHAPTER NINE: The End of the Row

  The Third Year

  CHAPTER ONE: The King of the Moors

  CHAPTER TWO: The Way You Fly with Wings

  CHAPTER THREE: An Attempted Escape

  CHAPTER FOUR: The Winter Wheat

  CHAPTER FIVE: My Name is Krabat

  CHAPTER SIX: Living in a Dream

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Surprises

  CHAPTER EIGHT: A Hard Task

  CHAPTER NINE: The Sultan’s Eagle

  CHAPTER TEN: A Ring of Hair

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: An Offer

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Between the Years

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The First Year

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Mill

  It was between New Year’s Day and Twelfth Night, and Krabat, who was fourteen at the time, had joined forces with two other Wendish beggar boys. Although His Most Serene Highness, the Elector of Saxony, had passed a law forbidding vagabonds to beg in His Most Serene Highness’s lands (but luckily the justices and those in authority would often turn a blind eye), the boys were going from village to village in the country around Hoyerswerda, dressed as the Three Kings from the East. They wore straw crowns on top of their caps, and one of them, little Lobosch from Maukendorf, who was playing the part of the King of the Moors, blackened his face with soot every morning. He walked proudly at the head of the little procession, bearing the Star of Bethlehem, which Krabat had nailed to a stick.

  Whenever they came to a farm, they would put Lobosch in the middle and sing, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ Or rather, two of them would sing, while Krabat merely moved his lips silently, because his voice was breaking. The other two Kings sang all the louder to make up for it.

  A good many farmers had killed a pig for the New Year, and they would give the Three Kings from the East plenty of sausages and bacon. At other houses they got apples, nuts and prunes, and sometimes gingerbread and lardy cake, aniseed balls and cinnamon cookies.

  ‘Here’s a good start to the year!’ said Lobosch at the end of the third day. ‘I could go on this way till next New Year’s Eve!’

  Their Majesties, the other two Kings, nodded solemnly and sighed, ‘We wouldn’t mind that at all!’

  They spent the next night in the hayloft of the smithy at Petershain, and it was there that Krabat dreamed his strange dream for the first time.

  There were eleven ravens sitting on a perch, looking at him. He saw an empty place down at the end of the perch, on the left, and then he heard a voice. It was a hoarse voice, and it seemed to be coming out of thin air, from very far away, and it called him by his name, but he did not dare reply. ‘Krabat!’ called the voice a second time, and then a third time – ‘Krabat!’ Then it said, ‘Come to the mill at Schwarzkollm, and you will not regret it!’ At these words the ravens rose from their perch, croaking, ‘Obey the voice of the Master! Obey!’

  With that, Krabat woke. ‘What a strange dream!’ he thought, turning over and dropping off to sleep again. The next day he and his companions walked on, and when he happened to think of the ravens, he laughed.

  However, he dreamed the same dream again the next night. Once more the voice called him by his name, and once more the ravens croaked, ‘Obey!’ This set Krabat thinking, and the next morning he asked the farmer who had given them shelter for the night if he knew of a village called Schwarzkollm, or some such name.

  The farmer remembered hearing that name. ‘Schwarzkollm …’ he said reflectively. ‘Oh, yes – it’s in the forest of Hoyerswerda, on the road to Leippe! There’s a village called Schwarzkollm there.’

  The Three Kings spent the next night in a barn in Gross-Partwitz, and there, too, Krabat dreamed his dream of the ravens and the voice that seemed to be coming out of thin air. Everything happened just as before, and now he made up his mind to follow the voice. He crept out of the barn at daybreak, while his companions were still asleep. At the gate of the farmyard he met the servant girl going to the well. ‘Say good-bye to my two friends for me,’ he asked her. ‘I have to leave them now.’

  At every village he came to, Krabat asked the way. The wind drove the falling snow into his face, and he kept having to stop and wipe his eyes. He got lost in the forest of Hoyerswerda, and it took him a good two hours to find the road to Leippe again. So it was that he did not reach his journey’s end until nearly evening.

  Schwarzkollm was like any of the other moorland villages, with a long line of houses and barns on either side of the street, which was deep in snow. Plumes of smoke rose above the rooftops, and Krabat saw steaming middens and heard the lowing of cattle. There were children skating on the duck pond, shouting with glee.

  Krabat looked around for a mill, but he could not see one. There was an old man carrying a bundle of sticks coming up the road, and Krabat asked him.

  ‘No, there’s no mill in this village,’ he was told.

  ‘Is there one nearby?’

  ‘Oh, if that’s the one you mean …’ The old man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Back there in the fen of Kosel, by the Black Water, there’s a mill. But …’ And he broke off as though he had already said too much.

  Krabat thanked him and turned in the direction the old man had pointed. He had gone only a few paces when he felt someone pluck him by the sleeve, and when he looked around, it was the old man with the bundle of sticks again.

  ‘What is it?’ Krabat asked.

  Coming closer and looking cautiously around, the old man said, ‘I just wanted to warn you, boy! Keep away from the Kosel fen, keep away from the mill by the Black Water – it’s a queer place, that …’

  Krabat hesitated for a moment, then he turned from the old man and went on his way, out of the village. Dusk was gathering, he had to take great care not to stray from the path, and he was shivering with cold. When he turned his head, he saw lights begin to flicker in the village he had left behind, here one, there another.

  Might it not be wiser to turn back?

  ‘Oh, come!’ muttered Krabat, pulling up his collar. ‘I’m not a baby! It won’t hurt just to take a look at this mill!’

  For some time Krabat groped his way blindly through the wood, until he came upon an open space. As he was emerging from the trees the clouds cleared away, the moon came through, and suddenly everything was flooded in cold moonlight.

  Then he saw the mill.

  It lay there before him, a hunched shape in the snow, dark and menacing, like some vicious, powerful animal lying in wait for its prey.

  ‘I don’t have to go there,’ thought Krabat, but then, telling
himself he was a coward, he plucked up his courage and stepped forward out of the shadows of the wood. Striding boldly up to the mill, he found the door of the house closed, and knocked.

  He knocked once, he knocked twice; there was no movement inside the house. No dog barked, no step creaked, no bundle of keys rattled – nothing.

  Krabat knocked for the third time, so hard that it hurt his knuckles.

  All was still quiet inside the mill. He tried the door handle, and the door opened. It was not even bolted. Krabat walked into the hall of the house.

  It was silent as the grave, and pitch dark. But right at the end of the passage there was a faint gleam of light, just the glimmer of a glimmer.

  ‘There’s sure to be someone around, if there’s a light,’ said Krabat to himself.

  Arms outstretched, he groped his way forward. As he came closer he saw that the light was coming through a chink in the door at the end of the passage. Suddenly full of curiosity, he crept up to the chink on tiptoe and peered through it.

  He saw a room lit by the light of a single candle. The room was all black, and the candle red; it was stuck in a skull that lay on a table in the middle of the room. Behind the table sat a burly man in dark clothes. His face was very pale, white as a sheet, and he had a black patch over his left eye. A thick, leather-bound book lay chained to the table in front of him, and he was reading this book.

  Suddenly he raised his head and gazed across the room, as if he had detected Krabat behind the chink in the door. His glance froze the boy to the marrow of his bones. Krabat’s eye, glued to the chink, began to itch, and then to stream, and his view of the room blurred.

  Krabat rubbed his eye – then he felt a cold, icy hand placed on his shoulder from behind. The chill of it went right through his coat and his shirt. At the same time he heard a hoarse voice say, in the Wendish language, ‘So here you are!’

  Krabat jumped; he knew that voice. When he turned around, he was facing the man with the patch over his eye.

  How had he got there? One thing was certain, he had not come through the door …

  The man, who was holding a candlestick in his hand, looked Krabat up and down in silence. Then, thrusting out his chin, he said, ‘I am the Master of this mill. You can be my apprentice if you like – I’m in need of one. Would you like that?’

  Krabat heard himself reply, ‘Yes, I would.’ His voice sounded strange, as if it did not belong to him at all.

  ‘And what am I to teach you? How to grind grain, or the rest as well?’ inquired the master miller.

  ‘The rest as well,’ said Krabat.

  The miller held out his left hand.

  ‘Done!’

  At the very moment that they shook hands, a muffled thudding and rumbling sound started up somewhere in the house. It seemed to come from deep down. The floor quivered, the walls began to tremble, the beams and door-posts shook.

  Krabat cried out and tried to run. All he wanted was to get away from this place! But the miller barred his way.

  ‘The mill!’ he cried, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘The mill is grinding again!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eleven and One

  Signaling to Krabat to follow him, the Master silently showed the boy the way up the steep wooden stairs to the attic where the miller’s men slept. In the light of the candle Krabat could make out twelve low truckle beds with straw mattresses, six on one side of the room, six on the other, and beside each a locker and a pinewood stool. The blankets on the beds were tumbled, there were a couple of overturned stools in the gangway between them, and shirts and stockings were flung around the room. It looked as though the miller’s men had been summoned posthaste to work, straight from their beds.

  One bed, however, was untouched, and the Master pointed to a bundle of clothes at its foot. ‘There are your things,’ he said. Then he turned and went out, taking the candle with him.

  Krabat was left alone in the dark. Slowly, he began to undress. As he took off his cap, he felt the straw crown – why, it was only yesterday he had been one of the Three Kings! How long ago that seemed!

  The attic, too, was echoing with the thud and clatter of the machinery of the mill, and it was lucky for the boy that he was worn out. No sooner did he lie down on his straw mattress than he fell asleep, and he slept like a log. He slept and slept, until suddenly he was awakened by a ray of light.

  Krabat sat up, and froze with horror.

  There were eleven white figures standing around his bed, looking down at him in the light of a stable lantern. Eleven white figures with white faces and white hands.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the frightened boy.

  ‘We are what you will soon be,’ one of the apparitions replied.

  ‘We won’t hurt you,’ another of them added. ‘We are the miller’s men, we work here.’

  ‘There are eleven of you?’

  ‘And you make twelve! What’s your name?’ ‘Krabat. What’s yours?’

  ‘I am Tonda, the head journeyman. This is Michal, this is Merten, this is Juro …’

  Tonda introduced them all by name, and then said, ‘That’s enough for now. Go back to sleep, Krabat. You’ll need all your strength in this mill.’

  The miller’s men went to their truckle beds, the last one put out the light, they said good night and soon they were all snoring.

  At breakfast the miller’s men assembled in the servants’ hall of the house, where the twelve of them sat around a long wooden table. There was good, thick oatmeal, one large dish to every four men. Krabat was so hungry that he fell on it ravenously. If dinner and supper were as good as breakfast, this mill was not a bad place at all!

  Tonda, the head journeyman, was a handsome fellow with thick, iron-gray hair, though judging by his face he could hardly be thirty years old. There was something very grave about Tonda, or more precisely, about his eyes. Krabat trusted him from the first; his calm manner and the friendly way he treated the boy made Krabat take to him at once.

  ‘I hope we didn’t give you too bad a fright last night,’ said Tonda, turning to him.

  ‘Not too bad!’ said Krabat.

  And when he saw the ‘ghosts’ by daylight, they were just young men like any others. All eleven spoke Wendish, and they were some years older than Krabat. When they looked at him it seemed to him there was pity in their eyes, which surprised him, but he thought no more about it.

  What did puzzle him was the way the clothes he found at the end of his bed, though secondhand, fitted as if they had been made for him. He asked the others where they got their things – who had worn them before? But the moment his question was out, the miller’s men put down their spoons and gazed sadly at him.

  ‘Have I said something wrong?’ asked Krabat.

  ‘No, no,’ said Tonda. ‘Your clothes … they belonged to the man who was here before you.’

  ‘Why did he leave?’ asked Krabat. ‘Has he finished his apprenticeship?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tonda. ‘Yes … he has finished his apprenticeship.’

  At that moment the door flew open, and the Master came in. He was angry, and the miller’s men shrank back from him.

  ‘No idle chatter here!’ he shouted at them. His one eye fell on Krabat, and he added harshly, ‘It’s a mistake to ask too many questions. Repeat that!’

  ‘It’s a mistake to ask too many questions,’ Krabat stammered.

  ‘Get that into your head, then!’

  And the Master left the servants’ hall, slamming the door behind him.

  The men began to eat again, but suddenly Krabat felt he had had enough. He stared down at the table, bewildered. No one was taking any notice of him.

  Or were they?

  When he looked up, Tonda glanced across the table and nodded to him – very slightly, but the boy was glad of it. He could feel that it was good to have a friend in this mill.

  After breakfast the miller’s men went to work. Krabat left the servants’ hall along with the others. The
Master was standing in the hall of the house, and he beckoned to Krabat, saying, ‘Come with me!’

  Krabat followed the miller out of doors. The sun was shining, it was a cold, still day, with hoarfrost on the trees.

  The miller took him behind the mill, to a door at the back of the house, which he opened. They both entered the meal store, a low-ceilinged place with two tiny windows covered with flour dust. Flour covered the floor too, hung on the walls, lay thick on the oak beams of the ceiling.

  ‘Sweep it out!’ said the Master, pointing to a broom beside the door. He went away, leaving the boy alone.

  Krabat set to work, but after wielding his broom a few times he was enveloped in a thick cloud of flour, like dust.

  ‘I’ll never do it this way,’ he thought. ‘Once I get to the other end of the room it will be as thick as ever back here! I’d better open a window.’

  The windows were nailed up from outside, the door bolted. He might rattle it and bang on it as hard as he liked, it was no good. He was a prisoner here.

  Krabat began to sweat. The flour stuck to his hair and eyelashes, it tickled his nose, it roughened his throat. It was like an endless nightmare – flour and more flour, great clouds of it, like mist, like flurrying snow.

  Krabat was breathing with difficulty; he laid his forehead against a beam. He felt dizzy. Why not give up?

  But what would the Master say if he just put down his broom now? Krabat did not want to get into the Master’s bad books, not least because of the good food at this mill. So he forced himself to go on, sweeping from one end of the room to the other without stopping, hour after hour.

  Until at last, after half an eternity, someone came and opened the door. It was Tonda.

  ‘Come along!’ he cried. ‘It’s midday!’

  The boy did not wait to be told twice. He staggered out into the fresh air, gasping for breath. The head journey man glanced inside the meal store.

  ‘Never mind, Krabat,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘No one does any better at the start!’