Krabat Read online

  Krabat had almost forgotten what hard work it was to carry a full sack, and how soon you were out of breath.

  ‘Remember that you are my pupil!’

  Those were the Master’s words, and the longer Krabat thought about them, the less he liked the sound of them.

  The whip cracked, the men ran back and forth, the mill wheel went around and the house was filled with the clatter and squeal of the Dead Stones. What was in those sacks? Krabat glanced into the hopper, but he could not make much out in the dim light of the lantern swaying from the ceiling. Was he tipping clods of dirt, or pine cones, into the hopper, or maybe round stones encrusted with mud …?

  The boy had no time to take a closer look; Lyshko came up with the next sack, panting, and elbowed Krabat aside.

  Michal and Merten had taken up their positions by the meal bin; they refilled the empty sacks with whatever it was that had been ground, and tied them up. Again, everything happened just as before. At first cockcrow the cart was loaded up again, the cover pulled over it and fastened. The stranger reached for his whip, and off he went with his cart, so fast that the Master only just had time to jump down without breaking his neck.

  ‘Come with me!’ said Tonda to Krabat.

  While the others went into the house, the two of them went up to the millrace to shut the sluice. They heard the mill wheel run down below them, and all was quiet, but for the rooster crowing and the hens clucking.

  ‘Does he often come?’ asked Krabat, jerking his head in the direction in which the cart had disappeared into the morning mist.

  ‘Every night of new moon,’ said Tonda.

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Only the Master knows that. He calls him the Goodman – and he is afraid of him.’

  They walked slowly back to the mill through the dewy meadows.

  ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ said Krabat, before they entered the house. ‘Last time the stranger came the Master was working, too. Why not today?’

  ‘Last time he had to help us to make up the dozen,’ said the head journeyman. ‘But since Easter the numbers of the Black School have been made up, so now he can afford to spend the nights of new moon cracking the whip!’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Ox Dealer from Kamenz

  Sometimes the Master sent his men out on errands, in pairs or in small groups, to give them a chance to use the arts they learned in the Black School. One morning Tonda went up to Krabat. ‘I have to go to the Wittichenau cattle market with Andrush today,’ he said. ‘The Master says you can go with us if you like.’

  ‘Good!’ said Krabat. ‘It’ll make a change from all this grinding of grain!’

  They took a path through the wood that joined the road beside some houses near the Neudorf village pond. It was a fine, sunny July day. The jays were calling in the branches, they could hear the tapping of a woodpecker, swarms of honey bees and bumble bees filled the wild raspberry bushes with their buzzing.

  Krabat noticed that Tonda and Andrush looked as merry as if they were off to the fair. It couldn’t be just the fine weather. Andrush, of course, was always a cheerful, good-tempered fellow, but it was unusual to hear Tonda whistling happily to himself. From time to time he cracked his ox whip.

  ‘Are you practicing to do that on the way home?’ said Krabat.

  ‘What do you mean, on the way home?’

  ‘I thought we were going to Wittichenau to buy an ox?’

  ‘On the contrary!’ said Tonda.

  Just at that moment Krabat heard a loud ‘Moo!’ behind him, and when he turned around, there was a fine ox standing where Andrush had been a moment before. It had a smooth, reddish-brown coat, and it was looking at him in a friendly way.

  ‘Hey!’ said Krabat, rubbing his eyes.

  Suddenly Tonda, too, was gone, and in his place there stood an old Wendish peasant, wearing felt shoes, linen trousers with cross-gartering from ankle to knee, and a smock belted with a cord. He had a greasy fur cap, its brim rubbed bare.

  ‘Hey!’ said Krabat again. Then someone tapped him on the shoulder and laughed. When he turned, there was Andrush back again.

  ‘Where did you go, Andrush? And where’s that ox – the one that was standing here just now?’

  ‘Moo!’ said Andrush in the ox’s voice.

  ‘What about Tonda?’

  The peasant turned back into Tonda before Krabat’s very eyes.

  ‘So that’s it!’ said the boy.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Tonda. ‘Andrush is going to show his paces in the cattle market.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to sell him?’ ‘Those are the Master’s orders.’

  ‘But – but suppose Andrush gets sent to be slaughtered?’

  ‘No fear of that!’ Tonda assured him. ‘Once we sell Andrush as an ox, all we have to do is keep his halter. Then he can turn himself into any shape he likes, any time he likes.’

  ‘Suppose we lose the halter?’

  ‘You dare!’ cried Andrush. ‘If you did that I’d have to stay an ox all my life, eating hay and straw – just you get that into your heads, and don’t do any such thing!’

  Tonda and Krabat created a great sensation in Wittichenau cattle market. Their ox was much admired. All the dealers came hurrying up and surrounded them, and a few of the townsfolk, and some farmers who had already disposed of their pigs and bullocks, joined the crowd. It wasn’t every day you saw such a fine, fat ox; they all felt they’d like to get their hands on it before anyone else could snap up such a splendid animal from under their noses.

  ‘How much?’

  The cattle dealers showered Tonda with questions, shouting at the tops of their voices. Master Krause the butcher, from Hoyerswerda, offered fifteen guilders for Andrush, and lame Leuschner from Koenigsbruck went one better and offered sixteen.

  Tonda merely shook his head. ‘Not good enough,’ said he.

  ‘Not good enough?’ said they. He must be crazy, they assured him. Did he take them for fools?

  ‘Fools or no,’ said Tonda, ‘I suppose you gentlemen must know that best yourselves!’

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Master Krause from Hoyer-swerda. ‘Eighteen!’

  ‘Eighteen! Why, I’d rather keep him myself!’ growled Tonda. He would not let Master Leuschner from Koenigs-bruck have him for nineteen guilders, either, or young Gustav Neubauer from Senftenberg for twenty.

  ‘The devil take you and your ox, then!’ cried Master Krause angrily, and Master Leuschner, tapping his forehead, said, ‘I’d be a fool to ruin myself. Twenty-two, and that’s my last word!’

  The bargaining seemed to have reached a deadlock when a fat, shapeless man, puffing like a grampus at every step he took, pushed his way through the crowd. His frog face with its round, goggle eyes was shiny with sweat, he wore a green tailcoat with silver buttons, a showy watch chain over his red satin vest, and there was a fat purse at his belt for all the world to see.

  Master Blaschke, the ox dealer from Kamenz, was one of the richest and probably the shrewdest of all the cattle dealers for miles around. Pushing Master Leuschner and young Gustav Neubauer aside, he shouted in his loud, blustering voice, ‘How in heaven’s name did such a thin fellow come by such a fat ox? I’ll take him for twenty-five!’

  Tonda scratched his ear. ‘Not good enough, sir,’ said he.

  ‘Not good enough! Did you ever hear the like of that?’

  Blaschke took out a big silver snuffbox, snapped open the lid and offered it to Tonda. ‘Want a pinch?’ He let the old Wendish peasant take snuff before he took a pinch himself.

  ‘A-tishoo – that’s the right stuff and no mistake!’

  ‘Thankee, sir!’

  Blaschke blew his nose on a big checked handkerchief. ‘The devil take it, then – twenty-seven! Hand him over!’

  ‘Not good enough, sir.’

  Master Blaschke went scarlet in the face.

  ‘What do you think I am? Twenty-seven guilders for your ox, not a penny more, or my name’s not Blaschke of Kamenz!’

  ‘Thirty, sir,’ said Tonda. ‘You can have him for thirty.’

  ‘It’s daylight robbery!’ cried Blaschke. ‘Do you want to ruin me?’ He rolled his eyes and wrung his hands. ‘Have you no heart? Are you blind and deaf to the troubles of a poor fellow trying to make an honest living? Don’t be so hard-hearted, old man – let me have your ox for twenty-eight!’

  Tonda stood firm.

  ‘Thirty, and that’s that! This ox is a fine specimen, worth every penny! You’ve no notion how hard it is for me to part with him. Why, it couldn’t be worse if I was selling my own son!’

  Blaschke realized he was getting nowhere, but the ox really was a beautiful animal. Why waste more time with this pigheaded Wend?

  ‘Hand him over, then, in the devil’s name!’ he cried. ‘This is my day for being soft-hearted – anyone can just wind me around his little finger! It’s a weakness of mine! All because I have a kind heart and I’m good to the poor … well, give us your hand on it, then. Done!’

  ‘Done!’ said Tonda.

  Taking off his cap, he made Blaschke count out the thirty guilders into it, one by one.

  ‘Did you count them, too?’ asked Blaschke.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Come here, then, my Wendish ox!’

  Blaschke took Andrush by the halter and was about to lead him off, but Tonda grasped the fat man’s sleeve.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ asked Blaschke.

  ‘Why, now,’ said Tonda, acting embarrassment, ‘it’s a little thing, nothing much …’

  ‘Come on, out with it!’

  ‘If you’d be so kind as to leave me that halter, Master Blaschke, I’d be very grateful …’ ‘The halter?’

  ‘As a keepsake,’
said Tonda. ‘You must know how hard it is for me to part with my ox, Master Blaschke! I’ll give you another halter instead, Master Blaschke, so you can take my poor ox away now he’s not mine anymore …’

  Tonda untied the cord he was wearing as a belt, and Blaschke, shrugging his shoulders, let him exchange it for the ox’s halter. Then the dealer went off with Andrush, and he was hardly around the corner before he began to grin broadly. Maybe he had paid thirty guilders for Andrush, and that was a pretty steep price, but he could easily sell such a fine ox for double that in Dresden, maybe more.

  Tonda and Krabat sat down on the grass in the outskirts of the wood, behind the village pond and the houses, to wait for Andrush. They had bought a piece of bacon and a loaf of bread in Wittichenau, and they ate some of it.

  ‘You were really good!’ Krabat told Tonda. ‘You should have seen yourself – the way you squeezed the money out of that fat fellow! ‘Not good enough, sir, not good enough … !’ A good thing you remembered the halter in time. I’d have clean forgotten it myself!’

  ‘You’ll soon learn,’ Tonda reassured him.

  They put a piece of bread and bacon aside for Andrush, wrapping them both in Krabat’s smock, and then decided to lie down for a while. Well fed as they were, and tired from their long walk, they fell asleep and slept soundly, until a ‘Moo!’ woke them, and there was Andrush, back in human form and sound in wind and limb, so far as anyone could see.

  ‘Hey there, you two – folks have been known to sleep themselves silly before now! I hope you’ve at least left me a crust of bread!’

  ‘Bread and bacon, too,’ said Tonda. ‘Sit down, brother, and eat it up! How did you get on with Blaschke?’

  ‘Why, how do you suppose?’ muttered Andrush. ‘It’s no fun to be an ox, I can tell you, and trot across country for miles, breathing in all the dust, especially when you’re not used to it! Well, I didn’t mind at all when Blaschke turned in at the alehouse in Ossling. He and the innkeeper there are cousins, you see, and they do a lot of business together too. ‘Look at that!’ cries the innkeeper, when he sees us coming. ‘If it isn’t my cousin from Kamenz! How are you keeping, then – how are things with you?’ ‘Not so bad,’ says Blaschke, ‘not so bad at all, if it wasn’t for the thirst this heat gives a man.’ ‘We’ll soon see to that,’ says the innkeeper. ‘Come along into the taproom! There’s plenty of beer in the cellar – even you couldn’t finish it inside of seven weeks!’ ‘How about my ox?’ the fat man asks. ‘That ox cost me thirty guilders!’ ‘We’ll put him in the stables and he can have all the water and fodder he likes!’ Fodder for oxen, he meant, of course …’

  Andrush speared a big chunk of bacon on his knife and sniffed at it before stuffing it into his mouth.

  ‘So they put me in the stable,’ he went on, ‘and the innkeeper calls for the girl who helps with the horses. ‘Here, Kathel,’ says he, ‘see to this ox – he belongs to my cousin from Kamenz, and we don’t want him losing any weight!’ ‘Very good, sir,’ says Kathel, stuffing an armful of hay into my manger right away. That was enough for me; I was tired of being an ox! I didn’t think twice about it, I can tell you, I just said in my own voice, in human words, ‘You can eat your hay and straw yourself! Roast pork is what I fancy, with cabbage and dumplings, and a mug of good beer!’ ’

  ‘And then what?’ cried Krabat.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Andrush, ‘at that the three of them were so frightened, their legs gave way beneath them and down they all plumped! They shouted for help as if they were being roasted alive. I mooed at them again, just to say good-bye, and then I turned into a swallow and flew out of the door – cheep-cheep, and I was gone!’

  ‘What about Master Blaschke?’

  ‘The devil take Master Blaschke and his cattle dealing!’ Andrush reached for the ox whip and cracked it hard, as if to lend his words force. ‘I’m glad to be myself again, pock-marks and all!’

  ‘I’m glad of it, too,’ said Tonda. ‘You played your part well, and I daresay Krabat has learned a lot.’

  ‘I have indeed!’ cried the boy. ‘I know what fun it can be to work magic now!’

  ‘Fun?’ The head journeyman sounded serious all of a sudden. ‘Fun? Well, you may be right … it can be fun at times!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Military Music

  For years the Elector of Saxony had been at war with the King of Sweden for the Polish crown. Now if you must go to war, what you need most of all, after money and guns, is soldiers, and so he had drums beating busily all over the country, and officers at work enlisting men. There were plenty of young fellows ready to join the army, especially at the start of the war;- there were others who needed a little persuasion from the recruiting officers, whether in the form of blows or brandy … but a man wouldn’t balk at that in the service of a glorious regiment, the more so as there was a special bonus payment for every man who could be induced to enlist!

  A small party of men, consisting of a lieutenant of the Dresden Foot, a great bear of a corporal, two private soldiers and a drummer who carried his drum on his back like a pack, lost their way in the fen of Kosel one evening. Dusk was already gathering, the Master had been away for three or four days, and the miller’s men were in the servants’ hall, planning to take things easy for the rest of the day, when there came a knock at the door. Tonda went to answer it. There stood the lieutenant with his men. He was an officer of His Serene Highness the Elector, he barked at Tonda – he had lost his way, and so he had decided to spend the night in this wretched hole of a mill; was that quite clear?

  ‘To be sure, Your Worship! There’ll be plenty of room in the hayloft!’

  ‘The hayloft?’ spluttered the corporal. ‘The fellow must be off his head! The best bed in the mill for His Worship, by thunder, and devil take you if mine’s a bit worse! We’re hungry, too. So bring us whatever you have in the kitchen, and some beer or wine, never mind which, so long as there’s enough of it – and enough there must be, or I’ll break every bone in your body with my own hands! Quick, march, now, and get a move on, plague take you!’

  Tonda whistled through his teeth, very briefly, very quietly, but the miller’s men in the servants’ hall all heard him. When the head journeyman came back into the room with the party of soldiers, it was quite empty.

  ‘Will your lordships please be seated, and the food will come at once!’ said Tonda.

  While the uninvited guests made themselves at home, loosened their neckcloths and unbuttoned their gaiters, the miller’s men were putting their heads together in the kitchen.

  ‘Those pigtailed apes!’ cried Andrush. ‘Who do they think they are?’

  He had a plan, and all the others, even Tonda, liked it. Andrush and Stashko quickly prepared a meal, with some help from Michal and Merten: three dishes full of bran and sawdust, mixed to a mush with rancid linseed oil and seasoned with crumbs of tobacco. Juro ran out to the pigsty and came back with two moldy loaves under his arm, and Krabat and Hanzo filled five tankards with brackish water from the rainwater butt in the yard.

  When it was all ready Tonda went back to the soldiers and announced that dinner was ready, and if His Worship permitted, he would have it served up. Thereupon he snapped his fingers … and that was a special sort of finger-snapping, as was soon to be seen.

  First the head journeyman had the three dishes brought in.

  ‘Now here, if it please your lordships, we have noodle soup with beef, chicken and giblets, there’s a dish of tripe and kale, and that one is vegetables – white beans and fried onions, with pork crackling …’

  The lieutenant sniffed the dishes; he was finding it hard to choose.

  ‘This is good food you’ve brought us! I’ll take some of the soup, for a start.’

  And there was ham and smoked meat, too, Tonda told them, pointing to the mouldy bread Juro was bringing in on a plate.

  ‘But there’s still something missing – something very important!’ the corporal reminded him. ‘Smoked meat gives you a thirst, and a good thirst must be quenched while it’s young, by thunder and lightning and all the plagues of Egypt, it must!’

  At a sign from Tonda, Hanzo, Krabat, Petar, Lyshko, and Kubo came marching in, each carrying a tankard full of rainwater.

  ‘By your leave, Your Worship – your very good health!’