A Witch's Burden

by D. W. Goates

  As he was clearing papers from Vogel’s office, a curiosity almost equal to that of Ernst Sachs inspired him to inspect the documents before discarding them. Vogel had been careful to leave no trace of his pilfered retirement behind, but the collective nature of these papers did not add up—everywhere it seemed were little sums which, try though he might, he could not bring into balance. The old man had missed something in his dotage, and this eager young fellow had found it.

  It took some months for the new official to achieve certainty in his investigations, but when he had irrefutable proof, he presented this most properly to the constable, his fellow councilmen, and the mayor.

  Vogel was arrested and the stolen funds recovered. A letter from the Sachses’ old supplier in Regensburg had also arrived to further confirm the shopkeepers’ innocence. Even their departure from church was explained when others, feeling more comfortable in the new environment, shared that they too had wondered more than once about the lack of attention paid to God in His own house.

  The following year—in an attempt to assuage their guilty consciences—the townspeople of Waldheim commissioned and erected a memorial to Ernst Sachs. Vogel’s ill-gotten gains provided the capital for the project, and the site selection was obvious.

  The statue stands watch to this day in Waldheim’s Marktplatz, the very spot where the maypole had stood before it and Herr Sachs were consumed by the fires of foolish judgment.

  Having had some time to get to know the Waldheimers herself, Elke was not in the least surprised by this story, but it did intrigue her. And she was especially eager now to find out more about these books—why they had been put away to rot in such forgotten crates. Her mind raced with such thoughts that she found it impossible to read further, and so turned in earlier than planned.

  After a restless night’s sleep, Elke awoke early and hastily readied herself for school. She was eager to confront Schoolmaster Rückert with her find. On leaving her lonely house, she made sure to remember her sample volume from the discovered cache.

  At school, Elke busied herself by tidying Frau Gellar’s desk while keeping a close watch on the door. Rückert was later than usual. He finally arrived only moments before the other teachers were due. Elke was forced to rush upon him with much less of an introduction to the subject than she had planned or would have in any circumstance desired.

  “Herr Rückert! May I have a moment of your time, please?” Elke stood up and started walking at him with the book the moment the skinny man was half in the door.

  “Oh, do give me a moment, fräulein. I’ve only just arrived . . .” His annoyance was evident, having been foiled in his attempt to duck into his office undisturbed.

  “It’s about a book—a book I found . . .”

  “Can’t we talk about this later . . . this afternoon, maybe?” he replied, already inside his office as he turned and made to shut its door.

  She was at that door, brandishing the book.

  “It’s important. See.” She held out the book, its fine cover framed by her delicate hands. “I found a whole crate of them just like this in the old house where I stay.”

  The old man stared at the book as if it were a ghost. Momentarily taken aback by this, the young teacher managed to recover herself enough to explain that she had reviewed it and found it to be an excellent student reader; she proclaimed it far superior to anything they had available in the school at present.

  “The students will love them!” said Elke with renewing enthusiasm. “With your permission—”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” he bellowed. He too had recovered. “You will take that thing out of here at once! You are not to bring any of those books to this school! You hear me?”

  His words, full of fear and anger, gave Elke pause, and he exploited the hesitation to shoo her not only from his door, but from the main and out into the square. With an abrupt slam, the school was then shut to her, and she was left outside, stunned, with the cold morning air biting at her skin.

  She couldn’t believe that such fine books were being discounted without consideration. What could explain Rückert’s bizarre reaction? Though doubtful, Elke supposed it at least possible that he was merely out of sorts on the morning, or perhaps feeling ill; he had arrived late. And it was a fact that he had never been particularly kind to her.

  Remembering that Fräulein Rückert, the old man’s niece, usually came in from the back door around this time, Elke resolved to try and drum up some resistance against him. From a side street she circled around the school building and tried the back door. It opened, confirming the other teacher had arrived. She then checked the door to Fräulein Rückert’s classroom and it too opened. Rückert was just sitting down at her desk.

  “Do you have a moment, fräulein?” asked Elke. Her tone was obsequious in spite of how obnoxious she found the woman.

  “Yes, what is it?” Rückert’s face betrayed a rude impatience.

  “I’ve discovered some wonderful textbooks that I would like to suggest we use in Frau Geller’s class, but I thought I’d best ask a second opinion of one of the teachers first.” Elke was careful in buttering her up; demonstrating that she remembered her place was the first task in this.

  “Ask Frau Geller,” replied the younger teacher, as bluntly and dismissively as possible.

  “I would, but you know how busy she can be . . . Look, this book I found is spectacular. The students would learn so much from it. In fact, it’s so good, that I’m certain you’d get special credit for its discovery from Geller, and most surely from your uncle. I’d introduce it myself, but I’ll be leaving soon . . . My only concern is for the students.”

  “Leave it here, then. I’ll look at it later.” Rückert gestured to a corner of her messy desk.

  “Thank you . . . Remember, there’s a whole bunch more where this one came from. I’m just sure the students would love them . . .”

  “Yes, yes . . . The students are almost here. You’d best run along.”

  This last disrespectful comment irked Elke. And she was sure it was meant to do so, yet she gave no reply. By her calculations she had but a few weeks left of this exile in Waldheim before she would have enough money to leave. A petty insult to her ego was no match for the value these books would represent to the students she was leaving behind.

  At the end of the day, before leaving school, Fräulein Schreiber checked in at the back classroom to see if Fräulein Rückert had had a chance to review the textbook. Knowing how apathetic the woman was, Schreiber was not optimistic when she peeked in the open door, but she was soon surprised. Rückert was sitting upright at her desk and gazing lovingly at the textbook. The visitor almost said something but, noticing that she had yet to be seen, instead stood and watched from the doorway.

  It did not take long, however, before it became apparent that just as Elke had been ensorcelled by the color pictures, so too was Fräulein Rückert. The woman was obviously just looking at them rather than reading the text, but in any case, that she was impressed by the book was obvious.

  Elke gave the teacher a bit more time with the book before finally announcing her presence. Approaching the desk, she asked Rückert for her opinion of it. The response, though predictably simple-minded, was approving. Good, thought Elke. Perhaps with his niece on board, and maybe even Frau Geller, she could overwhelm the schoolmaster’s unjust objections to it. She was in the process of taking the book back and thanking Fräulein Rückert for her time when that very schoolmaster’s voice rang out behind her.

  “Is that that book?”

  Elke wheeled to face the door to the classroom where he stood.

  “Yes, but—” The trapped book advocate was disarmed. She tried gesturing at the old man’s niece, still sitting there at her desk.

  “Get that book out of this school immediately, or you’re dismissed . . . whether you’re ready or not!”

&n
bsp; This last bit was a clear reference to her still incomplete savings and hopefully nearing departure date. It was too much. Elke took the book and strode to the door to leave. The spiteful schoolmaster was standing in her way and about to say something else to her when she interrupted him.

  With her head down, and with great deliberation she said, “Herr Doktor, I will remove this book from the school at once and will never bring it here again.” To her own surprise she had added a short curtsey to this expression, and it may have been this which disbarred him from her path.

  Nothing further was said as Elke moved purposefully to make her departure by the front door to the square.

  As she walked home, Elke seethed with hatred for the village and must have openly scowled at the few passersby she encountered, for they swerved to avoid her path. Nothing was going to prevent her from leaving, and as soon as it was possible for her to do so.

  Arriving home, the unhappy exile greeted yet another injury; an intruder had visited in her absence. The crates that had held the books she so adored were gone, as were the books themselves. Other boxes in the great room downstairs were still present, but it was obvious that they had been disturbed, some of them even ransacked. The culprit was long gone. She searched thoroughly but could find no signs of forced entry. Only then did she fear that her savings might have been pilfered. She raced up the stairs to her humble room, observing with horror that it too had hosted the burglar.

  Crestfallen, certain she had been robbed of her months of savings, Elke nonetheless fell to her knees and reached quickly under the bed for her carpetbag wherein she stashed her meager pay. The bag was still there but out of its usual position. Already disconsolate, she snatched it from beneath the bed and flung it open.

  The money was still there.

  Initially dazed, and genuinely confused by this finding, she began hastily counting out her savings in the same way she did each week.

  Every pfennig was there.

  She counted again, still not believing that someone could have discovered such a cache and not made off with it. Yet all of her savings remained. She vowed to herself then and there to come up with a better hiding place, but first she set out to inventory the remainder of her belongings.

  It took her some time, but she was eventually able to confirm that nothing of hers had been stolen. Going back downstairs, she looked carefully for clues for the real reason someone had entered her house that day. She soon surmised that whoever had come apparently had a key, for the main door was still locked, and she herself had unlocked the other door at the back as usual. The only items she could confirm missing were the books and the crates that had contained them. Whether the other disturbed boxes stacked in this house had held something that was also taken she could not say, as her accidental spilling of the books had been her first and only foray into the various things stored in the old place.

  Elke decided that this was Herr Rückert’s doing. He must have had Bernhard come after they had spoken that morning to take the books away. But what could be the man’s great issue with the books? Freshly disgusted with memories from her day, she went back upstairs to retire, but not before re-hiding her carpetbag—this time in the cold, dusty attic. It occurred to her that her only other thing of real value was her one remaining copy of the now-illicit book. That night the bedeviled teacher read herself to fitful slumber—the reader remaining tightly in her grasp even as the dreams came.

  At noon the next day, Elke crossed the square from the school to the Rathaus. She was looking for Loritz, the one person remaining in Waldheim that she felt she could trust. Finding him without difficulty, she was able to quickly convince him to grant her a private audience in one of the town offices. The comely fräulein was as oblivious to the man’s rather wrong ideas concerning her motivations as she was to his obvious disappointment when he discovered that all she wanted was for him to look at a book.

  “It’s a book,” Loritz said in deadpan. His accompanying wrinkled brow came and went entirely unnoticed.

  Elke was focused on the book she had just uncovered for him and so missed his competing interest in her face—her whole face, and not the mere profile to which he had been relegated.

  “It’s a textbook for students, but not like any one I have ever seen,” she responded enthusiastically, still looking down at it.

  “So . . .” he said, clearly trying to figure out where she was going with this.

  “Look! Look at these illustrations . . . Modern color prints . . .” Flipping through the book for him, Elke stopped when she did not receive the expected response. She turned her head up to him and was surprised to find that he had been admiring her instead of her book.

  Their eyes met for a moment before she became uncomfortable and looked away.

  “I’m sorry, I should do a better job of explaining to you why I wanted to meet today,” she said, stepping away from the desk and from him.

  In that brief moment, Elke was reminded that Loritz had feelings for her, feelings that she dared not allow herself to reciprocate under her current circumstances.

  She continued, “I found this book, and many more like it, in the house they have put me up in. Beyond the pictures, the stories too are of excellent quality . . . There’s even one about Waldheim. I wanted to use them at the school, but the schoolmaster steadfastly refuses and won’t explain why. Now they have even gone to lengths to take them away . . .”

  Breaking off, Elke began pacing ’round the room in frustration, half hoping that if Loritz did have feelings for her, he would offer some rescue in her distress.

  It worked.

  “What can I do for you, fräulein?” His words were only half sincere, offered in full recognition of her sophomoric manipulations.

  “I was hoping you could tell me something about this book . . . where it came from. It doesn’t have any publisher’s mark, but it can’t be that old with such color prints . . . And that story about Waldheim. You’re from Waldheim . . .”

  Loritz sat down at the desk to examine the textbook. He began to leaf through it, slowly and deliberately, and grew noticeably more intrigued as he did so. Wanting to follow along, Elke returned to him, leaning on the desk yet careful not to disturb his deliberations.

  Soon enough, Loritz came upon the story of Ernst Sachs and its accompanying illustration of the monument—that self-same statue just outside, eternally staring at the Rathaus as if it could see through to them even now within it.

  Elke allowed him time to read the entire story without interruption. When he was done, he looked up at her, and she at him. Gone was his previous expression of amour; replacing it was one of pride.

  “That was my grandfather,” he said.

  “Who, Sachs?” replied Elke, rather incredulous.

  “No! No . . . the ‘new councilman’ who caught Vogel and revealed all of his lies. That was my grandpa. He was a real hero.”

  “Extraordinary! So you’re following in his footsteps as councilman . . .”

  “I am,” Loritz beamed, “though I haven’t yet done anything quite as extraordinary as all of that.”

  “Well, I’m certain you are quite capable of it,” she replied, happily playing along.

  “Where did you find this book again?”

  “Books,” she corrected. “There used to be a whole crate of them in the house I’ve been staying in, but I suspect the schoolmaster is the one who had them removed. Do you know where they came from?”

  “The Margrave,” replied Loritz bluntly.

  “What? How do you know this?” Elke asked with alarm.

  But he did not answer. Instead he turned to the book’s frontispiece and pointed to its ornate coat-of-arms.

  With its origin now revealed to her, this family crest assumed a sinister quality.

  Over a week passed before the two met again on what Elke Schreiber hoped would be her
last week in Waldheim. This time it was Loritz who sought her out, though at the same time: during her noon break.

  “Won’t you let me buy you a proper dinner?” Loritz smiled rakishly as he said this. It was a grin made the more mischievous by the dance of his thin, impeccable moustache as his mouth carefully formed the words.

  Elke had not noticed him enter the school and was quite surprised; here he was upon her at her desk, having traversed the large classroom undetected. He had actually observed her, quietly, for the full span of a moment before speaking, gazing down at her as she gnawed at a plain loaf of bread, her nose deep within a book.

  Appreciating her start, he continued to remark, “That must be some book you have there. You and your books . . .”

  “It’s actually terrible,” she replied, managing a funny face of disgust. “It’s just one of these off the shelf here. No wonder the students are bored out of their minds.”

  “Won’t you leave it behind and join me at the Gastette, the one just here on the square?”

  It was considerate of him to suggest a place close by given that she was afforded a scant hour for lunch. He couldn’t know, however, that she was feeling less and less perfectly punctual the closer her departure date came. She had done all that she was capable of for the students already. For the rest, she cared not but to leave on time.

  “I’d be delighted,” she said, and then offered her hand which he gladly accepted.

  It was necessary that Elke don her coat, hat, and gloves at the door for the same reason she had been dining at her dreary desk instead of outside with her regular companion, Herr Sachs. Over the preceding days, the weather in the valley had become more and more erratic. There was a war going on: the cold dry winds from the Northern Lowland were struggling mightily to contain the warmer moist air invading from beyond the Alps—one day, freezing rain, sleet, and ice; the next, blanketing fog, followed by blowing wet and slushy snow. During the worst of it the heavens cracked and boomed as if Odin and Thor had chosen opposing sides in the conflict.