Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

  ‘Don’t you want to sit down?’ he asked at last, pulled a cane chair out of a pile and offered it to the traveller, who could not very well refuse it. Now the traveller sat at the edge of a pit into which he cast a fleeting glance. It was not very deep. On one side the dug-up dirt was heaped in a mound, on the other side stood the apparatus. ‘I don’t know,’ said the officer, ‘if the commandant already explained to you how it works.’ The traveller replied with an uncertain wave of the hand; the officer could have asked for nothing better, for it was now up to him to explain the functioning of the device. ‘It is,’ he said, reaching for and leaning on a connecting rod, ‘an invention of our former commandant. I myself collaborated on the very first experiments and was involved in all the fine-tuning that led up to its completion. But he alone deserves credit for its invention. Have you heard of our former commandant? No? It is no exaggeration to maintain that the entire installation of the penal colony is his brainchild. We, his friends, were already well aware at the time of his death that the colony’s design was so comprehensive that even if his successor had a thousand new plans in mind, there would be nothing in the original concept he could change for a good many years. Our prognosis has been confirmed; the new commandant had to acknowledge this. It’s a shame you never knew the previous commandant! But be that as it may,’ the officer interrupted himself, ‘I’m blabbering on, and his apparatus stands here before us. It consists, as you can see, of three parts. Over the years somewhat popular appellations have evolved for each part. The bottom is called the bed, the top the inscriber and the middle section here is called the harrow.’

  ‘The harrow?’ asked the traveller. He had not listened attentively, the sun inflicted all too merciless an assault on this shadow-less valley, it was difficult to gather one’s thoughts. All the more praiseworthy did the officer seem to him, zealously elucidating everything, decked out in his tight-fitting dress uniform hung with epaulettes and aiguillettes, assiduously engaged as he spoke, screwdriver in hand, in tightening a loose screw here and there. The soldier seemed to share the traveller’s disinterest. He had the chains of the condemned man attached to both his wrists, rested with one hand on his rifle, let his head hang down and did nothing. The traveller was not surprised at this, since the officer spoke French, in which language, no doubt, neither the soldier nor the condemned was conversant. It was, therefore, all the more remarkable that the condemned man, nevertheless, took pains to follow the officer’s explanations. With a sort of sleepy complaisance he invariably turned his gaze in the direction in which the officer pointed, and as the latter was interrupted by a question from the newcomer, he, too, turned his attention to the traveller now, along with the officer.

  ‘Yes, the harrow,’ said the officer, ‘the name fits. The pins are set in a harrow-like arrangement, and the entire device is handled like a harrow, even if only in one place and with a good deal more artistry. You will, by the way, grasp my meaning in a moment. The condemned is laid here on the bed. I would, if you don’t mind, first like to describe the apparatus and only then to set it in motion. That will permit you to appreciate its operation better. Also, a cog wheel in the inscriber is a bit too worn down; it screeches something awful when in use, so much so that it’s impossible to communicate; spare parts are unfortunately hard to come by here. Now then, here is the bed, as I said. It is completely covered with a cotton wad, the purpose of which you will soon discover. The condemned is laid belly-down on this bed, naked of course; here are straps for the hands, here for the feet, here for the neck, to keep him in place. Here at the head of the bed, where, as I said, the man is laid face-down, you can see this little felt wad easily regulated so as to be pressed into the man’s mouth. Its purpose is to prevent the condemned from screaming and biting his tongue. Of course, the man is compelled to accept the wad, since, on account of the throat strap, his neck would otherwise be broken.’

  ‘That’s cotton?’ asked the traveller, bending forward.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ the officer replied, ‘go ahead and touch it.’ He grabbed the traveller’s hand and ran it over the bed. ‘The felt is woven in a very particular way, which is why you can’t recognize it as cotton; I will get to its purpose presently.’ Already favourably impressed, shielding his eyes with his hand against the sun, the traveller gazed upwards at the device. It was quite a large contraption. The bed and the inscriber were both about the same size and resembled two dark trunks. The inscriber was suspended some two metres above the bed; both were fastened at the edges by four brass bars that almost shimmered in the sunlight. The harrow hung from a steel band between the trunks.

  Hardly noticing the traveller’s initial indifference, the officer now appreciated his budding interest; he paused in his explanations so as to give the traveller the time to quietly take it all in. The condemned man mimicked the traveller; since, shackled as he was, he could not bring his hand to his eyes, he simply squinted.

  ‘So the man is laid on it,’ said the traveller, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs.

  ‘Yes,’ said the officer, pushed the brim of his cap back a bit and wiped his flushed face with his hand, ‘now listen! Both the bed and the inscriber are powered by their own electric batteries; the bed needs them for itself, the inscriber to power the harrow. As soon as the man is firmly fastened the bed is set in motion. It trembles in tiny, very rapid palpitations, simultaneously to the side and up and down. You will have seen similar devices in sanatoria; only in our bed all the movements are exactly calibrated; they have to accord precisely with the motion of the harrow. It’s up to the harrow, you see, to carry out the actual sentence.’

  ‘What precisely does the sentence say?’ asked the traveller.

  ‘You don’t know that either?’ the officer replied, astonished, and bit his lip. ‘Forgive me if perhaps my explanations sound muddled; I beg your pardon for this lapse. It was, in fact, the commandant who customarily presented these explanations in the past; the new commandant dispensed with this honourable duty; the fact that he did not even deem it necessary to inform such an important visitor’ – the traveller tried with raised hands to demur to such lofty esteem, but the officer insisted – ‘to inform such an important visitor of the terms of the sentence, that is another innovation which’ – he had a curse on his lips, bit his tongue and simply said: ‘I was not informed of it, the guilt of the condemned is not my affair. That having been said, I am perhaps the best equipped to explain our manner of sentencing, for I have here’ – he tapped his breast pocket – ‘the pertinent drawings and designs of the former commandant.’

  ‘Drawings done by the commandant himself?’ asked the traveller. ‘Was he everything in one? Soldier, judge, builder, chemist and draughtsman?’

  ‘Indeed he was,’ said the officer, nodding with a blank, meditative expression. Then he looked somewhat critically at his hands; they did not seem to him quite clean enough to touch the drawings; he walked over to the bucket and washed them again. Whereupon he pulled out a leather étui and said: ‘Our sentence does not sound severe. The condemned is to have the command he disobeyed inscribed with the harrow on his body. This condemned man, for instance’ – the officer pointed at the man in chains – ‘will have inscribed on his body: Honour your superiors!’

  The traveller cast a fleeting glance at the condemned man; when the officer pointed at him he held his head down low and seemed to be straining all his powers of hearing to learn something about his fate. But the movement of his tightly pressed, puffy lips clearly indicated that he could not understand a thing. The traveller wanted to pose various questions, but at the sight of the man merely asked: ‘Does he know his sentence?’

  ‘No,’ said the officer, impatient to proceed with his explanations, but the traveller interrupted him:

  ‘He doesn’t know his own sentence?’

  ‘No,’ the officer repeated, pausing a moment, as if he expected the traveller to justify his question, and then said: ‘It would be senseless to inform him.
He will, after all, experience it in the flesh.’ Inclined though he was to fall silent, the traveller sensed the condemned man turning his gaze towards him; the condemned man appeared to be asking if the procedure just described met with his approval.

  Consequently, the traveller, who had already leant back in his chair, bent forward again and asked: ‘But the fact that he was condemned, that he must surely know!’

  ‘No again,’ said the officer and smiled at the traveller, as if expecting a few more curious declarations.

  ‘No,’ said the traveller, stroking his forehead, ‘then the man still doesn’t even know the court’s response to his defence?’

  ‘He had no occasion to defend himself,’ the officer said and looked askance, as though he were talking to himself and wished to spare the traveller the shame of having to have such self-evident matters revealed to him.

  ‘But he must surely have had the opportunity to plead his defence,’ the traveller said, rising from the chair.

  The officer recognized that he ran the risk of being held up for a long time in his explanation of the apparatus, walked up to the traveller, slung his arm in his, pointed at the condemned, who, realizing that all attention was so clearly directed at him, stood up straight – an action likewise abetted by the soldier’s tugging on the chain – and said: ‘This is how matters stand. I was summoned to this penal colony to serve as executioner. Despite my youth. I also assisted the former commandant in all matters of punishment and know the device better than anyone else. My actions presupposed the certainty of guilt. Other courts cannot follow this principle, as they comprise several judges and also have higher courts to contend with. That is not the case here, or, at least, was not under the former commandant. The new commandant has indeed already expressed the desire to have a say; I have managed for the moment to divert his attention to other matters, and will, I trust, manage to keep doing so. You wished to have this case explained; it’s as simple as all the others. This morning a captain reported that this man, assigned to him as his lackey, and who sleeps in front of his door, overslept. He is duty-bound at the stroke of each hour to stand up and salute at the door. To be sure, hardly a daunting responsibility, but a necessary one, as the man must remain alert both as guard and servant. The captain wanted to confirm last night that the man was doing his duty. At the stroke of two he opened the door and found him rolled up and fast asleep on the floor. He fetched a riding crop and struck him full in the face. But instead of leaping up and begging forgiveness, the lackey grabbed his master by the legs, shook him and cried out: “Throw the whip away or I’ll eat you.” These are the facts of the case. The captain reported to me an hour ago, I wrote down his statement, to which I promptly added the judgment. I then had the man put in irons. All this went smoothly. Had I first called him in for interrogation it would only have resulted in confusion. He would have lied, and had I succeeded in refuting these lies, he would have promptly replaced them with fresh lies, and so on and so forth. But I’ve got him and don’t intend to let him go. Is everything quite clear now? But time is passing, the execution was already scheduled to begin, and I’m still not finished explaining how it works.’ He urged the traveller back into his chair, once again approached the device and began: ‘As you can see, the harrow is shaped to fit the form of the human body; this is the part for the upper body, here is the part for the legs. Only this one small bit is meant for the head. Is everything clear?’ With a friendly look he leant in the traveller’s direction, eager and ready to launch into the most detailed explanations.

  The traveller regarded the harrow with a ruffled brow. The disclosure concerning the legal proceedings did not satisfy him. Nevertheless he was obliged to remind himself that this was a penal colony, that exceptional measures were necessary here and that it was imperative to proceed in a military manner from beginning to end. He did, however, set some store in the new commandant who, clearly, albeit gradually, intended to institute a new set of procedures that did not sink into the limited mind of this officer. Following this train of thought, the traveller asked: ‘Will the commandant attend the execution?’

  ‘It is not certain,’ said the officer, unsettled by the sudden question, his friendly expression twisting into a grimace, ‘which is precisely why we have to get a move on. As much as I regret to do so, I will even have to cut my explanations short. But I would be happy to elaborate with more detailed explanations tomorrow, once the apparatus has been cleaned – the fact that it gets so filthy is its only failing. When the man is laid on the bed and it begins to tremble, the harrow sinks down to the body. It automatically adjusts itself such that the spikes just graze the body’s surface; once the adjustment is complete, this steel cable immediately tightens into a bar. And now the game begins. A person not privy to the workings of the device will notice no external difference in the punishment. The harrow appears to have a uniform functioning. Trembling, it sinks its spikes into the body, while the body itself, moreover, trembles along with the bed. In order to permit all present to supervise the dispensation of judgment, the harrow was made of glass. Embedding the needles in the glass did entail some technical difficulties, but we finally pulled it off after numerous attempts. No effort, I may add, was spared in the process. Now everyone can witness through the glass as the sentence is inscribed in the body. Don’t you want to come closer and have a good look at the needles?’

  The traveller rose slowly from his chair, stepped forward and bent over the harrow. ‘You see,’ said the officer, ‘there are two kinds of needles in various arrangements. Every long one has a short one next to it. The long needle inscribes, and the short one squirts water to wash away the blood and preserve the clarity of the letters. The bloody water is then directed here to little ducts, from which it flows into the principal pipe, thence draining off into the pit.’ The officer pointed out with his finger the precise path of the bloody water. When, to make it as clear as possible, he actually caught up the spout of the drainage pipe in his two hands, the traveller raised his head and, reaching behind him with his hand, wanted to return to his chair. Whereupon he noticed with a start that, like him, the condemned man had also followed the officer’s invitation to take a closer look at the mechanism of the harrow. He had dragged the drowsy soldier a few paces forward by the chain and leant over the glass. One could see how, with an uncertain gaze, he sought out what the other two men had been looking at, but for want of explanations, failed to find it. He leant first in this direction, then in that. Again and again his gaze ran over the glass. The traveller wanted to make him stop it, as his actions were probably punishable. But the officer held back the traveller with one hand and with the other reached for a clod of earth from the mound and flung it at the soldier. The latter’s eyes shot open, he saw what the condemned man had dared do and promptly dropped his rifle and, digging the heels of his boots into the ground, dragged the condemned back with a jerk so that the man fell down, and the soldier watched as he turned and rattled his chains. ‘Stand him up!’ the officer cried out, having noticed that the traveller was unduly distracted by the sight of the condemned. The traveller even went so far as to turn his back to the harrow, in which he appeared to have lost interest, just to establish what was happening to the condemned. ‘Take good care of him!’ the officer cried out again. Bounding around the apparatus, he himself grabbed the condemned under his armpits, and since the man kept slipping, with the soldier’s aid he propped him upright.

  ‘So now I know it all,’ the traveller remarked, as the officer walked back to him.

  ‘All except the most important part,’ the officer replied, grabbed the traveller by the arm and pointed upwards. ‘There inside the inscriber is the clockwork that directs the motion of the harrow, and this clockwork is set according to the diagram prescribed by the sentence. I still use the diagrams prepared by the former commandant. Here they are’ – he pulled several sheets of paper from the leather étui – ‘unfortunately I can’t let you touch them, they are my most pre
cious possessions. If you’ll be seated I’ll show them to you from a distance, then you’ll be able to see everything clearly.’ He held up the first sheet. The traveller would have liked to say something appreciative, but all he saw were labyrinthine, repeatedly criss-crossing lines that so densely covered the page that one had to strain one’s eyes to see the white space in between. ‘Read it,’ said the officer. ‘I can’t,’ said the traveller. ‘But it’s clear enough,’ said the officer.

  ‘It is very artful,’ said the traveller evasively, ‘but I am unable to decipher it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the officer, laughed and returned the étui to his pocket, ‘it’s no calligraphy for schoolchildren. It takes time to decipher. You, too, would surely recognize it. It cannot, of course, be a simple script; it mustn’t kill immediately, but rather, on average, after a period of twelve hours or so; the turning point is geared to set in at the sixth hour. The actual script has to be enveloped by countless calligraphic flourishes; the script itself only traces a narrow belt around the waist; the rest of the body is intended for ornamentation. Can you now appreciate the harrow and the complexity of the entire apparatus? Look here!’ He clambered up the ladder, turned a wheel and called down: ‘Watch out, step to the side!’ And everything was set in motion. It would have been a perfect wonder, had the wheel not screeched. As if taken by surprise, the officer threatened the annoying wheel with a raised fist, shrugged, raised his arms apologetically to the traveller and climbed down to appreciate the functioning of the apparatus from below. But something else was amiss which he alone noticed; he climbed back up the ladder again, reached with both his hands into the inner workings of the inscriber, then, instead of using the ladder, slid down a bar so as to descend more quickly, and yelled with the greatest urgency into the traveller’s ear so as to make his words intelligible above the mechanical racket: ‘Can you grasp the procedure? The harrow starts writing; once it’s done with the first instalment of the sentence on the man’s back, the felt layer turns and slowly rolls the body on its side, so as to provide the harrow with a free surface. In the meantime the raw written parts are dabbed with cotton, infused with a special preparative which immediately stops the bleeding, in anticipation of deeper inscriptions. Here then, as the body keeps turning, the teeth at the rim of the harrow tear the felt from the wounds, toss it into the pit, and the harrow gets back to work. In this way it inscribes the sentence deeper and deeper over the twelve-hour period. For the first six hours the condemned lives almost as before, he only suffers pain. After two hours the wad is removed from the man’s mouth as he is now too weak to scream. Here in this electrically heated porringer at the head side a rice pap is placed, from which, if the man wants, he can partake, snatching it up with his tongue. None of them miss the chance. I can’t recall a single one, and I’ve been at it a long time. It’s only at the sixth hour that he loses the will to eat. At which point I generally kneel down here to observe this manifestation of his state. The man seldom swallows the last gulp, he just turns it around in his mouth and spits it out into the pit. I have to duck or else I get it in the face. But oh how silent he suddenly becomes at that sixth hour! The dumbest of them begin to get it. Understanding first radiates around the eyes. From here it spreads elsewhere. It’s a sight that could seduce one to want to lay oneself down along with him under the harrow. Nothing more happens, the man just begins to decipher the script, he purses his lips as if to listen. You saw for yourself, it is not easy to decipher the script with one’s eyes; but our man deciphers it with his wounds. It does, of course, demand considerable effort; it takes him six hours fully to comprehend the sentence. At which point, however, the harrow pierces him all the way through and drops him into the pit, where he lands in the bloody water and cotton. Justice has now been carried out, and we, the soldier and I, scrape up his remains.’