Again there was a scream as the rod hit naked flesh.
And then, finally, Jakob Kuisl understood.
Peter couldn’t sleep.
He lay in his bed up in the schoolmaster’s attic, staring at the ceiling. The massive oaken beams looked like huge snakes hanging over him and threatening to fall down and devour him at any moment. A few times he drifted off and had bizarre dreams. In one he was in a narrow, damp cave somewhere in a mountain, and the walls had closed in on him until finally they crushed him like a bug. His days in Oberammergau had been too upsetting, especially today. He kept thinking of the conversation between Franz Würmseer and that gloomy man, the knacker, that he, Jossi, and Maxl had overheard earlier that day. There had been a secret meeting on the Döttenbichl, just as he’d told his father there would be, and it must be over now, because there had suddenly been a lot of noise out in the village late at night. He had peeked out through the shutters and seen many people outside, as well as soldiers in armor on horseback. A wagon had come clattering down the road and he got a quick glimpse of the Ammergau judge and a few other Oberammergau citizens with dark looks on their faces. What was going on out there? And how was his father? Was he all right?
But then Georg Kaiser came into his room, shooed him away from the window, and brought him back to bed. The schoolmaster had been very friendly but didn’t want to tell him what had happened. Kaiser had told him only that tomorrow everything would be clear.
But for now he should go back to sleep.
After Peter had rolled back and forth in bed for another hour, he got up. In the room beneath his he heard sounds. Evidently Georg Kaiser was also awake. Surely the old man would understand if a boy had trouble sleeping on such a night. Kaiser was a warm-hearted, open-minded man, and Peter had become very fond of him. The schoolmaster had given Peter the feeling that he was something special. He valued Peter’s drawings, his knowledge of Latin, his intelligence, and always enjoyed kidding around with him even though he was often very tired, sick, or strangely lost in his thoughts.
Barefoot and in his nightshirt, Peter groped his way across the cold wood floor, carefully opened the door, and tiptoed down the stairs. The door to the main room was ajar and a narrow ray of light fell out into the hallway. Peter went to the door and peered inside. He didn’t want to disturb the old teacher unduly. If he was too busy, Peter would perhaps go to the library. Surely the schoolmaster would allow him to sit and read there for a while.
Kaiser was sitting at his desk, wrapped in his worn woolen jacket and frowning as he leaned over a pile of sheets and documents, stopping from time to time to scribble something into a file. Peter assumed the schoolmaster was still busy working on the play—but didn’t they say the Passion play had been called off?
Unsure of what to do, Peter stood in the hallway watching the emaciated, bent-over man, who started shaking now with a coughing fit. Peter felt sorry for him. Clearly, Georg Kaiser was very ill and ought to be in bed and not working on that play. Perhaps Father could look in on him in the morning and give him some medicine, for example that delicious syrup that tasted like honey that he himself was given once in a while.
As if Kaiser had sensed his presence, he suddenly raised his head and looked toward the crack in the door. At first he seemed annoyed at Peter’s visit, but then he smiled wearily.
“Come right in, lad,” he said. “It seems like neither of us can sleep tonight. Everything has been a bit too much recently.”
Hesitantly, Peter entered the stuffy but warm room. Kaiser motioned for him to come over and offered him a seat. “Would you like me to throw some wood on the fire over in the other room so you can sit there for a while and draw? It will soon start getting light, in any case, and your father will be coming then to see you.”
Relieved, Peter nodded. He was about to leave when he happened to notice all the scribbled pages on the table. They looked very old, some were ripped, and others had little sketches on them that Peter couldn’t quite make out—perhaps drawings of a stage, or something like that. Other pages were covered with symbols whose meaning Peter didn’t know, depicting a sun, a moon, or an upside-down triangle.
“Is that the play everyone is talking about?” he asked curiously.
Kaiser looked at him hesitantly, then smiled. “It’s an old version of the play,” he finally replied. “Very old. I’m studying it, changing some passages, and taking out others.” He sighed. “As you probably know, the play is very long, perhaps too long.”
“But it’s not going to be performed anymore,” Peter responded.
Kaiser snorted. “Not this year, but in four years. I wanted to finish the work.” He raised his finger and looked at Peter amiably but sternly. “Something you should take to heart—always finish what you are working on.”
Silence reigned for a while, then Peter pointed at the documents. “It’s written in Latin.”
The schoolmaster smiled. “You are right, lad, and in addition, in dreadful handwriting, rather difficult to decipher.”
Peter studied the scribbled letters that were sometimes so small and written so closely together that his eyes blurred. Sometimes the scribe used a rust-colored ink that had been smudged in places and almost looked like dried blood. Still, Peter was able to read some of the words.
Aurum . . . argentum . . . divitiae magnae . . .
“It’s talking about gold and silver,” Peter said in amazement, as he ran his finger over the lines. “And great riches.”
Kaiser was stunned, and took the parchment sheet away from him. “It seems you have better eyes than I do,” he replied, blinking. “I haven’t been able to read those lines. Let me have a look.”
The schoolmaster put on his pince-nez and held the document very close to his face. “Aha!” he said finally, laughing softly. “It’s about the passage in the Bible where Jesus drives the merchants and moneychangers from the temple. That’s actually not part of the Passion, but a good story anyway. God knows who wrote that in the text.”
“And this here?” Peter interrupted, pointing at another parchment full of crooked Latin letters, as if the scribe had been in a great hurry. “‘When you come to the place where lightning struck down the oak, turn left until you come to a deep hole,’” he translated slowly but fluently.
Peter looked at Kaiser in surprise. “Is that in the Bible, too?”
Suddenly, Kaiser’s expression darkened, his eyes narrowed to slits, and between the eyelids the pupils gleamed like water in a deep, dark well.
“Your Latin is quite . . . astonishing for a seven-year-old,” he said hesitantly, “but I really think it’s time for you to go to bed.”
At that moment, Peter noticed a sentence on another document that seemed strangely familiar. It took him a while to realize it was nothing he’d ever read, but he’d heard it. He remembered it well, probably because the words sounded so strange to him—the very words Jossi had spoken at the Malenstein when Peter was allowed to enter the children’s secret hideout for the first time.
When the eagle utters its cry with both heads, stay on the narrow path in the shadow of the mountain . . .
A two-headed eagle had been scratched into the rock at the Malenstein, and after Peter had pointed it out, Jossi talked about the little men from Venice.
“The Venetians,” Peter gasped. “Do they really exist, and is there something about them in these documents?” He frowned as always when he was thinking hard. “And why do my friends know what’s in these papers?”
Georg Kaiser stood up abruptly, locked the door, and turned around to Peter.
“Because they are my little Venetians, Peter,” he replied in a gentle tone of voice. “My dwarfs.” He sighed deeply. “Your Latin is really much too good, Peter, and I’m afraid we two now have a little secret. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can trust you.”
The schoolmaster walked over to Peter and bent down. Suddenly, he seemed very gray and wrinkled, like an ancient evil spirit that had come down from
the Kofel to steal children. To take Peter along to a dark, dank place deep inside the mountain.
“Tell me, Peter,” he whispered into the boy’s ear, “can I trust you? Would you also like to become one of my busy little dwarfs?”
Deep within the mine, Jakob stared at the boys in disbelief, while nearby the sounds of the beating continued.
“The Oberammergau schoolmaster stands behind all this?” he finally asked in astonishment. “That little cripple who has been praising my grandson to the skies?”
The boys nodded anxiously. “Kaiser has two souls,” Jossi said softly, as if fearing that even here in the depths of the mountain, the schoolmaster could hear them. “Good—and evil. Sometimes it seems like he’s fallen into the clutches of an evil spirit. It’s not that Kaiser doesn’t like us. He doesn’t even charge the poor children for our schooling. But sometimes the light is burning all night in his study, and we know he’s brooding again over his old treasure maps and books. Then he can turn very angry and mean.”
“Poxhannes is the one who comes into the mines with us,” Maxl added in a whisper, “but we always have to report back to Georg Kaiser. When we come back and tell him we have found nothing, he becomes furious, calls us worthless riffraff, and threatens to expel our families from the valley. As the schoolmaster and writer of the Passion play, he has a lot of influence in the council.”
“Does he know there’s a badly injured girl up here?” Jakob asked.
Jossi nodded. “We told him, but he’s probably afraid word would get around in the village about what we’re really doing here. The other villagers think we’re just working for Hannes chopping wood, picking up stones, or helping in the school’s vegetable garden; nobody knows what we’re really doing.” He put on a gloomy face. “Most residents of Oberammergau don’t even care, though some of our parents suspect something but they don’t ask questions. I rarely see my father, in any case, and my mother has her hands full with my five younger brothers and sisters. She’s just happy I am out of her way and have free tuition in school.”
“So except for this Poxhannes and Georg Kaiser, no one in town has any idea what you’re doing up here?” Jakob asked.
Maxl nodded. “No one, even though . . .” He hesitated. “Dominik Faistenmantel made some strange remarks once. He had his suspicions, but now he is crucified and dead.”
“And I’m gradually beginning to suspect who’s behind it,” Jakob mumbled. “How could I have been so stupid? Dominik never really fit in with the others.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jossi asked, puzzled, but Jakob just put on an angry face and waved him off.
“That’s of no importance. The only thing that matters now is that I have to get you all out of here, but first I’ve got to dispose of Poxhannes.” He pointed to the opening in the wall. “You two go in there and lure him away from the chest. Don’t worry—I’ll be close behind you.”
The boys visibly struggled with their fear, but they pulled themselves together and crept through the hole into the cave. A moment later, Jakob could hear his opponent’s shout of triumph.
“Ha! I knew you two brats would come back when you heard the others whining,” he crowed. “So, do you admit your guilt? Did you lead that fellow here? If you tell me the truth, maybe I’ll show some mercy and simply beat the daylights out of you instead of letting you rot to death down here with the hangman.” The loud snap of his stick sounded like a gunshot. “Speak up!”
Jakob Kuisl didn’t waste any time. He squeezed through the hole, groaning, and saw Poxhannes approach the two boys threateningly. He watched in alarm as Hannes put down the stick and started waving around a large sledgehammer, grinning as the children screamed in horror.
“I told you to speak up, you little maggots!” Hannes screamed. “Well?” He brought the hammer crashing down on a rock, which burst into little pieces.
Jakob moved closer until he could see the chest tucked away in a niche at the back of the cave. The opening he’d just crawled out of was exactly halfway between Hannes and the chest. In his mind he calculated how many steps away it was.
Ten . . . fifteen . . . twenty . . . If he acted now, he could do it.
“Open your goddamned mouths!” Hannes screamed, swinging the hammer.
With both arms Jakob heaved himself out of the hole.
Now!
He tumbled to the ground like a wet sack, but quickly scrambled to his feet and ran toward the chest, which was held closed by leather straps but—thank God—had no lock. The other children gaped at him wide-eyed, as if they’d seen a ghost, and some screamed in shock, but Jakob didn’t waste a second, running on, stooped over, toward the chest.
“You . . . you filthy traitors!” Hannes screamed as he now caught sight of the hangman as well. “Is this my reward for feeding you all these years? You’ve reported me? Now just wait . . .”
Brandishing the sledgehammer, he stormed toward Jakob, who opened the chest. There amid the damp canvases, filthy leather aprons, and torches lay the pistol. He grabbed it, turned around, aimed . . . and saw how Hannes suddenly stopped, and broke out in a wide, malicious grin. He was standing next to one of the oak pillars supporting the roof of the mine, and slowly raised the hammer.
“Very well, hangman,” he said in a deep, threatening tone. “You have the pistol, but I have my nice little hammer. If you shoot, I have enough time to strike the column, and what do you think will happen then, hmm? We’ll all go to hell together, you, me, and all the dear children. Tell me, is that what you want?”
Jakob hesitated and glanced up at the ceiling, which was brittle and crumbling, just as it was in other parts of the mine. It was entirely possible that there was nothing holding it up except the columns. He couldn’t risk it.
Quietly he placed the weapon down on the ground, looked at Hannes, and waited for what would come next.
“Kick it over to me,” Hannes ordered. “And hurry up.”
Jakob nudged the pistol with his foot so that it slid across the floor to Hannes, who tossed the hammer into a corner. With a malicious grin he reached for the pistol and aimed it at the hangman.
“It will be an exquisite pleasure for me to take the life of a hangman,” he snarled. “Go to the devil.”
He squeezed the trigger.
There was a click, nothing else.
For a moment, Jakob stood there like a rock. When he first saw the weapon in the chest, he immediately suspected it might have gotten wet lying among all the damp canvases. But that was not a sure thing. Now he was too tired to be relieved. Screaming, he rushed at his enemy, who still held the pistol in his hand, befuddled. Only at the last moment did he drop it, spin around, and run as fast as he could toward the exit. Cursing, Jakob followed.
Jakob, you’re getting old. Formerly, the fellow wouldn’t have gotten away that easily.
At the end of the cave was a low passage, only a few steps long, leading outside. The exit was so far away from the other corridor that Jakob hadn’t discovered it in the darkness. But now dawn was breaking, and in the first light of day Jakob saw Hannes run toward the makeshift shelter, grab Joseffa, the injured girl, by the collar, and shake her like a captured rabbit. The terrified girl let out a loud cry of pain.
“Stay right where you are, big fellow. One more step and I’ll wring her neck,” Hannes warned. “By God, I’ll do it.”
“Leave God out of this. I hate to mention you and God in the same breath.” Jakob stopped and raised his hands. “Just calm down,” he finally grumbled. “Let the girl go, and you can leave.”
“Ha! So you can catch up with me later and throw me off the mountain?” Hannes laughed, but it sounded more like a howl of desperation. “Oh, no you won’t. You’re going back to the cave now, and I never want to see your ugly snout around here again, do you understand?”
Jakob nodded, and started backing off, step by step, toward the entrance to the mine. He crawled inside and was again engulfed in darkness.
“He’ll s
urely kill her,” cried Maxl, who had been waiting for him near the entrance. “He’s so angry, and now that he can’t kill you, he’ll certainly take his anger out on poor Joseffa.”
“Nobody here is going to take out their anger on anyone,” Jakob said, trying to sound as calm and confident as possible. “The only one who’s going to get hurt is your Poxhannes,” he continued, lowering his voice. “And I’m going to smash his face until it’s even uglier than it already is. Listen to me now—run down to the valley and back to your parents; I’ll worry about Joseffa. Everything’s going to be fine, and Hannes will never torment you again.”
Jakob Kuisl couldn’t help thinking of his two grandchildren, who were as old as many of these children. Even though they were the grandsons of a hangman, they had a family that cared about them and would do everything they could to protect them. These children, on the other hand, had no one to protect them. They needed him.
Jakob waited a while, then he crept back cautiously to the entrance. Outside there was nothing to see or hear except for a few birds that were starting to wake up. At least he could make out his surroundings in the first light of the morning.
He was on a steep slope strewn with massive boulders. Not far above him were jagged peaks, one in the form of a huge raised finger, and off to one side was the summit of the Kofel. The path he’d taken several hours ago was a mere stone’s throw below him. It seemed to lead to the Kofel, though the trail soon disappeared around a corner.
Where is he?
Suddenly he heard a child’s cry. It came from the right, where the Kofel was enshrouded in the morning fog.
He looked suspiciously up the steep slope toward the summit that, from this point on, seemed forbidding and completely unclimbable. Still, the shout had come from exactly that direction.
The hangman tried to shake off at least the worst of the pain in his pounding head, then he slid down to the path below by the seat of his pants, scrambled to his feet, and ran off toward the Kofel.
Frozen with fear, Peter sat on his chair as Georg Kaiser patted his head almost tenderly. The schoolmaster’s lips had curled into a lopsided grin that looked as if it had been pasted on. The friendly old man, the good friend of his father, had suddenly turned into something completely strange.