Brother of Sleep: A Novel by Robert Schneider Page A

into his face had not one of them shouted “Stop!” and cried that the blasted cur should burn alive. Two of the people who had come tore his nightshirt off, beat him from his bed, and tore off one of his ears, while the third, like the devil, demolished all the decorations in his room, all the carvings and furniture. The eyes of the third fell upon a tin can, and on the can was written the words lamp oil . Then they threw him naked down the stairs, but he was lucky enough not to hurt himself and got away. They hurled themselves after him: they were faster, for they had the strength of murderers. He zigzagged and escaped them again, he stumbled and found his feet and burrowed into the branches of the undergrowth, climbing to the top of the gorge called St. Peter’s Rock. But there was an abyss, and there was only a single route to take: running into the smoke, through the charred and often still glowing branches of the burned forest. He had only the strength that comes from the fear of death, and it is crazed and directionless. For a while he managed to disappear into the cloud. He had burned his feet, but he felt neither cold nor hot and penetrated ever deeper into the smoke. Then he heard their voices close in front of him, turned back, ran in all directions, bumped suddenly into a tree trunk and gave a piercing cry; a sooty fist shot from the cloud, and he was captured.
    Where had he left his blasted Sunday best today? came the mocking laugh. He didn’t know whether he should hold his hand to his bloody jaw or cover his privates. And where had he put his eyeglasses today? Let him talk to them now, like a great authority, about the life of the mountain peasant and so on, and clutch his stiff collar, and swan about the place like a woman, as he mostly liked to do. They humiliated him and tormented him for more than two hours. Then they bound him with hempen rope to a tree stump, col­ lected half-charred wood, piled it around his body, poured petrol over him, bellowed with satisfaction, and set him on fire. The murderers knew that the fire had not been his doing, so they bellowed all the louder until their bellows overcame their consciences.
    It happened that at the same time Elias was ex­ploring the area around St. Peter’s Rock in search of his vanished friend, for he knew Peter’s hiding place. But he could not find him in the fault, only Elsbeth’s cat in its death rattle and a tinderbox. When he was on his way home a loud cry practically burst his eardrums. At first the cry sounded like a terrible laughter, but then Elias knew that somewhere in the cloud of smoke a man was being killed. And Elias heard the voices of the murderers, and the man who was driving the others on was Seff Alder. Seff Alder, his father. His father, whom he loved and who loved him.
    There he stood, the man-child. His fingers twisted, his lips turned blue. But from his lips there came, tenderly and endlessly, “Father, Father, Father?”

WINTER 1815
    THE dead were buried the day after New Year’s Day, nine days after the catastrophe, because Eduard Lam­parter’s body had not been found. However thoroughly they searched through the rubble of his farm, not so much as a little charred bone could they find. All that came to light was the porcelain bowl of a tobacco pipe, which made Eduard’s wife cry out with sorrow. Five coffins stood in the choir of the little church, and beneath them four little wooden boxes that had been cobbled together for the children who had died. But beside the fifth coffin stood a chair, and on it, on a damask cushion, sat Eduard Lamparter’s pipe bowl.
    The pain of the mourners was aggravated by the fact that Curate Beuerlein ended the requiem with the tuba mirum , squinted with confusion into the congregation, and then suddenly remembered, with a great deal of self-assurance, that it was time for the christening. So the curate walked down to the coffins and