Before the Feast by Sasa Stanisic Read Free Book Online Page A

lazy way she begins to swing, the dry, lingering resonance of her note. We guess that she could sound louder, deeper, somehow more , but she doesn’t have the right audience for that. Or a good reason. Or the strength.
    She has no ornamentation, she doesn’t tell us the name of the man who cast her or the donor who gave her to us, as bells sometimes used to do. Only an inconspicuous inscription inside her rim tells us:
    BE PATIENT IN TIME OF TROUBLE
    The bell-ringer and Johann don’t often persuade all three to ring together with a sound like cymbals. The bell-ringer rings the Old Lady, his apprentice rings Bonifatius. If the Old Lady happens to forget herself, all Fürstenfelde down below pricks up its ears. People can hear: there’s something up.
    Frau Schwermuth tells two stories about the Old Lady. In the first, the black bell is ringing in the middle of the night. This is sometime in the sixteenth century, and as the bell won’t stop, more and more people assemble in the church. But there’s no bell-ringer there, no one is pulling the bell ropes. The people are feeling afraid of this bell with a mind of its own, when a storm suddenly sweeps over the village, destroying houses, burying men, women and children under trees, injuring dozens. Those who made their way to the church, however, are unhurt.
    The second story runs like this: in 1749 the black bell rings again in the middle of the night, and as it won’t stop, more and more people assemble in the church, once again there’s no one pulling the bell ropes, etc. Then the rural district shepherd tells those present the first story—about the black bell calling the people to take refuge from the storm in thehouse of God. All of a sudden screams are heard outside; the village is burning! Several people hurry out to rescue those who didn’t leave home, most of them stay in the nave of the church, thinking themselves safe from the sea of flames. The fire burns everything down. Many, many people die, including those who stayed in the church. The black bell is left enthroned on the rubble, looking even darker than before.
    We like the idea of a shepherd appointed by the rural district council.
    We trust the old stories, and we believe in the value of copper.
    WE’RE NOT WORRIED. ELECTRIC FLASHLIGHT, RAIN cape, gumboots and her umbrella: Frau Kranz is well equipped. In her little leather case, cracked, on its beam ends, a thousand and one expeditions old, are her watercolor paints, brushes, the old china saucer for mixing paints and some loo paper. For provisions: a cigar, a thermos flask of rum with some fennel tea in it, a sandwich. She carries her easel over her shoulders—Lada has built a little light into it specially for tonight. She has all you could need when you set out to paint on a night when it looks like rain.
    â€œDoes rum in fennel tea taste nice?” That’s the journalist. He’s been visiting Frau Kranz this week to write a column about her ninetieth birthday, for the weekend supplement, under the heading “We People of the Uckermark—the Nordkurier Introduces Us,” and he’s been firing off all sorts of other exciting questions, one H-bomb after another: homeland, hobbies, Hitler, hopes, Hartz IV social welfare benefits, in no specific order. “Yes, I’m afraid I really must have a photo, that’s non-negotiable; right, not in front of a tree, no, it wouldn’t be so good taken from behind; yes, I’d love some juice.”
    Frau Kranz is hanging out laundry in the garden. The journalist sniffs at a sheet.
    â€œLet’s begin at the beginning. Your homeland and how you left it.”
    â€œGood God.”
    â€œI’d be interested to know how you felt, young as you were then, going here and there all over Europe in the confusion of wartime.”
    Frau Kranz smokes a cigar, drinks rum tea with some fennel in it, has a little fit of coughing and takes the