Jarmila by Ernst Weiß Read Free Book Online Page B

a murderer too! Look at this? Do you recognise it? You killed the woman! You are all witnesses, this is blood, isn’t it?’ He dipped his hand in the blood and held it up for everybody to see. All stood transfixed, in deadly silence. Full of horror, I looked down at the shiny new white tiles. I noticed Jarmila’s bare feet, the skin in shades of white and red. Delicate pearl-coloured feathers had been carried along by the draught and had gathered around them. This reminded me of the first time I saw her, those rosy feet embedded in light down. This sight had led to the ruin of us all.
    He had lunged at me now in feigned fury, pounding and punching me brutishly, his massive knee thrust in my back like a stone. The mayor tried to protect me. Yet the farmer would not let go and pulled his hatchet from his belt to deal me a blow on the skull. ‘I’ll killhim. He murdered her and I see this as an act of selfdefence. Such filth does not deserve to live!’ The mayor threw himself between us.
    ‘Shut up! Leave him alone!’ he said. He had looked upwards and seen the broken floorboards. He continued in an even graver tone: ‘You’re not to touch anything else either. Your wife wasn’t murdered. We are dealing with an accident. She fell on to the stone floor below. Where is the heavy trap-door you used to have here?’
    ‘He pushed her, he murdered her! Don’t you know him? He’s been after her for many years. In vain. Now he has finally had his revenge.’ He turned to attack me again, but my strength had returned and now I was the one to hurl him into the corner, sending him sprawling among his sacks of feathers, still clutching his ridiculous hatchet. ‘No one moves until the police get here. Everyone stay where you are! Get back!’ the mayor barked.
    I meant to obey. He was right! Yet just at that moment the second farm-hand, the retarded one, appeared. He was bewildered by all the commotion. In his arms he carried my little son who was awake and looked around with his big, blue eyes. I jumped up and ran towards him …
    Only to stop in mid-stride, stopped by the thought that he should be spared the sight of his dead mother.A child of two years with a receptive mind should not be exposed to this sight, for he might never forget it. I snatched the horse blanket which covered the second tramp and flung it over the half-naked young woman, over Jarmila. I never set eyes on her again. No one stopped me. We all waited in silence for the police to arrive. A few old women whispered prayers, crossing themselves, shuddering piously while deep inside revelling in their old hate. The wooden trickle of the rosary beads could be heard—perhaps this was as it should be. The lanterns had been placed on the ground, the light fell on the barrows’ wheels and the dead tramp, the younger one. Jarmila’s husband had gone up to his child. With fat fingers he patted his shoulders gently and tenderly until he stopped crying. No one intervened when he picked him up and carried him back to the house and put him to bed. Then he returned. He ignored me and I him. By now the old women had started to weep and the police had trouble shooing them all out of the barn. The officer compiled a brief report and announced my arrest. Jarmila’s husband was also under suspicion but released on bail for he was a landowner after all and the suspicion surrounding him was not of the same gravity. They didn’t believe him capable of anything, but me of everything!”

XIV
    “ T HE BARN was cordoned off behind us. I was taken to the fire station; my hands hadn’t been tied after all. I couldn’t sleep. It struck me in the dead of night that I might be an arsonist, thanks to my own foolishness, but Jarmila’s husband was a murderer, driven by jealousy. He had deliberately replaced the trap-door with the thin slats, he had calculatingly had the floor of the barn paved with flagstones, and he had intentionally stuffed the feathers into sacks!
    And yet it