Martin and Gernot belonged together like the sun and daylight – where you found one of them, you could be sure you would not have to look far for the other!
As soon as one of the boys rubbed his eyes in the morning, he would jump out of his roughly carpentered bed and run across the street to meet the other – still wearing his nightdress. They often met on the rather bumpy main street that ran between the two farms and tossed coins about where they would continue their night’s rest.
Ever since men remembered, Rodenbach had been a place where oxen were bred in the two estates. Ten years ago, the parents of Martin and Gernot had inherited the farms. And since they felt about each other in a way similar to that of their two sons, the village was always full of gossip:
“As likely as not”, people whispered to each other, “those dirty ox breeders are now so full of sodomy perversity that they do not even know which of the two boys was fathered by which of the men“?
But Martin and Gernot could not have cared less. When, after several years, they inherited the estates and married their wives Gertrud and Hildegard on the same day, they remained as inseparable as ever, regardless of all the gossip.
Shortly after the wedding, Gertrud, among cries of pain that could be heard all day long in the whole village, bore him a strong sun. Her husband had him named Siegfried. And Hildegard gave her Gernot a Berta, who was far easier to deliver. But it was only a girl! This was also something the villagers found hilarious; Siegfried, so they said, resembled Martin’s friend Gernot and Berta was said to have the same gleam of silver as her mother’s girl-friend.
”Why don’t you just let those stupid people talk“, Martin and Gernot told their nervous wives whenever they complained about, again, having been subjected to silly prattling.
”What a pity that there is never anybody telling it right into our faces“, they laughed as they made their right hands – each of them lacked the small finger – into fists and threateningly stuck them up towards the cloudy Rodenbach skies.
Berta and Siegfried grew up just as wild and unrestrained as their fathers had before them and everybody knew that those two would also marry and continue to breed oxen, as was the iron law of these estates …
But then everything changed!
Because even in the god-forsaken village of Rodenbach, the witches got bolder and bolder, sending the perplexed farmers and craftsmen apocalyptical hailstorms, deluge-like rains, fires that would make ashes of half of the village – and the ’Black Death’, pestilence …
Even after the congregation had been ordered from the pulpit of the small Rodenbach church to immediately notify the inquisition of any suspicious witch activity, and even though two witches had already been found in the village and handed over to the Hanau legislators, the villagers still felt threatened by the ever-present witch brood! And, as the priest angrily told the timid people sitting in the tightly packed church pews, these miserable witches were also the ones who brought the ’Black Death’ closer and closer to Rodenbach, thereby causing damnation for both the old and the young unless the Holy Inquisition would put a rigorous stop to this satanic nightmare!
It was Hagen, a nephew of Martin living in Gelnhausen who had seen much of the world, who urgently advised the two friends to become part of this holy movement:
“Do not wait until you will yourself become victims of the inquisition, due to your far from saintly reputation! Put yourself to the front! Help bringing the witch-brood to the stakes; those holy fires must always burn!” he called out to Martin and Gernot during the Sunday morning pint they drank at the ’Archer’s Pub’. The next thing he did was congratulate himself on his wonderfully successful carpentry with a round of Met: coffins, coffins and again coffins! What a pity that he was in no position to produce a hundred times as many coffins as he did, he lamented. People were even prepared to pay double price for them, if only he would make them…
When Hagen, due to his hoarse throat, got harder and harder to understand, Martin and Gernot literally drew into him in order to understand what he had to say: “Why don’t you imitate those before Africa?”, Hagen whispered, “I hear they place ’holy red chairs’ all over the country! Because whenever those smelly witches were sore from their nocturnal riding on those horny brooms, they definitely had to dismount once each night. At least that is what people say“.
“But may God have mercy on those wicked seductresses“! Hagen croaked, “as soon as they sit down on one of those ’red chairs’ a single time, the ’Holy Power of God’ will immediately turn them to stone! For the custodians of the inquisition, it is then child’s play to pluck them from their ’red chairs’ at daybreak and carry them to the flaying houses at the end of a meat hook“.
“And do you know where all those chairs – of course I could easily make them in my carpenter’s shop, regardless of all those many coffins – will be hallowed?“ he asked after his third litre of Met. “They will be immersed in holy oxblood. Do you understand? We are talking holy oxblood that has been given secret extra ingredients by the custodians of the inquisition that make the dark red of sin sparkle for weeks!
Since, however, those ’holy chairs’ were horribly smelly after even having had the oxblood exposed to the sun for but a few hours on hot days, the swarms of flies from neighboring manure heaps guarantee that no upright Christian would ever accidentally sit on them. Hagen added this extra advice with a wicked grin before hurriedly going home. After all, he already heard his old lady harassing him for returning late to eat the Sunday hare roast.
Soon after this, there was actually a smelly ’red chair’ standing near the eastern Rodenbach tower! And during the next night, there was another one at the intersection of Mill Road and River Street! And a third one in the Church Avenue, near the Grove Street! And still another one near the protective wall – and one outside near the ’Weidertsbörnchen’, where still many people living in Rodenbach collected their drinking water in the morning! And every one of them smelled so horribly into the light of day that, as a drunken soldier hobbling along bawled, even God himself would have been ashamed to see these ’rotten chairs’ …
Officially, Martin and Gernot had not breathed a single word about the ’red chairs’. Instead, they had clandestinely positioned them in all the right places on Midsummer Night. Still, somebody must have watched them, because ever since that day, nothing further was heard about either the two or their families with respect to their alleged sodomy life-style!
From day one, the priest, too, sang loud praises to the ’holy chairs of Rodenbach’, calling them a great, divine victory in the constant struggle against evil! Mind you, neither immediately afterwards, nor ever in the future did anybody discover one of those ’stark and stiff witches’ glued to one of the ’red chairs’. The only creatures that enjoyed lurking on and licking the chairs were the cats, while not a single week went by without the population of the village not complaining about the horrible smell of those chairs. Nobody, however, dared to touch them. …
Had Martin and Gernot known at the time what misery those ’red chairs’ were going to bring upon their families, they would certainly not have, implicitly, let themselves be celebrated during each morning pint and grinned at each other mischievously!
And at the time, certainly nobody could have guessed that said misery would strike Berta and Siegfried of all people. After all, those two children grew up as carefree as wild fawns, regardless of the hard times everybody was living through. At least to outward appearances, they were loved by everybody in the village because they were so merrily unconcerned and helpful! Weren’t those two literally darlings of fortune who nobody ever wished any evil on?
This was particularly true for Siegfried, who, from early childhood, showed exceptional talent for shooting the crossbow. Full of pride, his father Martin had taken him along when he went hunting, constantly telling people proudly that his son actually was an even far better shot than he himself could ever hope to be.
A true daredevil, this fellow, he said. Soon, he spent entire nights hunting boar and wolves with him. Siegfried never seemed to need any sleep, either! Not even when, a few years later, he prowled through the night totally by himself without any fear.…
How strange that, all of a sudden, he returned home with fewer and fewer kills – and his reactions to Berta’s questions got more and more testy.
In fact, one day he went so far as to tell her in no uncertain terms and with his face turned irately purple that he no longer cared for her bold grillings, as he called them. The same went for all other sorts of meddling: after all, they were not yet married, were they? And who knew if they were ever going to be married, either …?
Berta felt she had been struck by thunder. Never before had Siegfried treated her so inconsiderately! Weeping, she fled to her bedroom, locked the door, refused to eat and only occasionally sipped a little of the fresh water her worried mother Hildegard put in front of her bedroom door in a jug each morning.
But perhaps it was more than just Siegfried’s words that had made her unhappy. Perhaps she, too, had heard about Siegfried occasionally not roaming the woods at night for the sole purpose of hunting boar, but instead “hunting” the open-hearted and hospitable daughters of the charcoal burners living around Niedermittlau! And that it had been those Sirens who, for several weeks, had now seen to it that he returned home rather exhausted. Just like the other hunters in the neighborhood had got caught in the net of those horny charburners‘ brides. …
And to this day, the tale is told all over the village that Berta was not even prepared to open her locked door on this particular disastrous All Souls Sunday when her father Gernot and even Martin energetically knocked on her door and asked her – initially pleadingly, later desperately and angrily – to help, because Siegfried was suffering miserably.
After two stormy nights, the baker’s wife, fetching water on this All Souls Sunday morning, had found a totally exhausted Siegfried on the ’red chair near the Weidertsbörnchen’: he sat there ’stark and stiff’, in a desolate physical state, neither able to move nor talk. Both his face and his hands already showed signs of the ominous dark tell-tale spots signaling pestilence.…
The good lady had run into the village yelling loudly! Behaving like someone out of her mind, she had first jarred the front door of the ox farm and then that of the vicarage.
Instantly, the priest knew what was necessary. He wasted no time and instantly had the church rung: in the spontaneously arranged distress mass, he announced that now there was only one thing that could help: a pure virgin! She would have to be prepared to help and remove the witchcraft from Siegfried by a kiss on his lips. Otherwise his was eternal damnation, along with the entire village of Rodenbach!
After several Our-Fathers, the anxious congregation was on its silent way – everybody knew what had to be done!
But Berta would not open her bedroom door!
Since not even Gertrud‘s and Hildegard’s insistent pleas helped, the heavy oak door was – after short deliberation – smashed with an axe.
But the bird had taken flight! She had used a secret passage not even her father Gernot had known about!
Soon afterwards, when the excited villagers, to the sound of bells ringing, started on their procession to the Weidertsbörnchen, they discovered to both their surprise and relief that Siegfried, too, had disappeared …
Even Martin’s and Gernot’s bloodhounds that had been quickly fetched found no sign of the two. Instead, they returned whimpering shortly afterwards as they returned from the forests they had been ordered into …
Well – and that is why, to this day, the people of Rodenbach wonder what actually happened. Some said it had been an arranged affair between Martin, Gernot and the baker’s wife – who had been frequently visited by them – in order to reconcile the two quarreling children. Others were sure that the two lovers had ascended directly to heaven. And the rest of the villagers could have sworn that Siegfried and Berta had been either carried away by the devil, or else had fled over the border to Bavaria – which was basically the same thing…
KH
(Translated by EG)
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