Brodeck by Philippe Claudel Page B

is enough. But no one had opened a trail, and as soon as I passed the upper limit of the broadleaf trees and entered the forest of tall firs, the fallen snow became so thick that I sank into it up to my knees. The forest was silent. I saw no animal and no bird. All I heard was the sound of the Staubi, about two hundred meters below me, where it rushes into a fairly sharp bend and crashes into some large rocks.
    When I passed near the Lingen , I turned my eyes away and didn’t stop moving. I even increased my pace, and the frigid air penetrated into my lungs so deeply that they hurt. I was too afraid of seeing the Anderer’s ghost, in the same position as before, sitting on his little stool, surveying the landscape, or maybe stretching out his arms to me in supplication. But supplication for what?
    Even had I been in the inn when the others all went mad that night, what could I have done on my own? The least word, the least gesture from me would have meant my life, and I would have suffered the same fate he did. That thought, too, filled me with terror: the knowledge that if I had been in the inn, I wouldn’t have done anything to stop what happened, I would have made myself as small as possible, and I would have looked on impotently as the horrible scene unfolded. That act of cowardice, even though it had never actually taken place, filled me with disgust. At bottom, I was like the others, like all those who surrounded me and charged me with writing the Report, which they hoped would exonerate them.
    Stern lives outside the world—I mean, outside our world. All the Sterns have lived the way he does, for as long as anyone can remember: staying in the midst of the forest and maintaining only distant relations with the village. But he’s the last of the Sterns. He’s alone. He’s never taken a wife, and he has no children. His line will die out with him.
    He lives by tanning animal skins. He comes down to the village twice every winter, and a little more often in fine weather. He sells his furs as well as various objects that he carves from the trunks and branches of fir trees. With the cash thus acquired, he buys some flour, a sack of potatoes, some dried peas, tobacco, sugar, and salt. And if he’s got any money left over, he drinks it in fruit brandy and makes the climb back to his cabin dead drunk. He never gets lost. His feet know the way.
    When I reached the cabin, I found him sitting on the threshold, busy with binding some dead branches together to make a broom. I greeted him. Always suspicious of visitors, he replied with a movement of his head but spoke no word. Then he got up and went inside, leaving the door open.
    Many things, both animal and vegetable, were hung up to dry from the ceiling beams; the acrid, violent odors blended and clung to whoever was in the room. The fire in the hearth produced some stingy little flames and a great deal of smoke. Stern dipped a ladle into a kettle and filled two bowls with thick soup, a porridge of groats and chestnuts, which had no doubt been simmering since the early morning. Then he cut two thick slices of hard bread and filled two glasses with dark wine. We sat facing each other and ate in silence, surrounded by a stench, with its overtones of carrion, that many would have fled from. But as for me, I was familiar with stenches. That one didn’t bother me. I had known worse.
    In the camp, after my stay in the Büxte and before becoming Brodeck the Dog, for a few long months I was the Scheizeman , the “shit man.” My task consisted of emptying out the latrines into which more than a thousand prisoners relieved their bowels several times a day. The latrines were large trenches a meter deep, two meters wide, and about four meters long. There were five of them, and my job was to muck them out thoroughly. To accomplish this task, I had only a few tools at my disposal: a big pan attached to a wooden handle, and two large tin buckets. I used the pan to fill the buckets,