The Dark Meadow by Andrea Maria Schenkel Page A

Frenchies in. Don’t want to show themselves up, do they?’
    â€˜That’s a load of garbage. Why would the police do nothing just to avoid making inquiries abroad?’
    But the man did not reply; his head was down on the table again and he was asleep. Hermann Müller had another shot at waking him, but after a while he abandoned the attempt, put out the light, shot the bolt on the door of the bar, picked up the day’s takings and went home to his apartment upstairs.
    Next morning the man had gone. Some time during the night he had climbed out of a window in the bar, leaving his wallet lying under the table.
    When Roswitha Haimerl came to get the bar ready for the day, she found a few till receipts and a twenty-marknote in the wallet, along with a yellowed old newspaper cutting. Her curiosity aroused, she unfolded it.
    â€˜Take a look at this, Hermann. Don’t you know him? Surely that’s Dr Augustin!’
    She held the news report out to the landlord. ‘In that picture – he was still young then.’
    The landlord took the cutting. ‘Let’s see it.’
    Then he folded it up again and put it in his own wallet.
    â€˜Tell you what, Roswitha, I’ll show that cutting to Augustin when he comes in for his usual at midday. What a joke! Can’t wait to hear what he says, especially when I tell him the story of that layabout drunk yesterday.’

Afra
    The shutters had been half open all night, letting out the sultry heat of the day and allowing the cooler morning air to stream into the room. The mosquito came in with it, and now its high-pitched whine has woken her. Afra lies in her bed in the bedroom, listening. The sound gets louder when the insect comes closer, fainter when it moves away. Sometimes it even flies so close to her face that she feels a slight current of air on her skin. Afra lies there quietly, waiting. The humming gets louder and finally stops. She feels the mosquito on her cheek, keeps still a moment longer, then hits out with the flat of her hand. The insect’s body, swollen with blood, bursts, and the sticky fluid clings to her fingers and her cheek.
    *
    Afra opens her eyes. Disgusted, she wipes her hand on the sheet. The light in the room is grey. The few pieces of furniture are dark shapes standing out against the walls. Just before sunrise. Time to get up. She pushes the quilt aside; feeling the cold trodden-mud floor under her bare feet, she sits on the edge of the bed a little longer, looking across the room at Albert, who is asleep in his cot. The child is dear to her, and at the same time a stranger. He is her flesh and blood, so she must love him, but sometimes, when she’s sitting on her bed as she is now, she wishes he wasn’t there. Then her life would be simpler. She instantly feels ashamed, tells herself it’s unfair and sinful to think like that, the child can’t help it, and there are good moments too, she wouldn’t want to miss those. All the same, she can’t shake off the thought; it torments her, it comes back again and again. There are only a few days when she’s entirely free of it. Yesterday was one of them. Her parents went to Mass early, and on after that to visit relations. Afra and the child stayed behind in the house on their own. All that day, she’d felt none of the nightmare pressure that usually weighed down on her. To get out of going with her parents she had said there was laundry to do, the whites needed washing, and in spite of the drudgery it had been her best Sunday in a long time. She’d got up at four in the morning, had breakfast and went out into the yard.Before the others in the house were awake, she was already standing at the wooden trough, taking out the things that had been soaking in soda overnight and rubbing them on the washboard one by one. When she had put the big pan containing the laundry and soft soap on the kitchen stove, her father and mother had just been