Brother of Sleep: A Novel Read Online Free

unexpectedly, sternly resolving henceforward to be a wise shepherd to his flock. Sadly, resolution was as far as it went.
    This all happened three years before the birth of Johannes Elias. The reader who has followed us this far may wonder why we have devoted so much time to this hotheaded curate, rather than turning our attention to that strange child. Let the reader wonder a little longer.
    Two weeks after the birth of the child, in the little church in Eschberg–now admired for its bronze double doors, triple thickness, with twelve hinges and iron nails–a double baptism took place. The two boys who were being baptized were in the Alder line, which had been riven for decades. One, our child, was christened Johannes Elias, and the other, born five days later, Peter Elias. Peter Elias had come into the world with the help of a midwife from Altberg known as the “Weigher.”
    We might observe that the name Elias returns with some persistence. This is why. Since the Damascus road experience of Pentecost, Elias Bender saw himself not merely as a good shepherd but as a father to his children in Eschberg. He must have confused the purely spiritual meaning of the word with the carnal sense, for in Eschberg there would soon be a number of brown-haired children cast very much in the mold, it was said, of the reverend curate. And the curate had an almost vainly exaggerated weakness for the idea of immortality. He seemed to know that even the most inflamed words are soon extinguished, but a name is far more enduring. Thus he established the unusual prac­tic e of giving Elias as a second name to all male newborns.
    Only the closest family members attended the baptism. Johannes Elias’s Alders sat on the epistle side, and Peter Elias’s Alders on the gospel side. The curate delivered a sermon comparing the power of water with the power of fire. The sermon was a long one, and it seemed almost as if the curate was in some way nervous of the baptism itself. When he finally dabbed holy water on the boys’ lobster-red brows, his hand began to tremble so violently that he had to interrupt his flow lest he hurt the little creatures. Involuntarily, the cur­ate’s eye fell on Seff’s wife’s face, and they both blushed in the most embarrassing manner. Fortunately, the or­gan sounded the baptismal chorale and, fortunately, Johannes Elias suddenly began to cry. He was jubilant, for he was hearing the sound of an organ for the first time in his life. He was jubilant because he had discovered music.
    Seff, however, his father, sat sunk in a pew, his eyes plunged deep into his lap. When the boy began to cry, a frost descended upon Seff once more, a strange frost that ran down his back, around over his belly, and into his testicles. Blast it if there isn’t something wrong with the boy! That voice! thought Seff, and pressed his ears closed so that the veins stood out in his hands.
    But Peter Elias, Nulf Alder’s child, did not cry. We think we are able to see in this a prefigured trait of his later character, for Peter Elias never cried and complained. Only once, and that is an occasion to which we shall return in detail.
    Three days later Curate Benzer met a terrible end. He had climbed up into the Eschberg woods to the plateau known as St. Peter’s Rock. He had gone there, it was supposed, to pick spring juniper. A little wicker basket was found nearby. But he must have fallen mis­erably over the cliff, for his body was found utterly unrecognizable in the scree, his thighs thrust into his torso to the knee. The bare white bone of his left thigh lay a yard away.
    The rumor of suicide died hard. The baptismal registration of Seff’s boy reveals a trembling, almost illegible script, while the other shows the curate’s usual extravagant hand–which is not to say anything more than we mean to say.
    * The first Sunday in Lent, when coal stoves are lit in Germanic countries.

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