Authors: Peter Stamm
WHEN HIS APPRENTICESHIP
was over, Alfons stayed on for a while. He was still living in the little upstairs room over the offices, even though he could have afforded something better. But he didn’t need an apartment, he was saving to fulfill his own dream, a farm of his own, where he could put his ideas into effect.
Perhaps he acquired the farm too soon. He was only twenty-three when he responded to the advertisement. This farm was also on the ridge, but on the side facing away from the lake, on the edge of a small village. There was a small patch of woods that went with it, and twelve
hectares of arable land, just enough for him on his own. The property belonged to a rich farmer from the Canton of Zurich, who had bought it for his son, who chose to follow a different calling, and so the farm was on the market. Alfons asked himself why it was that he, out of the twenty interested parties, had got the lease. Maybe the farmer saw a son in him, the young man with dreams, working to make his fortune. Alfons’s father helped with the down payment. They signed the lease in the pub and wet it with a glass of wine. Now all you need is a wife to keep the business together, said the man from Zurich. Alfons nodded vaguely and mumbled something.
His parents were always on at him about it as well. Have you got a girlfriend yet? What are the girls like in Thurgau? When can we expect to become grandparents? What do you do all the time? asked his brother. You can’t always be sitting around at home. That won’t get you anywhere. But Alfons wasn’t thinking in terms of weeks or months or years. He thought in days, and every day he said to himself, Not today, I’m tired, I need to make the payments, prepare the sower, check up on the bees. In that way three years passed, imperceptibly, without him taking any steps to find a wife.
Kurt had married a girl he went to school with. Verena had been in a steady relationship for years, and it
was only a matter of time until she tied the knot. Only Alfons was still single. He was a member of the rifle club, but that didn’t take women. In the gymnastics association there was too much drinking and not enough gymnastics for his liking, and he didn’t want to join the choir, though he enjoyed singing. Once he had gone to a meeting of the rural young people, but all the others had known each other forever, and he felt excluded. Some evenings he went to the local bar, he liked the waitress there, but he didn’t know how to tell her, not under the eyes of the entire village. And with her looks, becoming a farmer’s wife was probably the last thing on her mind. He spent most of his evenings at home, doing sums. He kept precise accounts on each crop he grew, calculated the returns, compared them to those of last year and with the averages of the co-op. Every morning and every night he took note of the temperature, the air pressure, and the humidity. He made graphs and observed the changes in the weather. He also kept track of his expenditures on heating oil, water, and electricity. Whatever could be expressed in figures, he wrote it down.
At noon the rain stopped, and the gray murk turned into a layer of small clouds. Alfons picked up the lettuce seedlings in the barn and tossed them on the compost. It felt like throwing away money, but he had no choice, it was
pointless to produce more than the market demanded. In the news they said the weather was on the mend. Still, by the time his fields had dried out sufficiently for him to go out on the tractor, another two or three days would be gone.
While he rinsed the plates, he heard engine noise from outside. He wiped his hands and looked out the window. A big truck stood on his neighbor’s meadow, the other side of the road, and a couple of young men were rolling up the canvas cover. Then they separated, as though each was searching for something.
Alfons stepped outside and took a few steps closer, then he recognized one of the men, it was Klemens, the carpenter’s son, and it dawned on him that these must be the guys from Open Air. The idea had struck in winter, and for weeks the whole village had talked about nothing else. The young people wanted to organize an Open Air Festival for local bands, with a bar and activities for children. In January, Klemens had come by. He had introduced himself as president of the Organizing Committee, told Alfons that the festival would take place in the meadow below his house, and asked if they could take power and water from him. Of course they would install meters, and he would be properly reimbursed. Alfons felt he had little choice but to agree. After that, he had
heard nothing more from the organizers, and forgotten all about the whole thing.
He was surprised when his neighbor had part of the pasture mown a couple of days ago, even though the grass wasn’t that long. That was where the truck was parked now, and the men were starting to unload timber. Alfons walked down and asked them when the festival was happening. In ten days, said Klemens, the last weekend of June. That Sunday is Seven Sleepers. Klemens asked what that was, and Alfons explained. He had read the story in a farmers’ almanac. On Seven Sleepers’ Day, according to an old legend, seven Christians were found who in Roman times had been walled into a cave and had slept through two hundred years. From a farmers’ rule of thumb, that day predicted the weather for the next seven weeks. Then we can only hope it will have picked up by then, said Klemens, and returned to the planks.
All afternoon Alfons chopped weeds in his celery field. By the time he was finished and came home, at six, the truck was gone, but there were piles of boards and beams in the grass. The young men were busy putting up a large white tent at the bottom of the meadow. They worked until it got dark, then they lit a fire and drank beer. They had a CD player with them, and through his closed window Alfons could hear the distant music and
the men laughing and shouting. It was midnight before there was quiet.
The next day, a workman came from the utilities company and laid improvised water and power mains from Alfons’s cellar across the road and down into the meadow. Alfons knew the man from the rifle club. He offered him a cup of coffee, and they talked about the festival a bit. The workman said he thought it was good for the young people to set something up on their own, instead of just hanging around and doing drugs. Even though Alfons was younger than some of the committee, he noticed the workman talked to him as though he was an old man.
THE MEN MUST HAVE
got time off from work, because from now on they came every day and worked from early morning until late at night. They built a stage, fenced off the field, and put up a second tent. A portable toilet was brought along, and fridges and sinks installed. One time, a truck with a black cover was parked behind the stage, and a couple of fellows in black T-shirts set up lights and amplifiers. While Alfons was working after lunch on the top field by the edge of the woods, he could hear one of the men going one two, one two, all afternoon, one two, one two, and then a shrill whistling sound.
Occasionally someone would come up from the field and ask Alfons for a tool, or some bandages, or a wheelbarrow, whatever they happened to be short of. He fetched whatever it happened to be, and said, That’s fine. Oskar, his neighbor, turned up on the meadow almost every day, to keep an eye on things. He parked his Subaru on the grass and watched the workmen, kidded around with them, and lent a hand when asked.
The weather was cool that whole week, but sunny. At last, Alfons was able to put his French beans in and go out on the fields with his machines. At night he was tired, he just quickly filled in his weather chart and went to bed early. Then he heard the music and the voices of the men sitting around the fire after their day. The noise really didn’t bother him; on the contrary, he had the feeling of being part of the village for the first time.
On Friday morning the rain returned. Alfons worked all day in the tunnel, with a short break for lunch at home. He saw three men and a woman unloading instruments from a white minivan and carrying them onto the stage. When he finished work in the evening, there were already a few little tents up in the bottom of the meadow, and the first visitors were standing around on the festival site, mostly in rain ponchos, a few under umbrellas. From a temporary parking lot on the edge of the village, others
walked up in dribs and drabs. The big feeding tent was lit up, even though it hadn’t gotten dark yet. The trestle tables were half full. Alfons wondered about going down there himself, but he had been outside all day, so he fixed himself something and ate it at home.
THE MUSIC STARTED
a little after six. Alfons was listening to the evening news, then it was suddenly there, so loud it was as though the musicians were in his living room. He looked out the window. In spite of the rain, there was a decent crowd in front of the stage. From where he was, he couldn’t see the players. He sat down by the window, opened it a crack, and listened. Even though the music was very loud, the falling rain was clearly audible. It got a little quieter during the pause between sets, and Alfons sat down at his desk and did a few calculations, but as soon as the next band struck up, he couldn’t concentrate, and returned to his place by the window. In the meantime, even more people had turned up, the meadow was pretty full. Five hundred, reckoned Alfons, and he multiplied it by the entrance price. The bar must have a good turnover, and then there were the T-shirts with the festival logo on them. He had no idea what the bands were paid to perform, or what the equipment cost to rent. The
building materials had presumably been provided free of charge by Klemens’s father, but if you threw in all the work the men had put in, there was probably not much left by the end.
There was another break, and a third band started to play, even louder than the two before. It had got dark by now, and there were colored lights flashing over the stage. A few people were dancing at the front. The crowd farther back was more slow-moving, swaying back and forth, as though trying to keep its balance on shifting ground. Right at the edge of the crowd, people were coming and going. A few sat on the grass, in spite of the rain.
Alfons was in bed by the time the music stopped on the dot of one. There was a fiercely strummed guitar chord, one last crash of the cymbals, and then some applause, followed by total silence. Alfons got up one more time and looked out of his bedroom window. Two spotlights under the roof of the stage were playing over the crowd. People dispersed, visitors drifted to their tents or to the parking lot. A sort of haze seemed to come off the people, and Alfons was put in mind of his father’s cows, standing steaming on the grass in the rain or fog.
There were two long lines outside the toilets, and in the campsite he could make out the uncertain beams of many flashlights. On the road a truck was parked, with
motor running and lights on. Alfons watched the band climb into the truck and drive away. He was glad of his warm bed, and not to have to spend the night out of doors.
ALTHOUGH HE HAD
got to sleep so late, and it was a Saturday, he was up at six. He had breakfast, got the details from the weather station, and ambled down to the festival site. It was no longer raining, but the sky was clouded over, it could begin again at any moment. There was no one on the doors. The meadow had been turned into a swamp, there was hardly a blade of grass left near the stage. There was litter everywhere, empty bottles and cigarette packs. Everyone seemed to be asleep, except in the food tent a couple of women were already at work. They said hello to Alfons, and he asked if there was coffee yet. In five minutes, said the younger of the two, and rolls should be here any moment as well. Aren’t you Klemens’s girlfriend? asked Alfons, and they shook hands. Jasmine, she said. Her father owned the farm machine store in the village, where Alfons had bought his seed drill.
Didn’t the music keep you up last night? asked Jasmine.
Alfons shrugged his shoulders. If you carry on like this, Oskar can start a potato patch here on Monday. She
laughed. How many people did you get last night? he asked. Five hundred?
I don’t know exactly, we sold six hundred weekend passes in advance, but some of those people will only show up today. Or not at all, if the weather doesn’t improve.
Wouldn’t some straw help, for the meadow?
Oskar promised to put some down, said Jasmine. It would be nice if he got around to it before everyone gets up.
Klemens came across the meadow, clutching four paper bags. He said hello to Alfons and put the bags of rolls on the bar. Then he pulled a white plastic armband out of his pocket and handed it to him. I wanted to give you this, just in case you fancy coming on down. Although come to think of it, you’ve got a box seat up where you are. Or do you prefer folk?
I don’t listen to music, said Alfons, and once again he felt like an outsider.
Appenzeller bluegrass, said Klemens, and laughed.
The other woman came along with a coffee urn and filled four plastic cups. She gave one to Alfons and said, I’m Lydia. He thanked her. Conversation ceased while everyone drank their coffee and looked in different directions. Finally, Alfons asked Lydia if she lived in the village too. The question struck him as embarrassing in
front of the other two. Klemens clutched at his forehead and said he had a headache, he must have overdone it last night. He sat down on one of the window seats. Jasmine went over and started stroking his head.
I’m a teacher, said Lydia, and when Alfons looked at her blankly, I live in Weinfelden, but I work here. I’m the new teacher.
Did Herr Tobler retire then? asked Alfons.
Lydia nodded. Do you run the farm up there?
Yes, he said, I’m not from here either.
She laughed and said, Yes, I can hear that.
I grow vegetables, organic vegetables.
All the veg I buy is organic, she said, pretty much.
Well, if you got it from the agricultural co-op, then you’ll have eaten something of mine, said Alfons. Lydia smiled. He didn’t know what else to say. Finally he asked what he owed.
It’s on the house, she said, and he said thank you again and left.
Alfons did the shopping, then he paid bills and checked on things in the tunnel and in the beehives. He kept having to think of Lydia. She was no beauty, she was small and stoutish, her hair was cut very short, and she had bad acne on her face. But she had a nice way with her, and her voice was beautiful and warm.