Brother of Sleep by Robert Schneider

Author:Robert Schneider
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780879515959
Publisher: Overlook Press
Published: 1995-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE WOMAN IN THE MOONLIGHT

HE was a goodhearted teacher to the children. They began to feel an almost tender affection for him, although they could never quite conquer their fear of his yellow eyes. (Seldom did a child dare to look him in the eye.) He sang with them every day, taught them to understand his musical images at the organ, explained the Holy Scriptures as if they were a fairy tale, and persistently inculcated the notion that it was not man alone who had a soul but also the animals, the flowers, and the stones. If their attention waned, he opened their tired lids by imitating voices of Eschberg, which they then had to guess. If one child could not pay his weekly dues because hunger reigned at home, he did not beat the child but secretly took eggs, bread, and cheese from the allowances of the others, and gave it to the little one on the way home. If, in winter, one of them forgot the obligatory firewood for the school stove, he did not chastise the child, for he could see it did not even have stockings on its little legs. He was an attentive teacher, ever alert to discover a talent for music. He discovered voices he could train. But he did not find a musician, apart from Philipp, who was always in attendance. But Philipp was an idiot, and so his talent had to go to waste.

But his restless quest for Elsbeth, who by now was of marriageable age, gnawed at him like a perfidious illness. Its initial symptoms took the form of apparent bagatelles. If a door opened unexpectedly, he gave an excessively nervous start. If he saw a woman approaching the farm from a distance, his pulse raced. If he heard women laughing by the village well at night, he always imagined he could hear Elsbeth’s laughter among them. Music, which had always been easy for him, soon became an effort, and he had to acknowl­edge that he no longer found consolation in it. When he had taken up his office as an organist, he had practiced daily on the instrument, looked after it, and kept all the registers in tune. But this now became too difficult, for the school and the farm kept him busy at all times. When Eastertide came around again, his musical ardor seemed to rekindle. The Passion of Christ had always been a musical matter for him. We might almost say it actually stimulated him to composition. As did that misty season around All Souls, when he tried to set to music the November weather, mingled with the scent of incense and black vestments. He was a child of his time. He loved everything that could be associated with death.

In the years of silent waiting for Elsbeth, the theology of his faith underwent a change. From being a sober Christian but one who was strong in faith, he now seethed with doubts. Why would God not listen to

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