526
PARTISAN REVIEW
gave birth to her son. With the last of her strength, bleeding heavily,
she threw herself forward and bit through the navel cord. Then her
free soul rose, arrayed in the tattered plumage of the wild goose, and
the winged Goddess of Victory left the dirty courtyard where chicken
feed lay scattered over stagnant pools of water.
The host was lying in deep unconsciousness when the farmhands
found the corpse of the woman and the newborn child wailing to
the ceiling. They shook him aw.ake and told him what had happened.
He fastened a rope to the cross-piece of the window that had shaken
in the night when he and his wife had listened to the ghostly flutes
and trumpet calls. Carefully he tied an elaborate knot and then
swung in the death noose like the last grape in the parlor....
The neighbors took pity on the double orphan born into the
world under the sword of Saint Martin. They revived and warmed
him and gave him to a woman to suckle. Thus the cloak of compas–
sion fell on the infant even before he was covered with swaddling
clothes.
(Translated from the German by Wolfgang Sauerlander
and Norbert Guterman)
