Wolfgang Hilbig - Old Rendering Plant

Other titles by Wolfgang Hilbig available from Two Lines Press

The Sleep of the Righteous

Originally published as Die Weiber, Alte Abdeckerei, Die Kunde von den Bumen by Wolfgang Hilbig, Werke, Erzhlungen 2010, S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main

Translation 2017 by Isabel Fargo Cole

Two Lines Press

582 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104

www.twolinespress.com

ISBN 978-1-931883-68-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940026

Cover design by Gabriele Wilson

Cover photo by Christian Richter/Stocksy

Typeset by Jessica Sevey

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This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Yet in these bounds, these iron walls,

The dreadful portal is unbarred,

Though it stand firm as ancient rock!

GOETHE

Oystrygods gaggin fishygods

JAMES JOYCE

Contents

I recalled a brook outside town whose current, strangely shimmering, sometimes almost milky, I once followed for miles all autumn or longer, if only hoping to emerge one day from a territory confined, Ill admit it at last, by the bounds of my weariness. And I followed this path as though to the beat of silent wings; when darkness fell, Id begin to expect some horror, a bloodcurdling cry perhaps, followed by silencebut nothing came, the hush beyond the town and woods was the ceaseless presence of little noises. Farmland, meadows, and fallow fields, swelling up from both sides in the haze of ever-dimmer days, seemed for stretches to throttle the brook to a mere runnel; it often resembled the bluish blade of a long, straight knife slicing the terrain asunder, and the long-drawn wound seemed to steam.Some distance away, in a hollow, lay the inert eyes of two round forest ponds, their gaze turned inward, half hidden now by dark lids as the shadow of the forests edge slid over their imperturbable slumber. From there Id pass through withered cabbage fields on a footpath that turned to follow the brooks course; between this path and the water tall grass grew, the grayed, wildly bristling fall grass of those dim days, obscuring my view of the quick, barely audible runnel. Soon, at almost regular intervals, rotten old pollard willows rose from the grass, and then appeared on the brooks far side as well, standing opposite the intervals between the willows on this side, leaning over, just as these willows reached aslant across the brooks center, so that the branches sprouting from the swollen heads formed a virtual roof above the brook, beneath which, especially when the dusk grew dense, the waters trickling sounded louder, seemed indeed to echo as though in an elongated vault. And when I stopped and listened, I sometimes imagined myself within this canopy of willow boughs, and at times I thought I moved with the current, swaying beneath the black baldachin of willow wands, in a boat of corrosive grief, unfathomably drifting in aimless circles to strand on the shores of another clime entirely. Here the voices of this current had grown to one dense noise, and the other murmurs from the dark that had sealed the evenings end could no longer be heard, though they went on all the same, perhaps as steps across the fields, or as a windy rustling through the leaves, or perhaps as the rolling racket of a distant railroad train, passing on and on as though all night long its trundle and clatter must never break off. Then the waters noise was a trickle, garrulously washing my limbs, rising to flood and shroud me from all the outside things that still sought to infiltrate my weariness. And it was the noise of my weariness as it clamored and frothedthough I was more inclined to suspect a wide-awake scuttling and whispering, sleep-seeking shadows, groping and babbling, when the water washed the willow roots at the channels edge, when it loosened a stone or handful of dirt from the bank, or grazed trailing grasses and caused the perception of an infinitesimal spraying or hissing, instantly impossible to attend to as it vanished behind me, or fell back behind the next hiss or spray. When I felt the brook carrying the noises away from me, I knew in my heart that I was on the way back, a half-unconscious way back, in a drowsiness I tried to run from but that took shape before me again and again. It was the brook that was running from mebut its run renewed itself ongoing before me, going on to renew its onward rush away from meand so I stopped at times to make sure the runnel hadnt reversed its flow behind me, or strayed off into a side branch, leaving me behind in total silence: I recalled chasing the water, its noise, for a few quick strides to catch a quickly fading snicker Id thought Id seen or heard a moment beforeYet already it had escaped me forever, its memory was swept away forever, and before I knew it the memory of its direction had fled from me in my drowsiness, and with it the direction I had to take back. I strained to hear which way the water flowed: I couldnt determine it, my hearing couldnt orient me as my eyes would easily have done; it was as though the water coursed over me, flowing through my weary brain this way and that, flowing without bounds, as boundless as the railroad noise that ebbed in the distance but could never leave the territory amid which I stoodat the midpoint of that territory that concentrically circled the place where I stood with my eyes shut. Noise upon noise ran stinging in my eyes, and I knew, hurrying onward, that a strange pale-gray haze enveloped me, a cloying breath dried my throat, seemed to hamper my stride, and lay heavy on my face and limbsand the next afternoon, when I reprised my trek, I thought I sensed the smell still rising from my clothes. For a long time now it had been gathering in my clothes, the clothes I could never change, just as I could not change the earthfor many afternoons now, a smell that aged as I roamed around in it With seemingly matchless logic I told myself that the smell grew older and older and more tenacious the longer I roamed in it, and that the time would come when at last I could call it my very own smellif we endured, this smell and I, fused to an amalgam to cover the earth like water. Each afternoon of a certain fall I went this way, more quickly each day, soon without a break, for I knew every step perfectlyrecognized nearly every inch, helped by the last light of the late afternoons that were like one single afternoon for me. And after a short time Id grown used to calling this afternoon way my way back. Tomorrow, I told myself over and over, Ill head back down the same path again, maybe even a crucial bit farther back.So I fought the dull discontent that beset me each day when I arrived once more at a long-familiar place with no doubt left in my mind that this was where Id turn around, at this very place, again and again. From this very place began my turn into the night: a place seen so often that it seemed utterly mundane, mundane but not describable: the relevant nouns at my command proved again and again to be treacherous tools, perpetually demonstrating the impotence of all descriptionscompared to the nuances of the visible they seemed, at best, to be sketchy