Karl picked up his rusty bowl and made his way over to the basilica. It was almost noon. Now, in July, the sun blazed so brightly that the brick buildings seemed to glow like red embers. Shimmering heat lay above the square outside the huge church, and Karl wiped the sweat from his eyes. A crowd of pilgrims and burghers had gathered around a shaky podium consisting of a few stacked-up crates. Standing on top of it was an older man in a stained black-and-blue coat who was just about to pull a cackling hen out of his hat. The man swayed, struggling to stay on his feet. Evidently, he’d had too much to drink. His long beard was as ragged as the fur of a mangy dog, his graying black hair matted. He seemed like one of those crazy itinerant preachers who liked to predict doom and gloom and were only tolerated by the church because they made their flock afraid of hell. The flapping animal slipped out of his grip and made a run for it, cheered on by the roaring laughter of the crowd.
“Hey, your supper, wizard!” shouted a man in the front row, the same woad merchant from before. “It’s flying away. What will you eat now? Or do you just drink? I’ll gladly give you a coin if you can conjure a jug of wine from your hat!”
The man on the podium slowly raised his face to look at the loudmouthed merchant.
Karl froze.
The man’s eyes made him dizzy. They were pitch black, sinister, and as deep as wells. Endless grief shimmered at their bottom, and something else that attracted Karl almost magically. Despite his drunken state, the ragged stranger exuded an almost tangible authority. Karl sensed that he knew the man from somewhere. But he had no idea where from or why.
Who are you, stranger?
“I think I will have fried egg,” the wizard said with a low, dragging voice. “The egg is the beginning and the end, isn’t it? The alpha and the omega.” Suddenly he fished an egg from his hat, then another and another. He juggled them, but it wasn’t long before one fell to the ground and burst. The two other eggs vanished magically.
“Ha, now you don’t even have eggs,” jeered the merchant in the bright-blue beret with a velvet ribbon, the sign of his guild. “Or are you going to lick it off the ground like a dog?”
“It’s true, I no longer have eggs,” replied the man on the podium, his voice very low and yet audible right across the square. “Because you stole them from me.”
“What are you talking about, you fool?” growled the merchant, looking around uncertainly. Some of the spectators started to mutter and whistle. “Do you want the city guards to put you in the stocks?”
Karl still stood as if frozen. He was thinking about the image from his memories he had drawn so many times. A man in a long cloak on a podium.
It was as if his drawings had suddenly come to life.
Like a large dark bird, the man jumped down from the crates, staggered but caught himself, then strode toward the merchant with slow steps. He swayed a little but didn’t fall.
“And what are you going to do now, you drunk quack?” asked the merchant, jutting out his chin defiantly. “You won’t get any hens or eggs from me—but I can give you a kick up the ass.”
“Are you sure?” asked the man when he came to a halt in front of the merchant. “No eggs? See for yourself.”
With astonishing speed the wizard slapped his flat hand onto the merchant’s beret. A yellow mess of egg flowed out from under his hat and down the dumfounded merchant’s forehead. The crowd cried out with surprise, and some people laughed.
“You . . . you are going to regret this,” exclaimed the merchant, shaking his fists. “Guards! Arrest this man!”
He leaped at the wizard, who, despite his state of intoxication, dodged him with surprising agility. Other citizens rushed to help, but the man in the black-and-blue coat was quicker. He feinted to the left and the right and soon escaped the agitated masses.
Karl followed him.
He knew that he mustn’t lose the stranger. He was the key to Karl’s old life. If only he had a moment to ponder where he might know the wizard from. But there was no time. And so Karl stuck to the man’s heels. The wizard sprinted across the square, tripping several times and catching himself on market stalls, sending them crashing to the ground. Vendors cried out indignantly, geese took off cackling, loaves of bread rolled into the filthy gutter. Karl lost the stranger for a moment, but then spotted him at the narrow entrance to a lane at the right-hand side of the square. The passage was behind one of the stalls, so that no one else had noticed the wizard there. Karl ran, fell on his knees, struggled back to his feet, and continued running. The lane wound its way past several brick buildings and grew increasingly narrow. Finally it ended in a small yard full of trash. Trying to catch his breath, Karl was walking past a stack of barrels when he tripped over a foot. The man in the black-and-blue coat towered above him, a rock in his raised fist. His eyes looked like those of a hunted animal.
“Damned bastard,” snarled the stranger. “Leave me alone! Why don’t you all leave me—”
“Faustus!” exclaimed Karl.
The name had just popped into his mind, and with the name memories rained down on him like a warm shower. Karl laughed and cried at the same time. The man in front of him was like a messenger from a distant era, an angel come to bring him back to life, waking him from the slumber that had lasted two whole years.
