A Whole Life

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On a February morning in the year 1933 Andreas Egger lifted the dying goatherd Johannes Kalischka, known to all the valley dwellers as Horned Hannes, off his sodden and rather sour-smelling pallet to carry him down to the village along the three-kilometre mountain path that lay buried beneath a thick layer of snow.

A strange intuition had prompted him to call on Horned Hannes in his hut, where he found him behind the stove, which had long since gone out, curled up under a heap of old goatskins. The goatherd stared at him out of the darkness, emaciated and ghostly pale, and Egger knew that Death already crouched behind his eyes. He picked him up in both arms like a child and placed him gently on the wooden frame, padded with dry moss, that Horned Hannes had used all his life to carry firewood and injured goats on his back over the hillside. He wrapped a halter around his body, tied it to the frame and pulled the knots so tight that the wood let out a crack. When he asked him if he was in pain, Horned Hannes shook his head and twisted his mouth into a grin, but Egger knew that he was lying.

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