Otto, a middle-aged peasant, works hard on his farm. He has been a farmer all his life, and through these years his main companion has been his only digging fork. They are both born to work on a farm and produce wheat; a destiny that is about to be rewritten.
Otto takes a moment to clean the sweat off his forehead. The light hurts his eyes when he looks up at the sun. The scorching heat beats down harder on Otto today, but he does not mind. He is pleased about the harvest this season, and the entertaining thought of how much he will make tomorrow when selling them in the market makes the cruelty of the sun more tolerable. Without missing a beat, he gets back to his hard work.
The fork hits something hard that is buried in the ground. Otto pushes harder and harder, but the fork’s sharp points cannot penetrate through. He has a bad feeling about this. Otto looks around for help but does not find his son; he has to face it himself. After stabbing his fork into the ground at his side, he kneels and uses his bare hands to remove the soil around the object.
Judging from its top, it seems to be a giant, shy log that is hiding deep in the ground. Otto’s farm is no place for hide and seek. The log has to be removed, and Otto’s bare hands seem to be the only solution. He holds a grip on the log’s top and gives it a good pull, but the log is stubborn. He repositions his hands, holds a tighter grip, and tries again, this time with all his power. Before the log finally obliges, Otto’s hand slips and he tumbles on his butt.
Otto proudly watches the surrounded log when he notices that it is smeared in blood! As the joy of victory fades away, he feels tremendous pain in his palm. Before facing its defeat, the malicious log has left a deep wound in Otto’s palm. He takes a good look at the wound, where fresh blood is in a hurry to leave his body. Taking off his head kerchief, he wraps it tight against the wound. He winces from the pain when the kerchief touches the wound.
Otto gets up, takes his digging fork, and gets back to the hard work as if nothing has happened.
“First thing I’ll do after selling the crops,” Otto thinks, “I buy a new sickle. No, first I’ll fix the leak on the roof, then I’ll buy a new sickle.”
Drowned in his thoughts, Otto suddenly hears crows screeching. He looks up, nervous. Many pigeons and sparrows fly off a tree that has been their home for many years. In their place, a crow as dark as night is sitting on a branch. A bloody white feather that is stuck to its bill tells of the injustice that has occurred. The yet-free sparrows are loudly singing a depressing symphony, partly mourning for their brother who was today’s victim and partly for tomorrow when their turn will come. The black crow is still tasting the red blood that it has just shed.
A black cross necklace hangs on a red outfit. The pastor who is wearing it, Helmut, is riding in a cart. A creepy smile appears on his face when he touches the barley crops he is sitting on. His worker, who is, in contrast, wearing worn-out clothes, shamefully fights doubts while riding the cart.
The cart stops.
Otto hears his son calling him from far away. Taking his confused eyes off the crow, he turns to his son but still cannot hear him well. He worryingly watches his son running toward him. “Dad!” he hears after a few moments. “They are here! They are here!”
Otto drops his fork to the ground and takes off running, past his son, toward where his son came from. He does not need to hear more as he can already guess the tragedy that awaits him. The son also turns back and chases after him. Soon, he can see the cart, and then Helmut, who oversees Otto’s crops being taken away. The worker loads the cart with Otto’s wheat harvest that was packaged and ready to be sent to the market.
“Father!” Otto cries from far away. “Father!”
Helmut turns and waits a few seconds for Otto. Otto arrives finally, exhausted and out of breath.
“Oh, good afternoon, son,” Helmut says with a cheerful tone, “God bless you! Fine harvest this year!” he says and turns away.
Otto, still panting, needs to take a few more breaths before he can talk again.
“Father! I don’t… I… I can’t… Father! … I need your help.”
“Oh, son! Now is not a good time for a confession,” Helmut says while pointing to the worker loading the cart.
“No, not that Father.”
Helmut gets curious.
“Father, is there any way you could take less tithe this year?” Otto begs while pointing to the worker loading the cart. “The prince has raised the taxes, again, and my family—”
Otto’s son arrives as well and stands next to him.
Helmut, half surprised, half upset, interrupts. “My son! The tithe is by definition one-tenth of crops,” he says in a formal voice, “and it is not up to me or any other pastor to change the amount. This comes from God.”
Otto’s embarrassed eyes look away. “But Father! I can’t—”
Helmut interrupts him again, and this time takes a harsher, more serious tone.
“Do I need to remind you that the tithe belongs to the church of God, and avoiding it would make you excommunicated?”
Otto shakes from fear when he hears the word ‘excommunicated’. He takes a step back. “No, no, no, Father. I don’t want to… I didn’t mean to… It’s just that with taxes going up each year, soon I will not be able to even afford rent, I would lose my land. I’d become just a serf here, basically a slave.”
Helmut seems to be a bit sorry for Otto. Perhaps there is hope.
“I am a god-fearing man, Father,” Otto continues, “but I want to remain God’s freeman as He created me so.”
There are a few moments of silence. Helmut looks at the innocent eyes of Otto’s son begging for mercy. He then lets out a long sigh of disappointment and turns back to Otto. “We all are servants of God, son. I am serving by doing His work at the church, and your duty is to serve Him here… and to obey your lord.”
Noticing that the worker has finished loading the cart, without saying another word, Helmut turns away from Otto and approaches the cart.
“I am sorry!” the worker whispers while passing by Otto.
Instead of sitting at the front, Helmut sits at the back on Otto’s the crops. After a few moments, when Helmut gets comfortable, he turns to Otto and finishes his short sermon. “Have faith, my son, have faith. And don’t let the devil use greed to get into your heart.”
The cart leaves; and the crops with it. The black cross necklace bounces on Helmut’s neck.
Otto, with tearful eyes, watches the cart loaded with his crops getting further and further away. His son painfully observes the tears on his dad’s face, but there is nothing he could do. Holding under his dad’s arm, the son unsuccessfully tries to hold Otto when he falls to his knees. His father’s cry having burst out, the son helplessly eyes him mourning for their misery. Otto’s pitiful sorrow slowly turns into anger. He clenches his fist and angrily squeezes on the kerchief that is wrapped around his fresh wound.
Not too far away, Otto’s digging fork awaits him. Its sharp points, however, make it look more like an angry claw, ready to tear.
Hanging by a thread, a piglet’s head is bouncing left and right in the town’s only butchery.
Partly fragile and partly on edge, Otto is completely phased out, staring at the dead piglet’s head as if looking into a mirror. He feels related to the executed piglet and its pain.
The confused butcher, a man with an imperial mustache and thick arms, was gazing at Otto. He curiously follows Otto’s eyes and finds the piglet’s head. He leans forward to have a visual of the bouncing piglet and then joins Otto in staring at it, hoping to figure what is so mesmerizing about it. After a few moments that he gives up, he turns his gaze back at Otto. Otto comes off as a weirdo to him.
“Are you buying or what?”
Otto comes back to attention, still on edge. He looks at his palm, where two lonely coins are preparing for a farewell. His palm is still wrapped with the kerchief, which is now reddish-brown, having the blood dried up in the scorching sun. He looks up at the pieces of meat that are hung in front of the butchery. The biggest piece shines out among the others. That should feed the family for the whole week, Otto thinks. That sweet thought does not last long when he takes another look at the two lonely coins on his palm. He sighs and points to a piece that is considerably smaller than the others. “How much?” he asks in a frail voice.
“Two pfennigs.”
Otto takes another long and dragging look at his money. He is not able to say goodbye to them, not at least to both of them. “Give me half,” he says finally while throwing one of the coins on the table.
The butcher watches Otto as if he looks at a freak. The butcher seems hesitant at first, but eventually takes the coin and puts the small piece of meat on the table. He has not taken his eyes off Otto, still giving him a weird look. The butcher takes his cleaver, and as he is staring at Otto, chops the small piece of meat in the middle.
Sitting on the side of a bench in the small church of the town, Otto is pretending to listen to the priest who is passionately performing a mass. The priest talks about hellfire and the horrifying life of sinners after death. He then goes on and on about the importance of the Church, and that the true believers are the ones who support it. Otto, however, is preoccupied with more basic problems he has with the life before death. He looks at his hand, which is wrapped with the kerchief. A coin, lonelier than ever, is taking refuge on his palm. He clenches his fists tightly to protect the coin.
Snapped back to attention, Otto finds the priest right next to him, holding a coffer. Everybody else in the row throws a coin in the coffer, and the priest blesses them with a prayer. Otto turns his head down, hoping that the priest moves on to the next row. After a few moments, he hears the priest clearing his throat. Otto looks up and finds the priest holding the coffer right before him, waiting. Otto feels the weight of everybody’s gaze on him. “Son! Son!” the priest finally says when he loses his patience.
People in the previous row also turn and join the judgmental eyes that are staring at Otto. Embarrassed and pressured, he eventually surrenders and unclenches his fist. He reluctantly and slowly moves his hand up and over the coffer but still cannot gather the will to let go of the coin. The frustrated priest takes Otto’s palm, turns it over, and forcefully shakes it. The fallen coin rings in the coffer, and with that painful sound an angry beast springs and takes over the peasant’s soul.
Otto’s hand plummets on his knees when the priest lets go of it and moves the coffer aside. The priest gives Otto a very disappointed look, leaves his crushed soul alone, and moves on to the next row. People turn their gaze away from Otto one after another. Breathing angrily, he looks at his wounded palm—which is now empty—, clenches his fists, and squeezes them furiously. Otto strikes the bottom of his fist against the bench handle.
Some drops of fresh blood fall on the church floor. They are falling off the bench handle, where Otto’s bleeding fist is ready to roar its pain.