gouged out so the rest seemed to stand on nothing. The two men looked higher and saw through the mist, a hundred feet above, a ragged black hole pointing down toward them. It seemed to teeter on the brink, arrested and frozen in the moment of falling, a great vault tilted downward, gaping down at the boatmen like a massive stone throat. The two men were staring up into the nave of the church.
The news spread quickly, and by late afternoon most of the island was stationed at the beach to witness the aftermath of the disaster. Like an anvil, thought Ronsdorff. Like the prow of a ship, thought Haase. The islanders gathered on the shore by Koserow to look along the coast and view the newly shaped cliff. Perched on top, the church appeared hinged at the middle, half on, half off. Like the boathouse at Stettin, thought Matthias Riesenkampf. Like a half-broken loaf, thought Otto Ott. Werner Dunkel brought his pickax and Peter Gottfreund three shovels. From time to time, from their vantage point a few hundred paces along the shore, they saw odd stones topple from the broken bell tower or shoot forth from somewhere within the nave, as though the church were spitting pebbles into the sea. Of the monks themselves there was no sign at all.
Winter advanced and began to send the two boatmen its warnings. Waves coiled loosely in the placid autumn swell, rolled up the beach, and began unfurling frigid whites and starker blacks. Winds chilled in the northern gulfs swept south, gathered pace over open water, and whipped waves from the normally placid surface, pushing them farther out from the coast for fear of being driven aground. The days rattled and collided in the loose vaults of the season, and each morning found Brüggeman and Ploetz rowing out from the shore in the teeth of the wind and hoisting the sail to return in the evening. The catches were growing thinner, and most years, Ploetz knew, Brüggeman would have beached the boat weeks before. Yet they persisted, against their better judgment and Mathilde’s protests, while the waters grew darker and more turbulent by the day. They worked off Vineta Point. They cast and drew in the nets, soaked and chilled to the bone. They looked inland to the cliff and the scurrying specks of gray that labored in its shadow. They watched the monks try to save their church.
The first week had seen them recover the beams. As the winds blew them in, the monks had thrown lines and grappled them ashore with hooks. A depot was built and ropes thrown down from above. A tripod was raised, anchored underneath the cliff, then another, then a third. Other beams were hoisted, lashed together, and braced. A scaffold was rising underneath the jut, an enormous prop tounderpin the church. Ploetz watched as it rose upward to the overhang. It grew day by day but seemed never quite to reach. A puzzle, a conundrum, which kept him wondering at night while he drifted into sleep. He dreamed of towers being sucked beneath the sea, hungry mouths gulping invisibly beneath the waters, and he realized that it was the yielding ooze of the seabed that would defeat them; the gap between their effort and its success was widening, not closing, and their scaffold was sinking even as they built it. Still the monks persisted. They built a raft, a strangely fashioned craft with a hole in the middle, to drive in piles. Monks leaped about its deck to manhandle logs, making it lurch wildly, while small waves rocked it up and down. The fishermen watched as piles were fed down through the hole, knocked about by the raft, lost, then retrieved and inserted once again, until one was held in place for long enough to drive. Ploetz wondered what plan they had formed to free their raft from the firmly anchored beam that now stuck up through the deck. He saw their craft knocked about by the rising swell, bumping against the pile, which bent this way and that, loosening under the battery, finally coming free of the seabed’s soft mud. And above
The news spread quickly, and by late afternoon most of the island was stationed at the beach to witness the aftermath of the disaster. Like an anvil, thought Ronsdorff. Like the prow of a ship, thought Haase. The islanders gathered on the shore by Koserow to look along the coast and view the newly shaped cliff. Perched on top, the church appeared hinged at the middle, half on, half off. Like the boathouse at Stettin, thought Matthias Riesenkampf. Like a half-broken loaf, thought Otto Ott. Werner Dunkel brought his pickax and Peter Gottfreund three shovels. From time to time, from their vantage point a few hundred paces along the shore, they saw odd stones topple from the broken bell tower or shoot forth from somewhere within the nave, as though the church were spitting pebbles into the sea. Of the monks themselves there was no sign at all.
Winter advanced and began to send the two boatmen its warnings. Waves coiled loosely in the placid autumn swell, rolled up the beach, and began unfurling frigid whites and starker blacks. Winds chilled in the northern gulfs swept south, gathered pace over open water, and whipped waves from the normally placid surface, pushing them farther out from the coast for fear of being driven aground. The days rattled and collided in the loose vaults of the season, and each morning found Brüggeman and Ploetz rowing out from the shore in the teeth of the wind and hoisting the sail to return in the evening. The catches were growing thinner, and most years, Ploetz knew, Brüggeman would have beached the boat weeks before. Yet they persisted, against their better judgment and Mathilde’s protests, while the waters grew darker and more turbulent by the day. They worked off Vineta Point. They cast and drew in the nets, soaked and chilled to the bone. They looked inland to the cliff and the scurrying specks of gray that labored in its shadow. They watched the monks try to save their church.
The first week had seen them recover the beams. As the winds blew them in, the monks had thrown lines and grappled them ashore with hooks. A depot was built and ropes thrown down from above. A tripod was raised, anchored underneath the cliff, then another, then a third. Other beams were hoisted, lashed together, and braced. A scaffold was rising underneath the jut, an enormous prop tounderpin the church. Ploetz watched as it rose upward to the overhang. It grew day by day but seemed never quite to reach. A puzzle, a conundrum, which kept him wondering at night while he drifted into sleep. He dreamed of towers being sucked beneath the sea, hungry mouths gulping invisibly beneath the waters, and he realized that it was the yielding ooze of the seabed that would defeat them; the gap between their effort and its success was widening, not closing, and their scaffold was sinking even as they built it. Still the monks persisted. They built a raft, a strangely fashioned craft with a hole in the middle, to drive in piles. Monks leaped about its deck to manhandle logs, making it lurch wildly, while small waves rocked it up and down. The fishermen watched as piles were fed down through the hole, knocked about by the raft, lost, then retrieved and inserted once again, until one was held in place for long enough to drive. Ploetz wondered what plan they had formed to free their raft from the firmly anchored beam that now stuck up through the deck. He saw their craft knocked about by the rising swell, bumping against the pile, which bent this way and that, loosening under the battery, finally coming free of the seabed’s soft mud. And above
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