Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (33 page)

But while Milena slept her open-eyed sleep, he could hardly manage himself; his desperation (if such is not too emphatic a word) ripened within him like a worm in a corpse, until he could scarcely meet the eyes of others. Down a certain shady side-street lived a flower vendor of easy morals, who looked not unlike Doroteja. One afternoon he found his feet pulling him there. She smelled like roses, as he knew quite well from having bought bouquets for Milena. Her name was Anna. She smiled; her breath was as flowers. Oh, he almost could have done it! But as she stretched out her fingers to be kissed, he found himself imperfectly
recollecting a night when his faithful wife was lying on her side, with her head turned away from him and her buttocks exposed to him beneath the edge of the blanket—had she been asleep? If so, she must still have been alive. How tired she was, with the first two girls already born and always hungry; and once the sun was high she would have to be spreading the hay for the goats, with the elder one crying within the house and the younger one weighing down Milena's back, while he went to the forest to steal firewood; how could he magnify the griefs of this woman? And during those Triestine summer days, when she lay reeking in her wormy rags, and in those winter nights, when her caress was as cold as the bronze clasp of an old leather book, he loved and pitied her even more. He could easily have found some daytime courtesan, or perhaps even a sunshine wife, but it was only when Milena was present, and he accordingly felt like himself, that women attracted him.

Until evening allowed her globs of flesh to recombine he was always so tired nowadays, and come nightfall no one could compare to his wife, shameless and therefore innocent, her chin darkly dripping. As for her, of course, she was touched by the sweet feebleness of her faithful husband who had not yet died. She went on weaving noblewomen veils more fine than smoke, and custom came to her like flies to a corpse.

Vampires tend to have a fatalistic nature; and the faithful wife had certainly never anticipated being able to enjoy her husband forever. For many good years they comforted one another: for their friendless, lurking existence, for the deaths of their children and the loss of their old home—and since they were such perfectly suited helpers each to the other, I'd call their marriage as successful as any.

Once they caught sight of a kindred
vrykolakas,
dark brown like one of those Slovenian honey-breads in the shapes of animals; the Triestini had haled him out of his tomb, and were burning him in the piazza. He was wicked; anyhow, Milena and Michael could not save him; they turned away from his cries.

Then there was the child who disappeared—a very good little boy, too, of whom everyone was fond. Michael found difficulty in protecting Milena just then. But he had long since become the good husband who
knew and in a manner of speaking even cherished his wife's infirmities. He knew how to clean things up! As for her, she kept bringing renown to the neighborhood; on her devolves all credit for the soprano Rina Pelligrini's costume in “Lucia di Lammermoor”: golden embroidery on white, pale silver on a white as soft as the blurred face and girl-smooth hands of a priest's tomb-effigy after centuries of rain. And so the neighbors settled on a Jew to burn.

A few years later came the case of the dead man who an hour before had been laughing and full of blood. To save Milena from suspicion, Michael had to lead her out in the sun—barely after dawn, of course, and utterly gloved, perfumed and veiled; her tottering, twitching body began to liquefy at once, and she bit her tongue nearly in two so as not to screech; supporting her around the waist, he conveyed her down into the street, as if to help her take the air, fanned the light away from her face, explained to the passersby (who started at the stench):
my wife is not well,
then carried her back inside, terrified that he might have killed her forever. She did not leave her coffin for three days. Dusk of the fourth disclosed her helpless, as are we all when dead: hideous with sores, blind, unable to speak. He ran out, bought the fattest hen he could find and forced its head into her mouth. She tried feebly to bite, but even this she could not manage, so he slit the bird's throat, directing the wonder-working jets of blood upon her face.— Thank you, she whispered.— Perceiving that this had not sufficed, he rushed out again, just in time to catch a stray cat which had scented Milena. This time she was able to kill for herself. Then her sores began to heal. Every night he fed her on suchlike live creatures, and she lay there on the bed, grimacing and twitching. Soon she could see again. He sat by the threshold (although that was unlucky), wishing to take her in his arms or at least utter loving words but understanding that at this moment anything pertaining to life was nearly unbearable to her. All this she was suffering, if not for him alone, then for both of them. The distance between them seemed to have existed forever. But by then the neighbors had forgotten their suspicions of Milena, because a new wonder had been discovered in Trieste: a certain dead Countess's portrait, painted in oils, which could wink its left eye at anyone who praised it. And when he comprehended that he had saved her for a little longer, he felt the way he had as a boy in Bohemia on a certain
January morning, the ice black on the river and the whole family almost starving, when he found a precious apple hidden under the straw.

You might think that he sometimes wished to go back to the days before any of these events happened; for it is tiring to hide a secret, and lonely to forgo one's friends. But the fact is that he never thought along those lines. For they were consecrated unto each other. Their joint career was besprinkled with blood, perhaps, but only of the insignificant. And they were safe now. Who among the Triestini could believe this vital if pallid night-woman and her sweaty companion who sometimes behaved as if he kept a dagger near could be any worse than murderers or thieves? (Anyhow, in Trieste there is always some dead man or other rotting at the bottom of the Canal Grande.) By virtue of the magnetic sacraments they cherished one another to the end. Now it was time to make a silver girdle for the Duchess d'Aosta. Smiling at him with all her sharp teeth, Milena laid her hand upon his pulsing breast.

She had to go to bed earlier and earlier. By now a stench would come out of her an hour before dawn, her black tongue lolling out, her eyes screwing shut. As for him, he continued to look unwholesome, as might be expected of a man who never got quite enough sleep. Which of them loved the other more I cannot tell; they were bound to one another by the obscurest appetites of the blood.

I have seen an octagonally-framed daguerreotype of them from sometime after 1845—no, the legend you wish to cite is false; vampires do sometimes cast shadows, reflections and images, even if their husbands can't see them—with her dark hair parted high across that pallid forehead of hers; she wears a high-busted corset with a glass jewel about her neck; his arm is around her as she smiles, showing her teeth—no, what are you thinking? She wasn't like that!

Saving up their money until they could buy their indulgences, they entered the bosom of the Church, which was certainly soft and rich, although sometimes they found it difficult to breathe. He managed to protect her so long as they both lived, and she nourished him and kept her copperware shining like winter suns.

So finally they died together, and because they were wealthy and
generous, the Archbishop himself made sure that trentals were sung for them in church; and then they were buried in a marble tomb in consecrated ground, ringed round by the great trees, which do not even know their own names, and whose leaves hang down like grapes, like women's luscious hair, like ivy rushing to cover skeletons; and the crypt was sealed; the mausoleum was locked; and the moon passed into silver clouds, like a beautiful dead lady returning to the cemetery.

Doroteja sat embroidering red snapdragons on a white tablecloth which she would then hem with lace. She was childless. The joy she felt when one of Michael's daughters came running into her arms would surpass your belief.

Like any goodwife, she knew what is done with cristallium, tansy, zedoary, hassock and fennel in a jar of hallowed wine; all the same, the goblins had gotten at her, so that she miscarried. Her late husband had never comprehended the grief that a woman feels to lose the child she has cherished so long beneath her heart. Her mother, understanding quite well, taught her the charm to sing while stepping thrice across a dead man's grave:
This is my help against the evil late birth.
After that she was supposed to sell a clod from her baby's grave swaddled in black wool, saying:
I sell it, you must sell it, this black wool and the seeds of this grief,
but she could never find any merchant, peddler or Gypsy kind enough to buy this burden away from her. If only Tadeusz had lived, to give her another child!

The windows of her cottage were always darkened now.

But there was Michael, who ought to have wedded her in the first place. Milena was too ill to live, people said. With her out of the way, Doroteja needed but to sing the correct spell in order to have him.

On New Year's Day, with Milena declining more irrevocably, Doroteja washed herself in the water in which a silver coin had been dropped, in order to be as abundant in money as in water (because Michael had always been poor), and within the month six copper pieces came her way. Before Easter she bathed in a tincture of last year's roses, so as to be more beautiful—her elder sister staring at her, that same stinking kerchief on her head; Doroteja tried to wash herself at least twice a month.

Milena died when the moon entered her sixth mansion, and Doroteja felt very sorry, of course. A month later, Michael had not yet proposed.
So she paid a visit to his daughters, and the eldest one said: Aunt Doroteja, every night I pray for you to become our mother.

Soon after that, she learned that Milena had come back.

On the night of Holy Saturday, the dead souls go to church, which is the reason we burn graveyard fires on that night. Doroteja decided to ask her deceased husband for advice.

Reader, I would not care for you to believe that Doroteja was a witch, for we burn witches. She was simply one of those lucky girls whom God permits to be born on Easter Sunday.— Others hesitated to visit the cemetery at night. For Doroteja, the place was not much worse than her goat-shed.

Just as some papyri buried in humid old graves crumble away within moments after being unearthed, so it can be with deep-seated loves suddenly exposed; but the feelings of Doroteja and Tadeusz for each other endured like a hoard of gold coins. She had never loved him, but what did that matter? They were friends. Now that he was in the ground, she intended to indulge her hunger for love, which meant Michael.

Doroteja built a fire upon Tadeusz's grave. At midnight, after the dead sermon had been preached, he returned, pallidly glistening, and found his widow sitting at what for once could be called his hearthstone.

She said: Tad, do you still care for me?

Well, well, he said. What do you want? I've found more money if you need it—a hoard of Roman gold! And if you feed your calf a hank of grass from that grave over there, you'll get a fat milch-cow.

Where's our baby?

I never see him.

Tad, I want to marry Michael.

And eat my curse?

You wouldn't curse me, would you?

Gazing at him in the firelight, she fancied that his eyes and mouth were holes.

He said: Milena's living with him again. What would you do—put away his lawful wife?

Her rights are ended! I went to Father Hauser—

What would he say about your necromancy here?

Tad, never mind that. He said that Milena's sin is that she refused to bear in patience the death which God has appointed for us.

Flittering round and round her face, Tadeusz smiled at her with translucent teeth. Perhaps he too found death difficult to bear. Doroteja's mother had told her of the dead woman who returned on purpose to bite her husband's finger; when he pushed her away, she sank her teeth into his side. Remembering this, not to mention the fact that he kept circling closer, Doroteja began to fear her husband.

Milena and I will never allow you to marry him, he whistled.

So, said Doroteja. She's now become a friend of yours?

We all know each other here.

Then where's my baby?

Well, the unformed souls, you see—

Michael and I were
meant
to live together. You're the one being selfish.

His eyes narrowed, and a vertical crease came into his forehead as he cocked his head at her in the way he always used to when they were about to argue. Then, with a screech, he swooped in on her, hoping to bite her face. Knowing his moods, Doroteja was ready, and flicked a silver bullet into his mouth. Choking and retching, he shot back down into his grave.

Doroteja fed the geese, and then strung garnet crystals to sell. She washed her Sunday dress. She peddled eggs in front of the church, and turned them all into copper coins. When she got home she locked the door. She hid her profits beneath the fireplace, in the hole where she kept her magic treasures: two candles made by a virgin, four nails from a child's coffin. Then she filled a basket of plums and went to see Michael's daughters. So adorable in their white-rimmed ruffled caps, they ran into her arms, crying out: Aunt Doroteja!

How's your mother?

Father made us promise not to tell.

Never mind. Here are some plums for you. When I go I'll take my basket.

Thank you, Aunt Doroteja; you're always good to us. We love you more than—

Where's your father?

Here he comes now.

Long ago, before he married, he had felt something for her; now he was a wormy ball of equivocations. You may be sure that Doroteja did her best. When he greeted her, she rolled her eyes, smiled and adorably shook her head, all at once. But he was curt, even wary. That made her all the more jealous of Milena, whose postmortem existence resembled the idleness of some rich girl whose only work is to string beads. When she said farewell, he replied with relief. The daughters brought her basket. They begged permission to help Doroteja bundle up the wheat.— Never mind, girls, she said. Your father needs you.— Looking back over her shoulder, she saw Michael staring cautiously out at her, his forehead higher and paler than before. Then he closed the shutters.

So she returned to her dark house, where she kept weeping, weeping, like some dead woman whose every attribute but sorrow has rotted away. She would have cooked him mushroom soup with barley for Christmas. Because she so truly loved, her story is chased with flowers and diamonds, like the leather cover of an ancient book.

Doroteja was having one of those nightmares we all know, in which the wind becomes the rustling of a dead lady's dress as she ascends the stairs. When she awoke, she sought to persuade herself that the dream was good, and signified treasure from beyond the grave.

She milked her cow, fed the geese and collected the hens' eggs. She gathered firewood from the forest. She weeded her field, rescued plums from the birds, milked the cow again, and then life was as beautiful as a Bohemian sunset with a raven hovering over the mountains, or was it merely a fly on the windowpane? She ate supper: barley in milk. She prayed to Saint Polona, Saint Vitus, Saint Adelbert, Saint Wenceslaus, Saint Procopius and of course Saint Doroteja, her own patron saint. As soon as it got dark, off she went to the churchyard, where the memory-stones resemble sheaves of wheat leaning against each other. Singing the spell that her mother had taught her, she knelt at her mother's headstone, anxious lest some evil thing might come upon her from behind. She
poured out a little milk. And up rose her mother, spinning thread as she came, clenching between her knees the grooved distaff as tall as a scepter.

Mother, I've set my cap at Michael.

He's not for you. Milena has him.

Mother, I want a husband and a child.

You won't get either.

Then what should I do?

Die alone.

So back home went Doroteja, weeping, weeping, back to her house whose eaves ran nearly down to the ground.

The daughters died; Doroteja refused to believe any ill. But if only she had given them medallions of Saint Polona! At night she prayed for Milena to return alone beneath the earth.

Harvesting clover, washing beets in the creek and then confessing her sins, Doroteja endured that summer. Even now her love persisted, like some half-rotted scrap of flower-knitted lace. After Michael and Milena's disappearance, she accompanied her neighbors to burn down their house, singing hymns, with her hair braided up in a cornucopia, and Father Hauser complimented her voice. Outside sat Milena's mother, who was huge-eyed and pale, with her chin up and her mouth open, her hair tucked decently in her kerchief and her withered hands straining not to claw at one another in the lap of her faded striped skirt. Everyone both expected to make horrible discoveries and hoped to find supernatural treasures. Hans Trollhand, looking fearsome in his black-and-scarlet cloak, now kissed his torch to the thatch. As the flames ascended, people dispersed, and some were hiding objects in their pockets. As for Doroteja, in a recess beneath the straw mattress where the daughters had slept, she found an Easter egg red as sunrise, with yellow grapevines crossing upon it. She had made that for Michael the year before he married Milena. The next year she had made him a black egg painted with a golden castle; Milena must have destroyed that one.

Doroteja joined the quotidian line of men and women bending in the fields, scything hay, sweating, groaning because their backs hurt. So
she helped her neighbors in exchange for a mouse's share of the crop. In the forest she gathered mushrooms and berries. She dried her plums and pears on the kiln. At a rich man's funeral she got to taste bread with horseradish sauce and small scraps of smoked meat.

Come autumn she set out for the cemetery and called upon her dead father.

What now, Doroteja? Has Christ returned at last?

Father, father, I can't endure to live and die alone.

She remembered how he used to be in life, hunching forward, turtling down his shaggy head, gripping his spade as he stared furiously into any stranger's eyes. Now he was not much more than a gust of fireflies. It would have been different had she poured out blood for him.

Father, are you lonely here?

You never knew anything. How do you expect to get a husband?

Help me, father!

Then lower your ear and I'll sing you a charm . . .

Dead man's breath, a tongueless whisper and the crickets singing, that was all she heard.

Through the fall she kept the red Easter egg under her pillow. Sometimes she kissed it, because Michael had touched it and kept it. But it began to haunt her, floating before her eyes even when she was working in the fields. After she had dreamed about it three times, she realized that it was bewitched, so she smashed it, and maggots crawled out of it.

That night Doroteja set out for the cemetery and poured out milk for Michael's daughters, singing spells to draw them forth by their names. Here they came: Maria, Ludmila and then Markétka, the youngest—sad little girl with the watchful eyes, her dirty dress still too large for her. They rushed up wailing and trembling, with moonlight shining through their bones. They struggled to embrace her, but of course Our Redeemer permits no such perversions. Wriggling and fluttering, they breathed on her the faintest cool breath of earth. Doroteja burst into tears.

Aunt Doroteja, they said, will you be our mother now?

Did your mother murder you?

We promised not to tell—

Aunt Doroteja, may we live with you? We'll be good; no one will ever see us.

We'll help you; we'll count grains of rice—

In much the same way that magic can kindle a shadow upon the sun's disk, so the loneliness of those three dead girls cooled Doroteja's sorrow, and so she invited them home. No living soul ever entered that house but her elder sister, and when
she
came the ghosts hid in the pile of firewood, squeaking more faintly than rats. They never grew up, of course; they loved to ride on her shoulders when she went to the creek to wash her laundry.
Maminka
they called her. One might say that her home was as haunted as an old Gothic castle, but Doroteja forgot to look at it that way. When she went to confession, she neglected to mention her visitors to Father Hauser, because he was so fond of her that she thought it cruel to disappoint him. In the evenings when she sat eating her barley cooked in milk, they pretended to share with her, but in truth their spoons were too heavy for them to lift, and the iron pot burned them if they hovered too close by it. After dark, Doroteja would go out the back door and spill a few drops of milk into the dirt, whispering their names, very quietly, so that the neighbors would not hear.

They were as helpful as could be when she went to the forest to get mushrooms and berries, for they could fly off in three different directions, then come winging back to whisper in her ear. They could not scare away birds, but they could sit up in the plum tree watching for them, and whenever some bold robins or crows descended in a robber's band, one of the girls would fly squeaking into Doroteja's ear, so that she could save her fruit. When Doroteja went to church, attended a witch-burning or set out to sell eggs and garnets, those three darling girls watched over her field, sinking down into the dirt to count her beets, carrots and lovely yellow potatoes.

Just as ancient copper coins go green, so went Doroteja's life, and by the time she was old, what others imagined to be her desperate solitude had become as insignificant to her as the splash of a crabapple in a deep well.