Lapvona(16)

‘You poor boy,’ Jude said coyly. ‘What scent had the wind? Was there myrrh in the air?’

‘Oh yes, Father. And fire! And the smell of burning flesh! Lightning must have struck Jacob.’

‘Burning flesh, eh?’

‘Like a lamb struck by lightning!’ Marek offered, hoping to garner further fright and sympathy from Jude, who he knew had been so disturbed those years ago when the same had happened to one of his babes. But Jude had invented the story of the lightning. It had been merely an excuse for his overprotectiveness of his lambs. He himself had been afraid of storms since his parents drowned. They sent him into a panic. He had collected his babes inside the cottage for the comfort of their closeness. No lamb had ever been struck by lightning. God could never be so cruel.

‘I should beat you dead if you’re lying to me,’ Jude said when they stopped to catch their breath. But his fists were too tired from the work they’d done already.

‘I’m not lying!’ Marek cried, shielding his face from his father’s hand.

Oh, but his insistence was suspect. Jude prayed in his heart that the boy was lying. Jacob was his cousin Villiam’s son. Their fathers had been estranged, but there was still tragedy in hearing that someone of his own blood had died so young.

‘You’re telling stories to trick me again,’ Jude said. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No, he’s really dead! He’s there! Let me show you!’

‘Let’s get going,’ Jude said, and they kept walking.

Now they were halfway up the mountain. Marek was quiet, marching along. He remembered the first time he had met Jacob, years ago. It had been winter, Jacob a dot on the snow-covered horizon as he approached in his red wool cap, his fine coat, his red leather gloves. They were only five and six then. Jacob had seemed to Marek like a magic boy, impervious to the cold. He was so healthy and strong, his nose didn’t even drip. Pale as the snow. The two boys loved the winter. The cold whip of wind on their eyeballs made them hungry to trample through the snow to discover something. A few years later, Marek had shown him where to hunt elk, wolf, lynx, and beaver. Waxwings, black woodpeckers, and white-tailed eagles were harder to shoot, but they were around in winter. Jacob had an easy time with white fox and bunnies. Marek didn’t like the blood and killing, but he liked to assist on the hunt. Jacob had enjoyed his company and guidance. They’d had fun together, and Marek had felt lucky to be valued for his knowledge of the land and its animals.

These memories made his heart feel warm. But when he detached from the memories and looked around at the morning grayness and the looming height of the mountain before him, the rising sun, his heart felt cold, like a sweat chilled by a sudden wind. It was a terrible feeling, the boy’s first experience of nostalgia: the pain of his past. Until now, time had had almost no meaning. The sun rose and set. The church bells donged, but he didn’t bother to count them. Just the thought of the church pained him. The thought of the road filled him with longing, as if he might never go back there. He might never again trudge through the snow into the whiteness of the pasture. He might never again smell the smoke of fire burning in the cottage chimney. He might never see another winter. He may never see people again. He would be punished for what he’d done to Jacob. He was worried Jude might kill him.

Jude was worried, too. He had spotted Jacob before on his walks through the pasture toward the mountain but had never spoken to him. He’d seen him and Marek walking side by side, and the sight of them together had been hopeful somehow, as though the conflicts of past generations were ameliorated by these boys who intuitively shared a kindness toward one another, not even aware of their relation. The hopefulness confused Jude. He had gone through bouts of despair and anger about his lot in life, especially when he was younger, before he had found Agata. He had felt that God had deprived him of his great-grandfather’s fortune, had made him suffer for his grandfather’s stupidity: nobody ever told Jude what his grandfather had done to get himself exorcised from the family. Jude’s own father had been too proud even to speak of it, regaling them instead with boasts of the godliness of their pasture and their babes. ‘The Earth will provide all we need in this life. Anything extra is a sin.’ Jude had balked at that idea in his youth. Once his parents had died, any wishful thinking about money had faded completely. He understood that his destiny was to be small, a keeper of small animals, a man of the land, not of riches. And he had learned to accept the religious truth that his father had preached, that God favors those who are poor and powerless. Or he tried to accept that. Every day he looked up from his pasture at Villiam’s stone manor and tried to feel sorry for him. His cousin must carry the heavy burden of worry over the welfare of the entire village. Jude tried to think of him as a martyr. And poor Jacob, who would never know penitence or humility. God save those with money, Jude had tried to think.

But a life of poverty had not earned him an easy way. The more Jude went hungry, the more he mourned his beloved Agata, the more wrenching became the yearly goodbyes to his sweet lamb babes. The more he watched Marek grow ugly and twisted, doughy somehow despite the lack of proper food, the more Jude wondered if his grandfather hadn’t made a grave error. What good was a life of struggle with no guarantee of heaven? He watched Marek shuffle ahead of him up the mountain and wondered how he had ever committed himself to this strange, ugly creature. Agata had been beautiful, hadn’t she? All Marek had of hers was the fiery red hair. Poor Jude. Poor me. For what he suffered through on Earth, he had better reap rewards in death, he thought. If the boy kept him from heaven, he would kill him. He would throw him off the cliff. These were Jude’s thoughts as they walked up the mountain. ‘Kill the creature and walk away.’ But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. His own boy, no, God forgive him for the vile thought. Jude tried to shift his focus away from God and onto Marek’s story. He knew the boy was lying, but he couldn’t identify the lie. So he used his own lies to try to tease out the truth.