Lapvona(23)

Jude had spent all his energy walking to the lake and back each day for months, carrying the single bucket of water, sweating the whole way. It had been too much to make the babes walk so far to drink. The villagers had all abandoned their homes and taken refuge by the lake, many of them spending all day sitting waist-deep in the water, as if staking out their claim, their hold on life. They could only gossip about food—where wild things once grew, and where there were animals that hadn’t yet succumbed to the drought. Jude spoke to no one at the lake, and no one spoke to him. Since he had refused them the meat of his babes, the people had turned against him. ‘He’s gone mad,’ they said. ‘Traitor,’ they called him. And they wondered what had become of his boy, Marek, who had been the subject of some gossip in the village in brighter times. ‘What an ugly child,’ they’d said. Now they said, ‘His father probably chopped him into bits and fed him to his precious lambs.’

There was little to discuss by July, and those who had fed were too ashamed of what they’d put in their mouths to speak of it. Dead bees, bats, vermin, worms, dirt, and even old, desiccated cakes of animal dung had filled their bellies. Jude had stopped eating almost completely after the lambs had died. He lost his appetite out of sorrow, and then their rotting flesh attracted flies, which he found cruel and stupid, his beautiful animals teeming with maggots, the lowest of God’s monsters. He buried the lambs in the pasture while the indestructible ram watched, steam puffing from his nose. The villagers found out and some of the older men came to demand Jude pay for his crime of starving the village of the only meat left. He had nothing to give them but the few objects inside his home—his stool, a few bowls and knives—which they took, although they were useless. And then they took his ram, slaughtered him on the spot while Jude hid inside his cottage. He could hear them portioning out the meat. He hated them. He had nothing left then, only his ravaged brain that held memories in fragments, without words, small, desperate thoughts lifting off the smell of the air. He remembered Agata and Marek. He remembered his babes. He spent all his time trying to remember, as if memories could sustain him.

Now it was August. Jude lifted his bones from the floor and felt the blood rush from his head. Was he going blind? he wondered. He got up and shuffled painfully to the door, opened it and nearly inhaled a swarm of flies and bees. He clapped his hands over his mouth as they flew in, chewed them up, and tried to swallow. The bugs were sticky in his throat. He had no saliva to help him suck them down. He inhaled and choked and coughed, his vision spotting. Finally he leaned in the direction of the lake, hoping his legs would follow. He had never liked the lake. It wasn’t a refuge for him, but rather the thing that had killed his parents. He knew water was necessary for survival, but this one body in particular was laden with horror. Now he couldn’t afford to be horrified. If he wanted to live, he would have to join the villagers in making his home there, though he was loath to. Some said there were fish in the lake, but no one had caught any. A few had gone mad trying to catch one. Since the drought began, the levels had fallen, the banks dried. The lake was smaller now at least, Jude thought.

Jude did not miss Marek, although the thought did cross his mind—in the late-night haunts of hunger so strong they drove him to near madness, too—that if the boy were there with him, he would have taken some pleasure in watching him starve, yes. Such dark thoughts would have disturbed Jude had he the energy to be disturbed. He still prayed every morning and every night. Still beat himself with the whip on Fridays. Still believed that there was indeed a God out there watching him, measuring his suffering. If you died from famine, you were guaranteed passage into heaven. This was common knowledge. Jude had been through a drought before, watched faces wither into skulls, whole farms die, but never one like this, so sudden, so hot, so destructive. No clouds. No wind. No life. Only Jude’s raspy breath. He turned away from the sun to cool his face for a moment and caught sight of Villiam’s manor on the hill. Marek was up there, he knew, and that was all he knew. Whether the boy was alive or dead, Jude could only wonder.

The ground was rocky and the dirt lifted into the air as a hot breeze blew. Dust clung to the lashes of his eyes. It hurt to blink. His clothes were stiff and scratched him as he moved. His skin hurt. His teeth were loose. His joints ached. His bones were sore. At least his feet were in better shape than the rest of him. The colorful leather boots he’d taken off Jacob’s body were well worn by now, but they fit him like gloves. He thought maybe he could soak them in the lake and try to eat the leather, if it came to that. For weeks now he had lived only on mud. If Marek had been with him, he thought, maybe the lambs would still be living. Marek could have carried water from the lake. This was a comforting thought for Jude, as he could rest his mind on hating the boy, blaming him for everything. It gave him strength to pity himself, a man starving alone while his son lived in the lap of luxury, or so he could imagine.



* * *




*

Up at the manor on the hill, Marek was still asleep in his bed. He had been sleeping later and later into the day as the season deepened, now into the afternoons, as he had no work to do, no water to fetch, no chores, no fear that Jude would turn to him enraged that he had left the door of the larder open or that he had not shoveled the lamb shit well enough or that he was chewing with his mouth open, something that Jude complained was a habit of arrogance, and he would hit Marek in the back of his head so that he would choke on his food and have to spit it out. And then there’d been the accusations that Marek did not appreciate his blessings. ‘Do you know how hard I have to work to feed you?’ Marek didn’t need to know now. Jude wasn’t feeding him. Villiam was. And Villiam worked not at all, it seemed. By some miracle, the drought had not disturbed life at the manor—there was nothing to worry about. Villiam had told Marek that life was for enjoyment and that he would now have to be broken of his boorishness. This was hard for Marek, as he was so addicted to suffering. Sleep made it easier. He could sleep and feel no guilt. Villiam thought Marek’s waking martyrdom was a kind of barbarian vanity. ‘God doesn’t reward misery,’ he’d said. ‘Just ask Father Barnabas.’