Lapvona(73)

Marek saw his chance to sneak into the room for a private conversation with his mother. He had prepared what he would say. ‘I’m lord of Lapvona now, and I demand that you be a mother to me.’ His lower lip already trembled as he lifted his hand to knock on the door. To his amazement, the door swung open, revealing the sunlit room, the cradle by the open window, and Agata lying behind a gauzy curtain that hung down from the canopy bed.

‘Mother?’ he called.

She seemed to be asleep.

Marek crept slowly across the stone floor, careful to step on his toes so that his fancy heels didn’t strike the ground and make a noise and wake the babe. The light from the window streamed powerfully into the bassinet. He wanted to see if the child was the son of God indeed. Did it resemble Marek at all? As he approached, he felt a heaviness in his limbs, as though the life were draining out of his body. The baby was doing it to him, he thought. When he finally got close enough to look at it, the babe was curled up in a ball, its face hidden by a little bonnet. He reached toward it and gripped its tiny, soft shoulder to flip it on its back. He had never touched a baby before and wasn’t sure if he should be afraid of it, if it might wake suddenly and bite his hand like a sleeping dog. But it didn’t bite him. It merely opened its eyes, which were large and brown, and looked up at him and smiled a toothless, baby smile. Marek felt his heart drop. Having never known love before, he couldn’t recognize the feeling. Something was terribly wrong, he felt.

‘Mother?’ he called again.

Agata was silent. Marek went to her bed and lifted the curtain of gauze. A strong perfume struck his face. The bed was covered with tansy, piles of flowers in different states of decay.

‘Mother,’ he said again, and reached for her shoulder under the flowers. He swiped at the drying blooms and shook her. But she would not wake. He cleared the tansy from her face. It was hollow and gray, her eyes black holes. A maggot crawled out of her bony nose. Marek let go of the gauze. If she’d never died before, perhaps he would have been sad that she was no longer living. But instead, what dismayed him was her rotting corpse. God had not come to take her to heaven. The Devil had left her to rot.

He picked the baby up and hid it in the inside of his jacket. It nestled in the space above his jutting belly, held securely against Marek’s chest by his tight spring jacket. Then he went out, creeping along the halls. He saw Petra coming up the stairs.

‘I think I’ll go for a walk,’ Marek said as she passed.

‘Do you want me to follow you like last time?’

‘No, Petra. I want to visit Villiam’s grave and pray for his soul.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Marek knew Petra would not want to come near Villiam’s grave. It stank and teemed with flies.

He walked out and was surprised that nobody stopped him, nobody cared to know where he was going. He clutched at the wee thing in his jacket, peeking down to see its face—so pure, its fine red hair like a ray of light across its crown and eyebrows. He followed the sun down the hill toward his old pasture, and then up the mountain, where he hadn’t been since he’d thrown the rock at Jacob. If this baby was the savior, Marek thought, maybe he could pray to it and turn back time.



* * *




*

Without the church bells, the days had a wistful magic to them in the village. Lapvonians stopped waking up before dawn to pray and slept until the roosters crowed, and then even still, some of them liked to sleep later into the morning, rising only when their bodies had rested enough and their bones were getting sore against their beds. They rose and stretched and looked at the sun to align themselves, and then they ate and drank and went out to greet their happy new blond-headed neighbors. There were no bells to signal when it was time to rest or return home for lunch from the fields. People came and went as they pleased. Grigor explained this to Ina as they smoked in the sunshine by the garden. Ina squinted and covered her eyes with her hand.

‘You can’t believe the difference in my sleep,’ he said, ‘now that I know what time is to me, and not what it meant to the church.’

‘That’s good, Grigor,’ Ina said, inhaling. Grigor had brought a pipe he had carved from a branch of rosewood.

‘You can keep the pipe,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I like it. I know the birds who live in this rosewood tree. Are they back now that spring is here?’

‘Yes, they’re back.’

‘Are they singing?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Ina,’ Grigor began. He didn’t know how to speak to her now that her appearance had changed so drastically. To Grigor, it did seem that the Christ Child had turned back the hands of time. How was it possible? He figured it would be best to speak directly. ‘You seem very different, Ina,’ he said.

‘I am different,’ she said. ‘I’m a mother now.’ Grigor could see her eyes fill with tears. ‘I finally have a babe of my own,’ she said.

Grigor felt a nerve of fear throb in his jaw. What of the mother? He couldn’t ask. He sucked the smoke and let it pass and tried to be reasonable.

‘I thought the church was rotten,’ he said. ‘But you say there is a real Christ?’

‘Forget that church.’

‘I try to. You know that Ivan’s men tore it down.’