— Rawley Grau
Ljubljana, October 2017
Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.
Another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to the one who sat on the cloud, ‘Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.’ So the one who sat on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.
— Revelation 14:14–16
In Syncopated Rhythm
Hills of tender green were scattered about in syncopated rhythm, and the late-morning sun, which bathed the land in apricot light, announced that the cold which had paralysed the province right up to the first days of April was slowly releasing its icy grip. On a distant ridge, a little village was bashfully uncovering itself, wedged into a rounded slope and pierced through by the bell tower of a church. The bright-green forests revealed that the trees within them were mostly ancient beeches interspersed with lindens – trees that in these parts and those times held special importance for the populace. The hard wood of the beech tree had economic importance, for it produced the most bountiful warmth in household hearths. But for other fires, not meant for heating homes, it was best to use faster-burning woods drenched in animal fat, which were then tossed into a pile. On some occasions, linden trees were involved. To be sure, when it blossoms the linden gives off a heady perfume and its dried flowers have the power to soothe coughs and reduce fever, but the wood of the tree, with its particular softness, is also ideal for carving gods. And carving and cavorting with lindenwood gods was sufficient reason, in the late sixteenth century, for the carvers and cavorters to roast at the stake and be burned to the bone.
The old trees kept watch over memories from an age the local populace did not remember first-hand but that still rustled in secret among them. The little villages, sprinkled with modest churches, were watched over by the tall and mighty old trees, and, not infrequently, an oak might hold the foundation and walls of a church in the tight grip of its roots. As evening approached, the little churches would ring their bells and announce to honest folk that it was time to milk whatever there was to be milked and to fill their stomachs with whatever there was to fill them, so they wouldn’t churn and growl until morning, and then to go to bed and, before falling asleep, if their bodies allowed it, make a new Christian – a Catholic one, not a Lutheran! And then the churches, too, would shut their eyes and still their bells in a well-deserved slumber. That was how things were supposed to be. That was what was demanded and expected of a God-fearing people.
But not everybody kept these customs. Just as eyelids should be shutting out the visible world, the hours arrive when the dark world awakens and with it the ancient forces that supposedly lay vanquished and rotting beneath the little churches. When the evening bells have finished chiming and diligent hands have done what remains to be done, all in keeping with secular and religious law, there are a few who then start lifting the heavy lids off household chests, opening cabinets, pulling up a floorboard or unscrewing a panel in the wall, and as they look to see if anyone is watching, they take out various dried and fresh herbs, clay pots and bowls, glass jars large and small, roots, ointments, desiccated toads, insects and snake heads, which they place all around them, preferably on the floor, lest what they do be noticed by an intrusive eye from behind the curtained window and tightly closed shutters. Or perhaps, sitting or crouching amid all this paraphernalia in a windowless black kitchen by the light of a candle, they begin to consider what mischief might be made that evening. Would it be a good idea, is it the proper time, to take revenge on a neighbour – although they could just as easily do him evil for no other reason than the pure pleasure of it? Is tonight the night for wreaking havoc on a henhouse and binding the fowls’ guts so they never again lay a single egg? Oh, right! They could see if that woman has already given birth, and if she hasn’t, or is only now in labour, they could twist the umbilical cord around the little head in her belly so that not even the most skilful midwife would be able to disentangle the child.
There were, to be sure, more than a few midwives among those who hatched such schemes and nursed such dismal thoughts – the very women the populace was obliged to trust on such a sensitive and important occasion as the birth of a child. It would not be the first time that, right after a woman gives birth, the midwife hurries outside with the newborn, lifts him in the air and thunders out curses, summoning her dark master and offering him the baby as a gift. And her master willingly accepts these unbaptized little souls. Sometimes he will take both body and soul, and people then wonder why the child died so unexpectedly when there was nothing at all wrong with the mother’s belly, either during the birth or before it. Sometimes the hornèd one leaves the body alone for a time, bringing up the soul inside as his very own child, who does evil at his bidding. Some of them really are his children, although this is not always apparent at first glance. The child seems healthy and active enough, no naughtier than other naughty children. But eventually, the observant eye begins to detect certain suspicious and revealing signs. For instance, farm animals are afraid of the child, while foxes and wolves approach him boldly and roll on their backs at his feet like a pet cat or dog. Or when he walks past a crucifix, it tilts and turns so that if the Saviour really was nailed to it, all the blood would rush to his head. Accidents start happening in the family and no one can say why – and this in a family that is devout, where everyone has a good, pure heart and harsh words are never spoken and the rod always spared, unless the punishment is well-founded and necessary, a family who crawl on their knees in the great processions around the altar and even give to the church a little more than they are able to, who have no dispute with their neighbours or with anyone else in the village, not the priest or the count or any other authority. And then one day the mother slips and falls on her back and cannot get out of bed any more. And a few weeks later, one of the children breaks out in a festering rash, and even after the barber has let his blood and applied leeches to cleanse the poisons from the body, the child gets weaker and his skin turns sallow, until eventually, pale, ashen and emaciated, he sleeps the sleep of eternity. And that’s not the end of it. The family has not yet fully recovered when another son falls out of the cherry tree, hurting himself so badly he’s no good for anything until the following spring; with his broken fingers, he can’t even crack nuts or do the other small chores by which the populace gets through the long, cold, dark winter hours.
And to make matters worse, after a night in spring the fifteen-year-old daughter throws up her morning porridge and bores her eyes into the floor; and when someone asks her what’s wrong, she bursts into tears, clasps her hands in prayer and falls on her knees, begging Mary for help, because she doesn’t know what’s wrong. And she does well to pray to Mary, who more than any saint, male or female, let alone Jesus or God, understands why a teenage girl might first feel sick in the morning and then, despite not eating very much, grow larger by the day. ‘Tell me his name!’ The father is pummelling his daughter, who bears the blows meekly through her tears, for she knows she has honestly earned them and is now paying the price for her short and sinful life. ‘His name! His name!’ the father shouts, bellows, thrashes her. ‘You have defiled our family’s name! Never in recent generations has anyone in our family whored herself so young!’ (This, in fact, may not be true, for who knows whose seed a woman carries? Sometimes the woman herself doesn’t know, and in those days, the man she names as the father could as easily doubt her as take her at her word.) And because her father’s hand does not relent, the girl agrees to tell him, to show him, everything. He cracks his knuckles and looks around. Should he grab the musket, which he uses from time to time for poaching deer on the count’s hunting ground? Or should he take the sickle, the axe, maybe the scythe? Or merely a knife and with threatening looks make his daughter understand that she’d better not dally with the information. He moves a step closer, grabs her head and turns it towards the picture of the Virgin Mary that is hanging on the wall, and the daughter blurts out the first name that comes to her.
‘Who? I don’t know him! He’s not from our village!’
‘Of course he isn’t!’ the daughter weeps. ‘It didn’t happen in our village!’ While her young brain is weaving