The Harvest of Chronos. Mojca Kumerdej

this theory. I only hope we’ll be able to find him a wife who is prepared to endure a few obligatory conjugal nights and then, if she likes, she can follow in his mother’s footsteps.’

      ‘And what about you, Friedrich?’ the prince-bishop asks.

      ‘Me? Well, I am a man; I am a feudal lord.’

      ‘We are all men and feudal lords, but it’s appearances that matter. What’s true is what’s on the surface; the things we hide and cover up don’t exist, and after a while we start believing they never did exist.’

      ‘But what about secrets, gracious prince-bishop?’

      ‘Secrets are for the half-blind and hard of hearing,’ the prince-bishop replies. ‘And if things are as you say, then let’s pray to God that the hue of the new arrival’s complexion will not differ too obviously from that of your own lineage, and there will be nothing savage or barbarian in the child’s features.’

      ‘Just to be safe, I have two family portraits in readiness,’ the count says. ‘One is from my side of the family, the other from the countess’s. Great-Uncle Maximilian, although born in this very castle, looks as though he might hail from Alexandria, while my wife’s grandfather could easily be from Granada or Cartagena. They’re both of a sooty shade. Perhaps in those days people hired painters who mixed such dark colours, or maybe they used pigments of poor quality that darkened over the decades.’

      ‘In any case, the new child will not be able to fill your wife’s emptiness, although it will certainly divert her attention, at least in its early years. May God grant that it be as gifted as Hypatia was, or nearly so. A good mother will never recover from such a loss, although a bad one may even be glad of it, for such a brilliant gift from her body can easily stir envy and jealousy in her. But tell me, why did you give the girl such an inauspicious name as Hypatia? Why name her after that pagan astronomer, the doyenne of the Alexandrine Neoplatonists, who, like your daughter, suffered a very tragic end because of her intensive thought, slaughtered as a heretic by Christians? I’m superstitious when it comes to names; they must be chosen with great care.’

      ‘You think I wasn’t aware of that when she was born?’ Count Friedrich replies in a mournful voice. ‘But the countess insisted on Hypatia. The most I could do was demand we add the Christian name Agnes. For me, she was always my little Nessie, my Nežica.’

      The Apparition in the Pasture

      Not long after the visitations, and the sermons that incorporated not only the Indian story but others, too, with all sorts of apparitions, a shepherd knocked on the door of the nearby Dominican monastery. He told the doorkeeper that Mary had appeared to him, just as she had to that heathen Indian, Ivan, only he was no heathen but a deeply devout Catholic.

      ‘I was sitting quietly on a tree stump in the pasture, grazing my cows and goats and little sheep, when amid the tinkling of the cowbells a woman in a light-blue robe stepped out of the evening mists of late spring,’ he explained to the Dominican brother through the half-opened door – the monastery only opened wide its door to visitors when there was a serious reason, something more than petty fabri­cations and delusions.

      ‘I was very frightened and sat on that stump frozen, as if buried up to my waist in it. She stood in front of me, gazing at me with bene­volent eyes, as if I had never done anything bad in my entire life.’ (Which could not have been further from the truth, for whenever the shepherd got the feeling that his wife was talking too much or didn’t know how to turn around the way he liked, he would give her a couple of smacks to convince her to hurry up and put some effort into satisfying his desires and needs. In addition, there were a few thefts on his conscience, such as stealing horses, which he then sold on to fences. And once, in a drunken delirium, which happened more regularly than not, he was thought to have even killed a man, but as there were no witnesses and the victim was a foreigner, the incident was soon forgotten.)

      ‘There, standing in the midst of the cows and goats and sheep,’ the shepherd continued, ‘as I sat on the tree stump, Mary looked at me with infinite forgiveness, and her eyes seemed to tell me, “The past is the past, and now, shepherd, all is forgiven you.” I fell to my knees in amazement and, through the cowpats and small, hard turds of goat and sheep dung scattered all around, I crawled to the apparition and humbly lifted my eyes. Mary looked at me kindly, her hands clasped together, and she stroked my head with her merciful hand. Then she said to me something like what the Mexican Mary said to the Indian peasant Ivan: “Here, shepherd, in this pasture, on this grass, on which the sheep, goats and cows are munching at this very moment – right here, shepherd, build me a church. And not a little chapel either, but a basilica, with room enough for all who come to me on pilgrimage from near and far, who need my help and comfort. Every year in the month of May I expect to see fresh lilies of the valley – which you also know as St Mary’s flower – adorning my altar every day. But don’t let the priest pour that vinegary St Mary’s wine into the chalice, which causes you all to do so much evil; instead, he should pour the white, semi-dry wine which you will all be pressing from the local vineyards, specifically from the vine I now present to you, O shepherd. Plant this vine secretly in your own vineyard; I have imbued it with such incredible power that its wine will be famous far and wide. Because I have breathed miraculous power into your seedling,” – that’s exactly what she said to me: your seedling – “make sure the brothers at the monastery pay you a fair price for it, for as the feudal lords it is they who will receive the greatest benefit from the business. In addition, every May on the feast day of Mary Help of Christians, I would like there to be yet one more great procession, and with it a great fair, so that you can all get back on your feet, economically speaking, and have an easier life. After all, if you don’t help yourselves, how can I help you? For I am first and foremost your consoler. That’s all for today, shepherd; now go up the mountain to the Dominicans and tell them my demands.”

      ‘When she finished speaking, I nodded humbly and glanced up to see if Mary was still there or if her voice had been coming from heaven. Then I ran as fast as I could to the monastery door, and here I am now.’