After weeks of not sleeping, she felt herself being slowly lulled to sleep as she lay there on the hay. Tomorrow was a new day, and with it a new life would begin. ‘Good night, little baby,’ she said out loud. ‘Good night, angel of God, my guardian dear. And you, too, Virgin, who endured what I must endure and accepted it all without complaint – but since it was God you were dealing with, I guess you had no choice. Good night to you, too, Holy Spirit, who I hope will be able to help me. But not to you, God the Father, since you take the side of men and fathers and let them do to us whatever they feel like, even horrible things. Good night to you, Baby Jesus, who will soon have a little brother. But grown-up Jesus, I’m not talking to you right now because of my problems with men, since, even if you’re special, you’re still a man. And good night to you, by which I mean me: you’re not to blame for anything, and you’re going to be a good mother to your baby and to your brother and sister, too, and when all of this is behind you, you’ll be the owner of a farm, and, with the good sense you have, which is not very common around here, you’ll find yourself a good husband, a father for the tiny tot and the other two little ones – and Jesus, I’m expecting you to help me with this because I want him to be like you – kind and tall and strong, and good-looking, too, with long wavy hair. Good night, world … good night, moon … good niiii …’
Dark Sounds
The province was beset by catastrophes of a moral, meteorological and medical nature. It was just as in the Old Testament, the populace was starting to realize. After the bitter winter, the snow was melting, which in early March led to rising waters. This was followed by cold rains, and people were hacking and wheezing and spitting out gobs of phlegm. Then there was an unexpected warm spell, and the germs that had spent the winter in idle numbness now revived and attacked people’s bowels, ears, throats and lungs, and did not spare the livestock either. Two years earlier, the oaks had been full of acorns, so the following year the mouse colonies increased, with mice running freely through yards, barns and houses and even scurrying out of drawers and chests, but the year of the mice forecast an even worse torment waiting for the populace this spring – snakes. Overfed on fat mice and rats from the year before, with the first warm rays of the sun they were slithering about between people’s feet – long ones, thick ones, short ones, thin ones – and few could avoid them. Some snakes would strike at any feet they feared might trample them. And certain ones – such was the opinion of more than a few – were biting people out of sheer malice. After all, not only people and – well, we won’t mention who – can be evil; animals can, too, since he whose name is not to be written or spoken can sometimes assume their form.
Even before the real summer starts there will be a brutal heat wave – such was the prediction of both folk wisdom and astrology. Fires will break out (but surely not without help?), after which swarms of strange insects, like grasshoppers only bigger, will attack and devour the few crops that have taken root in the fields. The countryside will suffer scarcities, and it will be worse in the towns, where prices will surge. And to ensure that the catastrophes reach biblical proportions, an epidemic of dysentery will break out, with such excruciating stomach pains that some people will even die. And plague will arrive and claim a fifth of the village, and then typhus, putrid fever and again dysentery, and again plague, and meanwhile the Turks will invade and there will be an outbreak of the black pox, and as people from all this misery begin to dance the dance of St Vitus, typhus will reappear, and then plague again …
Maybe all these things really did happen, but probably not all in the space of a year or two. The human mind, looking back at the past, tends to compress events, reshaping them in rich and colourful ways and exaggerating many things. Exaggeration proves particularly useful when it is good to justify some past action. And as for what is good, well, the populace are experts in such matters. Common sense tells them clearly what is and isn’t good, especially when the deed marks the boundary between life and death, when it cuts into a body. Plainly, there was no other choice; it’s better for everyone this way – these are the usual explanations after such irrevocable actions, some of which are simply erased by human memory. Words like simply and plainly are very convenient for justifying violence, for they reinforce the logic and underscore the inevitability of what was done. And erasing memory is good not bad. Living with too much badness is exhausting and painful for human beings; it can arouse feelings of guilt and unease, which, in turn, can develop into severe anxiety. We should be grateful to the mind of God and the way he structured the human brain: everything is constantly being filtered so the bad things don’t clog our thoughts. Exaggerating, mitigating, erasing, inflating or in some other way transforming events – all this the human mind can do. But the human mind and the mind of God are not the only minds. There is another one, too, one that speaks deceitfully to the populace, seducing them, leading them astray …
‘So how do we know that what we did was right?’ the populace wonders.
‘That we didn’t make a mistake?’
‘That we did what we did because it was the command of God and that we didn’t maybe fall into a trap?’
‘Yes, how do we know when it’s God speaking to us and not perhaps …’
‘Perhaps …?’
‘The other one …’
‘You can tell who is speaking by the voice.’
‘But is it really always possible to tell the two of them apart?’
‘The two of them?’
‘Because sometimes we might believe and be entirely convinced that it’s God speaking to us, when, in fact, it’s …’
‘Who?’
‘His impersonator … the evil-toned … dark-timbred one … who pretends to be what he’s not …’
‘Devout people can tell good from evil!’
‘But can they always? And, if so, how? How did Abraham in the Old Testament, to whom God gave a son in his old age and then commanded him to take his son to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a sacrifice, the way animals are sacrificed – how could Abraham tell that it was God’s voice and not some other’s? How could he seize the knife without hesitating, ready to plunge it into the heart of his son, because that was what God wanted of him?’
‘He who believes is not afraid and does everything God expects of him.’
‘But what if the angel had not stopped his hand at the very last moment and placed a sacrificial animal before him?’
‘The fact that the angel did stop the Abraham’s hand and put the ram before him proves that this was the voice of God.’
‘That might be comforting in hindsight, but at the time, when you hear such a dreadful command and everything is still open and there’s an endless gaping void in front of you … What if the void really is empty and there’s no meaning in it at all?’
‘Where there is faith, there can be no meaningless void!’
‘But to kill a child? What sort of God can demand of a father his son’s death …’
‘If not a God who was able to send even his own son to his death?
*
‘Quiet! Let’s not impose on creation by trying to understand more than we need to, more than we are meant to. Let’s not undermine the plans of God with doubt and inappropriate questions! Some things are beyond us, beyond our understanding, and can only be accepted!’
‘But how can we know for sure what God wants from us? That he wants anything from us? How can we know that the voice that speaks to us is not our own madness?’
‘We