Halfway to Krisk, Luka stopped to take a nap in the miraculous shade of a dead chestnut tree. He crawled into the carriage and lay down. He fantasized that some maniac would burst in and slay him, steal the horse and take off, leaving him dead to drift up to heaven where Jacob was waiting. Finally, he could claim him as his son. ‘He is mine,’ he would say. It was all any man wanted, to point at his son as he passes and to say to the people, ‘He is mine. That is my boy. I made him. There he goes.’ Luka cried and grew tired. He turned to face the dark of the carriage. Eventually he did sleep. His dreams were thin and sweaty, just pictures. The brittle landscape of the plains outside of Lapvona, empty farms he’d passed, dried worms on the hard, cracked ground, an itch in the back of his throat. He awoke disappointed that he’d not died in his sleep. It was a luxury to die in one’s sleep, he thought. Of course, God would not make it so easy. This was what his mind repeated—‘God would not make it so easy’—as he watered his horse a little and mounted it again.
* * *
*
When Luka didn’t return with the singer in time for the feast, the stableboys were concerned that the horse had given up in the heat. But Dibra had a worse feeling. She paced as the servants set the table. ‘I loved that horse,’ she said to Father Barnabas, who sat, already eating the chicken. He seemed not at all bothered that the singer hadn’t arrived, for there was, magically, a replacement guest—a young nun with scorched cheeks. She sat glumly on the edge of the settle. Dibra didn’t like the burnt look of her face. She could see bits of flaking skin on the nun’s lips. Would she offer her some salve? No.
Dibra didn’t like nuns. She didn’t like their modesty. Once she had married Villiam, she refused to wear a cap over her head. Her long blond hair was wild and curly and bristly, and she liked to feel it swing as she walked. Modesty was boring, Dibra thought. Perhaps this was something she had absorbed from her husband—an irritation with anything too fussy in its purity. Marek was guilty of that fussiness. Dibra disliked him for so many reasons. Everything about him was a needy, arrogant demand for pity. He always looked up at Dibra with big, sad eyes, expecting what—a warm embrace? Forgiveness? She had nothing to return but cold disgust. He was scared of her, and she was glad. He had grown a bit since he’d arrived, but he was still so stiff, so stupefied by the food and drink every time they sat together at the table, his hands trembling to pick up his cup, as though he weren’t strong enough to lift it. Dibra could hear the fears in his head: ‘God, forgive me for this indulgence.’ The idiot. She was an atheist herself. She had once felt that there was a power in the way things happened, a kind of fatedness that she depended on, an order to life. After Jacob’s death, she lost that faith completely. Life was chaos. There were no rewards. Best to make the time tolerable, at least. It never occurred to her that her philandering might have inspired God’s wrath. How could a little love cause such a horrendous tragedy?
Although Dibra got irritated by Villiam’s gregariousness, she didn’t mind the entertainment he demanded. She especially liked the singer from Krisk. His lullabies were the best. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately either, and wouldn’t sleep at all now, not until Luka was back home safe and the singer was with him.
‘Let’s eat,’ Villiam said, sauntering feebly into the room. The priest put down his drumstick. The nun lifted her head. ‘Come, come,’ Villiam said, as Clod pulled the lord’s chair away from the long table. Villiam made a great fuss because the pillow wasn’t plumped enough. ‘Clod? How is it possible?’ Clod beat the pillow until it was puffed up, then Villiam sat on it, like a dying king on his throne, but he wasn’t dying. He was simply an insect. That was how he’d been since Dibra had married him. He moved like a spider walking on its hind legs. Perhaps this was why he preferred Marek to Jacob, she thought. Marek was also feeble. Stunted, his eyes hollow, his body always perched as though he were shirking away from a fist swinging toward him. And Villiam liked Marek for his ugliness. Just a look at the boy’s face elicited a response. Jacob had been too handsome, too staid. Marek trembled, vulnerable, spittle at the corners of his lips, a scar on his chin, his red hair so terrifically red, like it had been dyed a thousand times in madder. Maybe Marek’s real father used to beat him, Dibra thought, but she felt no pity or compassion for the boy. No pity or compassion would she ever feel. Not for Marek, or for anyone.