The horse eyes showed her things doubled in size—an apple, her own hand, empty space itself swelled and enlarged, and it made Ina feel that she was witnessing it all close up, without detail, blurry, as though she were huge. She saw color, but not the minor components of an object: the face and shape of a rock, but not its crevasses or its bits of moss or dirt. A man’s face was a large looming fact, and she couldn’t focus on any one feature—the wrinkles around his mouth, or the hairs in his beard, or the knobs of warts above his eyebrow. Every person was a skin-colored blur. She still depended on the sensitivity of her fingers, on her hearing, on the feeling of heat as her hand drew close to the man’s genitals to know where to dab the urine, where to rub. When she blessed the women’s bellies, she looked into their faces, which appeared so close, she felt that the domes of her eyes would kiss the domes of theirs.
‘I haven’t bled in so long,’ all the women confided, as if it were a secret that a starving body could not live up to the moon.
‘Eat more,’ Ina said simply.
The wet air was always filled with the scent of baking bread. Of great concern was the chopping of trees and the drying out of firewood. The cold of autumn arrived. If you asked anyone, the Devil had gone back to hell. Grigor, the elder who had lost his grandchildren during the Easter pillage, and who had cut off the pilloried bandit’s ear, did not trust Ina’s lessons or anointments. Although he had nursed from her breasts as a child, he feared her. He had survived at the lake off bloodsuckers and mud, had been weathered through his sixty years of toiling the soil to have gained enough cynicism to distrust anyone who claimed to have special powers. Since the horror of Easter, he had become particularly sensitive to death—its nearness, its obligations, its consequences. He had watched so intently the flesh of his own body feed on itself over the summer months, something in his mind switched. He became open to change. First of all, he had come to suspect that life in Lapvona was not what he’d thought it was. He had worked so hard to feed himself and his family, for the love of God, believing it would earn him a seat in heaven. Now he knew he had been working, in fact, to make heaven on Earth for the lord above. Of all the residents of the village, Grigor alone questioned the rations delivered back in August. Where did they come from?
‘Oh, God has blessed us,’ his neighbors exclaimed, too afraid to wonder.
His own son and daughter-in-law were too hungry to entertain his distrust. ‘It’s food, Father,’ they said. ‘Eat it and be merry.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Grigor answered. He could be persuaded to take only a few spoonfuls of wheatmeal before bed. He was often sleepless with hunger and worry. He shivered under a thick quilt stuffed with his dead grandchildren’s clothes. He considered returning to the lake, being a strangebody, an offbeater, someone who refused to work on the farms. There were a few such people in Lapvona. Ina was one of them. But why was she suddenly mixing with the villagers and encouraging them to breed? What was she after, nosing her way into people’s homes, taking their food and drink in exchange for the inspiration of lust? Where was she getting the lust from? Grigor wondered. Was that from Villiam, too? He warned his son and his wife not to let Ina in the house. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let her touch you.’ But she had gained entrance anyway one day while Grigor was out. Ina promised to help Grigor’s daughter-in-law, Vuna, conceive. ‘Just let me in for a moment. I will do it for free. Just a cup of water, if you please. My eyes feel dry.’ When Grigor had found out, he’d slapped the girl across the face. ‘You’ve put us all at risk now. She’ll turn us into animals.’
‘Don’t you want a descendant?’ Vuna asked, rubbing her cheek. ‘I’d think, old as you are, you’d be happy to have a grandchild.’
‘My grandchildren are dead,’ he said flatly. ‘You can’t replace them.’
‘They were my children,’ Vuna said coolly. ‘And I’ll replace them if I want.’
Grigor was immediately sorry for hitting Vuna, who had suffered so horribly. Her hair had fallen out completely during the famine and was growing back now like the fuzz on a peach. The poor girl. Grigor hid his face in his hands. It wasn’t Vuna or even really Ina he blamed for the darkness that had fallen on Lapvona. He blamed Villiam. How was it logical that the bandits would pillage Lapvona last Easter while the lord sat in his manor with all his riches? Why would God allow anyone to steal from the poor? And now the old milk lady was promising miracles? She was a witch, Grigor thought. Out to trick them deeper into hell. It pained him to imagine Vuna becoming pregnant again. He didn’t believe she could carry a child to term. She was too old—already twenty-eight—and too frail. Losing another child would be too much for any of them to bear.