The priest was as wide-eyed as an owl on a Greek vase.
I know your mother-in-law very well, of course, and she has confessed that on a recent occasion, during the night, you sent for her.
Yes, Father.
That’s all very well, saying, yes, Father, but you delayed your coming to me. Until now there’s never been anything against you. You’re a hard worker, a good tither, no blasphemy or fornication, but now…
Yes, Father.
Speak.
Well, Father, Milena came back to me. She was buried by mistake.
That’s not what your mother-in-law said.
Well imagining what his mother-in-law had said, he imagined equally well the recent doings of those people who all his life had known who he was and after his marriage tied up their bags of knowledge and lost them, because there was nothing further to know, and now reached new conclusions about him, mostly that he had become uncanny and ought to suffer for their safety or pleasure. Of course they had been acquainted with Milena and continued familiar with her mother, whom they now promptly haunted and tormented, until she, as most people would, gave up her dead daughter, and Michael with her. So the priest got involved. To him Michael said: But it’s true — I swear it on Milena’s grave! And since her mother didn’t approve, I told Milena to go back where she came from—
If you’re lying, you’ll be burned.
Yes, Father.
We may burn you regardless. You didn’t confess to me.
Please forgive me, Father.
The neighbors say that she sports licentiously with you every night.
She’s my wife, Father.
But you just claimed that you’d sent her away—
Yes, Father, because man who is born of woman, his days are short and filled with trouble—
I’ll remand you to the magistrate for questioning.
Please, Father, what about my children?
We’ll make provision for them. I’ll speak with Doroteja.
What if I deed our home to the Church as security?
Very well. Sign your mark here. Do you swear by the Virgin not to run away?
I swear.
The Inquisitors will send for you when they arrive.
Yes, Father.
Go tend to your children. If your wife appears, you must bring her straightaway.
Yes, Father. Father, Milena suspects the sexton of stealing her wedding ring.
We’ll search for it in the coffin.
Beautiful and resolute, the eldest daughter raised the carving knife over her mother, turning toward him as he entered, but appearing not to perceive him, her face barely poised in his direction, the evening light very lovely on the near side of her head and neck, her sweet lips, which resembled her mother’s, a trifle clenched.
The daughters, those lovely girls, soon unfortunately died, of the cholera, it was said, although the neighbors naturally wondered whether the mother had sucked them dry. In fact it truly had been the cholera, and when Michael asked Milena whether she could bring them back, she replied: Don’t ask God for too much. — Astounded that she could even speak of God, he determined to test her one morning while she slept, having obtained a pinch of consecrated salt from Father Hauser. He never meant to harm her, only to comprehend what she was. — What do you suppose happened? Did it burn her? He was just about to sprinkle it over her left hand when slowly, sadly, she opened her dark eyes, with all her best effort keeping at bay the glaring stupor of daylight, and looked at him, so that he felt ashamed. Hence he never learned whether holy salt could burn her; he went on living without seeking certainty.
Weeping, she wove the daughters’ shrouds in a single night. She requested to be alone for the sake of her grief, but when he peeked through the keyhole he saw that three spiders were helping her. Bursting in, he demanded: Are those your familiars? Did the Devil give them to you?
Of course not, husband. I found them.
What does that mean?
I only found them; that’s all.
(Perhaps you think it ghastly, what happened to the children, but there is no evidence of malice.)
Here came Doroteja’s elder sister, likewise a widow, and a simple, hardworking woman who had already lost half her teeth, lifting up her skirts as she negotiated the mud between her house and his, the kerchief wrapped tight around her sweaty forehead and her basket half full of cow dung. Fearing her condolences, Michael locked the door. She might have heard him breathing inside.
The authorities reasoned with him, citing wise words of the Malleus Maleficarum, which is a book of such virtue against the Black Arts that a Papal Bull has praised it, and the wise words run thus: I have found a woman more bitter than death, who is the hunter’s snare, and her heart is a net, and her hands are bands. And still further they counseled him from this Book, saying: There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing, which says not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb.
But he replied to them in their own coin, beseeching them: Isn’t marriage an eternal sacrament? Have I misunderstood? At all the weddings and funerals I have attended, and on Easter, and at every baptism, you teach us that the souls of those to whom we have been united in the sacraments will be with us in the Hereafter—
Provided that the parties are Christian. My good man, don’t you see that your wife has become a foul fiend? Like Eve herself, she has grown more bitter than death. The very grave vomits her out! And the very first result is that you begin to question us. Can’t you hear the Devil laughing? Kneel down now and beg our pardon, for we know you to be a simple man misled by uxoriousness.
Pray forgive me, Fathers.
The priest’s most prized and efficacious tool, a gable-faced reliquary casket, was given to be carried in the altar boy’s arms. — And you know what will happen to you if you drop it! — Yes, Father. — As for the butcher, his apprentice bore the sack of knives and the sharpening stele, but he himself marched with the great wooden mallet (an implement of office) over his shoulder; he used it to pound tough meat into tender, which went for a higher price. Beside them walked the executioner, Hans Trollhand, a shaveheaded, essential man with a bundle of rough stakes under his arm.
In Beograd it is often the drummer boy who carries the surgeon’s box of instruments when it comes time to disinter a suspected vampire, but since the drummer boy had recently broken his head, thanks to a kick from a colonel’s stallion, the surgeon found himself unable to emulate the example of that fashionable metropolis, whose glittering doings had been polished up still more for him by hearsay; accordingly, he was sulky, not to mention uneasy about this public trial of his medical knowledge; he had worked on dead patients before, but who could say what tricks the undead might play? But what he feared most of all was the Inquisition, whose severities are infallible, not to mention inevitable. In short, he carried his own toolbox under his arm, keeping a trifle aloof from Trollhand, who looked festive in his black-and-red cloak.