DOROTEJA
Doroteja sat embroidering red snapdragons on a white tablecloth which she would then hem with lace. She was childless. The joy she felt when one of Michael’s daughters came running into her arms would surpass your belief.
Like any goodwife, she knew what is done with cristallium, tansy, zedoary, hassock and fennel in a jar of hallowed wine; all the same, the goblins had gotten at her, so that she miscarried. Her late husband had never comprehended the grief that a woman feels to lose the child she has cherished so long beneath her heart. Her mother, understanding quite well, taught her the charm to sing while stepping thrice across a dead man’s grave: This is my help against the evil late birth. After that she was supposed to sell a clod from her baby’s grave swaddled in black wool, saying: I sell it, you must sell it, this black wool and the seeds of this grief, but she could never find any merchant, peddler or Gypsy kind enough to buy this burden away from her. If only Tadeusz had lived, to give her another child!
The windows of her cottage were always darkened now.
But there was Michael, who ought to have wedded her in the first place. Milena was too ill to live, people said. With her out of the way, Doroteja needed but to sing the correct spell in order to have him.
On New Year’s Day, with Milena declining more irrevocably, Doroteja washed herself in the water in which a silver coin had been dropped, in order to be as abundant in money as in water (because Michael had always been poor), and within the month six copper pieces came her way. Before Easter she bathed in a tincture of last year’s roses, so as to be more beautiful — her elder sister staring at her, that same stinking kerchief on her head; Doroteja tried to wash herself at least twice a month.
Milena died when the moon entered her sixth mansion, and Doroteja felt very sorry, of course. A month later, Michael had not yet proposed. So she paid a visit to his daughters, and the eldest one said: Aunt Doroteja, every night I pray for you to become our mother.
Soon after that, she learned that Milena had come back.
On the night of Holy Saturday, the dead souls go to church, which is the reason we burn graveyard fires on that night. Doroteja decided to ask her deceased husband for advice.
Reader, I would not care for you to believe that Doroteja was a witch, for we burn witches. She was simply one of those lucky girls whom God permits to be born on Easter Sunday. — Others hesitated to visit the cemetery at night. For Doroteja, the place was not much worse than her goat-shed.
Just as some papyri buried in humid old graves crumble away within moments after being unearthed, so it can be with deep-seated loves suddenly exposed; but the feelings of Doroteja and Tadeusz for each other endured like a hoard of gold coins. She had never loved him, but what did that matter? They were friends. Now that he was in the ground, she intended to indulge her hunger for love, which meant Michael.
Doroteja built a fire upon Tadeusz’s grave. At midnight, after the dead sermon had been preached, he returned, pallidly glistening, and found his widow sitting at what for once could be called his hearthstone.
She said: Tad, do you still care for me?
Well, well, he said. What do you want? I’ve found more money if you need it — a hoard of Roman gold! And if you feed your calf a hank of grass from that grave over there, you’ll get a fat milch-cow.
Where’s our baby?
I never see him.
Tad, I want to marry Michael.
And eat my curse?
You wouldn’t curse me, would you?
Gazing at him in the firelight, she fancied that his eyes and mouth were holes.
He said: Milena’s living with him again. What would you do — put away his lawful wife?
Her rights are ended! I went to Father Hauser—
What would he say about your necromancy here?
Tad, never mind that. He said that Milena’s sin is that she refused to bear in patience the death which God has appointed for us.
Flittering round and round her face, Tadeusz smiled at her with translucent teeth. Perhaps he too found death difficult to bear. Doroteja’s mother had told her of the dead woman who returned on purpose to bite her husband’s finger; when he pushed her away, she sank her teeth into his side. Remembering this, not to mention the fact that he kept circling closer, Doroteja began to fear her husband.
Milena and I will never allow you to marry him, he whistled.
So, said Doroteja. She’s now become a friend of yours?
We all know each other here.
Then where’s my baby?
Well, the unformed souls, you see—
Michael and I were meant to live together. You’re the one being selfish.
His eyes narrowed, and a vertical crease came into his forehead as he cocked his head at her in the way he always used to when they were about to argue. Then, with a screech, he swooped in on her, hoping to bite her face. Knowing his moods, Doroteja was ready, and flicked a silver bullet into his mouth. Choking and retching, he shot back down into his grave.
Doroteja fed the geese, and then strung garnet crystals to sell. She washed her Sunday dress. She peddled eggs in front of the church, and turned them all into copper coins. When she got home she locked the door. She hid her profits beneath the fireplace, in the hole where she kept her magic treasures: two candles made by a virgin, four nails from a child’s coffin. Then she filled a basket of plums and went to see Michael’s daughters. So adorable in their white-rimmed ruffled caps, they ran into her arms, crying out: Aunt Doroteja!
How’s your mother?
Father made us promise not to tell.
Never mind. Here are some plums for you. When I go I’ll take my basket.
Thank you, Aunt Doroteja; you’re always good to us. We love you more than—
Where’s your father?
Here he comes now.
Long ago, before he married, he had felt something for her; now he was a wormy ball of equivocations. You may be sure that Doroteja did her best. When he greeted her, she rolled her eyes, smiled and adorably shook her head, all at once. But he was curt, even wary. That made her all the more jealous of Milena, whose postmortem existence resembled the idleness of some rich girl whose only work is to string beads. When she said farewell, he replied with relief. The daughters brought her basket. They begged permission to help Doroteja bundle up the wheat. — Never mind, girls, she said. Your father needs you. — Looking back over her shoulder, she saw Michael staring cautiously out at her, his forehead higher and paler than before. Then he closed the shutters.
So she returned to her dark house, where she kept weeping, weeping, like some dead woman whose every attribute but sorrow has rotted away. She would have cooked him mushroom soup with barley for Christmas. Because she so truly loved, her story is chased with flowers and diamonds, like the leather cover of an ancient book.
Doroteja was having one of those nightmares we all know, in which the wind becomes the rustling of a dead lady’s dress as she ascends the stairs. When she awoke, she sought to persuade herself that the dream was good, and signified treasure from beyond the grave.
She milked her cow, fed the geese and collected the hens’ eggs. She gathered firewood from the forest. She weeded her field, rescued plums from the birds, milked the cow again, and then life was as beautiful as a Bohemian sunset with a raven hovering over the mountains, or was it merely a fly on the windowpane? She ate supper: barley in milk. She prayed to Saint Polona, Saint Vitus, Saint Adelbert, Saint Wenceslaus, Saint Procopius and of course Saint Doroteja, her own patron saint. As soon as it got dark, off she went to the churchyard, where the memory-stones resemble sheaves of wheat leaning against each other. Singing the spell that her mother had taught her, she knelt at her mother’s headstone, anxious lest some evil thing might come upon her from behind. She poured out a little milk. And up rose her mother, spinning thread as she came, clenching between her knees the grooved distaff as tall as a scepter.