Rapture

by Iliazd

  Brother Mocius exerted himself, strained until he farted with a self-satisfied giggle. Suddenly the vault caved in; he could stand up without trouble, shake himself off, and look around. So it is

  Brother Mocius climbed up to the head of the glacier that sat in the very saddle of the pass and flowed down both sides. A few clouds, puffs of fog, and a fringe on the cliffs recalled the morning blizzard. An unobstructed view in every direction! Admire your alpine environs! Continue on your way unhindered! But neither praise nor thanksgiving escaped from the monk—only an even filthier giggle, as though he were pleased at swindling someone. In his gaze, however, recently so resolute, radiant in the moment of death, there was a glint of fear, uncertainty, awareness of his own impurity. Had death turned squeamish when it saw whom it was dealing with? And the monk hurried along the ice to the highest point of the pass, just a little way off

  To the left, not more than a few steps from the place where Brother Mocius had just been lying, the glacier calved and plummeted into a small tarn that filled the cauldron beneath the pass. Although ice and slush were floating on the preposterously lilac water, a rabble of alpine butterflies was bathing very peacefully, taking flight over the surface or plunging below. To top that, the water was so transparent, you could see the stones, and when the wings were promenading on the bottom, you could make out their teeny-tiny antennae

  Summits, spiteful and disfigured, were staggered around the lake, but today they were neither shifting nor threatening. Brother Mocius felt no urge to inspect their suspicious crags, so he turned to face the valley he had just passed through, now lying on his right, surrounded by bulwarks rising up farther off on the main range, and therefore less dangerous. Particularly fine is that stake over there, hammered into heaven. They say some cutthroat clawed his way to the very top a thousand years ago, but couldn’t get down. He’s been crying out into the frosty air ever since, begging someone to rescue him. He must have been sitting on the opposite slope, since Brother Mocius couldn’t spot the screamer this time, either

  A herd of turs cut across the glacier on its way down. At first the animals loped along in a scatter, but the holy fool spooked the kids, and the hoofed beasts bolted from the steep, down from ledge to ledge, and then all at once to the very bottom, toward the barely visible herdsman’s shelter where Brother Mocius had passed a storax-scented night with no presage of the morning’s misadventures

  As usual, there were just a few cracks in the glacier and no reason to be apprehensive: they were covered. Now the walls were narrowing, forming a passage. You couldn’t relax here—quick as a wink, they’d come crashing down; and the monk stepped as soundlessly as possible, taking care not to say a word. Stones were leaping continually; this time, too, several streaked past and disappeared. A cluster of stalactites broke away, but without much noise. Here’s a heap of ice with a signpost stuck in it. The pass!

  How many times Brother Mocius had walked by this place during his long ascetic struggle, setting out yearly from his own monastery to visit the neighboring monks who lived south of the mountain chain. And no matter how much the years sharpened his sense for spiritual things and made him indifferent to earthly grandeur, even now the monk could not contemplate without rapture, and a touch of curiosity, the wonderful canyon, grandest of all, now opening up before him, which he must cross, trudging on about twelve more hours before reaching the first huts

  Since the ice field on the southern slope was much scantier, the wayfarer put the modest ravine, filled with ice and snow, behind him in less than half an hour and emerged onto a stony meadow. Now he could laze a bit, remove his chains, bash the bishop, chew his nails, and venerate his flask. His cassock was filthy (where had the mud come from?) and tattered, his elbows bloodied, his feet hopelessly frostbitten; his eyes were burning and his mouth was full of abomination. He’d not only lost his staff, his faithful companion, but also his cap. How had the brandy been spared? Someone popped up from behind a rock, cackled, and launched a stone at the holy fool

  But imps are no longer menacing in these parts and, after sprinkling earth on your wounds, you’re at liberty to stretch out in peace and contemplate the wonders—not for long, it’s true, since the sun has also made its way over the pass. Look at that first-class glacier, sky blue from the worms seething in it. Like to get some: the prior complains of constipation and says there’s no better remedy than the heads of those worms, but he has only a few left in his jar. And here’s the cave where the satyr dwells. Saw him last time from a distance, gnawing the rifle of some unfortunate hunter. Good thing the stream is already swollen: if you could clear it, might have to suffer all kinds of things

  And Brother Mocius relished the spectacle of icy masses, twisted like rams’ horns and rearing into the sky; and the numerous flocks of winged creatures, soaring way up high, level with the sun; and the springs spurting out with a hiss from under the cliffs and spouting upward. Clouds (concealing beasts reluctant to display their ugliness) sprawled on the overhangs to bask in the sunshine. The highest peaks, where no one ever has, or ever will, set foot—never mind those tall tales about Englishmen—were generally situated far from one another, so that, in general, you had to travel for weeks to get from the foot of one to the foot of another; here, they all huddled together, so close it wouldn’t take five hours to reach the farthest and most majestic. Innumerable pieces of ice broke away from the heights and hung in the air, pretending to be diamonds and supported by an unknown power (nothing special among these lavish miracles), and inexplicable singing burst out of the crevasses. Brother Mocius stood up and began to howl

  Instantly, who knows from where, angels small in stature, followed by swifts, flitted out and started tracing patterns above Brother Mocius while chiming in. Eagles, their white beards loosed to the wind, stooped, screeching. Swarms of fierce bees streaked by, obedient and humming; diverse butterflies swished, vipers crawled from their dens, whistling, and hyenas leapt out, sobbing and weeping. Howl, peep, roar, flutter. Everything was keening. Even the humble gentian and saxifrage, customarily dumb, as is meet for plants, contributed a barely audible squeak, not to mention the slender lizards, darting in with their hatchlings

  The monk’s voice rose. Drowning out hundreds of others, Brother Mocius howled, and at such volume that he did not, himself, know whether the howl was his own or belonged to the fountain in the canyon’s lower reaches, far away, it would seem, for the moment. Accompanied by the winged creatures, the singer followed a barely discernible path, forsaking the ice for pastureland. Here, goats and chamois ambled under the watch of spirits with dense feathers and rudimentary feet; the animals fought (not maliciously, but in jest), locked horns, and took a long time separating. Sinless, they would stare at the sun for hours without squinting

  The streams ran together and cut a deep channel. The path descended, hugging the edge of the ravine. The snows receded ever higher. The singers retreated behind the clouds. The grasses became more substantial, some like umbrellas as tall as a man. Dwarf pines. Now the canyon that had seemed beyond compass narrows, turns, and vanishes in the forest. Only halfway, and the sun was already cooling off, communicating a foul luster to the glaciers that had drawn back into the distance. And with a sigh, the monk gazed at the country he’d left behind

  Not counting the bear family taking its postprandial ease in the neighboring clearing, Brother Mocius was once more completely alone. He noticed this suddenly and promptly turned anxious. In vain he scanned the summits, trying to catch sight of his recent companions. A wasteland. And the mountains gloomier, more silver, more mundane. Where had everything hidden away? Before, the angels small in stature would accompany Brother Mocius to the very waters, until he plunged into the forest. And what about the beasts who showed the way and cleared his path? Why had they all abandoned him and—more to the point—abandoned him covertly? He lifted up his eyes. It’s unnaturally clear and pure

  And just then Brother Mocius recalled how death had spurned him in th
e pass, and it seemed that his hands were changing again. It seemed? No. So it is: they twist, overgrown with bark, turn wooden. And suddenly stones were flying from the slope; shades appeared in the bushes, sneezing, spitting, coughing. The air filled with bats, ready to latch on. The heavenly orb had just set, but night had already fallen. Fireflies, or something worse (God knows what) winked. At first, the pilgrim decided to stand still, but when something scratched him and then pegged him with a stone, he took off running, tangled in his cassock. Further down, he was less frightened, the smell of pitch made it easier to breathe, and his hands seemed to revive. If you don’t stray from the path, you might not be saved—but keep walking

  The moon caught fire and dressed the forest in motley. Nothing was audible except the fountain nearby, and you couldn’t have heard anything anyway. Needles gave way to leaves, pitch to the odor of humus. Brother Mocius tried chanting the evening prayer; his voice returned. Suffering fatigue, thinking about impending sleep, tormented by hunger, the wayfarer marshaled his strength, hurried on without stopping. Another two hours and he would reach the vineyards

  And again, Brother Mocius felt guileless and lighthearted, like he had when he’d awakened beneath the snow and begun to break free. The day he’d lived through receded beyond the pass. Fear of death—that is, fear in the face of new, otherworldly obligations you’re not sure you’ll be able to meet—disappeared, as did the sinful weariness, more deeply rooted in him than this fear. Now the monk thought how good it would be to meet some hunters and get some cornbread, how his brandy had run dry, how, in a week, he would make it to the sea, and how his return crossing would, most likely, be less troublesome. Cutting across a brightly lit glade, Brother Mocius frightened some deer, but didn’t even glance in their direction when he heard them breaking through the forest. The jarring cry of some raptor, not far away, touched him just as little

  As he was nearing the place where all the water that runs down from the glaciers and swells the raging river gushes into the sky to come crashing down a little way off, lamenting, and then slips away to the sea, Brother Mocius realized that the play of moonlight on the spray hanging over the area really had grown old, and he was about to begin descending along the winding path, when the brush parted and a stranger emerged, tall, but dressed like a highlander. Brother Mocius was not gladdened, only surprised, and cried out to the stranger coming toward him. But his words, evidently, did not carry beyond the fountain. Then Brother Mocius drew nearer and hiccuped in sudden fright

  Instead of greeting the monk, the stranger clutched and lifted him up like a sacrifice over the abyss

  The hamlet with the incredibly long and difficult name, so difficult even its inhabitants couldn’t pronounce it, was situated right next to the glaciers and forests and renowned for being populated exclusively by cretins and people with goiters—an undeserved reputation explained by its extreme inaccessibility. It really was inconceivable to climb up through the canyon along the stream. You had to go north, ascend against the current of the main river, and then, taking to the east, surmount a forested ridge accessible in good weather not just to people on foot, but to horses, and finally descend to a modest glade, where you would have counted, all told, about twenty chimneys. But since good weather was rare in this place noted for abundant precipitation, the inhabitants had to lug building materials, manufactured goods, and salt up on their own backs

  In fact, there was only one entirely goitrous, or wenny, household, with a few more cases peppered among the other families: a share no greater than in neighboring villages. The cretins, also just one family, occupied a hastily constructed stable. They normally crept out in the evening, heedless of bad weather, and, seated on a log structure that had once served as a trough, broke into abstruse songs composed just like the hamlet’s name. At some distance rose the house, made entirely out of mahogany and distinguished by lavish carvings, that belonged to the former forester, although no one could conclusively confirm that this man had ever been deemed competent to hold such an office

  The entirely wenny family consisted of an aged wenny, his wenny old lady, and fourteen wenny children, ranging in age from four to sixty. The old man was approaching eighty and had irrevocably lost his mind, without, however, losing his ability to sleep with his wife, shoulder loads of firewood, and be the wisest shepherd in the neighborhood. He knew the mountains and their scant pastureland so well that whenever the goats consumed all the fodder underfoot, the old man was the one the shepherds turned to for advice on where to find grass, and the wenny would unfailingly locate, in the most unexpected place, a completely uncharted dale or outcropping where they could find sustenance until winter. In his contempt for the canine race, the wenny did the howling and barking himself, and at night, whenever he was scaring off a bear, even the glaciers would cringe at his piercing, plaintive howling, bitterer than a brute beast’s. Several neighbors maintained that the wenny had long been dead and that a satyr was living in his hide

  The wenny wife was a very ordinary old lady, well-preserved and beautiful, despite her monstrous goiter and hunchback; they sharply distinguished their children by class: toiling and spoiled. Their progeny thirty and older belonged to the first class: six sons and a daughter, likewise very ordinary. The grown sons had been deprived of all liberty and lived in accord with the will of their father, who had invented a unique occupation for each. The oldest supervised the bridges that served the hamlet and the road to the pastureland. There were four bridges, one made of planks, while of the other three, further upstream, the first was a log thrown from one bank to the other, and each of the two following bridges was a pair of towering firs felled so their tops dipped into the water. Here, in crossing, you had to crawl along one tree until you were level with the stream and then leap skillfully onto the other tree that dropped down from the opposite bank

  The second son’s trade was whittling quarterstaffs for the great hunt. The old wenny was chairman for life, and that’s why he presented this kind of weapon to everyone who participated. The other sons’ occupations followed along the same lines. As for the daughter, an exceptionally old maid, she never left the kitchen and, strumming a guitar of her own design, sang songs borrowed from the cretins, mixing them up and misquoting them every time

  The spoiled class of children, thirty and younger, sons and daughters, was not even suited for the work mentioned above, since all were epileptics. They were not allowed to leave the confines of the hamlet and either shuffled all day about the squalid yard or hung around the former forester’s place and carved even more novel wooden ornaments for his magical house

  When the wenny was neither absent on business nor in the pastures, he invariably grabbed his rifle as the evening approached and headed off alone to the neighboring mountain. His progeny sat quietly in the yard, listening intently. In an hour, a shot would ring out, the children would cry in chorus, “Got it!” (the wenny never missed) and in another hour, the old man would return with a roe deer they roasted whole and consumed on the spot, their cheering backed by the guitar

  The former forester’s habits in no way resembled the wennies’ way of life. Likewise wenny, but with a modest goiter that could pass for his Adam’s apple, the prematurely widowed former forester had moved there from town many years back, and, after buying land, spent a large sum constructing a whimsical, spacious house that would have served to embellish even a hamlet not quite so absurd as this one. There he lived, never going out, with his only daughter

  The former forester got married late in life, when he was already bald and paunchy (he’d been an Adonis in his youth), to a girl about twenty-five years younger, if not more. He wanted to have a son—not for reasons that direct men’s minds in such cases, not out of propriety, but for rather extraordinary reasons he explicated at length to the future mother and to everyone within earshot. “I’m too much past my prime for a daughter,” he would repeat. “Just think, in about sixteen years, when my daughter starts blooming, who will I be? A
decrepit old man who doesn’t excite any rapt admiration! Will she really grasp how handsome I had once been? And the slight age difference between her and her mother will make them rivals, since her mother, as she fades, will envy and obstruct her daughter’s success. I need a son: what will my mug and my goiter matter to him? He’ll respect me and find his mother still beautiful”

  But events refused to comply with the forester’s wish, and a daughter was born. And the next year, when his wife died before delivering the son she was carrying and the cesarean section failed, the old man shaved his head (another caprice), sold all his goods, decided to take to the back of beyond, anyplace he could scare up, and made no mistake in selecting the hamlet with the unpronounceable name

  The change of scenery saved him from the physical and spiritual transformations that are inevitable in such cases. So, at least, he thought. The former forester remained just as devoted to chess and the collection of books he purchased only when he found them completely incomprehensible or impenetrable because they were printed in foreign languages. And since there was no one in the hamlet he could play chess with, and he never had occasion, over the course of many long years, to teach any of his neighbors, the former forester played against himself for hours or composed problems, pretending he didn’t know their solutions beforehand. He even asked one of the spoiled wennies to carve some special chess pieces and assigned them wild names, nothing like the usual ones—names that corresponded to the mountain and forest powers he possessed knowledge of

  The former forester was neither a believer nor an unbeliever and thought there were neither angels (evil or good) nor miracles; everything is natural and normal, but there are, so to speak, unusual immaterial objects we know nothing about since, for now, generally speaking, we don’t know anything, but will come to know, if we diligently study nature, the way he had in his youth and still did now, as a widower. In his account, the immaterial objects contained in all things constituted their souls and could, under special conditions, influence the world. They brought a man blessing or bane and bad weather, as was appropriate; and in order to bring about one and not the other, one had to know. For his part, the former forester knew enough not to fear misfortune, although, remarkably, the chief sorrow of his life, the deaths of his wife and son, never came to mind. He imagined himself secure against the forest, against the mountains, against his neighbors, and this was more than enough to justify calmly dedicating himself to leafing through books or shifting chess pieces from square to square