Rapture

by Iliazd

  Ivlita, festive, emerged in a cherry-red dress to bring the guest his parting drink. So tall, Laurence had never seen women like her in the mountains. Her thick braids, thrown over her shoulders, were the color of straw and reached her knees. Her eyes, there aren’t eyes like that here. Laced up in a corset, her superb bosom, her long legs. Ivlita was holding a curved drinking horn, not the usual ram’s horn it was customary to drink from in such cases, but a prodigious one, made of silver, and suited, rather, for a wake

  Laurence had been hoodwinked and cheated. He’d been living half a year in this gnarly hamlet, and even those whose fate depended entirely on him had kept secret these riches, which had never been equaled and never would be—that nasty habit of concealing treasures, thinking it only right and proper that they should vanish idly. But this time, it wasn’t sorcery, not an apparition that disappears as soon as people see it. You could hold this woman like the horn of brandy; you could devour her like any other. Laurence stood up, grabbed the horn, drained it without stopping for breath, and, placing it on the table, told the forester:

  “I want her for my wife”

  Laurence was not requesting her father’s consent. It’s not required among highlanders. You can abduct a bride from her home, even against her wishes—in secret, if you’re afraid her father and brothers might interfere and get the better of you, or openly, if her relatives are weak. If her parents are really abject, they’re warned ahead of time, just as a courtesy

  Since there’s no priest in the mountains and no way to get to one, the complicated wedding ritual is replaced by an even more complicated ritual, but performed by a person chosen for the purpose, usually the oldest. The elders make the marrying couple jump across streams, flog one another with branches, crawl on all fours, and such like; the wedding goes on until the bride or groom falls down exhausted, which happens sometimes on the second or third day, if the ritual consists in moving cordwood or walking back and forth from one tree to another. Bandits are spared all this because they are not wed. Whether the unique nature of their business or their independent position is the reason, no one knows. A robber’s wife has no right to children and no right to respect, no one greets her, women are forbidden to be in contact with her. It’s not just that bandits don’t object to this arrangement or fight against it (as to a fight, they might even pull it off, given their exceptional power), quite the contrary, they by all means condone depriving their wives of rights, and they’re not barred from killing their wives even when the surrounding populace has paid a tithe to be left untouched. And since it’s shameful to be a bandit’s wife, an abducted woman, counter to all the rules, is allowed to divorce, although, in that case, no one and nothing safeguards her future life

  The forester never imagined it was permissible to desire a dead woman, and wouldn’t even have ascribed any meaning to such a thought. But now, once the murderous words had been pronounced, the former forester beheld that his deceased wife was alive, and in bloom. The possibility of losing her, the consciousness that they would drag her away, were completely intolerable. The host, half out of his chair, shaking, stammering, traced some signs in the air, clutching his throat. Laurence, intoxicated, was silent. All at once, her father darted into a corner, grabbed his rifle and fired without taking aim. He dropped it and fell on his face

  The bullet lodged in a floorboard. Laurence didn’t budge. Ivlita wasn’t in the room. Frightened by her father’s frenzy, she had run up to her room, locked herself in, covered up with furs, and was looking intently at the young man as though he had not remained below, but was standing before her, resolute, dressed to kill, triumphant; she searched for definitions worthy of him, but didn’t find any, her thoughts were too few, she was worn out, enervated. She didn’t think about her father

  The shot chased off the image and replaced it with unbearable alarm. She needed to return. But in the room adjoining the dining room where Ivlita had left her father, Laurence, seeking her out, ran into her. The young woman recoiled. Laurence was not alone. Shadowy people were standing behind her bridegroom, among whom Ivlita recognized, although she had never seen them, Brother Mocius, the stonecutter Luke, and the postal convoy. Behind them all, the former forester was bent double. Ivlita started, shrieking: “You killed him, you killed him,” pushed Laurence out of the way—and rushed into the dining room. But as soon as she saw her father spread out before her, she stopped. Her face assumed a calm expression, her head tilted back. Hastily unbraiding her hair and spreading it over her shoulders, Ivlita turned toward Laurence, who was swaying on the threshold, and asked, “You don’t happen to know why my beloved father does not greet me?” And then she addressed the wennies, who had shown up on the outer threshold without daring to step across: “Friends, can you tell me why my beloved father does not come to meet me?” She walked around the table, wandered into other rooms, and returned, repeating: “My beloved father, why don’t you come out to me?” And only after stepping around the prone body several times, she pretended to notice it for the first time. She cried out, fell on him, wailing: “Father, father, you’re dead, but why did you leave without taking me along? I wouldn’t have been a heavy burden for you, but when you abandoned me, you left me a sorrow not to be borne…”

  After raising Ivlita, grasping her shoulders, and shouting into her ear: “I didn’t shoot, your father did, he fell down in fright, he’s not dead, don’t give yourself so much grief”—Laurence, slowly coming to and gathering that, although still on his feet, he was unduly drunk from the prodigious draft of brandy, gazed with undiminished amazement at the young woman’s face; the desire to possess her as soon as possible, compounded by his fury at being hoodwinked, returned tenfold, and there arose within the bridegroom, along with his readiness to turn beastly here and now, an unaccountable rancor toward his bride; he had to take something out on her, make her pay dearly, and all the more dearly for being so beautiful, for expressing so much of heaven. All the same, Laurence did not yet dare give himself free rein. He swept Ivlita up, wrapped her in a skin, determined to run home and get even with her there. But when he threw the door open to the frost and saw the wenny children before him, the thought sprang up that he didn’t live alone and would be obliged to face the old wenny himself, withstand his attack; there was no telling how it all might end. Laurence slammed the door, set his burden on the table, baffled. Why leave? He could stay here in this excellent house. But the forester harried his sight and prevented him from initiating anything with an easy mind. Laurence didn’t feel master here. The master of the house was lying there—deceased, perhaps, but formidable. Laurence had not anticipated this embarrassment, a weakness he had never suspected in himself. And suddenly he wanted so badly for the old man to live, for this to be really just a faint. Laurence rushed to the forester and turned him over

  There was no determining whether the former forester was dead or alive. Laurence went out into the yard, hollered for the wennies, brought in snow, and began rubbing down the insensate body. Since his efforts remained fruitless, the young man would periodically leave the old fellow’s side, walk away, sit down, stare dully at the body lying on the floor, and once more set to chafing it. He found brandy in the house, dragged enormous furs into the dining room, from time to time he loosened them and directly pulled them tight

  Several times it seemed his host had regained consciousness. It was only spasms of his dead arms. But then the former forester drew breath and opened his eyes. The old man fancied he was returning from an abyss he remembered nothing about, but returning transfigured, remade, no longer the former forester, but someone else, and the former forester was no more, and never would be again. What strange events had caused this, the old man couldn’t comprehend, but the events were of distinct importance, irrevocable as the former forester’s flight. The old man gazed absently at Laurence, who was holding him in his arms, at the snow strewn about the room, at the rifle lying nearby, at the table opposite, meaningless and mute objects. On the table, a
curious heap of furs attracted his attention only because arms had slipped out from the furs and were hanging down on either side. It wasn’t the first time the old man had seen those arms, but for a long time he couldn’t recognize whose they were. He tossed and turned, moaned, gazed questioningly into Laurence’s face. Gradually, the thought kindled in his consciousness that those were, as a matter of fact, Ivlita’s arms, his daughter’s

  And then everything that had happened came back to him quickly and clearly. Laurence’s advent, his insolent demand, the shot; and what horrible thing had taken place afterward, why was his wife laid out on the table, arms helplessly outstretched? The old man tensed, trying to break free of Laurence and get up. But the forester was dying. He no longer had any strength. His gaze, after shining momentarily with wrath and hatred, became clouded. “Is Ivlita dead?”—he moaned when he noticed Laurence’s tears falling onto his own face and trickling down, mixing with his own. “No, she’s sleeping,” Laurence replied. And then the departing man’s consciousness blazed up once more because of the young woman’s presence. Hadn’t Ivlita caused his misfortunes? Hadn’t he buried himself alive on her account? Doomed to a vicious neighborhood? Hadn’t he fired his gun and become overly agitated while protecting her? And she had brought their guest the silver horn, shared her love with the thief, right here, next to him…The whore, the tramp. “Take her,” the old man imparted to Laurence. “Beat her, torment her, you’ll never find such a noble body anywhere.” But then, “Help me up, Laurence, lead me to Ivlita, let me look at her one last time, I spoke falsely, I want to bid my final farewell and on good terms…”

  Gathering strength from some unknown source when Laurence lifted him under the arms, the old man stayed on his feet and took a few steps toward the table where Ivlita lay all wrapped up. He grasped the edge with his hands and rasped, “Show her to me, boy.” Laurence threw back the skin. In a faint that had passed into sleep, his daughter presented her unbearable beauty to her father for the last time. The bodice she had torn in her raving revealed her breasts, the breasts of the forester’s late wife. Her shoulders were fabulously naked, blindingly white. Tearing himself from the table, the father collapsed on his daughter and latched onto her throat with skeleton hands: “Whore, you wanted to betray me, you couldn’t wait for me to die…” The woman’s cry forced Laurence, swallowed up in his thoughts, to focus. Grabbing the old man’s hands, he unclenched them with some effort, pulled him off and threw him against the wall. Ivlita, crazed, sat up, blood oozing along her throat. And the old man kept spluttering out, “Whore, whore, damned whore, you’ll die like a dog, took a bandit’s part, you’ll hang with him, there’ll be no rest for you, adulteress…” Clamping her hand over her mouth as though she’d been blaspheming, the half-naked Ivlita looked at her father without seeing anything. She didn’t understand his words. But the dying man’s rattle was insulting, even without words, her throat was aching and hurt as though his fingers were still clenched on it. “Quiet, you maniac,” Laurence roared at the thrashing old man. Seeing as he wasn’t calming down, Laurence walked over and kicked him in the face. He scooped up Ivlita, sat her on his shoulder, went out, and set off with giant steps down the mountain

  Spring in the mountains arrives with such a delay compared to low-lying areas that a highlander who descends assumes there’s no escape for flatlanders, so to speak, from summer, humid and rank. This impression grows more intense if he journeys to the sea—if, in particular, he gets there not by road, but taking advantage of the river’s current, which, in four hours, with dizzying speed, will deposit into the salt waves a raft or a large boat, heavily laden so as not to capsize in the rapids, and on which the pilots vigilantly keep watch in all directions for the right time to push off from the cliffs, otherwise, they’ll break up—if highlanders descend this way to the sea, they simply land in hell

  This discrepancy magnified the difference between the months spent in the hamlet and this businesslike and busy journey a hundred times, and Laurence, lying on the bottom of a bark rocking near the seashore while the wennies deployed the oars, since now they would have to row to reach the nearest port town, answered his comrades’ questions reluctantly, suffered from the sun, and couldn’t stop thinking about Ivlita. There, in the mountains, her presence conferred divine happiness; here, he was becoming convinced that Ivlita had tangled him in malign nets after taking away his freedom. Previously, his colloquies on the advantages of brigandage had largely been exercises in eloquence, but touring the villages that pledged fealty and robbing the post—those were exercises in daring, and now Laurence realized he was no longer at liberty to dispose of the business he’d begun, necessity ruled him, he had carelessly dabbled in playing with things whose powers he had no feeling for, and was now constrained to float aimlessly. It hadn’t been long since his need for the treasures he sought would not even have been found in avarice, in a desire for change and luxury. When money fell into his hands, large sums of money, he didn’t know what to do with it, gave almost all of it away, and the rest, buried in the ground, was lying idle, the way riches were pointlessly hiding in caves and on the lake bottom. Ivlita, once she took over his mind, had turned everything upside down. If she were a woman like any old peasant woman, there’d be no cause for anxiety. But her beauty remained beyond Laurence’s grasp, she herself was supernatural, demanding excessive obeisance, gifts, offerings. He’d dug up his forgotten money, handed it over to her, watched her pour the coins from palm to palm, pick out a handful, and, spreading her fingers, lull herself to sleep with a golden shower. And those fingers, what rings did they not demand, what necklaces did her neck not await, what tiara her precious head? He could clean out all the sacristies, despoil all the wonderworking icons, and all of it, in Laurence’s eyes, would hardly suffice to adorn Ivlita worthily. And it was no longer merely possible to rob, he had to

  Spooked, the young man tried to calm down, reassuring himself that he was, no doubt, strong and would obtain everything. But self-assurance didn’t help. His freedom had been forfeited, and life had withered along with it. As though his victims had infected him with the malady of nonexistence. As though the mountains where he was stuck for good had placed him in bonds, like a waterfall or a creeping glacier. The phantom most sweet had flown when, in order to prove its reality, Laurence had deserted and cast the monk down, and the poor fellow reckoned he had already suffered shipwreck

  Once he’d resigned himself, Laurence was obliged to get back to business. Palavers and preparations began in anticipation of spring. But Laurence couldn’t busy himself with some run-of-the-mill affair, making mischief near at hand. He needed a tenfold profit, something extraordinary. In the end, it wasn’t worth robbing churches, either—a lot of complications and trouble with the locals. And when you got right down to it, could you really walk around the forest in vestments carrying gonfalons? And soiling yourself for the pleasure of drinking brandy from chalices also wasn’t worth it. If the occasion presents itself…

  And so you had to pluck up your courage and sail far away, to places where you don’t feel safe, where there’s no place to hide, places teeming with police, and attempt the impossible. And Laurence, grasping that his circumstances demanded extra focus, stubbornly struggled to drive off speculations on Ivlita and freedom

  The deed itself was still far off, but there were already so many worries about how to unload weapons without being spotted by the shore watch. If not for Galaction’s goggle eyes, grown to such size that you couldn’t restrain your horror when you looked at them, the robber band would have been in serious trouble as to where and how to land

  Galaction owned the town coffeehouse, situated opposite the harbor on the only street in town—along the embankment, stretching a considerable distance—and to all appearances he had no other occupation. He could invariably be seen strolling among the tables with a napkin thrown over his head to guard his bald spot from the sun’s influence and checking to see whether any of his customers needed a cu
p of coffee and whether his guests were waiting for checkers, cards, dice, dominoes, or other games. The sight of the sea instills fear willy-nilly, you need to buck up your nerves now and then with black coffee, and since the town had only one dimension—length—no one drank anything but coffee, and since you wouldn’t think of drinking coffee at home, the whole populace hung out at the coffeehouse, including children, peacocks, parrots, and cats. And since, finally, the port did a brisk trade, with cargo ships arriving and departing God knows when and agitation tormenting them all the time, the populace sat for whole days and nights in the coffeehouse and would eagerly have moved in for good if only they could have reached an agreement with the owner. This perfect arrangement of life in the port made finding people you needed easier in so far as it compelled everyone to live in sight of all

  Sometimes, however, Galaction mysteriously disappeared somewhere and, when he got back, would tell his customers and friends (equivalent notions for him, by the way) either that he’d been ailing from constriction of the eyes and had gone to consult a renowned physician, or that he’d been ailing from distention of the eyes and had placed cupping glasses over them, or that he’d been suffering from his eyes growing fatter, lamenting that he never suffered their growing thinner; and so on, all in the same vein. With his eyes he squared accounts for all his liberties, and his witticisms were so flat, while his eyes were so horrifying, that by way of exception, everyone pretended to believe him