by Iliazd
There, at home, filled with rapture, she had imagined love as something completely different. Could that imagined event really be brought to an end by a disturbance in the forces of nature? Could danger gain access to happiness? And, most important, was the phenomenon whose advent she had foreseen really not of the same order as the activity of mountains and waters, that is, infinite? And this satisfaction that had been taking form might have been engaging, but it was something else, a failed stand-in for her goal, a lie, which Ivlita had so stupidly credited
Caresses coursed with chills along her body. Spring had arrived, it was necessary to welcome it, to return to ordinary everyday life, in anticipation of true love. From this filthy shed where Ivlita had for too long been languishing, deceived, to rush back to the whimsical house. Would her father understand her? Forgive her? Of course. And although her neck had not forgotten his vise-like grip, Ivlita thought of the former forester with no trepidation
The growl of Jonah, one of the villagers, about whom Ivlita knew only that he had to urinate standing up, like it or not, after losing a leg during a bear hunt, while highlanders sit to do it, and that’s the only way, brought her finally back to consciousness. “Dirty slut,” he disgorged, “well, have you brought us good fortune with your unlawful sleeping around? Have you seduced Laurence to quench your abominable lust? Did you conquer him with your fucking beauty? Do you, coupled with death, think you won’t get your comeuppance? Are you counting on your lover to defend you? But you even screwed him over and got him shot. And us, our homes?…” He drew closer, rearing up and waving his mitts. “Well, your case is clear, you’re not even married, so you don’t have the right to be a widow. For our common use, get it? That’s how it works for any bandit’s girl, and you’ve had it coming a long time. Well then, whore…”
There was nowhere to go. Ivlita wasn’t frightened, she merely forced herself to enter into the meaning of Jonah’s words. More abuse. But, really, he was right, she thought so herself. Those unpardonable blasphemies against rapture she was guilty of. That meant the storm had spared her to hand her over to Jonah. But did it make any difference?
And when Jonah started crawling in, Ivlita did nothing to defend herself. She looked at the beast with complete indifference, then turned her eyes away and sank into thought. Of course, she was guilty. Hadn’t she been dreaming about Laurence from dawn until dusk and even in her sleep? Hadn’t she been pumping the wennies for information about him on a daily basis? But had she really meant to work iniquity? Had she really earned endless humiliations and hardships? Certainly not, but how long would this drag on?
Jonah, however, once he’d leaned over her, lifted her skirts and seen her unbearable beauty, lost his nerve, shaded his eyes, and, shamefaced, limped back. Ivlita had plunged into expecting her new guest, but no one was there. Then she decided to go home. But before she stepped over the threshold, stones began flying at her. “Have no pity on her,” Jonah was shouting to the highlanders, “This catastrophe’s on her account, the witch. You can’t even sleep with her, she’ll cast a spell on you.” One of the stones wounded her head. Ivlita slammed the door and began piling everything she could find within reach against it. Stones knocked against the door and walls for a short time. The swearing and name-calling also died down with the knocking
Sinking, no longer able to hold back her bitterness, Ivlita shouted, thrashed around, tore out her hair. Only now did she realize how much she was bogged down in the human dregs, and humanity was the dung of the earth
And her thoughts returned once more to her father. He alone could be her consolation. Her father, in whose shadow she had led a crystalline life. If he were no more, everything would be stripped bare, turned to desert. Some people are drawn to people, others to things. Red admirals alight on flowers, and seeds fall and sprout. Ivlita had no one, and never would, except her father. Ivlita weeps
Her misfortunes were explained simply by her separation from him, not by the other reasons she’d discovered earlier. To return, therefore, and as soon as possible. Better to be beaten than to delay, death from parting was bitterer than any other
Ivlita scattered the furniture, flung the door open and ran out. The sky was so blue, and the sun so caressing, the plants so fresh and aromatic that the mournful aspect of the devastated hamlet was just an inconsequential trifle. From the heights, the lark that never lands on the trees sprinkled a trill of eternal return
Ivlita turned to head for her house, to run, to run…But the look of the lacy structure was so unnatural, even from afar, that Ivlita grew stiff as wood. The tower of the second floor topped, as before, the flat roof, but was hanging in midair. There was neither an upper nor a lower floor. The hummock was not a hummock, but a mountain of ice, and this ice had crumpled the outbuildings, now comical and pitiful, here sagging, there spread out completely flat. And the seemingly amusing spectacle was full of intolerable horror
The sensation of spring, the hamlet, and the highlanders standing a little way off disappeared, replaced by the sensation of running, and Ivlita regained consciousness only at the place where her yard had once been. But what had happened to the fence behind which Ivlita grew up and lived her life, which would be no more; she had known happiness she couldn’t bring back. Fragments, ruins. Ivlita clambered up onto the pile, kept closing her eyes and opening them again, hoping to find anything that had been spared
She didn’t think at first of her father. She couldn’t entertain even the thought of his presence here, amid the chaos. But a strange object, half covered with snow, roused her curiosity. Ivlita approached and studied it. Her buried father was dozing and taking his repose in the snow
Ivlita had suffered too much to lose heart yet again. She just turned away and shuffled off. Even without tears. To the wennies who caught up to her, she said: “There lies my father. I don’t know when he died. In all likelihood, some time ago, and I missed it. Bury him, please. I’ve already mourned him once and lost him by doing so. It’s not seemly for a murderer to remain with the victim”
As she passed by Jonah and his accomplices, who had not yet dispersed, but were no longer making any move against her: “You are right, at least in that portion of your accusation that concerns my father’s death. You may, therefore, judge me a parricide”
Jonah tried to mock her. “You think you don’t have anything to deal with,” he drew out a laugh, “except sorting out your relationship with your father? That doesn’t quite cut it. It looks like everyone’s facing enough work rebuilding the hamlet not to waste time on you. True, like a hothead, I wanted to kill you just now. But I wasn’t thinking about getting revenge for your forester, but for the insult. On second thought, however, I’ve decided to wash my hands of you, since the avalanches rolling in are the best guarantee there won’t be any more deaths…” As for everyone’s right to her, not a word about it. Ivlita shrugged her shoulders and set off to the old wenny’s
The old wenny was busy in his yard, near his house, the only structure spared by the storm, not counting the cretins’ stable, and pretended not to notice Ivlita. He was actually listening carefully, kept track of her out of the corner of his eye, never ceasing to putter about. Ivlita was looking for protection with him, with an elder. Her father had perished, Laurence, too, most likely. Jonah and the others had just now wanted to beat her. But when she demanded a verdict, they abstained. Since she’s not certain that if she stays in the hamlet and the wenny goes out to the pastures, they won’t attack her again (while the women wouldn’t dare intercede for a bandit’s lover, even if they agreed to admit her to their society, which would be a singular courtesy on their part), Ivlita even begs the wenny to take her along to higher altitudes
Ivlita’s request could not be fulfilled. Women, not just in view of their imagined weakness, do not frequent the pastures. Their presence there is just as undesirable as in the army, diminishing valor, readiness for self-sacrifice, and intuition. The beings lurking in the ravines and around the glaciers,
now and then manifesting themselves to the shepherds, are sufficient proof that when spirits desire to harm a man, they need only incite him to love. And since, although highlanders much excel the earth’s other inhabitants in purity and perfection, they are not entirely delivered from human flaws, for they, too, sleep with their wives, then, so as not to sink completely to the common level, it behooves them to spend a third of the year in chastity on the heights. And even if the presence of a single woman cannot lead all the shepherds to break the rules, it will introduce temptation, and then there will be no end to coupling with spirits and goats. And the wenny would not be able to prevent the shepherds from coveting Ivlita, all the more so because Ivlita was a bandit’s widow, unwed, and must enter into common use
The stupor left Ivlita, and the words that she was, so to speak, generally available dribbled even from the wenny’s lips to no purpose. A possession in common utterly like the moon and airy matter? However alluring this was, the cosmic enthusiasm in Ivlita had gone out, irrevocably. Now, she was not so naïve. Why should she be likened to eternal things, when her father had perished, her home was in ruins, and Laurence was gone? She alone was obliged to settle accounts for everyone, in order to prove that death is not death, but a miraculous transmutation. No, the others had died, and Ivlita along with them. No one had any right to her at all, since she was not of this world. The hamlet’s laws deserved respect, but nature deserved more, and that these were not one and the same was clear, for the hamlet, notwithstanding the cretins’ protection, had not been spared. Being an honorable widow is a law of nature; after an ill-starred love you want no other. A second love is unnatural
What did it matter that Laurence had been a bandit? And Ivlita grew ardent, quarreled, noted that she had passed from self-defense to defending her lover, and, consequently, justifying his murders. And the once-menacing moral world engulfed her anew in smoke, beyond which she couldn’t distinguish a thing. Ivlita faltered. She was right only if Laurence was right, and if Laurence was right, then bear law was no worse than human law, and that meant Laurence and Ivlita were absolved of the murders, and the opposition between Ivlita and morality was no accident, but rather Ivlita, in her very existence and beauty, negated bedrock human precepts. And if that were so, could the wenny really judge her, when he considered highland statutes superior to lowland statutes only insofar as they were closer to animal statutes? No, Ivlita would not submit. Whether here or there, she would resist, weapon in hand
The wenny didn’t just watch her, he devoured her. He was seeing this woman as was meet for the first time. No rules applied here, no, this wasn’t a woman, but a sojourning feminine entity. And since the mountain ravines were swarming with her like, decidedly, adding one more wouldn’t change a thing
And so when, several days later, the highlanders, after quickly fixing their dwellings, set off, all packed up, into the mountains, driving their goats and whistling shrilly, and proceeded up the canyon, making use of the remarkable bridges, Ivlita was bringing up the rear of the procession, armed with a rifle, although in this season none of the shepherds were carrying firearms, fearful of encountering the satyr, since the latter, having a goat’s lower part, and an old man’s above, attacks people only in the middle months of the year and when it sees a rifle, so it can sharpen its teeth on the barrel
What a journey! They were done with leaves and needles, ascended nearly to the sources of the stream that flows from the mercury lake in a narrow, but towering waterfall, so that the mercury, as it falls, has time to decay into water; they had to clamber up to the north along a damp clay outcropping. While the canyon hadn’t yet been able to free itself from snow, higher up there was no longer any, all had melted away, well, just a little was left here and there. The sprouting grass was so juicy that the goats, after passing the winter on hay, refused to understand the journey’s end had not yet been reached and they’d have to wait a while to relish it. Here were the last scattered junipers and thickets of rhododendron. The pastureland was beginning: long, narrow strips, bounded on the north by cliffs and glaciers that hid the summits themselves from view. It extended, dipping here and there, and then a stream, all in cascades, would cut across; or it rose, and to shift from one pasture to another, you’d have to surmount a wearisome col. That made movement so laborious that a day’s travel equaled an hour’s on the plain, and only after several nights of camping did the highlanders reach the hollow indicated beforehand by the wenny. Now they had only to emit a glottal sound and the goats would scatter over the grassy plots, risking descent right to the forest edge. In the evening, a labial sound compelled them to run back to the pen, jury-rigged out of branches. The next item of business after the pen was erecting huts, shelters for pails of milk and tubs of cheese. The highlanders themselves scorn huts and sleep wrapped in their cloaks, heedless of any cold or rain, under the open sky. When it really pours, they have to get up during the night, wring out their shirts, pants, and cloaks, and put them on again, perhaps several times
Their victuals: yogurt and cheese. Neither bread nor meat…
Ivlita, who had burst out of the hamlet for the first time, was too taken with her surroundings to suffer from all this. She was suddenly happy. Adversity, troubles, and the whole of intentional life had been left down below with the forest and the women. Here, you could laugh at hesitation and horrors. From now on, Ivlita would live like the shepherds: sleep all winter, and in spring take a stroll on a carpet of azaleas. The hard life is a fictitious life. Natural life is easy and cloudless
Once she’d grown accustomed to the pastureland, and the wenny, after elucidating everything, teaching her about the mountains and the mind, things you can’t read in books, started repeating himself, Ivlita decided to find out what went on beyond the cliffs to the north. One day, she made an hours-long ascent along the glacial bed the wenny had christened the swallow’s nest, until she reached a modest snowfield; from here she could see to the south not just the mountain where the wenny shot roe deer, but also the hazy outlines of the unfamiliar plain that lay beyond the mountain. Venturing next time to make an even higher ascent, Ivlita achieved a new field, more extensive and framed by crags, fettered in ice. A herd of turs drifted aimlessly over the snow, and Ivlita passed the day lying on a rock, observing the animals. But no matter how great her rapt admiration, when dusk began to fall and the herd started to leave, she raised her rifle and felled one of the beasts. What for? She didn’t really know. Why such cruelty? Wasn’t Ivlita imitating Laurence? After all, she, too, was a murderer! But does a mirror reflecting something animate cease to be itself inanimate? Wasn’t Ivlita’s deed an exercise in futility, an attempt made with unsuitable means?
Unsuitable? A buck lay on the snow, its head bent back; blood was dripping from its muzzle. After lying there for a month or two, it would resemble the former forester
She couldn’t fall asleep that night; it was too cold. There were the constellations slowly rolling across the heavens; they recede, fade, and only two greet the waning moon. The sky ruddies and soon flames up: the hour when barely perceptible fumes stalk over the mercury lake. No trace of fatigue. Ivlita perseveres and resolves to climb to the sky. She struggles with the ice sheets, now and then traverses tongues of snow that have become firm overnight, and cuts steps with her rifle butt. In the end, her rifle starts getting in the way. Ivlita leaves it in some crevasse and continues clambering up, clinging to every ledge. Sometimes it seems that if she stops for a moment, everything will collapse, so she crawls on until she reaches a shelf where she can imagine resting
The plain is already perfectly distinct. Bright rivers crisscross it, ending in an expanse that’s just as bright. That must be the sea. Far, far away to the south, in the cloudless sky, are two cloudlets like crumbs. No, they’re not cloudlets, they’re snows, too, imprisoning the plain. That means there are still more mountains and Ivlita’s not the only one struggling and prevailing
The heavenly orb was already falling when Ivlita reach
ed the summit. She looked around. On the other side, the crest dropped off into an abyss, and in the abyss, fenced on all sides by ranges just like this one, lay paradise. She couldn’t see the ground because of the shimmering of whitest wings, and managed only to make out that it was built over with white towers, where the wings flew in and out, and that it was crisscrossed by sky-blue streams. The streams merged into one, cascading into the abyss and then spouting back up in a fountain so majestic that its roar reached all the way to Ivlita. The wings exclaimed and exulted, except for one sitting by the fountain, preening. And Ivlita understood: it was a memorial for Brother Mocius
But the whirlwinds rose up, the mists rebelled and cloaked everything. In vain did Ivlita remain until twilight, hoping for the curtain to rise. And a second night passed without sleep because of the cold. In the morning, she had to hurry to the pastureland
With utmost difficulty, Ivlita descended to the upper field, crossed it, and was ready to mount the cliffs when a body of some kind that had slipped fell nearby. A tur? Ivlita hurried around a boulder. Before her lay a bloodied Jonah
“Ivlita, it’s your fault I’m perishing,” the highlander whispered when she bent over him. “I didn’t dare when I had the chance, and I’ve been pining away ever since then. I’ve been stalking you relentlessly. I wanted to assault you, but, you see, it’s hard without my leg”
“Jonah, don’t die, darling, you mustn’t. You must live. If you need me for the sake of living, take me, but don’t die. Dying for love isn’t worth it”
If the city fellow with glasses hadn’t shown up, the resumption of work at the sawmill would have brought on nothing new. They went back to cutting, planing, sawing, drinking away more at the tavern than they earned, and gossiping more than they worked. The hills and slopes were in bloom, even the cemetery was in bloom, and in place of snow, the almond tree now scattered its petals on the graves of the monk and the stonecutter