Black Spring Read online

  I looked back as his lone figure dwindled into the distance, struck to the heart by the man’s tragic beauty. He seemed indeed like an angel of death, walking through a landscape of the dead. For the first time I began really to understand my friend’s words about the Northern Plateau. But perversely the sight cheered me: perhaps, after all, I would find something to interest me in this godforsaken place.

  My carriage clattered into Elbasa’s tiny central square shortly before dusk that same day. A few vagrant sunbeams peeped through a low rent in the clouds and lent the square a little shabby warmth. While my coachman ventured off into the rain for directions to the house, I contemplated Elbasa gloomily out of my carriage window. On one side of the square was a tavern, on the other what I presumed to be the house of the mayor. In the middle was an ancient and stunted lime tree, still bare of leaf, a forlorn version of its gay southern cousins, and underneath that a worn stone seat by a rank pond of blackish water choked with rotting leaves. A grimy shop and rows of shuttered houses completed the melancholy impression.

  After almost a week of constant travel I was anxious to leave my carriage and settle into a comfortable house. I longed for a hot bath and then a glass of Madeira by a roaring fire before I fell gratefully into a comfortable bed. That I managed to get these things at the end of my journey was, I confess, a source of considerable astonishment.

  My friend’s report had not erred: the house I had leased for the spring months was indeed luxurious by the standards of the Northern Plateau. It was but a little way out of the village, and set at a pleasing angle on a low rise, which was the closest they came to a hill in these parts. It could not escape the usual pines, which sheltered the house from the harsh winds that often swept down from the mountains. It was known as the Red House, because it did not have the ubiquitous slate roofing, but cheery clay tiles, which someone must have imported at great trouble and expense from the south. As I peered curiously out of my carriage I saw the last of the day’s light touching its roof, making it appear almost luminous, and it seemed to me miraculous to see such a thing in this dour landscape of greys. I could also see a butter-yellow light streaming from the windows, and my heart lifted.

  Once inside, I met the couple who kept the house, a taciturn and courteous man named Zef, and his wife, Anna. They were respectably dressed and mannered, locally bred but well trained, and although the house was not large – running perhaps to six or seven main rooms – it had about it an air of order and prosperity which was already a little alien to me, accustomed as I had become over the past few days to low-roofed inns with mattresses more notable for their livestock than their softness. Although it felt a little foolish in these polite surroundings, I carefully anointed the thresholds of the house and my pillow with a droplet from the phial Aron Lamaga had given me, as had become my habit since reaching the Plateau. To complete my satisfaction, I found that Anna was a superior cook: she made a dish of tripe and onions that evening that nourished the soul as much as the flesh. You can imagine how I congratulated myself on having found such an oasis of civilization in this rude country; with what relief I lay down that night between fresh linen sheets; and how, before I drifted off into well-earned slumber, I turned my mind with a fresh excitement to the prospects of my new situation.

  II

  The morning of my arrival, after an excellent breakfast of blood sausage and chitterlings, I was sufficiently restored from the rigours of my journey to contemplate my surroundings with some degree of amicability. It helped that, after days of driving rain, the day dawned clear and bright. The pale sunshine of early spring struck blindingly silver off the puddles and made of the wet grass a wealth of trembling prisms. I stared out of my bedroom window as I dressed. It overlooked the back of the house, which boasted a wintry vegetable garden and the compulsory stunted orchard, and in the distance I could see the Black Mountains, clearly visible today, although their craggy heights were shrouded by mist. I found myself humming the mournful but beautiful ballads of my childhood about the shepherds of the Land of Death. The songs made me think of the youth I had seen the day before: he could scarcely have reached full manhood, but his face seemed ageless, as if death had already lifted him out of the stream of time.

  I inspected my dwelling, which I had not had the energy to look over the night before, and confirmed my feeling of satisfaction at my situation. Indeed, it was perfect. The kitchen was large and well supplied, the amenities modern and well ordered. There was a pleasant dining room, furnished with surprising taste, a formal drawing room, a sitting room adjacent to my bedroom upstairs, and an attractive breakfast parlour downstairs at the front of the house, which captured all the morning light. In this room stood an elegant mahogany writing desk, surely the best piece of furniture in the house. I immediately requisitioned the parlour for my work room; I have brought with me several projects which I hope to complete in my time here, including the almost complete manuscript of poems which I have promised to S—. I thought of the lady who had inspired a good number of the poems; it is almost the anniversary of our first meeting. I confess to a moment’s weakness, as I remembered a certain gesture, a certain turn of her head which displayed the graceful curve of her neck, and for a while I toyed with the idea of dedicating the book to her (I need only use initials, after all); but I discarded the notion almost immediately, since it would be taken as proof of an ardour which for me has now grown cold and which I have no wish to revisit.

  After noon I found myself restless, and spent some time in the kitchen speaking to Anna, as I was more and more curious about the history of this house, which was so atypical of the dwellings I had seen in the Plateau. She told me that its owner, who was known only as Damek, lived not far away, less than two miles’ walk.

  “Well then!” I said. “I should, as a dutiful tenant, pay him my respects!”

  “I fear, sir, that he might be from home,” cried Anna, with what seemed to me a certain confusion.

  “It would only be courteous,” said I. “And if he is not home, I have wasted no more than my time. I feel as if I should enjoy a walk.”

  “I think, sir, that the weather will turn later,” Anna answered. “A storm can blow down from the mountains in a trice, and with a savageness as you lowlanders are not used to. And even if it is but a short distance, storms are no pleasure to walk in.”

  She looked as if she might say more, but instead turned to her cooking. My curiosity was piqued by this exchange; I felt that Anna was concealing something from me. I stepped outside to sniff the air and saw that the skies were clear and blue and showed no sign of unrest. So it was that a short time later, despite further attempts at dissuasion from Anna, I left the house, armed with meticulous directions (and checking that my silver ring was still on my finger, in case of unexpected meetings with Plateau wizards or the like). I found myself following a path that was little more than a goat track, which wound its way through scrubby fields of cabbages and barley in the direction of the Black Mountains.

  I passed around a dozen sad memorials – the crumbling cairns of stones that signified where some luckless man had met his death – which seemed excessive for such a humble goat path. Then I remembered that my friend had told me that some two decades before, Elbasa had been under vendetta. “Vendetta can go on for generations,” he said. “But in this case they found some way to stop it before it killed every man in the village.”

  It was, at first, as pleasant a stroll as I had anticipated, but as I neared my destination I began to realize that my housekeeper’s warning had been well founded. The temperature fell abruptly, the wind began to gust in uneasy jumps and startles, and I saw to my alarm an ominous bank of purple cloud devouring the sky with an astonishing rapidity. I wrapped my coat closer around me and hurried on, keeping an anxious eye out for the house which, according to my directions, should soon appear to my left. It was with some relief that I spotted a gleam of light in the gathering darkness of the storm – it was only mid-afternoon, and yet th
e sun had all been eaten up, so that it almost seemed like night – and hurrying on, I found myself at the doorway of a large farmhouse just as the first drops of rain began to fall.

  No one answered my initial knock. Puzzled, I tried again, growing concerned because the rain now began to pour down in earnest, liberally interspersed with hail. I thought that perhaps the deafening thunder drowned my knocking, and persisted, and after some minutes began to shout as well; but although there was a light in an upper window, indicating that the house was by no means empty, the door remained resolutely shut. At last I gave up and, shaking the water out of my eyes, started looking around for some rude shelter; perhaps the storm would pass quickly and I could make my luckless way home. There were, I saw, a couple of outbuildings, but more promisingly, I saw that at the back of the house there was a small courtyard. Perhaps this man Damek – if he was at home – was at that end of the house, and simply had not heard me through the din of the storm. The gate was locked, but when I clambered to the top of the wall I saw a window, and through the window, flickering against the wall, the reflected flames of a huge hearth.

  By now I was soaked through and freezing – seduced by the pleasant morning, I had only worn a light coat – and forgetting how loud the storm was, I was possessed by an irrational rage, that anyone could have such lack of fellow feeling that they could leave a traveller unanswered by their door – and in such weather! And in the high country, where one’s duty to a guest was sacred, a matter of honour, of life and death itself! Standing on an old water butt, I hefted myself over the courtyard wall and scrambled into the dark courtyard.

  As soon as I dropped to the ground, I realized I had made a grave mistake: a very hound of hell, which had hitherto remained silent, rushed out of the shadows, barking fit to wake the dead. Had I not plunged forward in a blind panic for the door, it would have torn out my throat; even so, the brute attacked my leg, inflicting a most painful bite. I should have been done for, had the back door been locked; but to my great good fortune, it was not, and I and the snarling dog tumbled in a wet, graceless heap into the middle of a huge kitchen.

  Somebody pulled the hound off me, but not before it had bitten me once more, and drove the animal out of the door with a stick. I sat on the floor gasping for breath, recovering from the shock of the attack, and it was a little while before I realized that I was crouched ignominiously on the floor, clutching my bleeding calf. A powerfully built, black-browed man in shirtsleeves, clearly a servant, was standing above me, regarding me with no great friendship in his face.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  I attempted to draw together some poor shreds of what remained of my dignity.

  “My name is Hammel,” I said, trying to ignore the pain of my wounds and examining my trousers, which were sadly stained with blood. “I sought to pay my courtesies to my landlord, and find myself rewarded in this poor fashion. I knocked on the front door, but no one answered, and in desperation to escape the storm thought I would try the back…”

  The man sneered and turned away without speaking, and my anger, fanned by my recent fright, reignited.

  “Even if your master is away from home, it is no excuse to show such poor hospitality!” I said. “You disgrace his name. You can be sure that report will reach him, you cur. I’ll see that he has you whipped.”

  The man turned back to face me, and to my astonishment I saw that an infernal laughter flickered in his eyes. “And what of your manners, tumbling in here uninvited and messing up my floor?”

  My breath was quite taken away by his insolence, and I sat there, gaping like a fish. But now he squatted down and, without further reference to me, examined my leg. He grunted.

  “You’re lucky,” he said, standing up again. “Percha might have had your throat. But that’s scarce a scratch; you’ll live.” He opened a cupboard and found a rag, poured some water from a jug into a basin and handed them to me. “Here, clean yourself up.”

  I took the items in a daze, still astounded by his rudeness. At last I found my tongue again. “Did you hear what I said, you dog? Your master will hear of this!”

  “And whom, pray, are you calling ‘dog’?” The amusement had vanished from his face altogether, and I began to feel afraid of him. He regarded me steadily for a few moments.

  “I suppose,” he said, “that it is not a mortal offence to be a fool, even if it ought to be. I expect you are my tenant; you look vapid enough. I had no desire or need to meet you, and I wish you would go home. Sadly, that is impossible at present, since this storm will not pass before the night is over. But since you have come to pay me your respects, I would suggest that it is inadvisable to call me names.”

  So this man, whom I had taken for a rough servant, was in fact Mr Damek, my landlord! Or was it some monstrous joke? What was the master of the house doing in the kitchen, dressed like a peasant? I thought better of arguing; a sudden uncomfortable image of the many cairns I had seen in my walk earlier that day passed before my inner eye.

  I stuttered an apology, but the man merely gave me a look of contempt and told me to get off the floor. He returned to the table, where he had been cleaning a rifle before I had interrupted his task, and ignored me completely. Shakily, I stood and found a seat, as far away from my host as possible, but close enough to the fire to dry myself off. I cleaned my wounds, which smarted badly, bitterly regretting my hasty decision that morning. I resolved to listen to Anna in the future; it promised to be a long, uncomfortable and unamusing night.

  III

  Nor was I disappointed in my forebodings. I sat by the fire even after I became uncomfortably hot, not daring to move, listening to the storm outside and casting surreptitious glances at my sullen host and around the kitchen. It was a large room, and had once, clearly, been the heart of a prosperous and solid home: but everything, from the cracked plates stacked carelessly on a dresser, to the grimy windows and walls and cobwebbed eaves, spoke of neglect. The impression was reinforced by the smoky oil lamp, which cast most of the room into shadow: the only other illumination came from the hearth, which threw out a hellish red light.

  Every now and then I made a nervous sally at conversation, which my host either ignored, or greeted with a grunt. He finished cleaning and oiling his rifle, reassembled it, placed it on a rack that hung on the wall, and took down another. While doing so, he glanced at me.

  “You might as well make yourself useful, and put a log on the fire,” he said.

  Again, I was astounded by his discourtesy, but did not dare gainsay him, and did what he bade. At this point a door that I had not noticed at the far end of the kitchen opened, and a young woman entered the room. The last thing I expected to see in this house was a woman. I jumped to my feet in some confusion, and bowed.

  The woman, I noticed at once, was very handsome; she had long black hair, no less thick for being dirty and uncombed, large, brown eyes set in a pale, delicate face, and a full, soft mouth. But her looks were marred by her slatternly dress and her sour, defiant expression. She started when she saw me, but my bow and stammered greeting merely elicited a sneer.

  “Be polite to our guest, Lina,” said my host. He sounded amused. “You need not betray your ill-breeding so grievously. This is Mr Hammel, from the city, who is currently staying at the Red House.”

  Lina turned and gave Damek a look of the purest hatred I have ever seen on a human face. She then sat herself down on a bench by the fire and, although I was scarce five feet from her, behaved as if I did not exist.

  Now my situation was doubly uncomfortable; and to make things worse, I was getting very hungry. However, this last problem was resolved promptly, as after some sharp commands from Damek, Lina sulkily swung a black iron pot over the hearth and heated some soup, which she served out gracelessly in what had once been good porcelain bowls, but which were now, like everything in the kitchen, chipped and marred.

  I thanked my hostess, and she favoured me with a contemptuous glare. Damek laugh
ed.

  “Don’t waste your breath on her,” he said.

  Lina forestalled the objection that rose to my lips with a foul curse. But to my chagrin, she turned on me instead of Damek. “Don’t think yourself so superior,” she said to me. “I know your type. He might be a devil, but you’re just a stinking louse.”

  Taken aback by her unprovoked attack, I found myself stammering like a fool. I concentrated on my meal, my vanity hurt by her open scorn, wondering whether she was mad, or if she was one of that breed of women that hate all men. For some time there was no sound except the scraping of spoons on crockery.

  I tried, for the sake of ease, to strike up a conversation, since my mercurial host now seemed almost cordial; but everything I said was turned by Damek into an occasion for needling Lina. If she answered either him or me, it was in such a way as to lower her in my estimation. She was so surly and rude that I had a strong desire to slap her, and almost felt that she deserved the treatment meted out to her. I wondered if Damek had been soured by such unremittingly unpleasant company.

  The soup was unexpectedly delicious, but my hostess received my compliments indifferently. Not that, by now, I expected anything else.

  “As it happens,” said Damek, with a malicious glance at Lina, “I made the soup. Lina is of no use at all. Except in one way, and even that has to be beaten out of her.”