Black Spring Page 3

  Lina didn’t respond and I found myself, despite my better judgement, attempting to defend her.

  “Sir, that is a churlish thing to say of a lady—” I began.

  “A lady?” said Damek, and laughed. “I thought by now that even you would know better than that.”

  Lina started up, spilling her soup on the table, and flew at Damek, scratching at his eyes. He struck her full across the face, a sickening blow that flung her halfway across the room. She lay so still at first that I feared for a moment that she was dead; but then she stirred and scrambled up to her hands and knees, her hair swinging loose in rats’ tails across her face. Her lip was bleeding.

  “You son of a rotting whore,” said she.

  She spoke with such venom that I thought Damek would be momentarily silenced, but he merely glanced at me with what seemed to be complicity. I felt instantly revulsed.

  “You see?” he said. “A certain superficial charm, I grant you, but such foulness within.” Then he turned to Lina. “Get back to your room, lest I give you the beating you deserve.”

  She cringed away from him, so that I suddenly pitied her, and gathering herself together left the room. Damek followed her with his eyes until the door shut behind her.

  “So,” said he, turning back to me without the faintest trace of embarrassment. “Here you see the advantages of married life. I advise you to avoid it.”

  “She’s your wife?” I said, with involuntary amazement. I was so stunned by the scene I had just witnessed that I scarcely knew what I was saying.

  Damek didn’t deign to answer, so I gave up my efforts to be companionable, and stared morosely into the fire. I had lost all sense of time, but it was now dark outside, and I estimated that it must be early evening. The storm, howling above the domestic popping of the fire, showed no sign of abating. My walk and the successive shocks of the day, combined with the heat in the kitchen, conspired to make me sleepy, and I found myself nodding off. I wondered, if I was to stay the night, as seemed inescapable, where I was to bed down.

  I had passed around an hour in this fashion when the dog outside started to bark. I was wondering what other traveller could be so unfortunate as to be seeking succour from this cursed house when the door opened, letting in for a moment a gust of wind and mingled hail and rain which almost blew out the lamp. With it came a man so twisted by age and rheumatism that he was almost bent double. He was heavily cloaked, and water streamed from his cloak onto the flags as he cursed the dog.

  He had one of the most unpleasant faces I have ever seen: all his features seemed to collapse into a lipless mouth, which was a thin line that expressed countless years of bitterness, spite and envy. His eyes were set close together, as if they conspired over his nose, pale blue irises floating in a web of blood vessels, and the nose itself was so red it was purple. This, I found later, spoke more of his drinking habits than the cold outside.

  “One day I’ll shoot that damned bitch,” he said. “By the gods I swear I’ll string her up…”

  At this, he caught sight of me, and stopped short, turning to Damek with a wordless question.

  “My tenant, Hammel,” said Damek indifferently. “Hammel, this is my manservant, Kush.”

  Kush favoured me with a sour look, and returned to his grumbling as he removed his dripping outer garments and drew close to the fire. “I told you, Master Damek, there’s a storm coming. But did you listen? Did you care? Not you. I could have been blown to the four quarters or frizzled up in a bolt of lightning. It’s not a night fit for man nor beast out there. But no, nothing would suit you but—”

  “Shut your whining, man,” said Damek testily. “You’re home now. Did you see the king?”

  The old man reached inside his breast and threw a fat leather purse onto the table. “There, and much good may it do you,” he said.

  I was startled by the expression of lust that flickered over Damek’s face. He swept the purse so swiftly into his pocket that I scarcely saw the movement, and then, suddenly aware of my observation, gave me a hostile stare. I averted my eyes; I had no wish to know what nefarious business concerned him. Our new companion gave me a sidelong suspicious look and helped himself to the remains of the soup, which he ate with disgusting slurps and sucking noises.

  By now I was heartily sick of my situation. I have never wanted so passionately to leave a place in my life; if the rain had eased even a little, I might have risked getting lost in the darkness, just to escape. At last I told my host that I wished to sleep. He irritably ordered Kush to show me to a room and the old man took up a candle and, grumbling all the way, led me along an unlit passage and up some narrow stairs. On a landing he opened a door to a room furnished with a narrow bed, a washstand with a mildewed mirror and a wardrobe. The room had a fusty air, as if it hadn’t been opened for years, and smelt strongly of damp. It was also freezing cold. Kush had every intention of leaving me in pitch-darkness, but I had a protracted argument with him, insisting that he leave the candle for my use, and in the end he acceded grudgingly to my wishes, and fumbled his way back downstairs.

  I nervously checked that the silver ring the wizard had given me was securely on my finger and wished that I had not left the phial behind when I had departed in the morning. I set the candle on the washstand and found my matches and placed them beside it – I did not feel at all at ease in this house, and didn’t want to be left without light should anything strange happen. I anxiously inspected the wounds on my calf, which were still very painful, for signs of infection, but in that poor light could tell nothing: I would have to wait until I could find a doctor on the morrow. Then I climbed into bed with all my clothes on, laying my coat on top of me for warmth, and blew out the candle, thinking regretfully of my cosy feather mattress in the Red House. But at least I was alone.

  IV

  Although it was so cold that my feet felt like blocks of ice, and the bed was hard and lumpy, I fell asleep quickly, exhausted by the events of the day. I passed into a night of dreams, the most vivid and horrible that I have ever experienced.

  I was walking through a landscape very like the one I had walked earlier that day, still sere with winter, but something was wrong with the perspective: things that should have been close appeared to be very far away, but the mountains in the distance seemed to press up against me oppressively. The sky was a strange bruised purple. All around me, as far as I could see, stretched rows and rows of graves, some marked with crosses, some with mounds of stone.

  I seemed to have been walking for hours without seeing a single soul, and the further I walked the more anxious I became. I was searching for something, although I didn’t know what it was, something dear to me, the loss of which afflicted me grievously. The further I walked, the further I was from the possibility of finding it, and yet I knew I could not turn back. My heart grew more and more oppressed.

  At last I saw a figure in the distance, walking towards me. Out of sheer relief, I started running; but then I saw it was Kush. He leered grotesquely when he saw me, in a parody of greeting, and held up his hands. From one dangled a leather bag, which I knew with a dreamer’s clairvoyance was full of gold pieces; the other hand was empty. But in the centre of his palm was a wound, from which was falling a constant stream of blood. The blood fell to the ground and made a black puddle, in which was reflected my own face.

  On seeing this, I was overwhelmed by loathing and horror. Kush began to cackle, and moved closer to me; I could smell his breath, an odour of decay. I wanted to run but, transfixed by terror, I could not move, and he reached out to touch my face with his bleeding hand. Just before his fingers touched me, I woke up.

  I lit the candle with trembling hands and looked about the room. Although it was so cold I could see the breath hanging in front of my face, I was lathered with sweat. I took a few deep inhalations and admonished myself for foolishness: it was no wonder that I was suffering nightmares, after the day I had had, and probably I was feverish, from the dog’s bites, maybe, o
r from catching a chill.

  I told myself that the dream’s dreadful realism stemmed from its echoes of my experiences earlier that night. I had sensed a dark tale behind that hastily hidden purse that my dreaming mind had transformed into deathly portents. So I comforted myself, noting that the storm wasn’t so violent now; I must have been asleep for some time. Only a few more hours, and I would be out of here. I settled myself down and once again fell rapidly asleep.

  I dreamt that I was in the room in which I now slept, standing on the floor between the bed and the wardrobe. The grey light of dawn filtered through the grimy window, lending every object in the room a faint luminosity. I knew that the door was locked, and that I couldn’t get out. For reasons I couldn’t trace, I was filled with increasing apprehension, rising to panic: some dreadful event was to occur later that day, although I couldn’t remember what it was.

  Then, with the illogic of dream, I was in my own study at home in the city. With an intense sense of relief I sat down at my desk and picked up my pen, a new one I had purchased just before I left for the north, and began to write a poem which had suddenly occurred to me. But the ink was a strange colour, and kept clotting. I knocked the pen impatiently on the blotter, and tried again to write, but a haemorrhage of ink spilt over the page, and I realized then that it was not ink, but blood. As I stared at the spoilt paper, the blood began to pour impossibly from the nib of the pen, an increasing stream that collected into a red puddle and began to drip on the floor. The sound of its steady drip was, I remember, particularly dreadful. I lifted my hand to my eyes, and saw that it was covered with blood; then I realized that it was my blood, and that I was bleeding to death.

  Again I woke in a sweat, all my limbs trembling. For a horrible moment I thought I was back in the nightmare: dawn-pale light was leaking through the shutters, giving the room the same ghastly luminosity that it had possessed in my dream. It was very quiet, a silence which seemed sinister until I understood that it was because the storm had blown itself out.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat with my face in my hands until I stopped shaking. I feel incapable of conveying the peculiar horror these dreams invoked in me: my entire body felt chilled through, the hair crept on my scalp and neck, and nausea crawled in the pit of my stomach. This house, thought I, is infected with more than the sheer unpleasantness of its inhabitants: some sick wizardry is at hand here. I checked that my protective ring was still on my finger; it was. I wondered, with a shudder, what might have happened, had I not protected myself in that way.

  My only thought was to get out of that place as soon as possible. I had had more than enough of it. Perhaps I had had enough of the north, and should head back to the city … though even then, the image of Grosz’s mocking expression held me back from the thought of a humiliating return.

  I stood up as slowly as an old man – all my body ached as if with ague, and my bitten calf felt more sore this morning than the night before. I put on my coat, and then leant towards the mirror on the washstand, to check the no doubt lamentable state of my person. And then I was plunged into nightmare again, because the reflection I saw was not my own.

  It was the face of a woman who was perhaps in her twenties. She bore a strong resemblance to Lina, but was less conventionally beautiful. The same thick black locks tumbled over her face, and she had the same high, chiselled cheekbones, but her face was thinner, more asymmetrical, somehow more wild. In the mirror I could see that she was wearing a nightdress that fell immodestly off one shoulder and exposed almost the whole of one of her full breasts. Her mouth was luscious, preternaturally red, the colour of blood; but it expressed a wilfulness that lent its frank sensuality some other, thrilling, quality. Aside from her lips, her skin was deathly white. But it was her eyes that captured my fascinated attention. They were the violet eyes of a witch, and they blazed with unassuageable longing, a bottomless, reckless hunger, and they stared unseeingly straight into mine.

  In those first moments I don’t know whether I was more possessed by desire or terror. The imprint of that wild, beautiful face has never left my memory. I have seen – have even embraced – women more handsome, but never have I seen a face so passionate and yet, despite its utter abandon, so wholly itself.

  Then it was as if something focused in that spellbinding gaze, and with a clutch of horror I comprehended that the apparition in the mirror was looking back at me. Her expression changed with astounding swiftness: now those extraordinary eyes blazed with anger. I was not what she had hoped and longed for; and even in my fright, I confess I felt a little shock of disappointment. Her gaze locked on mine, and I could see that she was speaking, although I could not hear what she said. I involuntarily flung up my hand in a gesture of helplessness. When I did that, she recoiled; I almost heard her hiss, as if she were in pain. I realized that she must have seen the ring on my finger. I tried then to turn and run away but found that I could not move my legs: my feet refused to obey me, whether because of sheer terror or because of some bewitchment I do not know.

  In a moment she was close again to the surface of the mirror, as if it were a glass window that imprisoned her, and began to beat it frantically with her hands. When I saw this, complete panic took hold of me: I no longer knew what I was doing. I cried out, screaming at her to leave me alone, and hit out blindly at the mirror. The thing exploded in a shower of glass shards, some of which cut my face and hands. But I didn’t care: now I could move. I ran out of the room, slammed shut the door and stood in the dark hallway leaning against the wall, panting, trying to regain my breath.

  My host, perhaps awoken by my cries if he was not awake already – if indeed anyone could sleep at all in that infernal house – came running down the hallway in shirt and trousers. When he saw me standing by the door, his face darkened with fury; but I was at such a pitch I swear that even the Devil himself was beyond frightening me further.

  “What were you doing in that room?”

  The unexpectedness of his question pulled me up short.

  “Why, you bastard,” I answered furiously, “you put me there!”

  “Not I,” he said. “Not I. No one goes in that room.”

  “Then your filthy manservant did,” I said, holding my bloody hand close to my chest. “Out of malice or mischief, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have chosen to sleep there for a million gold pieces. I’m going home, where that bitch of hell can’t get at me. Even if I have to crawl there…”

  I stumbled down the stairs, but I had not gone halfway before Damek caught me up and, grabbing my shoulder, swung me around to face him. “What bitch of hell?” he snarled at me. “What are you talking about?”

  I attempted to tear myself free of his grasp. “A nice trick, putting me in a haunted room!” I shouted. “I swear, you’re the Devil himself, and that woman…”

  “Who?” he said to me with passionate urgency. “What woman?”

  “That unholy witch in the mirror,” said I. I looked up and met his eyes: they were blazing as intensely as the woman’s in the mirror, though whether with longing or despair or rage or grief, or all of those at once, I couldn’t tell. We gazed wordlessly at each other for a few seconds, both suddenly still.

  “Tell me,” he said, his chest heaving. “Tell me what you mean.”

  All of a sudden I pitied him, and I realized also that I was no longer afraid, although I hurt all over.

  “I saw a woman in the mirror,” I said. “A witch, sir! She tried to bewitch me, or come out of the mirror, or something – and so I smashed the mirror…”

  Damek’s face tightened as I spoke, and then he thrust me violently away from him, so I fell down the remaining steps. He rushed upstairs, shouting his wife’s name in a voice that sounded thick and hoarse with tears. I was momentarily baffled: what kind of husband was this, who reviled his wife with blows and scorn at one moment, and called for her with such passion the next? But all I knew was that I did not want to stay in that house with those people one mi
nute longer. I ran down a wide passage to the front door, hastily unbolted it, and at last found myself outside, under a clear pale sky. Never has the dawn air smelt sweeter to me; and I swear that even with my wounded leg, I ran most of the way home.

  V

  My return, limping and bloodstained, to the village of Elbasa created in its own small way a sensation. The proprietor of the shop even came out of his dingy premises to witness open-mouthed my exhausted stumble over the cobbled laneways towards the Red House, and a couple of the mangy dogs crept up and sniffed me. I saw several faces peering out of dark windows, and in the narrow street a woman grabbed a small boy near by and whispered in his ear, whereupon he took off as fast as his fat legs could carry him, to bring the news of my reappearance – as I found when I arrived there – to Anna at the Red House.

  My absence had, it seemed, created much consternation. Most of the village had known of my intention within an hour of my departure, and after much discussion had decided that I was doomed. Heads had been shaken and judgements pronounced on the foolish city dweller who so stubbornly had insisted on visiting the Devil himself. My survival must have been, therefore, a source of considerable disappointment: but I have no doubt that the sorry spectacle I presented would have been some compensation.

  I was past caring what anybody thought. When I shambled up the path to the Red House, Anna and her husband were already at the door. I have never been more grateful for simple kindness: they took me inside, and I found that Anna had prepared a hot bath and laid out fresh clothes, and there was a delicious-smelling breakfast already cooking. Anna inspected my leg, pursed her lips, and carefully cleaned it. I confess that I luxuriated in their fussing over me, although it was behaviour which would normally have made me irritable.