Black Spring (9 page)

Patiently, with her rare gentleness, she coaxed him out of his sullen silence, and he began to seem more like any boy of ten; she drew him into her games and pranks, and although he never quite lost his wariness, for the first time we saw his face animated with laughter. I know you will not believe me, but I began to like Damek myself then; he was a handsome boy and could be an amiable playmate. I am sorry for what he became. Perhaps he would have become what he is in any case, but I think he could have been a different man had things turned out otherwise.

Lina and Damek would disappear for hours on end, returning with their clothes torn and filthy with mud and their eyes shining with secret mischief. Their antics were the despair of my mother, who felt both their impropriety and their inconvenience, since they doubled her laundry and darning. I was moved by less pragmatic considerations: to put it baldly, I was jealous. The pair stole away on their excursions without telling anybody and after they returned home, would whisper together like conspirators. I was locked out of Lina’s private world, and I felt my exile keenly.

I caught them leaving the house one day when I knew they had been expressly forbidden to do so and demanded that I should come too, or I would tell my mother. Lina stared at me impatiently, biting her lip.

“Why would you want to come with us, Anna? You know you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“I would so,” I said.

“You wouldn’t,” she said. “We don’t do anything special, do we, Damek? We just go racing in the wind by the river. You know you don’t like running much. You’d just get puffed and spoil it all and we’d have to come home.”

“I won’t spoil anything!” I said heatedly.

Lina exchanged a glance with Damek that I couldn’t read, but its intimacy fanned my jealousy. Damek shrugged. “Come if you want,” he said. “But you’ll only get into trouble.”

I was already regretting my importunity, but it was too late now to withdraw. Lina cast me a dark look, but she tolerated my tagging behind. As we reached the meadows that led to the river, she broke into a run. Damek cast a glance over his shoulder that was not without sympathy and then raced to follow her.

I plodded stubbornly behind them in the distance, sweaty and uncomfortable. I finally caught up with them by the river. Lina was swinging from a willow branch with her back to me as Damek sat on the ground looking up at her. With a pang of envy, I saw that for once his face was unguarded. He was staring at Lina with the same intense expression of worship I had sometimes seen on old women praying before the Madonna in church. Even as this incongruous thought crossed my mind, he sensed my gaze and turned his face away, and I saw a flush spread across the back of his neck. I already knew that I was pushing myself where I was not wanted, but suddenly I felt a new discomfort; it was as if I had glimpsed something that shouldn’t be witnessed. I hadn’t seen them doing wrong — don’t misunderstand me; what I saw was completely innocent. I felt clumsy and embarrassed, as if I had stumbled without permission into a hushed church in the middle of an important ceremony.

Lina dropped down from the tree and turned toward me.

“See,” she said. “I
said
you wouldn’t enjoy it!”

“But I am!” I said stoutly, and sat down to catch my breath. “Maybe we could make a house now. You could be the mistress.” Even in my confusion, I wasn’t going to admit that Lina was right and I wanted to return to the world of our ordinary relationships, undisturbed by the strange depths that had briefly opened before me.

“Sometimes you’re so dreary, Anna,” said Lina. “What do we want with houses here? Look at the mountains!” She pointed into the distance, where the Black Mountains stood, clear of haze, on the horizon, their flanks shading to deep purple. “Aren’t they beautiful? They’re just like Damek.”

“You mean he’s purple?” I said, bewildered by her fancy, as Damek cast her an angry look. I think she must have broken a confidence between them, because she colored a little.

“No, stupid. If you can’t see it, I’m not going to explain.”

Before long, Lina announced that she was bored and we went home. We were gone so briefly that nobody had missed us, and the next time Lina and Damek disappeared, they took good care to avoid me. I was cured of wanting to join them, and I told myself that I didn’t care, but of course that wasn’t true.

Shortly after Lina’s rapprochement with Damek, the master came home again. Had he returned while Lina was still tormenting Damek, the consequences would have been unthinkable, and all of us — with the exception of Lina herself — felt the relief of disaster averted. In all my life, I have never met anyone with such a talent for ensuring her own unhappiness as Lina; despite his partiality, her father could not have countenanced her cruelty, and even his mildest disapproval had the power to cast her into the depths of despair. And Lina in despair, in the midst of the extremity she had already so gratuitously created, was a vision none of us wished to contemplate. I knew even then that my mother feared for Lina’s health, perhaps even for her sanity; for all the trouble she caused her, she cared for Lina as if she were her own child.

Thus we all covered for her. On his first day home, the master noticed the fading bruises on Damek’s arm and frowningly asked whence they had come and whether Damek had suffered mistreatment. We all started, unable to know how to answer without delivering an outright lie, but Damek steadfastly denied any abuse and claimed they had come about from a fall during play. The master studied Damek skeptically, and I was sure that he didn’t believe him, but since it seemed that all was well, he forbore to say anything further.

This time, to Lina’s delight, the master stayed at home for the entire summer. He spent much time in his study going over the accounts, and when he emerged, he was often gray-faced with exhaustion. I still have the ledgers and once went through those for that year out of, I confess, a vulgar curiosity. The southern estate had suffered an early frost followed by unusually severe tempests, which had devastated the vineyards, and there had been besides an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the cattle. The bulk of the annual income came from that estate, and those disasters I think accounted for his presence, as the accounts also showed that when he was away from the Plateau, he led a life of considerable extravagance — indulgences to which his finances would not stretch that year. We believed that his constant absences were due to what we all vaguely referred to as “business,” but the plain truth was that the master had no great love for the Black Country. Ties of blood, honor, and money kept him here, and those bonds, which he could not break, were twisted tightly with threads of resentment or even hatred. Of course I only understood this much later. I don’t think even my mother, his most faithful servant and perhaps one of the few people besides Lina who really loved him, knew this.

As the spring turned toward summer, the rains abated, and it was as if a heavy lid had lifted off our heads and we could stand tall and breathe freely. The Plateau was then at its most beautiful. I know you think it a grim and ugly place, but to my partial eye, even its winter dress has a rugged grandeur. When the many-hued grasses are strewn with wildflowers dozing in the sun and the mountains rise in the distance like benign gods, their gray shoulders thrusting into white plumes of cloud, I think even you would say that the Black Country is a misnomer. Then this place is all color and light. The air has a special clarity which picks out the edge of every blade of grass and gives all colors a muted radiance, so that each object seems to glow from within. There is no place like it in the world.

For all the relief of the sunshine and the general harmony in the house, there was a troubledness to this time that, looking back, seems like a foreshadowing. The Wizard Ezra again came to our house, and although he was not permitted over the threshold, the master spoke with him for some time. I was polishing the table in the front room and could not help but watch them with fascination, ready to duck if either turned my way. I couldn’t hear what they said, but both were stiff and angry. I thought the master won that encounter: finally the wizard turned and stalked back down the path, dragging his poor little mute in his wake.

I assumed the argument was about Lina, who was oblivious to the scandal her presence caused. Her behavior was outrageous even if she had not been a witch; when she was free of lessons or the other tasks like needlepoint that my mother considered essential qualities of a lady, she ran wild about the estate with Damek and would come home with her dress torn and her hair in tangles. She was now reaching an age where these actions in a girl are seen as the signs of a wanton and are a dishonor to her household. Even the master, who in the softer regions of the South had looked on Lina’s behavior with a lenient eye, began to be alarmed: in the North, such behavior is not merely ill advised but dangerous.

The chief peril was, of course, the Wizard Ezra. Like most northern wizards, he used his powers seldom, but when he chose to exercise them, it made a lasting impression. Not long after I witnessed the argument with the wizard, one of the laborers on a neighboring farm, a man called Oti, made some slanderous comments about the Usofertera clan. He was known as a simpleton, and at the time was much the worse for drink, or even he would never have said such things in a public place. A man less prideful than Ezra might have thought the incident beneath his notice, but, unfortunately for Oti, word reached the wizard’s ears, and retribution was swift.

The entire village was summoned to the square to witness this poor man’s fate. The master, to Lina’s deep chagrin, forbade her to go, and my mother likewise refused his summons, out of loyalty to our house. As for me, like all the rest of the village children, I was beside myself with curiosity (not unmixed with fear) and made sure I turned up at the appointed time, safely hidden behind my uncle.

Oti was dragged out into the middle of the square, his arms tied behind his back, and was made to stand on a makeshift platform, so we could all witness his punishment. There followed a long and dull speech, in which the Wizard Ezra expatiated on Oti’s crime, which, he said, betrayed not only the Usoferteras, but the entire vocation of wizarding, and which deserved the most summary retribution.

My eyes were fixed on Oti; I could see his limbs trembling from where I stood. His face was absolutely white, and it seemed all his features — aside from his eyes, which were stretched wide open so that the whites around his irises were visible — had sunk back to his skull. His terror was so pitiful that I started to cry, trying to be as quiet as I could, as I was fearful I might attract the wizard’s attention. I began to feel very sorry that I had come, and yet I didn’t dare to steal away.

At last the Wizard Ezra stopped talking, and a dreadful silence filled the square, as if everyone there were holding his breath. The silence was broken by a thin, tearing shriek. I knew it was coming from Oti, but I could not see why: neither he nor the wizard had moved a muscle. He kept on screaming, the same high, horrible note, for what seemed like an eternity, writhing against his bonds as if he were in the most unspeakable agony. I was as baffled as I was appalled, for I could see no reason for his distress.

Then, just as suddenly, Oti was struck silent, although he still twisted as violently, and a spark shot out of his throat. Within moments a torrent of flames was pouring from his open mouth, and almost at the same instant I smelled burning meat. I realized with a clutch of nausea that I was watching this man being consumed from within by fire. Even as I watched, his skin blackened and split open, so that briefly it appeared as if flames were shooting out of every part of him, surrounding him in an infernal aureole, but almost at once he ceased to have a human shape, and the house of his body twisted and collapsed, until the whole was consumed to ash.

The fire burned with such ferocity that the whole process, from the moment that Oti began to scream to the dying out of the flames, took less than five minutes. The platform where he had been standing was barely touched: it was marked, my friends told me later, only with scorch marks where his corpse had fallen. Myself, I had no desire at all to examine the site: I ran off from the crowd and was violently ill, and for months afterward could not pass the spot where Oti had burned without feeling sick with horror.

After that, I needed no persuasion that there was good reason to fear the Wizard Ezra. I suspect now that this demonstration might well have been for the benefit of the Lord Kadar, to impress upon him the perils of crossing a wizard’s will. I think the master took note: certainly, he employed the tutor shortly after this incident, telling us that he was ashamed of the ignorance and rough manners of his charges.

The tutor, Mr. Herodias, was well chosen. A tall, thin-lipped man who affected a pince-nez, he was in truth a bit of a dandy: he was an exotic sight indeed in our village when he ventured out for his regular Sunday stroll, with his polished boots, embroidered waistcoat, and carefully folded neckcloth. But his effete appearance belied a steely will that even Lina found difficult to bend. He was impervious to her sulks and threats and indifferent to her charms, and she was never able to deceive him. She was the most difficult of his charges: Damek was a stolid pupil, neither enthusiastic nor rebellious, and I was frankly studious, which exposed me to Lina’s mockery.

Calmly and coldly, with a switch on his desk, which he didn’t hesitate to use, Mr. Herodias set about instilling an education into even the most recalcitrant of subjects. He rented a small but comfortable cottage in the village and walked up to the Red House every morning, swinging his switch around his legs, and calmly returned home each night to eat his supper. We spied on him sometimes, peeking through his window in the evenings: he always sat in his front room, sometimes reading but mostly writing in a book. We never dared to ask him what he was writing about; the rumor was that he was a naturalist and was writing a treatise on butterflies, but I never heard the truth of it.