Vintage Vampire Stories (21 page)

“The Priest and His Cook” is excerpted from Prof. P. Jones'
The Probatim: A Slav Novel
(London: H. S. Nichols, 1895) which contains a number of Slavic folktales. In “The Story of Jella and the Macic” (pages 11-22), the villains are punished by a cemetery full of vampires.

The following story, which is taken from Chapter 16, “The Vampire,” is preceded by the phrase:

“The old man complied willingly, above all as Vranic had brought a bukara of wine with him, so he at once began the story of ... ”

I
n the village of Steino there lived an old priest who was exceedingly wealthy, but who was, withal, as miserly as he was rich. Although he had fields which stretched farther than the eyes could reach, fat pastures, herds and flocks; although his cellars were filled with mellow wine, his barns were bursting with the grace of God; although abundance reigned in his house, still he was never known to have given a crust of bread to a beggar or a glass of wine to a weary old man.

He lived all alone with a skinflint of an old cook, as stingy as himself, who would rather by far have seen an apple rot than give it to a hungry child whose mouth watered for it.

Those two grim old fogeys, birds of one feather, cared for no one else in this world except for each other, and, in fact, the people in Steino said—, but people in villages have bad tongues, so it's useless to repeat what was said about them.

The priest had a nephew, a smith, a good-hearted, bright-eyed, burly kind of a fellow, beloved by all the village, except by his uncle, whom he had greatly displeased because he had married a bonny lass of the neighbouring village of Smarje, instead of take as a wife the—,well, the cook's niece, though, between us and the wall, the cook was never known to have had a sister or a brother either, and the people—, but, as I said before, the people were apt to say nasty things about their priest.

The smith, who was quite a pauper, had several children, for the poorer a man is the more babies his wife presents him with—women everywhere are such unreasonable creatures—and whenever he applied to his uncle for a trifle, the uncle would spout the Scriptures in Latin, saying something about the unfitness of casting pearls before pigs, and that he would rather see him hanged than help him.

Once—it was in the middle of winter—the poor smith had been without any work for days and days. He had spent his last penny; then the baker would not give him any more bread on credit, and at last, on a cold, frosty night, the poor children had been obliged to go to bed supperless.

The smith, who had sworn a few days before never again to put his foot in the priest's house, was, in his despair, obliged to humble himself, and go and beg for a load of bread, with which to satisfy his children on the morrow.

Before he knocked at the door, he went and peeped in through the half-closed shutters, and he saw his uncle and the cook seated by a roaring fire, with their feet on the fender, munching roasted chestnuts and drinking mulled wine. Their shining lips still seemed greasy from the fat sausages they had eaten for supper, and, as he sniffed the window, he fancied the air was redolent with the spices of black-pudding. The smell made his mouth water and his hungry stomach rumble.

The poor man knocked at the door with a trembling hand; his legs began to quake, he had not eaten the whole of that long day; but then he thought of his hungry children, and knocked with a steadier hand.

The priest, hearing the knock, thought it must be some pious parishioner bringing him a fat pullet or perhaps a sleek sucking-pig, the price of a mass to be said on the morrow; but when, instead, he saw his nephew, looking as mean and as sheepish as people usually do when they go a-begging, he was greatly disappointed.

“What do you want, bothering here at this time of the night?” asked the old priest, gruffly.

“Uncle,” said the poor man, dejectedly.

“I suppose you've been drinking, as usual; you stink of spirits.”

“Spirits, in sooth! When I haven't a penny to bless me.”

“Oh, if it's only a blessing you want, here, take one and go!”

And the priest lifted up his thumb and the two fingers, and uttered something like “Dominus vobiscum,” and then waved him off; whilst the old shrew skulking near him uttered a croaking kind of laugh, and said that a priest's blessing was a priceless boon.

“Yes,” replied the smith, “upon a full stomach; but my children have gone to bed supperless, and I haven't had a crust of bread the whole of the day.”

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,' the scriptures say, and you ought to know that if you are a Christian, sir.”

“Eh? I daresay the Scriptures are right, for priests surely do not live on bread alone; they fatten on plump pullets and crisp pork-pies.”

“Do you mean you bully me, you unbelieving beggar?”

“Bully you, uncle!” said the burly man in a piteous tone. “Only, think of my starving children.”

“He begrudges his uncle the grub he eats,” shrieked the old cat of a cook.

“I'd have given you something, but the proud man should be punished,” said the wrathful priest, growing purple in the face.

“Oh, uncle, my children!” sobbed the poor man.

“What business has a man to have a brood of brats when he can't earn enough to buy bread for them?” said the cook, aloud, to herself.

“Will you hold your tongue, you cantankerous old cat?” said the smith to the cook.

The old vixen began to howl, and the priest, in his anger, cursed his nephew, telling him that he and his children could starve for all he cared.

The smith thereupon went home, looking at piteous as a tailless turkey-cock; and while his children slept and, perhaps, dreamt of kolaci, he told his wife the failure he had met with.

“Your uncle is a brute,” said she.

“He's a priest, and all priests are brutes, you know.”

“Well, I don't know about all of them, for I heard my great-grandmother say that once upon a time there lived—”

“Oh, there are casual exceptions to every rule!” said her husband. “But, now, what's to be done?”

“Listen,” said the wife, who was a shrewd kind of woman, “we can't let the children starve, can we?”

“No, indeed!”

“Then follow my advice. I know of a grass that, given to a horse, or an ox, or a sheep, or goat, makes the animal fall down, looking as if it were dead.”

“Well, but you don't mean to feed the children with this grass, do you?” said the smith, not seeing the drift of what she meant.

“No; but you could secretly go and give some to your uncle's fattest ox.”

“So,” said the husband, scratching his head.

“Once the animal falls down head, he'll surely give it you, as no butcher'll buy it; we'll kill it and thus be provided with meat for a long time. Besides, you can sell the bones, the horns, the hide, and get a little money besides.”

“And for tomorrow?”

“I'll manage to borrow a few potatoes and a cup of milk.”

On the next day the wife went and got the grass, and the smith, unseen, managed to go and give it to his uncle's fattest ox. A few hours afterwards the animal was found dead.

On hearing that his finest ox was found in the stable lying stiff and stark the priest nearly had a fit; and his grief was still greater when he found out that not a man in the village would offer him a penny for it, so when his nephew came he was glad enough to give it to him to get rid of it.

The cook, who had prompted the priest to make a present of the ox to his nephew, hoped that the smith and all his family would be poisoned by feeding on carrion flesh.

“But,” said the uncle, “bring me back the bones, the horns, and the hide.”

To everyone's surprise, and to the old cook's rage, the smith and his children fed on the flesh of the dead ox, and throve on it. After the ox had all been eaten up, the priest lost a goat, and then a goose, in the same way, and the smith and his family ate them up with evident gusto.

After that, the old cook began to suspect foul play on the part of the smith, and she spoke of her suspicions to her master.

The priest got into a great rage, and wanted to go at once to the police and accuse his nephew of sorcery.

“No,” said the cook, “we must catch them on the hip, and then we can act.”

“But how are we to find them out?”

After brooding over the matter for some days, the cook bethought herself that the best plan would be to shut herself up in a cupboard, and have it taken to the nephew's house.

The priest, having approved of her plan, put it at once into execution.

“I have,” said the uncle to the nephew, “an old cupboard which needs repairing; will you take it into your house and keep it for a few days?”

“Willingly,” said the nephew, who had not the slightest suspicion of the trap laid to catch him.

The cupboard was brought, and put in the only room the smith possessed; the children look at it with wonder, for they have never seen such a big piece of furniture before. The wife had some suspicion. Still, she kept her own counsel.

Soon afterwards the remains of the goose was brought on the table, and, as the children licked the bones, the husband and wife discussed what meat they were to have for the forthcoming days—was it to be pork, veal, or turkey?

As they were engrossed with this interesting topic, a slight, shrill sound came out of the cupboard.

“What's that?” said the wife, whose ears were on the alert.

“I didn't hear anything,” said the smith.

“Apshee,” was the sound that came again from the cupboard.

“There, did you hear?” asked the wife.

“Yes; but from where did that unearthly sound come?”

The wife, without speaking, winked at her husband and pointed to the cupboard.

“Papshee,” was now heard louder than ever.

The children stopped gnawing the goose's bones; they opened their greasy mouths and their eyes to the utmost and looked scared.

“There's someone shut in the cupboard,” said the smith, jumping up, and snatching up his tools.

A moment afterwards the door flew open, and to everyone's surprise, except the wife's, the old cook was found standing bolt upright in the empty space and listening to what they were saying.

The old woman, finding herself discovered was about to scream, but the smith caught her by the throat and gave her such a powerful squeeze, that before knowing what he was doing, he had choked the cook to death.

The poor man was in despair, for he had never meant to commit a murder—he only wanted to prevent the old shrew from screaming.

“Bog me ovary! What is to become of me now?”

“Pooh!” said the wife, shrugging her shoulders; “she deserves her fate; as we make our bed, so we must lie.”

“Yes,” quoth the smith, “but if they find out that I've strangled her, they'll hang me.”

“And who'll find you out?” said she. “Let's put a potato in her mouth and lock up the cupboard again; they'll think that she choked herself eating potatoes.”

The smith followed his wife's advice, and early on the morrow the priest came again and asked for his press.

“Talking the matter over with the cook,” said he,“I've decided not to have my cupboard repaired, so I've come to take it back.”

“Your cook is right,” said the smith's wife. “She's a wise old woman, your cook is.”

“Very,” said the priest, uncomfortably.

“There's more in her head than you suppose,” said the wife, thinking of the potato.

“There is,” said the priest.

“Give my kind respects to your cook,” said the wife as the men were taking the cupboard away.

“Thank you,” said the priest, “I'll certainly do so.”

About an hour afterwards the priest came back, ghastly pale, to his nephew, and taking him aside, said: