A Swarm of Dust E-Book

Evald Flisar

• Herausgeber: Istros Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 290

Beschreibung

"A world without truth would be an immensely sad place," states the magistrate in the murder trial of local boy, Janek. A young man with serious mental issues, Janek weaves a 'chestnut crown' from the leaves of a supposedly sacred tree in a attempt to rid himself of the demons of the past through a pagan ceremony. The crown is later found on the body of the farmer Geder - stabbed to death with a bread knife. Through a series of flashbacks during the subsequent interrogations, we learn of Janek's story: from the perversion of his relationship with his mother, to the frustrations of his love affair with Daria and his inability to complete his studies or free himself from the ghosts which haunt him. A Swarm of Dust is widely considered to be one of Flisar's finest works of fiction, questioning the very notion of objective truth and subverting the norms of Judeo-Christian morality.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

THE AUTHOR

THE TRANSLATOR

Evald Flisar

A SWARM OF DUST

Translated from the Slovene by David Limon

First published in 2018 by Istros BooksLondon, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com

First published in Slovenia by Sodobnost International as Greh (Sin), 2017

Copyright © Evald Flisar, 2017The right of Evald Flisar, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Translation © David Limon, 2017David Limon has received a translation grant from the Slovenian Book Agency.

Cover design and typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr

ISBN: 978-1-908236-38-8 (print edition)ISBN: 978-1-912545-09-4 (MOBI)ISBN: 978-1-912545-10-0 (ePub)

Published with the financial assistance of Trubar Foundation, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

PART ONE

There was a full moon. Through the sparse branches of the pine trees it cast its light among the buildings. The meadows beside the stream were a silvery grey. The whole landscape had been transformed into sharp-edged patches of light and dark. Janek spent a long time crouching at the lower edge of the woods, despite the unpleasant night chill and the constant, unfathomable feeling that his surroundings were strange in some special way.

He stared at the sky. Hints of thoughts flashed through his brain, but he was unable to connect them. This strange state had overcome him the moment that the landscape began to seem unusual and his eyes drank in the visible objects. His feelings dragged him along. He saw the silvery meadow in the valley and the dark track of alder by the stream. He knew that was what he was seeing, but that was all he knew, his mind was somehow distant. Normally when he saw meadows and a stream he thought about something, objects aroused different associations that were either whole or fragmented and scattered, but always thoughts and impressions found their way through. He would skip from grass to stream, to trees, to children chasing each other among the trees, to felling trees, to scooping water from the stream, and all these thoughts and impressions triggered associations that swarmed within him.

Now the mental state of young Hudorovec was completely different. It happened just after he was struck by the unusual colour of the meadows. This halted the flow of associations that would at any moment have engulfed him and he focused entirely on the meadows and their appearance. He began to soak up this appearance, he began to soak up the colour and he felt the silvery colour was coming closer to him. He could sharply smell the night chill. It was the dampness coming from the valley, the damp earth, the damp grass, the dampness of the lazily flowing water, damp bark, leaves damp with dew, the dampness of the air.

And he heard a fox yelping in the woods, he heard the gentle wind moving the leaves in the treetops, slowly flowing through them and making them tremble. He felt how the wind swept across the damp grass, shaking it slightly, how it licked the clods of earth in the fields, how it slightly ruffled the surface of the stream, how it caused the tiny scales on the tree bark to tremble a little, how it flowed through the air. He felt the ruffled coat of the fox and its hoarse call, he felt the mossy ground beneath its paws, he felt the stickiness of the fat, slippery footbridge across the stream and the solidness of the ground beneath him.

He felt the expanse of the world, its hollowness, its extensiveness, he felt the distance of the sky above him and the closeness of the earth and its objects, he felt the form, the hardness and softness of substances and things, he sensed the tone of the sounds rushing to his ears. And he smelt all of this: he smelt the sap of the trees, the smell of the earth, the spruce needles, the brushwood, he smelt the smoke, he felt how the water in the stream smelled of mud and acorns, he smelt the warm plumage of birds, he smelt the wood close to him, his clothes, his skin, he smelt the stench from the woods, he smelt sweat.

Behind him, in the settlement, a radio began to play. He knew that Pišta Baranja had a radio, but he did not know this as a thought, but rather felt it in a particular way, like the self-­evident fact that water is wet and that your hand will also be wet if you plunge it in. That the radio he could hear belonged to Pišta Baranja was alive in him like something for which there was no other explanation; something self-evident that touched the edge of awareness like a shadow, but a distinct shadow. And so he only heard the music coming from the radio; it did not draw him into any associations in connection with the music, the radio, the settlement. For him, the sounds were movements of matter and he grasped them in the same way he grasped the colour of the meadows, the stench of dirt, the rustling of the wind.

Getting up and moving towards the settlement was a highly complex process of sensory perceptions and movements of matter. Perhaps the cold played the main role, but he could not say so with any certainty. Among the feelings bursting and splashing within him, the feeling of coldness was ever more frequent; after first appearing of its own accord, it then began to attach itself to others, it pierced him with a feeling of dampness – with a feeling of the wind, with a feeling of the stickiness of a tree trunk, with a feeling of the yellow light – and when a dog barked above him in the settlement it also awoke in him a feeling of coldness. The earth beneath him soon lost its hardness and roughness, and changed into a feeling of coldness. And when his stomach grumbled he felt his body, he felt its substance, he felt his posture, his stillness, he felt the possibility that he might move, he felt the pulse within him. In the veins on his neck his blood pulsed, and he felt how it flowed and at the same time felt how coldness flowed through him. He got up and went towards the buildings.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple, for when someone who has been sitting motionless suddenly moves it is likely that some idea came upon him and triggered the desire for movement. And when someone feels cold, it is natural to be aware of this and to think: it’s cold, better get moving. This didn’t happen in the case of Janek Hudorovec, since he didn’t move with any intention. Wave a stick at a dog and he will jump, offer a bunch of hay to a cow and it will move towards you, frighten a wolf and you should flee, for it will leap at your throat! Perhaps Janek Hudorovec instinctively retreated from the coldness, just as an animal drags itself towards a fire or its den. He acted under some kind of delusion, but in spite of this everything remained clear: objects and his perception of them. In the same way that he had felt cold, he now felt warmth, flowing beneath the bed cover.

He was not aware of time, but when his mother entered the house he saw that the moon was still shining through the small window, illuminating part of the wall and floor, but not his bed, which was in darkness. His mother put down the basket in which she had just brought the potatoes, flour and bread that she brought every evening. Then she went to her bed, which was lit by the moon, knelt down, turned back the cover and with her right hand straightened the pillow. Then she took the basin that was leaning against the wall by the door and put it on the wooden bench. There was a slight metallic noise as she did so. Then the sound of water being poured from a jug. The moon shone on her and the corner where she was standing. She reached for her belt, unfastened buttons and began to undress. She hung her clothes on a nail hammered into the wooden wall; then she began to splash herself with water and wash her naked body. Janek could see her clearly, but now his mother’s naked body filled him with no more feeling than had the silvery meadow or the outline of the trees. He perceived her body as substance.

The scent of soap reached him, he heard rubbing as his mother washed her feet. She lifted one and stood on the other. He saw her large breasts shaking, he saw the roundness of her belly shining, and when she rubbed her back with a towel she leaned slightly backwards. He saw the blackish shadow beneath her belly. None of this seemed unusual to him, he was cut off from experience. And so he could not be surprised that his mother had stripped off in front of him. The thought could not take hold that maybe she did not see him and was convinced that he was not there.

Then she put the towel down on the bench, left the water in the basin, rummaged among the things on the edge of the bench, found some scissors, went over to her bed, sat down, bent over and began to cut her toenails. With each one he heard a slight click. The moon shone on her back. Janek could see her vertebrae, dividing her back into two halves. When she had finished her toenails, she lay back, raised her hands in front of her face and began on her fingernails. Once again, they could be heard hitting the wall and the floor.

Then she stopped for a moment, placed her hands beside her and looked at the ceiling, as if in thought. Janek could hear her breathing. He could see the slight rise and fall of her breasts. It seemed as if she was trembling a little. Probably the cold was getting to her. But she still lay there without getting under the cover.

What happened within him that he suddenly got up and moved towards her? Our interior world is such an anthill of perceptions, feelings, thoughts, emotions and impulses that at certain moments, even with the sharpest eyes, it is not possible to penetrate it. Allowing for the possibility that we might be wrong, we might say that within young Hudorovec in those moments when he was cut off from experiencing, there expired all the strange anxiety that women and sexuality evoked within him. When the sensory and perceptual world prevailed, weakening his mental capacities, his instincts became stronger and his reactions began to resemble the reactions of animals, guided by the impulses of the real world. At such moments his sexual drive must have been stronger. We all know how dogs behave; we’ve all seen them pairing on the road in full sight. First the sniffing, then the running, the agitation, a kind of wooing, in between some snapping and sharp teeth, hackles rising, and finally the submission of the female and the action of the male. All this happens without the presence of the mental world, it happens beneath the wings of the sensual, within the framework of instinct.

When Janek shuffled over to his mother’s bed, he certainly wasn’t struggling with fear, with indecisiveness. He was not clear what he was doing, since he had never done anything like this before. He was being drawn to his mother’s naked body on the bed, just as the animal male is drawn towards the female when he sees or smells her. His mother started in fright and exclaimed: ‘Janek!’

In young Hudorovec’s mind associations were triggered: his mother’s shriek was like the hoarse bark of the fox he had heard in the woods. But that was just a momentary flash that quickly vanished. He was not aware of his mother’s fright, he did not perceive it. He touched her body, which trembled, he felt the smoothness of her skin, he felt the warmth, her smell. He ran his hand over her belly, across the dark shadow beneath it, to the thigh, the knee, then back, to the breast, the neck. All his sensations condensed into one: the hot pulse of blood, the tension of the body yearning to explode, the absence of any thought, impetus, a feeling of flying, a feeling of falling and rising.

In each person, in the most intense sexual spasm, there is a small spark that draws attention to the nature of the act in which he and some other person is present. In young Hudorovec this was absent. He was completely in the domain of sensation. After a brief trembling brought on by her son’s strange behaviour, his mother experienced a kind of spasm. The next cry that came from her throat was one of unknown joy. A strange heat washed over her, she held Janek’s body, which was no bigger than hers and very thin, and then she began to tear his shirt off, crying out and whispering strange words, as if hallucinating.

‘Don’t be scared, Janek … don’t be afraid … we all do this and you must, too … my heart would pain me if you didn’t … don’t be afraid … I’m your mother … I’ll show you how … you’ll see, you’ll see … ’ Suppressed gasps mingled with her words, as she stripped him completely with hungry hands. ‘You see, in here.’ She turned him towards her, locking him with her legs, grabbing his hair and wildly kissing his eyes. She raked her fingers across him, all the while gasping, panting and whispering. At the beginning Janek only breathed deeply, but then strange sounds emerged from his throat, a strangled noise. He took hold of his mother’s hair and roughly pulled her towards him.

‘Ow, that hurts, Janek …’ she sighed. ‘But let it hurt, let it hurt … it’s nice if it hurts.’ Then he bit into the skin on her shoulder and she cried out in pain, he began to slap her, to beat her all over so that she was gasping. ‘Hit me, Janek … hit me … more … you’re a good boy, Janek … you must beat me, you must punish me, you must always beat me … till my dying breath I’d do anything for you … Janek … my son …’ Towards the end she wheezed, his spasm ended, he unclenched his fists, he lay on her body, then he rolled aside. He saw that she was bloody from his bites and mottled from the blows. He looked at his own body, his member, which seemed red in the moonlight. An association immediately flashed into his brain, as he remembered the red tongue of a panting dog by the stream.

Then something snapped inside him. Thoughts rushed upon him. Through the bustle there trickled all that he had experienced, all that had stifled him. With all these dark feelings inside him, he turned to his mother’s bitten body, their nakedness. An image of his actions began to appear: he remembered he had beaten his mother … he felt dizzy, objects slipped away from him … his ears were filled with silence, he passed out.

When he came to, he was lying beneath the cover on his own bed. His mother was leaning over him and dabbing his face with a wet cloth. She was dressed. Previous feelings overwhelmed him again. They choked him, then they flowed away, the dark mass shattered, and he began to sob, convulsively and silently. ‘Janek!’ she said, ‘you mustn’t cry. You must go to sleep. Then it’ll be all right. Everything’ll be all right!’ The sobbing became a long, inconsolable cry. His mother stroked his cheeks for a while and then she threw herself on the bed beside him and began to sob too. When they had no tears left, their bodies shook with silent convulsions. The spasms gradually became sparser.

A coldness began to grow between them.

Summer came, dry and windy. There was no rain; it seemed as if the countryside would burn up in the drought. Old Baranja deteriorated, his skin turned yellow and limp, he was shrivelling into a skeleton. He spoke to no one, he hid in his house and no one saw him the whole week. Sometimes he could be heard cursing, throwing things at the wall and choking as he coughed. It seemed as if he could pass away at any minute, but Baranja fought back. In the evening, when the sun was no longer so fierce, he appeared once again in front of his house and lifelessly lingered on the threshold. He was no longer coughing so badly. Emma had to bring him schnapps. Whenever he sat outside, the bottle was beside him.

In early July three gypsies came, two Horvats and a Šarkezi. They were tired and morose looking, they threw their wooden suitcases down in the corner and grimly said they had been let go. More soon followed. They began to sit around in front of their houses; the settlement began to change into a mortuary. School kids started wandering around the villages all day as the school year had ended. The sun on the dried-out front yards was dazzling. Even in the shade of the trees it was insufferably hot. No one spoke, the gypsies moved slowly and lazily, sleeping most of the time, and even the dogs no longer barked, but lay around, tongues lolling. People were overcome by a dull lethargy. They spoke with great difficulty and hoarsely, opening their mouths only when it was unavoidable, and then only half way.

During the day Janek did not hang around the settlement. He suddenly had the feeling that a stench of dirt, sweat and inertia was coming from the houses. The smell was nothing new, he had smelt it before, but now it began to disturb him, to make him feel nauseous. Beneath the hot sun the smell was particularly intolerable, it hung in the air among the trees and made it difficult to breathe. Maybe the smell was also an excuse, since he did not want to linger. Maybe he dared not admit to himself that he was being driven from the settlement by something else, a kind of fear that he would speak to someone, that he would make eye contact with someone, for he was filled with what felt like guilt and beneath the hot sun among the buildings that feeling was very strong, insupportable.

If he was not lying in the grass down by the stream, he was wandering through the woods, which in that hot summer were unusually quiet. Sometimes he was lured far away, across the valley and into the hills on the eastern side, even straying onto the lowland. Now and then he sat on some rotting tree stump to rest and then he was driven on again aimlessly, he stopped by streams and watched them, he looked at the trees and touched their crusty trunks; sometimes he scared a hare out of the bushes, which went crashing into the woods, another time a whole column of deer passed by. He cooled down and quenched his thirst at forest springs. Whenever he came to the edge of the trees, he stopped and looked at the landscape before him, then turned and went back. He did not walk across fields, orchards or meadows, he kept to the woods where he was seen by no one, where he felt alone with the damp silence and the sappy smell of wood.

During this wandering, the feeling of anxiety was not so intense, it became a deadness, a laziness of the arteries, a numbness of body and mind. Thoughts flowed idly through him, like the forest streams running among the dry grass. This numbness lasted quite some time, but now and then it was interrupted by sudden outbursts of sharp and unfamiliar feelings. Sometimes he was overwhelmed by an undermining fear and he did not know its source, nor did he even try to work it out, but rather succumbed to it with a trembling sense of enjoyment. Other times he was overcome by a shrill sense of joy. He would roll on the moss, run his hands over tree bark, hug their trunks, leap around and yell, and then chase the echo from the woods. But in a moment it all vanished, as in a whirlpool, and then everything flowed back to its former lethargy, to the dead decanting of thoughts, to the endless wandering through the woods.

He always returned late at night. And every night he and his mother pleased each other. It usually lasted until morning, when she went into the village to work and he disappeared on his familiar paths. They barely spoke; sometimes they whispered as if afraid they might wake someone, but even that was rare. They were scared they might say something loud enough to break something, destroy it. The whole time they had the feeling that what they were doing was mysterious and that it could bear no voices, apart from the cries and gasps emitted during lovemaking.

At night his spiritual lethargy was transformed into sharp sensations that had hitherto been alien to him. He still beat his mother, tormenting her more every night. When he heard her gasp with pain he felt a particular passion. It was not unlike that time when he and Pišta Baranja had killed the puppies that no one wanted. They were little fluffy balls, still blind, crawling over each other and squealing and shaking their snouts, and when he touched them he felt how warm the little creatures were and how their blood was pulsing just below their skin. When Pišta Baranja grabbed the first one by its leg and bashed it against a tree, he broke out in sweat and felt fixed to the ground. This was despair or something like it, a kind of fear at incomprehensible action, but the more the fear grew, the more another feeling grew alongside it that suppressed the fear. And when that feeling prevailed, he leapt on the little creatures, trembling, saliva dripping from his mouth, his eyes glassy, and he bashed one puppy against the tree for so long that he shattered its blind head and reduced its body to pulp. Then he put his hand into the bloody mass of flesh and groped it.

Making love with his mother filled him with a similar feeling; he tortured her until she bled and the more she panted with desire, the stronger grew the wish to make her suffer as much as possible. So she no longer felt enjoyment, but a kind of torment. The wildness of their relationship grew from night to night. When by chance they saw each other during the day he looked at her glassy–eyed, feeling a tremulous fear of her, but at the same time an intense hatred. The whole time he was gripped with a desire to torture her. She stared at him with docile humility. The whole time she reminded him of those crawling puppies, tumbling over each other. When on occasion he was weary of rushing through the woods and lay down on the moss and closed his eyes, he saw her convulsive movements, her distorted face in the moonlight, he heard her cries, and all this swirled together inside him, creating strange images, fading away and then returning. And when he walked among the trees all that floated before his eyes were images of their coupling, every object reminded him of some shade of night and he was flooded with the desire to hit, to beat, to torment.

One evening, he didn’t know how, he returned home before dark. The sun was going down behind the hill, but it was still quite light. In front of Baranja’s house he saw Emma walking to and fro. He realised she was hanging clothes on a line between two pine trees. On the bench in front of the house was a wooden tub and she had just finished doing the washing. He saw her look at him as soon as he emerged from the trees and the whole time she watched him as he continued towards home. He was about to go inside when he heard her calling him. He stopped, but then moved quickly forward. ‘Janek!’ she called again, louder this time. ‘Come here, something’s happened to your mother.’ He was struck as if by lightning. He looked up, towards her, his legs took him in her direction, but something held him back. Emma wiped her hands on her apron and then kept beckoning with her finger. Her face bore a mysterious expression.

‘Come,’ she said and disappeared round the corner, then up into the woods. He followed her. His every vein was taut, and confused feelings flowed through him. When they got to the edge of the woods at the top of the slope she whispered to him to go quietly, and without meaning to he began to put his feet down without making a sound. Emma stopped behind some dense acacias and gestured to him again, then she pointed through the bushes. He came closer.

Behind the thorns and brambles, around a large white hornbeam was a bed of moss. His mother was kneeling there, smoothing her creased skirt. Then she buttoned up her blouse. Beside her stood a tall, thin farmer, fastening his trousers. It was Geder. His mother picked up the basket that was leaning against the hornbeam and looked at Geder, but said nothing. They both turned and left, Geder to the left, towards the nearby road, his mother towards the gypsy settlement. Long after the rustle of her steps faded, Janek remained staring at the tree and the moss beneath it. The only feeling that gripped him at that moment was contempt for Geder, for he was certain that the man had not beaten his mother and so she would not be satisfied. Her words came back to him: you must beat me … then it is better …

Geder did it just like that, as if mother meant nothing to him? Just like that? The past, from which he’d been cut off for so long, assailed him and he slumped to the ground, seething with memories. Images appeared and vanished. He saw how once, in those other places, in school, he had stolen a large piece of bread from some farmer’s girl, how he had flown home with this bread, where his mother was ill and there was nothing to eat, and his father and sister were ignoring her; he saw how he fell to his knees beside her bed and shoved the dried up bread into her hand and said: bread, mother, bread … eat it.. And he remembered how he felt when he sat in the corner and watched his mother chewing the bread and looking at him with bright eyes. It was like a strange trembling, a yelling within him. And before him danced the priest, the one here … do you love your mother, he asked … Love, love … He broke into a sweat, he realised he felt something different towards his mother than he had before and he was overcome with torment at the memories. It all seethed inside him. The sense of confusion was so strong that he could not see clearly. He got up again and the contempt for Geder reappeared, for he should have beaten her, otherwise she was not happy. And mother must be happy. He felt tears running down his cheeks. Mother … he sobbed inside. He would always beat her, he would always yield to her, he would always do what she wanted.

Through his tears he saw Emma crouching beside him, looking at him in fright. But there was also a kind of mockery in her eyes. ‘Janek,’ she said, ‘didn’t you know? They’ve been doing it for ages. Will you tell your father?’ Amazement grew within him. Emma talked on; he didn’t quite know what she was saying, but some of her words struck him sharply. ‘If they can, so can we … I’d like to … do you want to, Janek, my husband’s away … Janek … do you want to … ?’

‘You don’t understand!’ he yelled, startling her. He saw her wide open eyes, he saw her timidly withdraw. He was filled with confusion, it stirred within him, disintegrated. He was thrown upwards, and then down into the woods, where it was already getting dark …

That night he was wild like never before. He bit his mother’s breasts and shoulder, drawing blood. Then at the end he whispered: ‘Was it good, mother? Was it good?’

‘Yes, son,’ she whispered, stroking him.

‘If it hurts, it’s … better?’

‘Yes, son … ’

‘Shall I keep beating you?’

‘Yes, son … ’

Then they fell silent. He wanted to ask why the tall man didn’t beat her, why she didn’t ask him to do it. But something stopped him. Maybe he did, he thought. With this hope his loathing for Geder evaporated, to be replaced with something else. When he was drifting off to sleep, Geder assured him that he did beat his mother, that she was happy, and he felt he liked Geder, he even stroked his sleeve …

… then he drifted off completely …

… oblivious …

From then on his mother no longer returned late at night and Janek no longer wandered the woods until dusk. In the evenings they sat inside, eating corn bread or boiled potatoes, speaking quietly, a benign peace between them. They enjoyed watching each other’s gestures, the former sense of alienation had gone, they kept meeting each other’s eyes and feeling comfort in their closeness. The evenings were still humid and the moon kept shining.

One evening they heard a noise outside and a moment later the door opened. On the threshold stood the enormous figure of old Hudorovec.

They turned to stone.

Janek’s mother was poking the fire beneath the pot, Janek was sitting on the bed.

‘Home already?’ she asked in surprise, still mechanically poking at the fire.

‘Home, wife, home!’ said the old man. Janek was surprised that he gave ‘wife’ a strange emphasis. Usually he said ‘woman’. And he had never spoken so quietly, coldly, crisply. He put his battered suitcase in the corner. He closed the door behind him. He did everything slowly, pensively. Then he began to unfasten his belt.

‘What about you? You’re home, too?’ he asked, looking at her.

‘What do you mean?’ his wife whispered.

Her voice was hoarse, it trembled slightly.

‘You should be up there, with that one. Eh, wife?’

‘What are you saying?’

Hudorovec, meanwhile, had removed his belt and ran it through his open left hand. Then he stretched it in front of his chest, as if testing its strength. He was doing everything coldly, thoughtfully.

‘Come here, wife!’ he ordered. She froze.

‘Out, boy!’ He turned to Janek. ‘Did you hear me?’ he yelled, when Janek failed to move. Now his coolness was gone, his face distorted, saliva flew from his mouth, his eyes glistened.

‘Out!’ he yelled once more. Then his enormous paw grabbed Janek by the shoulder. As he flung him towards the door, Janek’s head struck it so hard he felt dizzy. Again the bony fingers reached for him and the next moment he was outside the door. It closed behind him. He got up, rushed at the nearest pine tree and grabbed hold of it, shaking.

From inside he heard his mother moaning. He could hear the blows of the leather belt. Hudorovec was panting and swearing. It sounded as if he was banging her head against the floor.

‘Whore … ’ he gasped, ‘bitch … ’

‘Stop it, stop it!’ pleaded his wife. ‘I had no choice, husband … my dear husband! How was I supposed to live, when you go off, not caring whether we die of starvation!’

‘You could work, you slut! Take that … and that … And the boy could work … ’

‘I did, I did … ’ she insisted, but she was becoming quieter. She cried out a few times, then she was silent. The blows kept falling.

Janek ran off through the woods. On the hill he stopped and watched the trunks of the beech trees trembling with light. He realised it was lightning. There was thunder above the plain, a wind had started up, a storm was coming, the first in quite some time.

Long into the night he was washed by the rain. He turned his cheeks to the sky. He opened his mouth and eyes to feel the falling drops. The treetops were shaking. The flashes of light shimmered, never disappearing.

The priest sat at the open window. He was looking across the valley to the village at the end of the ridge. He had a chilling recognition, for everything that he had planned to think calmly about was revealed in the first moment; but because it was revealed too quickly, he was confused. He felt he would be unable to focus, at least at the beginning, so that the delusions would be fragmented and deceptive.

It had started with the tall chestnut tree above the valley, which was over three centuries old. It was a special thing, not only in appearance, but also in its significance. The wood around it had long ago been cut down, long before the priest came to these parts. Where the trees had been felled there were saplings growing and thick bush. Next to this miniature wood the chestnut seemed even bigger, like a great grandfather or guardian. It could be seen from the other side of the valley and from the north, where the low hills became a higher rise, and even from the plain, from the south, when it was clear. For many years it had been washed by storms and had lost its crown a number of times during turbulent nights. Since the winds blew mainly from the west, over the years it had wearied and leaned crookedly over the valley. It aroused unpleasant feelings, especially on stormy summer nights, when it swayed menacingly before the flashing background. But lightning hadn’t struck it for many years.

People created a legend: when the burning hand from the sky shattered the solitary old tree or it was touched by unworthy human hand, then great misfortune would befall the valley. The legend had been woven from one generation to the next. The priest knew that all in the valley paid homage to the tree; they paid for masses to be said in its honour and spoke of it in whispers, cautiously. He also had a strange respect for it himself: whenever he went by he felt a special solemnity and hurried his step. Instead of fading away, the belief strengthened from one generation to the next, for children received it from their parents at that age when they are most open to the miraculous, the fairy-tale. The priest knew that the child’s soul is like a freshly ploughed field; when it absorbs faith, it carries it within, without being aware of it, for the rest of its days.