ALSO BY CATHERINE JOHANN
Chad
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual living persons living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright 2010 © by Catherine Johann
Written and designed by Catherine Johann
Edited by Vreni Merriam.
Published by Smashwords.
VRENI, SINISA AND NATHALIE
YOUR HELP AND SUPPORT HAVE BEEN INVALUABLE.
THANK YOU.
JACQUELINE, PAUL, BRIGITTE AND ARIELLE,
MAY YOU BATHE IN BLISS.
FOR NATHALIE
I’ve never known Love. I have never been the voluptuous receiver of words such as ‘I’m in love with you,’ ‘Oh my darling!’ and so forth. No one has ever fallen in love with me--not when I was young and handsome, not when I was a mature adult, not then, not later, not now, never!
My hair, still brown and vigorous, should have turned completely white a long time ago; I am an old woman and I abhor it and, to top of it all off, ‘Love’ has never knocked at my door and I’m enraged about that!
Born from a simple family of Slavic immigrants, my aims in life were grandiose but fate decided otherwise, and throughout all my years, I have had to endure the painful spectacle of seeing my dreams abort, one by one, bit by bit.
I am cursed because I’m a woman but I am doubly cursed because my youth vanished in pre-historic times, and even if deep inside myself I feel greener than ever, society has long ago stopped noticing me. I’ve always been fond of my striking features. I wouldn’t define myself as having ever belonged to the clan of cuties but my strong bone structure; muscular limbs, big hands and large feet had a charm that I have always cherished tenderly.
Even though I ceased years ago to update the count of my birthdays, until not so long ago I felt good in my body. I liked the way I walked, I liked the way I stood on my feet, I liked the way I grasped things, I liked to feel fresh air go down my lungs, I liked the scent of lemon soap on my skin after a long hot shower. I loved life, living and being alive. Not only that, but I was a skilled engraver and I will always be proud of that.
In my younger years I was stronger than a horse. My teeth were so white and perfect then. Ironically, now only my lower ones, the ones that never show when I smile, are still there and in good shape. One cold winter morning I was trimming my plum tree a bit too hastily and the last thing I remember is that a large branch came down straight at me. I woke up at dusk spitting blood and teeth and my beautiful smile was gone forever!
Not that my real or even fake teeth have made a difference with love or with just plain luck. They haven’t!
I love being who I am, but God, I can’t stand being a woman! If only I were a man.... Although…I hate men!
Men are evil, stupid and mean. My life has been miserable and ruined by them, and because I was not one of them. I should have been born a boy who would have grown up into a strong, bright and handsome man who could have taught these bastards a good lesson. Starting with my male progenitor! My father ignited that never-ending dance of men abusing me, men taking ruthless advantage of me, men forcing me to endure in silence their physical and mental torture; besides, what kind of crooked man was he, my own father, to conceive a prisoner child? What sort of selfish ingrate must he have already been in his younger years to participate in the creation of an innocent being trapped in the body of a girl?
My father! That cheap liar, that hypocrite wimp! Still alive and virile while his daughter is rapidly fading away, still loved and in love, still respected and admired by all, still a man among other men!
My father was born a monster.
Monsters never fall from grace.
Monsters never die!
I was born the last of my family and grew up in Druna, a remote village in South Dakota peopled entirely by inhabitants of Czech origin. Both my parents were musicians. My mother, a courageous hardworking woman, was a gifted pianist. My lazy father played accordion. Poorer than the poorest farmers, we didn’t own a square inch of land, and the menace of the monthly rent for our small house and garden loomed over our lives like famished vultures. My mother sacrificed a brilliant pianist career for the illusion of love. Unfortunately, in those days divorce was never an option for pious wives, and once she realized that she had thrown her dice on the wrong man, she had already been pregnant several times. She tried her best to raise her big family with the proceeds of private music lessons and playing weekend country balls, and while she ruined her delicate fingers growing food or washing clothes in ice-cold water, my dad drank, played cards, chased women and destroyed shamefully my innocent years.
I don’t remember when my mother’s aversion for me started but all I know is that I was the embodiment of everything she loathed. I was the ugly duckling amongst her offspring, the irremediable mistake. I could never read music, had zero talent for piano, didn’t care for dolls, refused to wear dresses, had no manners, spoke always the wrong words at the most inadequate times and, most damnatory of all, I unwittingly awakened the dark zones of my father’s sexual perversion.
I loved trousers, open spaces and climbing trees. I was a hurt tomboy searching for crumbs of affection and I got burned from both the physical and emotional ends.
The need for survival taught me to block any negative feelings against my parents. I learned to numb my wrath and to crush the urge of instant revenge with dreams of splendor: I would become a rich, successful, powerful adult and they would all see how wrong they had been in failing to perceive what the real me truly was.
Ruthlessly and relentlessly beaten by adults, kids and adolescents, I separated myself from the low race of human beings and became a species of my own. Passing clouds, rain, wind, rainbow, forests, rivers and fields became my teachers. Animals taught me the art of seeing, hearing, and fleeing.
I communicated both silently and vocally with all the flora and fauna around. I spoke rat, bat, dog, ant, frog, dandelion, clover and mint. I was ‘nature witnessing nature’. I talked to mist and dew, brooks and cornfields. I was transparent and I was color.
My peculiar and intimate contact with the wild during the months that preceded and followed my seventh birthday imparted to my body and soul an aura that inspired uncontrollable fright in the hearts and minds of Druna’s populace. I felt the same, looked the same when I observed the reflection of my image in the mirror, yet to the villagers I had metamorphosed into an odd ball, an enigma, a mutant…a witch. That such an harmless child would be the object of dread was absolutely ludicrous, but by the time I reached eight not a soul from my village dared approach me, look into my eyes, insult me, accuse me or brutalize me.
From defenseless victim who had been treated like vermin, harassed and spat upon, I became repulsive and fearsome like a wounded wolf with rabies. Suddenly, and not to my overwhelming dislike, I embodied a living container of plagues and ills, and from that infamous Easter Sunday where my people officially anointed me as the reincarnation of a dangerous and mean vixen, my life was changed irrevocably. My family officially barred me from its lineage and rejected me as one does with rotten and damaged apples at the dawn of a long winter. My father’s hands and hurting snake miraculously ceased to explore the hills and caverns of my flesh and I lauded this heaven-sent relief in spite of the drama that was even now engulfing me in a new whirlpool of insanity. My mother denied that she had ever conceived me; betraying me, she convinced everyone including herself that I had been switched at birth and that my foreign blood was toxic as a deadly chemical. The non-existent support of my own siblings turned sour. They ostentatiously shunned me except on those very rare occasions when they launched elusive smiles at me as one throws a picked-clean bone to a ferocious mangy dog.
Irretrievably expulsed from the Druna sanctum, I lost the connection with my human fabric and felt like a defenseless animal kicked violently by pointed metallic boots. Human ignorance and crooked minds threw me into the pit of witchcraft and sorcery long before my childhood had blossomed into adolescence. Yet, instead of shriveling like a dead fetus, I expanded and became an expert in reaping all the fruit of the negative powers that had been assigned to me. I crowned myself as queen and saw the inhabitants of Druna as my vassals, and thus my royal satisfaction swallowed a great chunk of my frustration.
There was a run-down barn stacked with hay half a mile from the village entrance and it became mine, or so to speak. And since no one wanted me to roam about the village at night to forage for food, leftovers and rags were often thrown my way. Old bigots sprinkled holy water on houses, gardens, paths and by-ways to defeat my evil spell, and I keenly took advantage of their mounting superstitions. I saved a calf, a pig, two ducks and countless chickens by walking towards them just as farmers were ready to take their lives with axe or knife. I freed chained dogs and no one tried to stop me. Genetic predisposition made me acutely sensitive to the audible. I listened like a predator and pricked up my ears like a prey. I spoke, growled, sang, hummed, moaned and screamed. I even talked so loudly in my dreams that often my own voice pulled me out of the deepest slumber.
Queen of illusion holding a scepter of make believe, I often fell from my throne. Loneliness sank inconsolably into my young life but glowing visualizations of my future granted me the patience to endure. When somber thoughts surged uncontrollable from the sadness of certain days and the sorrows of dreamless nights, I cuddled with the ersatz friends I had crafted with clay, hay, wood and tree resin. Neither boys nor girls, these friends were as real for me as any living humans. I dressed them, cleaned them, scolded them, shared thoughts with them, argued with them, kissed them and consoled them, laughed with them and sang good night songs to them.
During these austere childhood years, my life apprenticeship yearned for interaction with other humans and what hurt me the most in being so meanly rejected by all was to be severed from conversation with others of my race. Often I feared that my mother tongue left unattended would vanish from my brain and that, once gone for good, I would become like a demented monster belonging neither to the world of humans, ghosts nor animals. As much as I loved my dolls they weren’t enough to fill my vacuum, so I anchored imaginary social posts throughout the fabric of my persona, and from the desolation of isolation created a rich imaginary universe filled with ebullient beings that shared their lives with mine. More real than real, these personalized beings were very talkative, and since they borrowed my timbre to speak I was never able to silence my voice for too long. I never grew tired of listening or participating in the animated conversations that ushered out of me unbidden, and played endlessly with the rich gamut of sounds whose points of origin I could never precisely determine.
Caught up in the turbulence of this lively inner universe, I wondered sometimes if there were even a tiny bit of my voice that was my own. My voice, and to a lesser extent my breath, was a highway borrowed by foreign entities whenever they needed. Listening to the distortions of sounds that spat out from my own throat and lips gradually choked out of me whatever little genuine personality was left, so that by the time I had vanished from myself I scarcely noticed it.
But surely things weren’t so complicated: The universe hadn’t forsaken me. It had merely gifted me with benighted company. My thoughts were my own, but my voice belonged to the beings inside me whose main purpose was to confirm that my aloneness was only a mirage.
Winters, springs, summers, autumns came to pass, then another wet spring followed another rude winter.
On one early April afternoon, as small patches of blue pierced the dark clouded sky, I stepped out of my retreat and paid my regular visit to the tadpoles in the forest pond. Suddenly, while I was there, rain clouds burst into a massive deluge sparked by violent explosions of thunder. Lightning jolts pierced the dense forest canopy and knocked down some of the oldest and tallest trees. Paralyzed by fear, I lay flat until the menacing storm chased me from my bed of clay. I ran down the North field praying to the sky to either kill me clean or spare my life, but please, oh please, not to strike or harm me.
My bare feet slithered on the wet grass and with the swiftness of a wild hare brought me home in one piece. I entered my barn and yelled out both the discomfort of my drenched and freezing flesh and the relief of my safe return:
“Zima, zima, zima, zima!”
As I rubbed my wet hands together, I distinctly felt a presence nearby.
A real human presence…
I wasn’t alone. Someone was there!
I wiped my runny nose with my fingers. The odor of sophisticated perfume blending with the vapors of wet hay and rotting clover overwhelmed my olfactory senses. Whoever had dared trespass into my domain was a woman. Some Druna whore had the audacity to violate my premises!
Feeling something behind my back, I abruptly turned around.
A shivering young woman was approaching me. She was a total stranger who sported none of the traits of Druna’s inhabitants. She definitely didn’t belong to my village and she didn’t look like a prostitute.
“My name is Adeline,” she shyly presented herself.
The hesitation and innocence in her voice indicated she must have been in her early twenties at most. Adeline looked as drenched and miserable as I was. She was dressed from head to toe in white. I was accustomed to clothes of dark shades, black being the most prevalent since, from close relatives to distant acquaintances and neighbors, there was a never-ending process of mourning going on in Druna. In my village, besides nurses, brides, infants being baptized or first holy communions, no one wore white in those days. Adeline wasn’t wearing nurse or bridal attire, and even though her dress was rain damaged, one could tell that it could only belong to a person of wealth. I wondered what such a strange and out of place being could be doing in my barn. She couldn’t be an angel because she had no wings, no golden halo and no dry immaculate dress with long sleeves. Who was she? Floods of questions assaulted me from all directions but my tongue stiffened as I stared mutely at this enchanting person who was by now separated from me by less than three feet. She looked too fragile and kind to present any immediate danger. Eyes never lie and Adeline’s crisp and blue ones seemed honest and sincere as she twiddled nervously the tips of her dripping wet curly blond hair with long fingers perfectly adorned with carmine red nails.
Using my eyes as weapons and keeping them riveted on Adeline’s puzzled facial expression, I counted the seconds between raging claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. Fifteen...eighteen…thirteen…twenty-four! The sky’s electrical swords had moved a hefty twenty miles away from Druna. I didn’t know how much damage had fallen over the villages nearby but my barn and my life had been spared. I could hardly contain the waves of relief that welled up from my stomach to my chest.
I thought about rushing towards my dolls and hugging them but I found I lacked any frank desire to do so. I whistled, forced out some “oh’s” and “ah’s”, and shoveled a few ‘zima’ and ‘yuppies’ with my tongue and jaws, but to my dismay, no one was there!
My invisible friends, who had always been so intimately associated with my voice, had removed their presence and radiance. They had abandoned me, and for the first time since I could remember, I was one with and within myself. I was whole and alone in my mind and body.
I redirected with great difficulty the curiosity to tour my new wholesome psyche and orient it instead towards the woman who was stealing my barn’s oxygen. I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed with a reality that was so distant from the realms of my imagination. I clapped my hands and tried to welcome Adeline with warm words and a smile but it had been such a long time since I had spoken normally with another human being that my throat was dry and my jaw stiff. I waited for Adeline to break the ice, fantasizing that she would launch a witticism so irresistible that it would blast to smithereens the clumsiness of my social skills.
The angry rain on my leaking roof diverted my concerns. I watched rivulets grow into rivers and puddles into lakes as my barn suffered the first symptoms of inundation. There was a reason why, out of all the bible stories I had been inadvertently exposed to, the great flood was the one that had impressed me most. Adeline was perhaps a real angel that had come to rescue me from the floods and the heavenly fire. I wondered if she had the power to materialize boats or wings.
I left my daydreaming when I noticed her blue lips and shivering body. I had guessed wrong. Adeline couldn’t be a celestial messenger or a supernatural entity. The ethereal bodies of angels were invulnerable to temperature fluctuations. Angels didn’t shiver, unlike my surprise guest who looked frightened, exhausted and freezing cold. Her young womanhood still carried tight bonds with the girl she had been in a past not so remote. Her glowing face was taut with the strings of innocence and animated by enormous blue sapphire eyes that moved swiftly like two searchlights in the darkest of nights. Adeline’s refined features and her scar-less skin bespoke a golden upbringing in a cozy home full of love, laughter and soft voices. To be in the company of a stranger who belonged to a world so foreign to the brutal one that had given birth to me made me feel awkward and prompted me to act heedlessly. I stood under the streams of frigid water gushing through the roof leaks and gesticulated to Adeline: “Your turn now!”
“Oh my! I certainly wouldn’t do such a thing!” she responded with a tone revealing that her porcelain features harbored a creature with a temper chiseled by sharp crystals. Adeline’s answer took me a little aback.
“If we do not stay warm we might die of pneumonia. Should we run for help? We need blankets and hot soup,” she continued.
“I have everything we need, I live here. Come,” I said. Adeline followed me with surprising docility. Her face radiated an irresistible candor as I dusted off my vintage oak chest with the tattered sleeve of my oversized hunter’s jacket and pulled out a treasure of torn wool blankets and ripped down comforters.
“Strip naked and rub your skin with moss, then dig a hole in the patch of dry hay right behind that pile of wood!” I commanded.
“I beg your pardon?” Adeline looked at me wide eyed.
“Get in there! Close your eyes,” I dictated, “and don’t look my way until I tell you to. And I won’t look at you either.”
My thoughts churned vigorously. Shyness had retreated and now blunt authority had risen like a dragon. My dragon, the one that had rested dormant in the confines of my repressed emotions, had finally awakened! I had long ago learned how to manipulate my voice in order to neutralize the destructive barbs hurled at me, but that evening my tone conveyed the most sublime sensation of centeredness.
Adeline’s smile extended from ear to ear.
“Yes, captain,” she said softly as she moved away with the whole stack of my prized blankets, the ones that I had been generous enough to share!
“Hey!” I lashed out, trying to stop her.
“Hey!” she responded with a smile as if I were just playing a friendly game with her.
My heart lacked the will to be rude. I couldn’t scold her for lack of consideration because, truth be told, the situation wasn’t that alarming for a tough kid like me.
Survival had already given me its share of crash courses and it was quite reasonable to admit that, compared to blizzards and deadly winters, the ambient temperature was almost pleasant and certainly bearable.
Meanwhile, my dripping wet clothes hindered my every move. I stripped naked in a flash and rubbed my skin against a compacted bale of hay, but prudishness cut short my normal urge to whip my blood until it became hot as torrential lava. Instead I swiftly sorted through a pile of dry grasses and roughly braided enough of them into a somewhat primitive skirt in order to hide my genitals from the scrutiny of a stranger. I robbed a large rag from one of my life size straw dolls, wrapped it around my shoulders and hurried towards Adeline who had managed to build a deluxe nest in the midst of the driest and softest stack of hay.
“You chose the best spot,” I grimaced.
“Oh!” Adeline exclaimed as if coming out of a deep sleep.
“And you took all the warm things but that’s all right…I sure don’t want you to die on me; don’t worry, I’ll be alright, I’ve been through worse.” I kept talking as I swiftly arranged my own quarters really close to hers. “You can keep the warm blankets but we must share this spot,” I said, to prevent the possibility of a rejection.
“Oh sure, please, come closer, it is starting to become quite pleasant here. I can already feel my body temperature rising. But perhaps you should take my spot--this is your place after all--and I certainly didn’t mean to take all your blankets!”
Adeline spoke with a sophistication that felt very inappropriate in such chaotic surroundings. I locked into a deep silence. When our eyes finally met, she launched an effusive flow of thanks and apologies. I responded with gibberish. My thrill at having an actual conversation, and with a kind, polite and educated woman no less, miraculously replaced my frigid blood with a current so hot that it rose to my head and inebriated me in the most agreeable way. The luxury of a private talk with a real and sophisticated person was a priceless gift that had fallen straight from a special corner of paradise, and by the time nightfall spread its tentacles I had metamorphosed into the most social being I could ever be. Yet, having talked about this and that, I had utterly failed to introduce myself.
But Adeline‘s clairvoyance and poise solved my quandary; just as I was wondering how to introduce myself to her, she deftly stole my topic and made it hers.
“My name is Adeline, as I mentioned earlier. Adeline Berriford. Forgive me if I have been distracted but I am dying to know your name.”
“My name? Which one? You mean how I’m called?” I asked. I was so baffled by the synchronicity of my guest’s thoughts with my own that the urge to kneel and give thanks served to push me even deeper into a state of mental slow motion.
“I am…I am…Winifred,” I stuttered, “Winnie for short.”
The sound of the names gliding out of my mouth troubled me. Winifred and Winnie had been indelibly tattooed over my persona from my very birth, and although they were integral parts of who I was, these names felt like misfits because they had been chosen not by me but by humans who had never respected me, let alone loved me. And beyond all these basic considerations, the main reason of my unease as I revealed my identity to Adeline came from lack of familiarity with hearing my name pronounced.
Diplomat in the art of peace, Adeline coated me with just the right words. “You have the most beautiful and unique name. Winnie! There is no doubt that I am so very privileged to have met such a lovely person with such an exquisite name,” she said as she folded rags and tattered blankets into a neat pile between us.
Adeline’s elixir worked wonders and I wouldn’t have minded bathing under her waterfall of compliments until deep slumber captured me away from the awareness of my flesh, but suddenly I saw that Adeline’s lips had turned purple again. Convulsive shivers had taken command of her muscles. I grabbed her elbows in my hands and moved them back and forth as if to rekindle the dwindling impetus of her body to stay alive.
“Look at you! How can you be warm? You lied! You are cold as ice. What’s wrong with you? Get up!” I summoned.
“I am stronger than you might suspect, you know,” Adeline rebelled.
“No time and place to feel offended. Get up!” I said. You must jump, jump, jump until your forehead drips with sweat...then you must scrub and scrub your skin with bark and straw. It will make your blood so hot…then the wool will keep in the heat all night long.” I spoke with the authority of an adult.
“All right, I will jump then,” Adeline declared as she stood up with obvious difficulty.
“Move, move, move! Start moving now! Copy exactly what I do,” I commanded.
Adeline followed my orders and mimicked my impromptu gymnastic session with the discipline of a nun. It took an eternity to see tints of pink spread through the surface of her exposed skin, but when it finally did Adeline trustfully sat by my side and wrapped my ragged wool shawl around her slender limbs with the grace of a princess. She imitated my guttural sounds of relief and pleasure, then we screamed even louder as we jumped back into our respective holes where we buried ourselves under a foot or so of hay.
“Thank you very much, thank you so much! I feel so much better now. Thank you Winnie.” I didn’t reciprocate Adeline’s extravagance of thanks yet they overwhelmed me with gratitude for being recognized as something other than a nuisance; but soon the words that had prompted such elation triggered an impatience that bordered on rage because now they seemed devoid of heart-felt resonance.
“No more thanks, please. Too many! One was plenty enough,” I said. To my utter dislike, Adeline began apologizing profusely. “None of that either…I want real. I want honesty. I want truth,” I interjected.
My abrupt tone for a moment sealed an uncomfortable silence around us, but nothing in the universe could resist Adeline’s charm.
“Well…I must admit, I mean what I say! And now I’m starting to be really warm. I am so happy! These moments are really glorious, Winnie.”
“I know. I’m toasty here. You should see my burrow….” I hesitated.
“Burrow? Do you have a burrow?” she asked with sincere curiosity.
“In the dead of winter it’s so cold even right here…oh no…we couldn’t stay here when it’s so cold that snow is warm in comparison,” I declared.
A barrier had been broken, and I foresaw the delights of a long intimate conversation.
“Do you live here all year round?” Adeline asked with such obvious interest that from then on I barely paused even when she interrupted me with questions or opinions.
“I have no other place, Adeline. This is my home…do you want to hear about my burrow?”
“Oh yes, Winnie, I most certainly do.”
“Well you see, Adeline, my burrow… is like…it’s like an igloo but instead of being made out of ice I carve it inside thick hay stacks…”
“Igloo of hay?” Adeline sounded intrigued.
“Yes, and I coat the walls with everything warm I can find--every bit of cotton or wool that I can put my hands on--every feather, rag, piece of moss…things like that, and believe me it is so much warmer than this. In winter I live in an igloo of hay, right in the midst of this barn,” I proudly announced.
“I am very impressed, Winnie. One should write a story about you because you are so amazingly creative!” Adeline laughed appreciatively and I blushed. Adeline paused for long seconds then, just when I assumed she had run out of words, she went on: “My mother is a teacher. She writes so beautifully…I am a teacher as well but my style doesn’t even come close to that of my beloved mother.”
Adeline’s revelations catapulted her into the world outside, into the world that had expelled me and deprived me of my right to be part of it. Society had rejected me and since teachers were so integrally part of its structure it made sense that Adeline’s profession automatically lumped her into the global pool of my bad wishers. I had learned the hard way that all teachers were partial, sadistic and unjust, and no matter how I looked at it I couldn’t see how Adeline could become my special friend when she was already so intrinsically part of my adversaries’ camp.
I had been bluffed!
Night was falling deeper into the blind zone. Cold sweat blistered my skin as it rubbed against my goose bumps. Outside, the rain pouring on my leaky roof imitated the sarcastic giggles of hyenas. Nature was laughing at my expense, yet, as humiliation tingled my scalp, Adeline bewitched me to a point of no return.
“I love everybody. All of my students. All of them and I am sure that you would be my very best one,” she said. I felt warmer.
“I am a bad student,” I hastily stipulated before Adeline could lead me astray in some other illusion.
“Oh…hmm…well…there is no such a thing as a bad student. I think of myself as an artist, a sculptor who transforms even the most difficult children into masterpieces. I am like a treasure hunter. I know how to find gold and diamonds in my students and the people I am taking care of. You know, Winnie, there is no such thing as coincidence. I come from a privileged milieu and it is by my choice that I have been assigned to the most rustic and rural village of the whole region. You are the very first person, the first of Druna’s inhabitants that I have met and I know that there is a reason for that. Winnie…my dear and beloved Winnie, I will take extra care of you. Are you listening? Are you sleeping already? Oh…I guess you have fallen asleep. Good night, Winnie. May you have sweet and beautiful dreams.”
Adeline’s honeyed voice had unearthed my deepest unhealed grievances and left me defenseless. My world crumbled in the face of her sincere compassion. Insensitive to the cold that crept back into my flesh, I became all tears, burning tears flooding my head, overflowing the cavities of my eyes and sweeping away the pollen and dust from my cheeks. I marveled at the abundance of warm and salty water that had been resting all these years in the great depths of my inner oceans. I, ‘Winnie the monster’, was crying, and the silent flow of my repressed sorrow gushing out of my sore heart felt long awaited.
It took the cacophony of competing roosters to pull me out of the cradle of my self-commiseration. I turned my head. Dawn had been waiting for the tears to dissolve the night away and for my puffy eyes to open. I watched whiffs of vapor rise as young sunrays through the roof holes proceeded to dry out patches of wet hay. Then I heard Adeline moan in her sleep like a baby lamb.
Normally, on mornings after a storm, I would have rushed outside and stared at the spectacular beauty of a clear sky, then rinsed my face in the crystal clear water of Castor Creek and yodeled all the way there. But that morning I mimicked the sleeping beauty’s stillness and waited with great apprehension for what a brand new day in Adeline’s company would provide. Her arrival had burned to ashes any attempts to conform to Druna’s image of me as bedeviled. She had ripped to shreds my acceptance of a doomed fate and instead made me want to take my rightful place in the social stew. My barn life with its routines dictated by the imperatives of survival had come to an end.
I had the good taste to allow Adeline her private space so she would follow her true instincts. I closed my eyes and breathed loudly to feign a sound sleep. I heard her hands gently clap and brush the dry grasses that had stuck to her skin and then I heard the whoosh of her footsteps slipping on the trail’s sticky clay…then nothing!
I fantasized that Adeline would soon come back and gently call for my attention, so instead of following her and spying on her, I stayed prostrate and waited; but she never came back.
Adeline had burst unannounced into my life. She had unwittingly shattered my routine comfort zone and her departure had left me bereft of clues as to how to carry on with my life. I refused to acknowledge that Druna had been Adeline’s original destination and that she could actually be on her way there. I had presumed that serendipity had singled me out. I wanted to believe, with all the power of my mighty immaturity, in some sort of holy miracle that could revive hopes in souls born with injustice as their sole companion. I desperately searched for answers.
I yearned to dissolve once again into the zone of tears but my eyes stayed hopelessly dry because suddenly I intuited that Adeline had left for good. Gone! She had deserted me and betrayed my hospitality without even acknowledging my presence with a simple “good morning” or a polite “good by”. She had escaped like a thief and, as I now recognized by the barks of Druna’s dogs, Adeline was probably already walking down Main Street.
I tried to guess where she was going and to whom she might be talking to. Would she have the courage, if asked, to tell where she had spent the night? Deep down I hoped the villagers would chase her and that she would run back to me. And I would be there, patiently immobile and ready to welcome her.
The church bell rang eight times then nine then ten then eleven and twelve. Time was set on the cusp between morning and afternoon, and if Adeline hadn’t shown up by now it was obvious she wouldn’t later. She had joined the ‘others’ and now she was one of them. Them! The ones who hated me so viscerally, the ones who wished the worst for me, the ones who, if not so superstitiously fearful of me, would have killed me a long time ago. Hadn’t ‘One-eye-Jake’ the locksmith, explained to me--from a distance of course--that my venom was potent like that of a young rattlesnake and that, contrary to legend, young sorcerers were far more dangerous than old weathered ones? A witch like me could not be slaughtered because it was believed that my black spirit would come back and spread the worse plagues and epidemics for generations to come over every inhabitant of the village.
Was Adeline already wishing me dead too? Had she been contaminated by Druna’s rotten souls who swore that my body was hosting some sort of repugnant evil nature?
Adeline’s surprised eruption in a village crowded by obtuse minds must have had such a phenomenal impact that it would certainly have pushed far from anyone’s mind anything to do with my existence. In Druna, where the level of illiteracy was extremely high, a schoolteacher was treated and respected like a celebrity. Knowing my village as I did, the mayor had probably appeased some old quarrels by selecting which family would be the first to host the erudite beauty for lunch. Old Sophia might have slaughtered a couple of fat hens, plunged them in boiling water then burned her knotted fingers while plucking sticky feathers away. I saw in my mind’s eye, as clearly as if I were there, women gathering wheat, sugar, lard, butter, eggs, spices, fruit and vegetables, then singing and yapping while peeling, chopping, roasting and baking. As the fumes of the gargantuan feast-in-the-making would be rising above Druna, it was obvious that all the men of my village, hiding under masks of open minds, would quiz this gorgeous young woman who had chosen to share the sparks of her intelligence with their progeny. Andrew the priest had most certainly postponed his afternoon obligations and rushed to bless the banquet, and I envied the conviviality that such a menu of chicken noodle soup, roasted potatoes, smoked ham, apple pies and fresh mint tea had brought amongst the lucky invited guests. I pictured Adeline sitting around a long oak table partaking in a meal with a bunch of inebriated farmers. I missed the heavy cigarette smoke that punctuated the end of big feasts and the sight of scattered leftovers and empty bottles of plum brandy. It had been such a long time since I had eaten like a normal human being, like normal folks do. My stomach gurgled. I was used to hunger but that day my hunger wasn’t the same. I was hungry for real food. I starved for meals baked with love and served warm. I longed for what most humans, rich or poor, young or old, took for granted. I craved to belong, to eat with people that would acknowledge me as much as I would acknowledge them. I wanted to chitchat with my mouth full of reassuring edibles, I wanted to converse with friends, plain human friends, not animals nor dolls nor imaginary entities. I wanted to listen to fascinating stories. I wanted to hear the murmur of speaking voices, debating voices, singing voices; I wanted to hum along with women knitting or spinning yarn.
A rat squeaked, and then an owl flew above my head.
Another night had squatted itself down in my barn. I had barely moved since the morning yet I was stoic and calm. I waited and waited in vain to give a chance for the unlikely to come about. I waited two more days but Adeline never returned. As if that weren’t bad enough, ever since she left my haven of straw, not a single person from my village had approached my barn, no one had insulted me from a distance, and no food had been thrown on my threshold. A torturing silence had spread around my existence, a silence worst than any of the ones that I had known so far. I’d grown familiar with hatred and could cooperate with it but to be radically ignored was a punishment that made rejection look like a joke. Adeline’s arrival had reduced my existence to non-existence. For the inhabitants of Druna and perhaps for the rest of the world as well, I wasn’t anymore!
At moments I speculated that Adeline was some kind of strange being who had escaped from one of my dreams, while at other times I wondered if perhaps it was me who had transgressed the frontiers of the waking realm and who was stuck in the sort of absurdity one can only find in lightweight nightmares.
Was Adeline a hologram?
Was I of human nature or was I an illusion?
I searched for some remnants, some proof, some insignificant objects that Adeline might have forgotten and left behind, but the only things I found in the barn were my own belongings strewn on the ground and disheveled stacks of dry fodder.
I slept throughout the long hours of two consecutive days. On the third morning, I swaddled my feet with strips of heavy cotton, slipped into my oversized rubber-boots and stepped outside. The air was still nippy but the sun and sky promised a beautiful April day. I walked the muddy fields, devoured fresh mushrooms, and drank unsurpassably pure water from my favorite springs. I said hello and good-bye to the forest and trees; I greeted all the early spring flowers and the fresh grass.
Tomorrow I would be gone. Tomorrow I would walk away from what destiny had chosen for me as my birthplace. I felt the sadness of my friends the birds, possum, fox and bees. They would miss me and I would think about them a lot but they would have to stay here and do their best to thrive and survive in that merciless territory dominated by the cruelty of ignorant humans. Tomorrow I would burn my barn and walk away forever from the pain.
On my return, I was still a few hundred feet from the dwelling I called home when I noticed a flock of crows hovering over it. There was nothing outstanding in a congress of crows in open fields but to see them circling above my place was quite unusual. As I approached closer, my beloved black friends landed on the roof and started noisily debating about some matters that seemed of the most urgent importance. This was the first time ever that they had chosen my barn as a meeting point. I wanted to think that my feathered companions had come to bid me farewell, but instinct indicated that they had come as the bearers of ill omen. I climbed the walnut tree facing the entrance to my barn and sat silently on a wide branch. Closing my eyes I tried to understand the meaning of their croaks; but something in me had changed and barred my access to avian dialogue. I had changed. Adeline had damaged my link with the non-normative. Before I met her, I would have been honored by the crows’ choice of my roof as a meeting place and would have even actively participated in their turbulent debate. But that would have been then. Adeline had transformed whoever I was before her arrival into a stranger to my own self.
The birds’ uproar reached a peak at dusk then abruptly ceased. That night, as nocturnal winds brushed my face, I recognized that the crows carried a message of doom. Something macabre, some terrible catastrophe had or was about to happen. Yet my instinct didn’t warn me of any imminent danger for myself. Night autographed its comforting pitch-dark signature around me. I was not in harm’s way; the resonance of my heartbeats pointed my attention instead towards Adeline. No doubt about it, Adeline was in dire need of my help! A revelation of this amplitude thrilled me with poignancy; I had had enough of make believe and yearned now to dedicate my energy to ventures other than my own survival.
It didn’t take any effort for the hero syndrome to resurrect itself and for my legs to start hurrying towards Druna. The absence of a moon heightened my intrepidness. I moved with the swiftness of a magician in a blackness that no flickering stars dared disturb. As I drew near the village, I praised my luck when unchained dogs followed me silently instead of denouncing my presence with continuous barks.
I avoided the main street, crossed the communal field, and then crawled on all fours along the narrow alley that led to the school. The place seemed deserted. If Adeline had followed the rules and regulations of our village she would have moved into the teacher’s apartment located on the school’s second floor, just above the classroom. Maybe she did. The absence of light, though, indicated that she wasn’t there. Chances were she was eating Ludmilla’s goulash at the Hladis or Marketa’s shnitzels at the Janaaek’s or that she was telling stories to Klara and Petr’s thirteen children or listening to Madgelena’s list of complaints while roasting shriveled apples and pears in red hot embers. Chances were that she was perhaps at that very moment drinking Pavel’s sweet herb liquor...or perhaps she was already sound asleep.
I turned on my heels and stopped, thinking. I had been wrong but now I was getting back to my senses. The crows had landed on my roof to show me their appreciation of my radical decision to desert the land that had given me birth as well as curses. Nothing more. Nothing less. My first guess had been the right one and my second had been influenced only by my longing to participate in some kind of heroic venture.
Adeline and I belonged to incompatible worlds and although the storm had briefly joined our paths, it hadn’t changed anything in the prescriptions of luck, sorrow and happiness that fate had written out for Adeline and for me. I smiled bitterly. Adeline whispering to my credulous ears that she would take care of me had just been an empty promise, not so much because she was a bad person but simply because I could never have fit into her reality. It was very probable that soon she would forget my existence in the same way that one forgets dreams, especially those that one wants to remember for the rest of one’s life but that leave instead just a blank trace.
A chilling draft funneled spooky blows wherever it found bare skin or random holes in my tattered clothes. I had heedlessly followed a false alarm, not so much because the wizard in me had transmuted into a somewhat obtuse girl, but because I had dared to play a game of iron fisticuffs with the exasperating verdict of misery that was nailed across my each and every moment. I had transgressed the rules. Since the beginning of my exile in the barn, the men had loudly and clearly prohibited me from setting foot in Druna. I wouldn’t have been stoned or shot during the daytime but it was plainly stipulated that if I was to be roaming in the village by night, there was no guarantee that I would be shielded from deadly bullets. Druna’s belief in werewolves and in shape-shifting creatures gave it the full right to destroy whatever it might interpret as a danger bred by the dark shadows of the night, and I was one of them….
I wasn’t on the outskirts of the village; I was in its very midst. I was a target. I had dragged myself into highly hostile ground and there was no safe exit. Running back towards my barn was exposing me to no less peril than staying in this minefield and keeping a quiet profile.
Following a primitive instinct, I eased into the school and moved stealthily around the first floor. No lights spilled out from the building yet somehow I felt that something abnormal was occurring in there. Afraid of neither the heights nor the dark, I quickly climbed to the second floor and pushed a window open. The hickory floorboards creaked under my feet as I trespassed into the teacher’s private quarters but the noise didn’t alert a soul. Standing stock-still in the middle of what seemed to be the living room, I tuned my auditory radar to catch a snore or a sneeze, but only inanimate objects pierced the gaping silence.
Nobody was there.
I was ready to abandon my blind exploration when I heard a barely perceptible groan, then another, leaching from the other room. My heart jolted as it recognized a delicacy that could only come from the teacher I knew so little yet so well. I cautiously advanced towards the sound, announcing with a soft voice my presence and my identity.
“Adeline? Is that you? It is me, Winifred,” I murmured.
Someone responded with a weak wail. I bumped against sharp-edged furniture, smashed my head into the bedroom door and at long last, reached the source of the lamentations. The small flame of a yellow beeswax candle floating in a bowl of water on a tiny marble table helped me discern who was agonizing on the bed nearby.
My gut instinct hadn’t betrayed me after all because, yes indeed, it was Adeline. As I approached her four-poster, she wheezed and coughed. I touched her sweaty forehead. It was burning with high fever.
“What happened to you? It’s me, Winifred…remember me? Winifred from the barn…don’t be afraid…I have been waiting for you, you know…but that’s all right I forgive you…now don’t you worry about a thing because I’m here to take care of you…at my own risk.” I spoke with a firmness borrowed from the adults’ repertoire.
Adeline seemed unconscious but I wanted to believe that my voice would reawaken the clarity of her mind and somehow heal her like good fairies do in mysterious tales.
“Adeline? Adeline! Adeline…open your eyes,” I attempted.
I could have sworn that she uttered my name yet the grounded part of myself knew that couldn’t be the case. I went frantic and covered her shivering body with a blanket that had fallen on the floor, then dipped a towel in water and moistened her lips with it. I needed to act fast. Some fevers treated too late could easily degenerate from benign to fatal.
I had trespassed into the Forbidden City so I couldn’t run freely and alert the whole neighborhood. I wasn’t supposed to be there and, to make matters even worse, no one would have interpreted Adeline’s illness as coming from a natural cause but it would have all been blamed on me. Oh yes indeed, everybody would have been way too thrilled to condemn me for having thrown a spell on their most precious teacher. Instead of seeking the help of doctors or healers they would have tried to expel the wickedness out of her body with frightening incantations. I also knew only too well that they would have tortured me and most probably shot me since it was nighttime and I had broken the rules.
Time was of the essence. I had to find a way to attract the villagers to the school without divulging in any way my presence to them. I seized the candle, calmly went down the wide stairs, crossed the classroom, grabbed a chair with my other hand and squeezed a newspaper between my teeth. I peeked through the fogged-up window. Nothing threatening seemed to be roving about. With extreme care I pushed the school’s door until it was wide open. I placed the chair in the front porch then cautiously went back to the classroom to fetch another chair that I placed on the top of the first one and, in between, the loose sheets of newspaper that I then set on fire. A second later I threw a heavy stone that broke the kitchen window of Jakub and Dorota. Their kitchen faced the front of the school, and if luck were on my side they would rush out of their house like enraged lions.
They did.
I was quickly running away when I heard their screams and calls for all the inhabitants of the village to come witness what vandals had dared to do. Thanks to straw seats, the chairs caught on fire rapidly and spectacularly, enough to at least polarize everyone’s attention to the school building. I grabbed my chance to escape and moved like a feline along the back alley. It was easy to imagine the chronology of actions and events that would bustle around the school for the next few hours. The fire was easily extinguishable and had probably died by itself from sheer lack of fuel to burn. Not only that, I noticed that rain was just starting to fall.
The infinite unknown was blatantly winking at me. Feeling strong and invincible, I put aside my vigilance and turned my attention to my mind’s eye. Someone had probably noticed the open school door and by now a whole horde had crowded in, climbed the stairs and found Adeline up there burning with fever. And it was easy to imagine what would follow. Women would replace the soiled bed sheets with dry and scented ones. Anna would force her warm concoction of bitter herb tea down Adeline’s throat, Iva would place a handful of cupping glasses on the chest of the non-responsive teacher, then she would try to revive her frail legs and arms by rubbing them with garlic and plum brandy. Holy water would be sprinkled all over the bedroom, more candles would be lit and old Sophia would recite the rosary while telling her beads.
A terrible clamor of angry men and barking dogs rushed me back to the present. Utterly lost in thoughts of Adeline and her caretakers, I had dangerously slowed my stride and momentarily forgotten about Druna’s dastardly folk. I furtively turned my head. The night was too dark; I couldn’t see faces, but I could clearly spot dozens of torches snaking along the path that led to my barn. I crossed my chest three times. There couldn’t be any mistake; these angry yelling bastards were looking for me with great menace, ruthless vengeance on their minds. I panicked. I had intended to fly away and forever from this accursed village of mine, but in my own terms and not under such terrible circumstances.
I took the North trail. I fell often on the slick ground, my feet and legs stabbed by sharp rocks and thorny shrubs. At long last, I headed obliquely towards the forest.
I turned for one last look before I penetrated into my beloved timberland: My barn had been set on fire. The men of Druna were burning the dwelling that had sheltered me through winters and summers, through hail, rain, sunshine and snow. My overwhelming state of panic degenerated into utter terror because I could have been roasting in the midst of these ferocious flames and not a soul would have come to my rescue!
Scents of humus and mold appeased my despair. I crossed Stinging Nettle creek, walked a few hundred yards straight ahead then carefully backtracked and trudged my way upstream. Protected for now by the forest maze and by the Cimmerian night, I nevertheless dreaded the hounds’ dogged persistence and exceptional sense of smell. There wasn’t a second to spare. Keeping my hands firmly gripped on what seemed to be thick tree roots protruding from the middle of the creek, I immersed my body into a deep pocket of water.
Then I heard them coming.
The hounds had retraced my footsteps. Their nonstop grunts, growls and barks indicated that they knew I was close. To the sound of commanding voices I heard them cross the stream and move away, but soon they all came back to the water. Opening my mouth wide, I breathed as quietly and slowly as humanly possible. My arms and hands shook violently. The water temperature was too frigid; I wouldn’t be able to last much longer in it. In a moment, the drift would pull me out of my hiding. I would float downstream and the men would immediately spot me with their torches. I was finished. I closed my eyes and waited for the mongrels to rip my flesh to pieces while their masters would beat me with the butts of their rifles and the iron heels of their high boots.
They never did.
The demented peasants ordered silence then suddenly decided to expedite their deliberations:
“This place is haunted.”
“Sure is.”
“We burned the barn.”
“So why look further?”
“I think I saw the bad eyes.”
“You did?”
“I could swear I did.”
“Me too.”
“I told you idiots we shouldn’t harm her.”
“Idiots? Did you say idiots?”
“Calm down Vaclav. I hope we didn’t do the wrong thing, that girl is….”
“She’s evil.”
“I’m not staying here.”
“I’m going.”
“Let’s go!”
A deep encrusted superstition that wounded witches would mercilessly seek revenge had resurfaced in the villagers’ nescient minds. They didn’t dare dally any longer in the spooked realm of hexes and ghosts and hurried back in the direction of the village. I was safe. For now…