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“Stop gobbling your
watrobka and pay attention. And while you’re opening your
ears, close your mouth. The gravy dripping its way down
your chin makes me feel quite ill. Yes, yes, I know, your
grandmother is an excellent cook, yes. But forget your
belly for a moment. I want to tell a story about a woman who
was in no way such an excellent housewife.
When I was a young man,
I lived in a small hamlet called Hammer not far from
Czernikowo in the old country. My parents, your
great-grandparents had been imprudent enough to die of
influenza when myself and my brother Dominik were yet only
boys. The parish priest of Hammer arranged for us to be
taken in by a good Catholic family who raised us alongside
their only daughter, Katarzyna. I was obedient and worked
hard, the model adopted son. But no matter my efforts, it
was Dominik who was loved best. He was spoilt by our
adopted mother who coddled him for his dark eyes and
indulged by her husband who admired his courage and daring
ways. He was inseparable from Katarzyna and would often
drag her into the many scrapes he found himself in. I found
this last the hardest of all – Katarzyna was more beautiful
than the most beautiful girl you could imagine. She had
nut-brown hair in a thick shining braid that snaked down to
her waist, rosy skin, and a mole on her chin that was
visible when she tilted her head just so. Every day I would
greet her ‘Dzień Dobry, Kataryzna’ and she would answer
‘Dzien Dobry, Piotr’ but without really seeing me. Her eyes
would already be searching about her for my brother.
I moved out to farm a
small patch of potato land on the outskirts of the village.
I worked hard, built my own cabin, and before long was well
on my way to being what passed for prosperous in Hammer. My
brother, he was an entirely different story. Coddled all
his life, he soon found that his looks and endearing ways
wouldn’t bring him the fortune he thought he deserved nor
even a steady income which he needed to be able to marry and
set up house with Katarzyna. Not a worker by nature, he
showed no aptitude for the smithing craft our adopted father
tried to impart to him. Instead, he fell in with a bad
crowd and joined in when they robbed the merchants that
passed by Hammer on their way to market. It was not long
before those merchants hired guards who caught Dominik and
his companions, hanging them high on gallows that they built
in the forest. And that was the end of his dark eyes.
I didn’t waste time but
went to Katarzyna’s house and asked for her as my wife.
Numbed and silly by grief, her father gave his consent
because as he put it ‘Now Dominik is gone, she’d as like
have you than anyone’. He was right – she raised no
objections to my offer and we were married a short week
after my brother swung in the forest. I brought her home
and prepared to be a happy man. But as soon as we married,
she began to – I can’t think of another word – to wither.
Her lustrous brown hair grew dull and limp. The roses in
her cheeks faded to paper. Her breathing grew laboured and
she complained all the time of strange flutterings in her
chest. She would eat or drink nothing – or almost nothing.
The only thing the woman would eat, the only thing the woman
would cook was liver. The physician I shrugged his
shoulders, diagnosed her as having a ‘disorder of the
blood’, took the groszy from my hand and left.
I begged in vain for her
to cook proper meals – sausage perhaps, or herring with
potatoes or even ryemeal soup. But liver was all she could
think about. Every other day she would badger me to walk to
town and buy her meat with coin we could ill afford. On one
such occasion, she nagged me to the brink of madness and I
hit her and she fell to the ground. Her eyes looked up at
me yet it still seemed to me that they looked past me, still
searching for my brother. I stormed out and even the dogs
we kept in the yard fled before me, sensing my ill temper.
I walked into Hammer
intending to buy her the liver she craved and on the way my
rage changed to self-pity. I was young, hard-working, my
brother had just been hanged as a common criminal and my
wife was an invalid. My own dog wouldn’t even acknowledge
my touch. I felt very sorry for myself. And why shouldn’t
I? I ended up at the tavern talking of my plight to anyone
who would listen. The liquid sympathy in the eyes of the
tavern women, the sympathetic shakes of the heads of the men
nursing their own drinks and troubles, these were as balm to
me. It was dark when I left the warmth, light and sympathy
to face the long walk home in the dark – without the liver
that she had asked me for. I couldn’t face going back to
her reproachful face and moans that her stomach was empty
and I sat down on the path out of town and rested my
spinning head.
A hand clapped me on the
shoulder and one of my drinking companions – a hunter,
passing through Hammer -settled down beside me, hand still
wrapped around his drink. ‘I’ve been thinking about your
problem, friend and I think I have a solution’. My eyes
filled with sentimental tears that a stranger should have
such sympathy and care for me when my nearest treated me
with so little regard. His voice went on, ‘Why should you
be burdened with such a wife? I have an idea. In the very
centre of the forest, there is a gallows which has a few
dead bodies hanging from it. Do you know it?’ I confessed
that I did, darting him a sharp glance. But he went on,
apparently oblivious that one of these corpses was my
brother ‘Good. Take one of those bodies down, cut out his
liver and give it to your wife – you can tell her that it is
beef liver’. In that golden haze that descends over the
world when you’ve had too much cider, I thought this a
simply wonderful plan. He heaved himself to his feet and
finished with ‘A word of warning, though. Give her the
liver, then go to bed and don’t get up for anything, no
matter what you hear’.
It took me some time to
find my way through the great forest to the clearing where I
stood before the gallows. The three bodies – the third
Dominik, my little brother – hung there, swaying slightly
though no wind moved the leaves of the trees. My brother
had changed beyond recognition. His St Colman medal still
hung around his neck but his body had not remained as
untouched as that holy man. His dancing brown eyes were dark
holes in his face and his flesh had begun to melt from his
bones. Staring at his familiar face, I was once more struck
with the injustice of my situation – here he was, a dead
criminal, and he still overshadowed my life. In anger, I
plunged my knife into his stomach again and again, I spilled
out what was left of his insides, carefully cutting out the
liver protected behind his ribcage. I wrapped it in cloth
torn from one of the other corpses and set off on my journey
home.
As expected, I met
reproaches from Kataryzna but when I silently handed her the
package, she calmed and began to hunt out her knife and
skillet to slice and fry the liver. I lay down on our
pallet in the corner of the cottage and pulled the blanket
over my head. The lulling effects of the cider had long
still gone and I listened, petrified, first to the sound of
her knife methodically slicing away the fat from the liver
and chopping the onion then to the sizzle as she laid the
strips of meat on the hot skillet. I slowly went mad as she
turned the meat over – and over again. My nerve broke as I
shook in my cocoon of blankets and I called to her to come
quick to bed.
Her high voice answered,
‘Just a moment, husband. Let me first dip some bread into
this gravy and taste the meat you have brought for me.’ I
opened my mouth but the words dried in my throat. There was
a sound from the door and she cried out ‘Who goes there?’
A deep voice answered,
‘Everyone sleeps, even the dog in the yard. And you stand
there awake, frying my liver.’ The door swung open,
creaking on its hinges, revealing whatever stood there to
Katarzyna.
But yet her voice came
again, impossibly calm ‘Mój drogi, what happened to your
eyes?’
The spirit’s voice
filled the room and as hard as I held my hands over my ears
under the blankets I could still hear the booming reply,
‘The ravens plucked them out and carried them away’.
‘Mój drogi, then what
happened to your skin?’
‘The ravens pecked at it
until it was in tatters and the wind blowing through the
trees scattered it away’.
There was a long pause
and shaking, I lifted the blanket a sliver to see a dark
skeletal figure towering over Kataryzna to whom her pale
radiant face was lifted up as if to a lover. I opened my
mouth but could make no sound come from my throat. She
spoke instead, in a different tone than she’d used before,
reluctant but with a strange note of hope, ‘Moj drogi, what
happened to your liver?’
‘You have it!’
With this, the skeletal
hand fixed around her throat and tightening, lifted her off
the ground as she struggled for breath.
My world went black and
when I woke and crawled out from under the blankets, my wife
Katarzyna was dead on the floor, her eyes bulging and face
discoloured – and around her unmarked throat a St Colman’s
medal.
I left Hammer when I
could not stand the rumours any longer. I wandered about for
a while before settling down to remarry. I must admit that
I have had a happy life even though sometimes, sometimes
when I look out of the window on cold nights I fancy I see
them. A tall dark skeletal man hand in hand with a woman
with long nut brown hair blowing in the wind – both with
only hollows for eyes. But everyone has their fancies now
and then and that one will usually go after a cup of cider
or two.
Yes, despite this, I
have been as happy as a man could be. Except for the days
where your estimable grandmother cooks liver such as is
sitting before you now, and I am put in mind of my first
wife”. |
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