DID YOU KNOW THAT A CITY CAN DIE AS EASILY as a person? It is true, I promise you. It dies in the same sad, lonely ways that people do: a knife in the governor’s heart, a quick poisoning of rivers. And there are cancers that begin slowly, a pinprick in a bookseller’s shop in a dust-clouded alley, a lump in a rainspout splashed with yellow leaves. Who would ever notice such a little thing tucked away like that, in a city of pillars and plums and plumes? Or it can become food, as all things inevitably are. It can be devoured, torn limb from street—it can be swallowed. By larger cities, by armies, by citizens too hungry for the meager meat of lamps and botanical gardens and commemorative war statues.
Or by something which has come to like its taste.
I suppose you could call me a cancer, a tumor tucked into the storm gutter, but it would be more apt to call me a creature of appetite.
Would you like to hear about my family? Every time I have come across one of you gem-gobbling peacocks, you immediately tell me who your mother is, or who your father is, or who your great-uncle on the distaff side is. I should offer no less—I had no mother, I had no father. Is not my pedigree immaculate?
There was a man, once, in a wood far from here. This man suffered a great hunger, suffered it the way some men suffer a wasting illness or an arrow in the foot. He was a man of some property, and before he was struck by his hunger, he was not unhandsome, and married well. His wife was lovelier than a year of Aprils, black of hair and eye. He was called Maciej; she was called Malgorzata.
Because of the fortunate match of Malgorzata, Maciej found himself in possession of a goodly number of tenant farmers, which for a time he treated as well as any lord may—which is to say, with neglect at all times save harvest, for at harvest all lords exhibit hunger beside which Maciej’s would seem but moderate and mild. But it came to pass that for three harvests the land was cruel and hard, and yielded up barely enough to feed all that tilled it, and the house on the hill had to satisfy itself with selling tapestries and suchlike in order to provide apples and pig flesh and cabbages.
In the fourth winter, there was no crop at all. Wind howled across the fields, bare and bristling as a new monk’s head. Maciej and his fair wife stared at an empty table, and so too did all of those who worked that land. It was difficult, as such times are. The last dairy cows had been slaughtered; the last egg chickens had been slurped to the bone. I would not like to tell you what the most wretched of them did to survive.
In the depths of this winter Maciej conceived a great hunger in him, conceived it the way some women will conceive a child. His belly snarled and lurched; he was blind with it, clutching at the very drapes to fill the hole in him. But fortune sometimes smiles on the suffering, and it was a rich, green spring, full of new lambs and new fields planted with seed and breeding pairs brought by sympathetic relatives of Malgorzata, who sent wagons from over the hills. Speechless with relief, Maciej ate, and ate. He paced his halls, his stomach gnawing caverns into itself, devouring apples and pig flesh and cabbages as quickly as he could—but there was no surcease for the unlucky lord! Yet he did not grow fat, for as quickly as he ate he was hungry again, his body burning so hot and bright that at night, the farmers needed no candles: the house on the hill was incandescent with the starving lord.
Finally, when harvest came again and with it the lord’s due, Malgorzata thought her husband would be sated. Into his mouth went cider and beer, hazelnuts and venison, apples and currants and sheep shanks. Into his belly went squash and pies and hollering chickens; into his gullet went beef knuckles and mushrooms and pigs by the wagon. When there was nothing left for the farmers to give over to the house on the hill before they starved themselves, fair Malgorzata, black of hair and eye, went to them and begged them to give over their animals to her husband’s hunger, which was now so great that mere vegetables and fruits could not touch it. All would be repaid, she promised—had her kin not supplied the spring when the winter was at its worst? They could survive winter; they knew this now.
At first, they surrendered ox and chicken, goat and goose, even horse and dog. All these Maciej ate at his groaning table, to bone and hoof—all save the teeth, which even he could not stomach. These teeth he tossed into a corner of his hall when he had sucked the marrow from their owners, and as the days wore on, the pile grew. His endless feast held no joy for him now: His belly burned and he could not slake it, could not even move from his creaking table. He wept as he ate, for he could not stop, and he hated the taste of gristle and bone—but he could not stop.
Before long their holdings were empty of snorting and bleating. Malgorzata sent to her distant kin for ever larger and more exotic creatures: elephants and tigers and wolves disappeared into the house on the hill, which lit the nights for miles as Maciej sat at his board, eating and weeping, eating and weeping. His jaw crushed leopard and lion, griffin and even the odd unicorn. He did not notice their taste, but he ate them all the same, and the house on the hill blazed.
But even this plenty could not last and the kin of Malgorzata refused to send more. There was nothing further to take from their holdings, and even the draperies had been stripped to feed the unfortunate lord. He had begun to gnaw at the cornices and baseboards, his tears falling from the cairn of teeth as he climbed atop it, trying to suckle at the reliefs of blossoming grapes that adorned the ceiling.
Softly, as was her way, Malgorzata drew him down and sat him at the table which had become the rack on which his bones cried out. He looked up at her with hunger-haggard eyes, red as plague and twice as hollow. He looked at her, ashamed, with hunger.
“It is all right, husband. I have known this day would come.”
She laid her hands on the table, smooth and tanned with her days beating blankets in the sun and begging livestock from threshold to threshold. She spread her fingers against the juice-stained grain of the wood.
“A woman may give her flesh as she pleases, and a lady owes no less than her people give. The lord takes equally, all from all. Take only my hands, and swear to me you will replace them.”
At first he would not, feigned horror at the very suggestion—but there were her hands, fingers splayed wide and firm on the table, and his mouth watered for her. She did not say a word, but also, she did not withdraw her hands. After a time, he brought out his carving knife, and, weeping all the while, severed his wife’s brown hands at the wrist.
Malgorzata did not weep.
He would not eat before his wife’s gaze, and crouched in the corner below the mountain of teeth like a whipped dog, sucking flesh from bone. When he was finished, he placed the chewed bones most tenderly in a reliquary of copper and opal, fingers delicately folded on a green cushion.
And for a while, the lord was sated. He was true, too, to his word, and made for his wife new and strange hands—for Maciej was a clever man before his hunger devoured him. He wove together hands of wicker, of hazel and red osier, green and pliant willow. He lashed them to her bruised stumps with leather and bolted the branches to her belt with fine, thin chain that looped and whorled through her skirts, so that she could move her arms as widely as before. To be sure, she moved oddly, her long wicker fingers clattering against dish and cheek, but she was much as she had been, and the house on the hill was quiet and dim at last.
But the time came again when Maciej was consumed. He hid it as long as he was able, but finally collapsed before his lady, the terrible light boiling all through him as he hungered. Fair Malgorzata, black of hair and eye, raised him up and said to him:
“It is better that I lose a limb than that the countryside lose all once more. Take only my feet, and swear to me you will replace them.”
This time he did not argue, but brought out his carving knife immediately, nocked and pitted as it was from the joints of so many creatures, and severed his wife’s feet at the ankle. As before, he would not eat before her gaze, but crouched in the corner before the mountain of teeth, sucking flesh from bone. When he was finished, he placed the chewed bones most tenderly in a reliquary of silver and malachite, toes delicately folded on a blue cushion.
And for a while, the lord was sated. He was true, too, to his word, and made for his wife new and strange feet—for Maciej was a resourceful man before his hunger devoured him. He wove together feet of wicker, of hazel and red osier, green and pliant willow. He lashed them to her bruised stumps with leather and bolted the branches to her belt with fine, thin chain that looped and whorled through her skirts, so that she could move her legs as widely as before. To be sure, she moved oddly, her long wicker toes clattering against floor and bedpost, but she was much as she had been, and the house on the hill was quiet and dim again.
But the time came again when the lord hungered. And again, fair Malgorzata, black of hair and eye, looked out onto the green fields and covered her face with her wicker hands, saying that it was better that she lose another limb than for the countryside to lose all once more. And she gave over her knees, her calves, her hips, her rib cage, her shoulders. Maciej fed and glowed and wept and fed again, and all the while Malgorzata’s body became a strange skeleton of branches, her chest a hollow cage, her back a ladder of wood. Behind these bars still beat her red, hot heart, and still she had her jaw and some part of her fair face—and both black eyes—though she had given over her left cheek to her husband’s need.
Finally, when Maciej starved once more, these things were all that were left, and Malgorzata walked her halls in a body of willow and hazel. He told himself he would not ask such a thing, that the rights of a lord have limits, that she had given more than any man could ask of his wife. But still, the hunger roiled in him, and after so much time the hunger burned for nothing but her. It was the dark of winter, and fair Malgorzata, who had nothing left of her black hair but a stiff fall of twigs, laid herself upon the old table and said:
“It is better that I lose these last than that I live to see my lord ravage his lands yet again. Take my heart and my face which once was fair, but swear to me you will replace them.”
Weeping bitterl
y, his hunger naked on his face, Maciej brought out his carving knife, darkened as its blade was from so much woman’s blood, and cut out his wife’s heart, and jaw, and fair black eyes. There was no gaze to meet, and he devoured his feast before her wicker frame. When he was finished, he placed the chewed bones most tenderly in a reliquary of gold and garnet, her jaw lying heavy on a red cushion.
And he made for her a wicker heart, and placed it behind her hazel-ribs.