“My grandmother knew the term . . . a singer, and leader in songs. She keeps the village’s memory, its stories.”
“Its fairy tales?” She nodded. I conjured a smile, no doubt forced, but intended only to cheer. “Perfect for you, then, my love.”
The look she gave me in return was odd, however. “One might think so,” was all she said.
From then on things progressed quickly, or at least seemed so, from where I stood—out of the compass of the action, wholly dependent on Dr. R— for any sense of what might be happening, or why.
We were received the next morning by the Kantorka herself, a withered and feeble old woman with a great pile of embroidered cloth on her blind, nodding head, ensconced in a veritable witch’s cottage at the edge of town. The same girl as before attended her, continually simmering something vile-smelling in an iron pot over a smoking fire, watching as her mistress and Iris conversed while Dr. R— translated for me, careful to keep his voice to a polite whisper.
“You are troubled by the Noon-Witch’s touch,” this wretch of a peasant mountebank told my darling, “and you will be troubled always, for those She has set her eye upon” . . . and yes, I heard the capital letter used here, blasphemous and awful . . . “will never again be free from her influence, except that they find their true vocation and keep to it. Do you do the work you are intended for, my girl?”
“I do the only work I can do, old mother.”
“Well, then.”
“But is there nothing else to say? We have come a long way, my husband and I.”
The old woman seemed to assess me, shrewdly. “I can see he loves you dearly, daughter, and that his intentions are good, but these are matters only women should deal with, not men, or outsiders. As to the other, only She can say. Yet if you make an offering at the procession tomorrow, She may yet consider your case favourably.”
“Ah, and now comes the request for cash, which—luckily enough—I have in ready supply,” I muttered to Dr. R—, who hushed me, quickly.
The procession they spoke of is an annual event, apparently, aimed at placating this aforementioned “Noon-Witch,” some spectre or pagan goddess, said to haunt the fields at harvest-time. The crop in this case is rye, winter-planted, which reaches full growth at the summer solstice; this ceremony must be performed before they start to reap, or dire consequences will result. Dr. R— told me that before Christianity took hold, the fields in question were known as the Place of Burying, where (rumour has it) Sorbians were once wont to entomb decrepit family members alive, “feeding” the earth, so as to keep it fertile.
(I recall how my darling told me a similar tale during our courtship days, having learned it at her own beloved grandmother’s knee, along with many more: of the Wodny Muz or water-man, who tempts bathers into his lake, where he pulls them down to the bottom to drown; of the Dusiolek or Forest Strangler; the Zmora, a female creature who kills people in their sleep; the Strzyga, a flying monster that swoops down on people and carries them off, dropping their half-devoured parts from a great height, and the Cmeter, who digs up people’s corpses from graveyards, and eats them.)
Such terrible things to tell a child, or anyone. Was that venerable unfortunate of the same lineage as this Kantorka, or are such horrible fables what all Wendish children receive with their mother’s milk, thus explaining from where her father’s seemingly unnatural bloodthirstiness truly stemmed?
But no, I cannot think that, and so risk tarring my Iris with the same foul brush. Not when she is so dear, so tender, so terribly feeling, always—for others, if not for herself.
I will forbid her to participate in such folly, and she will obey, I thought to myself, knowing in my heart both statements to be a lie, since I have never exerted my husbandly prerogative over her in such a fashion, nor will I ever. So to Dr. R— I said instead, “I cannot let her go there alone, unprotected, amongst these people . . . they are hardly trustworthy, with their strange beliefs; I will not have it. Yet gold cures all things, as the old saying goes, and marriage makes my blood hers, as hers is mine. Surely, if I offer to pay my way—given their obvious poverty—they cannot seek to bar me access.”
To this, however, he simply shook his head, replying, “My friend, in some places money truly is no object, especially where faith is involved . . . this being one, as you may well find yourself forced to realize.”
I paused for a minute, feeling light-headed and pukey, only to realize that was because I must’ve actually stopped breathing some time back, caught up in poor old Mr. Whitcomb’s narrative. I made myself take a long, measured sip of air, which immediately improved everything, before continuing on.
He had the right of it, of course. I would have followed her into that nodding thicket of stalks, but they held me back. I am unashamed to say it took several of them to do so effectively; I fought them with all the strength at my disposal, for which not a few of the bastards commended me, in their way. My ultimate overthrow, I lay at the feet of the last man to join their number, my height but far wider, a veritable upright bull who so expertly slipped his arm around my collar and choked me into unconsciousness like some slaughterhouse ram drove mad by fright, yet gently enough that I woke with barely a bruise in the aftermath.
I remember seeing the Kantorka leading my Iris by one sleeve, her latest canvas tucked beneath her other arm, with the old wretch herself piloted by that assistant of hers as the hot morning sun turned the tops of the rye to gold. The procession—made up entirely of girls and women of all ages, similarly dressed in crossed-front blouses, long, flounced skirts, and high-piled headdresses of fringed, bright-stitched scarves—was led by a looming creature who might have been either one masked mummer propped up on stilts or a puppet manipulated by several revellers concealed beneath its train, like some Chinese New Year’s dragon or pantomime horse.
The face of this thing was no doubt intended to seem feminine, fashioned with horrid skill from a dried, painted lattice of braided husks and other vegetable matter; its hair was a pelt or hide, falling to graze the shoulders of its cloak, whose panels were pinned all over with brass or silver tokens, glass beads, any manner of mirror or tinsel, throwing back the light in such a way as to look almost on fire.
One naked human hand I saw upraised claw-like, while the other hung down, slim fingers white-gripped around the hilt of a sword much like the one my darling’s accursed father supposedly beat out of ploughshares—almost a full three feet in length and so heavy it dragged behind, carving a furrow through the crop-dusted earth below.
I watched as they took her into the fields, those witches, my sight fading, even as I waited in vain for her return.
Here I paused again, the same weird feeling mounting, like bile in my mouth.
Because here it was, wasn’t it? At last. The image that’d haunted Mrs. Wh
itcomb the rest of her life, become the centrepiece of paintings, murals, movies alike: Lady Midday, Poludnice, the Noontime Spectre herself, shouldering her way through the crops to inquire of some unlucky farmer whether or not he was comfortable with his given task, whether or not he wished himself elsewhere. Whether or not he could feel his attention . . . slipping.
That blazing cloak, that great, sharp sword, that hidden face. And the sun staring down overtop it all, hot and pitiless, a naked white eye in an equally naked sky.
But now Mr. Whitcomb was “talking” once more.
Dr. R— cautions me to control myself, if only for her sake—set an example, as a man must, for his helpmeet’s support—but I find it
(Here came another smear, perhaps two piled on top of each other and violently abraded, the paper beneath creased or possibly torn.)