again.
I came to the conclusion that Garbos’s seemingly unmotivated fits of rage must have some mysterious cause. I recalled the magic incantations of Marta and Olga. They were meant to influence diseases and such things that had no obvious connection with the magic itself. I decided to observe all the circumstances accompanying Garbos’s attacks of fury. Once or twice I thought I had detected a clue. On two consecutive occasions I was beaten immediately after scratching my head. Who knows, perhaps there was some connection between the lice on my head, which were undoubtedly disturbed in their normal routine by my searching fingers, and Garbos’s behavior. I immediately stopped scratching, even though the itching was unbearable. After two days of leaving the lice alone I was beaten again. I had to speculate anew.
My next guess was that the gate in the fence leading to the clover field had something to do with it. Three times after I went through that gate Garbos called me to him and slapped me when I approached him. I concluded that some hostile spirit was crossing my path at the gate and inciting Garbos against me. I decided to avoid the evil one at the gate by scrambling over the fence. This hardly improved matters. Garbos could not understand why I took time to climb over a high fence instead of taking the short route through the gate. He thought I was mocking him on purpose and I got an even worse beating.
He suspected me of malice and tormented me ceaselessly. He amused himself by jabbing a hoe handle between my ribs. He threw me into beds of nettles and thorny bushes, and afterwards laughed at the way I scratched the stings on my skin. He threatened that if I continued to be disobedient he would hold a mouse on my belly as husbands did to unfaithful wives. This terrified me more than anything else. I visualized a mouse under a glass cup on top of my belly button. I could feel the indescribable agony as the trapped rodent gnawed its way through my navel and into my entrails.
I pondered various ways of casting a spell on Garbos, but nothing seemed feasible. One day, when he tied my foot to a stool and tickled it with an ear of rye, I recalled one of old Olga’s stories. She had told me of a moth with a death’s-head pattern on its body that was similar to the one I had seen on the uniform of the German officer. If one caught such a moth and breathed on it three times the death of the oldest member of the household would shortly follow. That is why young married couples, awaiting their inheritance from living grandparents, spent many nights chasing after these moths.
After that I made a habit of wandering about the house at night when Garbos and Judas were asleep, opening windows to let the moths in. They came in swarms, starting an insane dance of death around the flickering flame, colliding with each other. Others flew into the flame and were burnt alive or stuck in the melting wax of the candle. It was said that Divine Providence had changed them into various creatures and in every new incarnation they had to endure the sufferings most appropriate to their species. But I was little concerned with their penance. I was looking for just one moth, though I had to wave my candle in the window and invite them all in. The light of the candle and my movements startled Judas and his barking woke up Garbos. He sneaked up behind me. Seeing me, candle in hand, jumping all over the room with a swarm of flies, moths, and other insects, he was convinced that I was practicing some sinister Gypsy rite. On the following day I received exemplary punishment.
But I did not give up. After many weeks, just before dawn, I finally caught the desired moth with the strange markings. I breathed on it carefully three times and then let it go. It fluttered around the stove for a few moments and then vanished. I knew that Garbos had only a few days to live. 1 looked at him with pity. He had no idea that his executioner was on the way from a strange limbo inhabited by disease, pain, and death. Perhaps it was already in the house, waiting eagerly to cut the thread of his life as a sickle cuts a frail stalk. I did not mind being beaten as I stared intently at his face, looking for the signs of death in his eyes. If he only knew what was awaiting him.
However, Garbos continued to look quite strong and healthy. On the fifth day, when I began to suspect that death was neglecting its duties, I heard Garbos cry out in the barn. I rushed there, hoping to find him breathing his last and calling for the priest, but he was only bending over the dead body of a small turtle he had inherited from his grandfather. It had been quite tame and lived in its own corner of the barn. Garbos was proud of this turtle because it was the oldest creature in the whole village.
Eventually I exhausted all the possible means of bringing about his end. Garbos in the meantime invented new ways of persecuting me. Sometimes he hung me by the arms on a branch of the oak tree, leaving Judas loose underneath. Only the appearance of the priest in his dogcart caused him to discontinue that game.
The world seemed to close over my head like a massive stone vault. I thought of telling the priest what was going on, but I was afraid he would just admonish Garbos and give him a chance to beat me again for complaining. For a while I planned to escape from the village, but there were many German outposts in the neighborhood and I was afraid that, if I was caught by them again, they would take me for a Gypsy bastard, and then who knows what might happen to me.
One day I heard the priest explaining to an old man that for certain prayers God granted from one hundred to three hundred days of indulgence. When the peasant failed to understand the meaning of these words, the priest went into a long exposition. From all this I understood that those who say more prayers earn more days of indulgence, and that this was also supposed to have an immediate influence on their lives; in fact, the greater the number of prayers offered, the better one would live, and the smaller the number, the more troubles and pain one would have to endure.
Suddenly the ruling pattern of the world was revealed to me with beautiful clarity. I understood why some people were strong and others weak, some free and others enslaved, some rich and others poor, some well and others sick. The former had simply been the first to see the need for prayer and for collecting the maximum number of days of indulgence. Somewhere, far above, all these prayers coming from earth were properly classified, so that every person had his bin where his days of indulgence were stored.
I saw in my mind the unending heavenly pastures full of bins, some big and bulging with days of indulgence, others small and almost empty. Elsewhere I could see unused bins to accommodate those who, like myself, had not yet discovered the value of prayer.
I stopped blaming others; the fault was mine alone, I thought. I had been too stupid to find the governing principle of the world of people, animals, and events. But now there was order in the human world, and justice too. One had only to recite prayers, concentrating on the ones carrying the greatest number of days of indulgence. Then one of God’s aides would immediately note the new member of the faithful and allocate to him a place in which his days of indulgence would start accumulating like sacks of wheat piled up at harvest time. I was confident in my strength. I believed that in a short while I would collect more days of indulgence than other people, that my bin would fill quickly, and that heaven would have to assign me a larger one; and even that would overflow, and I would need a bigger one, as big as the church itself.
Feigning casual interest, I asked the priest to show me the prayer book. I quickly noted the prayers marked with the largest number of indulgence days and asked him to teach them to me. He was somewhat surprised by my preference for some prayers and indifference to others, but he agreed and read them to me several times. I made an effort to concentrate all the powers of my mind and body in memorizing them. I soon knew them perfectly. I was ready to start a new life. I had all that was needed and gloried in the knowledge that the days of punishment and humiliation would soon be past. Until now I had been a small bug that anyone might squash. From now on the humble bug would become an unapproachable bull.
There was no time to lose. Any spare moment could be used for one more prayer, thus earning additional days of indulgence for my heavenly account. I would soon be rewarded with the Lord’s grace, and Garbos would not torment me any more.
I now devoted my entire time to prayers. I rattled them off quickly, one after another, occasionally slipping in one that carried fewer days of indulgence. I did not want heaven to think that I neglected the more humble prayers completely. After all, one could not outwit the Lord.
Garbos could not understand what had happened to me. Seeing me continuously mumbling something under my breath and paying little attention to his threats, he suspected that I was casting Gypsy spells on him. I did not want to tell him the truth. I was afraid that in some unknown manner he might forbid me to pray or, even worse, as a Christian of older standing than myself, use his influence in heaven to nullify my prayers or perhaps divert some of them to his own undoubtedly empty bin.
He started to beat me more often. Sometimes when he asked me something and I was in the middle of a prayer I would not answer him immediately, anxious not to lose the days of indulgence which I was just earning. Garbos thought I was getting impudent and wanted to break me down. He was also afraid that I might get bold enough to tell the priest about the beatings. Thus my life was spent alternately praying and being beaten.
