He told the men to prepare for their departure, and at the door to the woman’s hut he told Amiel they would soon leave the farm. He told her also that she must not speak to him again because he was not an immortal but a knight of Christ and his will was not his own.
Now in his confession he put to St Michael this frustration and impotence: A sin of the heart if not the body, dear Lord, and for all of that a greater sin.
For now there was a burning, an ache more heated and more urgent than that physical ache he had known which, no matter how much he drank the unction the woman had made for him, grew stronger by the day. He knew this must be so, since Ovid had said that such a pain could not be cured with herbs.
The woman’s father-in-law had sought him out. Some days before he had set himself the task of mending Etienne’s boots and these he had returned to him when Etienne was filling the water troughs. The old man Iacob had told him, ‘Do not trust a wolf cub, Lord, for it will always become wolf, even if it is suckled among the sons of man,’ and left him to his thoughts.
Etienne was paused thinking this through, and it brought a sorrow to his heart, to the very core of his being, where his muscles moved against his bones. He tried not to think on it but the more he pondered the more he resolved that the man had entered his soul and had discerned a wolf there, wishing to be a faithful dog.
Now gazing at all his transgressions he fell to the floor, hands outstretched to form a living cross. In this way he asked St Michael to forgive the woman since she was a Jewess who could have no real knowledge of his life and the rigours of his vows and, in the balance, was not responsible for his weakness and his failure in duty. And secondly, he asked that he might look upon the little family from time to time when Etienne was gone from them and see to their safety. This he gathered under the name of his beloved Lord Jesus Christ and turned his attention to his own sins, the forgiveness of which he found it improper to ask. Instead he made penance by saying thirteen Pater Nosters and seven Hail Marys and waited for a word or a sign that he was heard.
Whether St Michael heard him he did not know, for at that moment there was a loud, familiar silence that tightened his chest. A scream as quiet as growing plants over the ground, whose message, coming from the direction of the house, was instantly recognised by him.
It was Amiel, the woman. The sound in his mind made him gasp and the limbs of his body became pinpricked in a provocation to terror.
It was the voice of the woman’s soul in its dying thoughts, as they were directed towards his soul, and the soul of her child.
SECOND NIGHT
THIRD DAY
REMEMBERING
Maybe one day it will be cheering to remember
even these things.
Virgil, AENEID
Lockenhaus, July 2006
The old woman paused. ‘I must go now,’ she said and collected her cards. Without a backward glance she disappeared into the mouth of the little shop, leaving me once again, alone with the portal, the lime trees and the visitors who, having parked their cars, were making their slow way up the avenue dressed in their finest for tonight’s concert.
I took myself to the hotel room. The ghostly melody of Shostakovich’s fifteenth symphony found me as I dined on cabbage strudel and Burgenland wine. I sat back and listened, letting my tired mind rest a little before tackling the task of reconstructing the story.
But I was tired and fell asleep.
I woke the next morning to the bells announcing mass in the village. My limbs were aching and I felt a deep frustration that seemed to have no cause, or at least no cause that I understood.
I answered my emails, made my phone call to the children, showered and dressed. It was still early when I walked out into the courtyard outside the bistro. The tables stood stripped of their tablecloths and deserted. It looked strangely sad.
The old woman was tired this day. Her eyes were sunk into shadows and she surprised me by saying she would not open her shop but would sit one last time with me, without disruption.
It was already hot and bees droned in the flowerbeds and in the long grass. Above our heads hawks made their squeaks and from the shrubs and trees there came the chatter of birds. I observed her as she laid down her cards, always the same way. Today she wore a floral dress but it did not cheer her countenance. She made a shiver as the warm breeze stirred the lime trees and made them move in soft waves. She looked up to them and I saw her face crease in age-worn concern.
It occurred to me then that I would forever have a longing to return here, to see those lime trees and to hear that voice: a longing full of leftover feelings and unfinished words.
‘Shall we start?’ she interrupted my thoughts. She was staring at me with that familiar intense regard.