The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski [60]
While mumbling her magic incantations, Olga’s face had always taken on changing expressions that aroused fright or respect. She rolled her eyes, shook her head rhythmically, and made elaborate movements with her arms and palms. In contrast, the priest, while saying the Mass, remained the same as in everyday life. He merely wore a different robe and spoke a different language.
His vibrant, sonorous voice seemed to buttress the dome of the church, even awakening the sluggish old women sitting in the tall pews. They would suddenly gather their drooping arms and with difficulty raise their wrinkled eyelids, resembling shriveled, heavy, late-cut peapods. The bleak pupils of their dimmed eyes would glance fearfully around, uncertain of where they were, until, finally beginning anew their rumination of the words from an interrupted prayer, they rocked back to sleep like wilted heather swayed by the wind.
The Mass was ending, the old women thronged the aisles, jockeying to reach the priest’s sleeve. The organ fell silent. At the door the organist greeted the priest warmly and gave me a sign with his hand. I had to return to work, to sweep the rooms, feed the cattle, prepare the meal.
Every time I came back from the pasture, the henhouse, or the stable, Garbos would take me into the house and practice, at first casually and then more eagerly, new ways of flogging me with a willow cane, or hurting me with his fists and fingers. My welts and cuts, having no chance to heal, turned into open sores, seeping yellow pus. At night I was so terrified of Judas that I could not sleep. Every slight noise, every creaking of the floorboards, would jolt me into attention. I stared into the impenetrable darkness, pressing my body into the corner of the room. My ears seemed to grow to the size of half-pumpkins, straining to catch any movement in the house or yard.
Even when I finally dozed off my sleep was disturbed by dreams of dogs howling through the countryside. I saw them lifting their heads to the moon, sniffing in the night, and I sensed my approaching death. Hearing their calls, Judas would sneak up to my bed and when he was quite close he would jump on me at Garbos’s command and maul me. The touch of his nails would make rising blisters on my body and the local man-of-cures would have to burn them out with a red-hot poker.
I would wake up screaming and Judas would start barking and jumping at the walls of the house. Garbos, half awake, would rush into the kitchen thinking thieves had broken into the farm. When he realized that I had yelled for no reason, he beat and kicked me until he was out of breath. I remained on the mat, bloody and bruised, afraid to fall asleep again and risk another nightmare.
In the daytime I went around in a daze and was beaten for neglecting my work. Sometimes I would fall asleep on the hay in the barn while Garbos looked for me everywhere. When he found me idling, it started all over 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