The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski [63]
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.
I muttered prayers continuously from dawn to dusk, losing count of the days of indulgence I was earning, but almost seeing their pile constantly rising until some of the saints, stopping on their strolls through the heavenly pastures, looked approvingly at the flocks of prayers soaring up from earth like sparrows—all coming from a small boy with black hair and black eyes. I visualized my name being mentioned at the councils of angels, then at those of some minor saints, later at those of major saints, and so closer and closer to the heavenly throne.
Garbos thought that I was losing respect for him. Even when he was beating me harder than usual, I did not lose time but continued collecting my days of indulgence. After all, pain came and went, but the indulgences were in my bin forever. The present was bad precisely because I had not known earlier about such a marvelous way of improving my future. I could not afford to lose any more time; I had to make up for lost years.
Garbos was now convinced that I was in a Gypsy trance which could bring no good. I swore to him that I was only praying, but he did not believe me.
His fears were soon confirmed. One day a cow broke through the barn door and went into a neighbor’s garden, causing considerable damage. The neighbor was furious and rushed into Garbos’s orchard with an ax and cut down all the pear and apple trees in revenge. Garbos was sleeping dead drunk, and Judas was helplessly straining at his chain. To complete the disaster a fox got into the henhouse the next day and killed some of the best laying hens. That same evening, with one stroke of his paw, Judas massacred Garbos’s pride, a fine turkey he had purchased recently at great expense.
Garbos broke down completely. He got drunk on homemade vodka and revealed to me his secret. He would have killed me long ago had he not been afraid of St. Anthony, his patron. He knew, too, that I had counted his teeth and that my death would cost him many years of his life. Of course, he added, if Judas should kill me accidentally, then he would be perfectly safe from my spells and St. Anthony would not punish him.
In the meantime the priest was sick at the vicarage. He apparently caught a cold in the chilly church. He was lying in a fevered and hallucinatory state in his room, talking to himself or to God. I once took the vicar some eggs, a gift from Garbos. I climbed on the fence to see the vicar. His face was pale. His older sister, a short, buxom woman with her hair piled in a bun, was fussing about the bed and the local wise woman was letting his blood and applying leeches which grew plump as soon as they fastened on his body.
I was astonished. The priest must have accumulated an extraordinary number of days of indulgence during his pious life, and yet here he was lying sick like anybody else.
A new priest arrived at the vicarage. He was old, bald, and had a very thin, parchmentlike face. He wore a violet