The Testament of Yves Gundron (48 page)

She said, “I don't know. I don't know where the nearest hospital is. It'll take two days to get to a phone to find out.”

“Let us see what the morning brings.”

I slaughtered a chicken in the barn. The other animals smelled first its fear and then its blood, and cried out in indignation. As Ruth boiled the warm carcass for her soup, I lay on the bed, my stomach to the back of my wife, my arm around both her and Elizaveta. Their bodies had begun to smell stale from sweat and lack of washing. This bed had already taken my father, mother, brothers, sister, first wife and child—it could not take one thing more. If need be, we could cart them to the hills and carry them on our backs to the other village. I had no more qualms about it if their lives would be saved.

I could not sleep that night, though Ruth and Mandrik slept well.
Friedl Vox was about the parish, ululating despite the blanket of snow, her shrill cry piercing the fragile silence of my home. The fear of death gripped my bowels, and I waited for the ghosts of the departed to come reassure me, to give me a sign—but they did not come. Neither could I give much succor to the sick, for they slept peacefully, though the fever ate at their flesh. The night expanded, grew so large it filled the weeks and centuries, and when I could no longer stand my home's closeness, I returned to the barn, where the gleaming eyes of my beasts told me they had expected my return, known from the beginning that I could not keep away. I placed my torch in the holder by Enyadatta's stall, and wrote as if the writing would save me, would save my whole family, if not from death, then from the terror of being forgotten.

In the morning, my brother set out around the village to tend to the sick. As he went from house to house ministering to the stricken, he read aloud at each stopping place this proclamation:

“In the midst of Darkness we are in Light, but lo! in the center of the light does there burn a rank and consuming darkness, and it burns with the heat of a thousand Suns, its one desire to consume. This world is in darkness. What, though enlightenment be ours and the breath of God animate every atom of our beings; what if we are his children, his image, and his fondest dreams? We are a vile and sickening lot. With so much Joy and Wonderment all around—hanging ripe for the picking from every tree, as well as lodged deep within the mind and heart—we turn always to our Darkest Selves, our ugliest instincts, and follow them wherever they may lead. Even in my solitude and my renunciation, how oft have I been tempted down the road to eternal ruin by no beckon louder than my own silent thought? If my own mind—my truest Companion since first I rocked in my mother's arms—can turn against me thus, imagine how many and various are the perils offered by the Devil, and by his Body and Spirit, this World. Think each poppy in the field a drop of poison, for who knows where its influence may lead you.

“Our forebears knew little of History. What need had they of facts and dates when they knew when the crops wanted gathering? What changed from father to son but the proper Name, and perhaps the tilt of the nose? We are the first men to have need of what came before; for without it, we cannot divine our destination, or what kind of progress we are making there toward. My own brother has set this deadly rock
in motion, and it will continue to roll downhill, past whatever comes into its path, until it comes to rest of its own accord.

“I urge you, my Brethren, to Caution and Reflection in the face of all that is new.”

I have been writing these two weeks now, night and day, hardly sleeping, eating what Ruth and my no-longer-holy brother bring me because I feel I must, not because I have any longer an ounce of appetite. The days grow shorter, palpably shorter—though the shortest day fast approaches, it will be months before they feel longer again. We are all of us together in this darkness. My wife and daughter yet lie abed—nor our prayers nor our physic will raise them, but neither have they chosen to walk among the dead. Our neighbors to the west have come twice now, bearing such devices as Ruth's countrymen bore, and with medicines for the sick, and women and men versed in the medicines. They have taken three of Ydlbert's sons across the water to a home for invalids where they may heal more quickly than those who hang in the balance here at home. Our newfound brethren are mad with questions, and everywhere they travel they send beams of light tearing through the countryside and our homes, which brightness strikes terror into my heart.

I am done my inventing. I have done too much already, if this be the result. If I have overstepped my bounds, then I pray that God is as merciful and kind as ever I supposed He must be, and that I will be spared the worst of this punishment. For now, I can hope only that this account, and Ruth's account, and my brother's fair treatise, will leave adequate record, no matter what may come of these individual lives, which are, in the end, as dross. I cannot stop thinking of my daughter's small hand, raised in farewell as Ruth's brother and sister left for the other world. I can only hope that her gesture sent forth, as surely she intended it to, our benedictions. For I have faith in God, and in the rightness of this world He has created. Surely, surely, it could not be any other way.

¹
Spirits of the North
,

Call the Demon forth
.

Spirits of the South
,

Draw it from the Mouth
.

Spirits of the East
,

Bring the Soul to Peace
.

Spirits of the West
,

Give the Soul her Rest
.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank the Michener-Copernicus Society and the Vogelstein Foundation for their generous financial support.

Many thanks to my editor, Ethan Nosowsky, and my agent, Eric Simonoff, for their insight, wit, patience, and good fellowship; to Laura Harger and Max Curry for helping to translate the primordial ooze into a legible early draft; and to Chris Adrian for being the kindest of readers.

And many, many thanks to my teachers, my family, and my friends.