Lapvona

by Ottessa Moshfegh

‘Beauty is the Devil’s shade,’ Jude said.

Since he was little, a scraped knee or a whipped back, anything to make his body hurt, felt like the hand of God upon him.

She had indeed seen death and she was not afraid of it. What scared her were other people and their immovable selfishness.

When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn’t know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.

She smiled and sniffed at the sooted air. ‘Take off his clothes and burn them in the fire. Then chop him into pieces.’ Jude recognized her madness. It was the same insanity that he’d seen in Agata while she was in labor with Marek, a female power, evil, something he would never understand.

Perhaps this was a dream, he thought. But his dreams were usually more dreamy. It struck him now that his dreams were never quite right. They seemed to occur in a space without time, in death, he thought. He heard a night bird sing its aeolian melody. That was the problem, he realized. He did not dream of birds. Without birds, there was no time.

‘My father will not know that I’ve brought him these plums.’

But such was death—it had nothing to say.

Would his father be whole again in heaven?

But God wasn’t listening. God didn’t care about Jude. God was busy lifting the sun for another day.

Dibra learned a little of Luka’s faith and why the servants worshipped only by night. ‘The stars are God’s, Luka told her. ‘How else do you explain such light in the darkness?’

She was, to him, a holy grace, far more powerful than any priest or nun. God lived in her eyes. That was how he had fallen for her—like a religious conversion. It had struck him the moment he’d seen her, a profound, eternal love, the kind that occurred by cause of fate, against reason.

Nobody had loved him before.

the young lovers spoke to one another like a prayer: a silent song floated between them, a duet of devotion. And the song had played ever since in Luka’s mind.

he was wholly committed to Dibra, far more seriously than she was to him. She was a married woman, after all. She had to be practical and careful. Luka understood this, sneaking silently into her chambers after everyone was fast asleep. He tried to keep to himself around the estate, as if his very existence was a secret.

Perhaps hell is a tiny place, a single flame, Clod thought now. The thought moved him, and he imagined the pureness of the flame as he gazed through the darkness at the candelabra. Just one flame could contain all the evil that has come and gone.

Finally the larger animals returned—bears and wolves, who paraded around at night with human bones in their mouths. Nobody remarked on this. The rains had washed the blood off their hands and refilled the streams.

Vuna and Jon were not free. Their idea of life was to work the land and worship, and to have another child who could work the land and worship when they were gone. Their only anxiety was in what the land would produce for them. Didn’t they know that the land was God itself, the sun and moon and rain, that it was all God?

No. Jude couldn’t even think of it. He pushed Agata from his mind. The pregnant nun Villiam had married only resembled a girl he once knew, and she herself was a nobody. His memory of her was only a fixing of his mind upon a dream on a lonely night. He told himself that he knew nothing about her, cared nothing. She was ugly now, anyway.

There was no right way to deal with grief, of course. When God gives you more than you can tolerate, you turn to instinct. And instinct is a force beyond anyone’s control.

And what did Grigor really want from Villiam? An apology? All lords were corrupt. If he wanted to live freely, he would have to live like Ina lived, in a hovel. Poverty had its limitations, but if you had nothing, there was nothing to be stolen.

‘This is the trouble with women,’ Jon replied, his heart curdling against hers. ‘They would rather lie and pretend all is well and let the men

Perhaps it is most miraculous when God exacts justice even when no human lifts a finger. Or perhaps it is simply fate. Everything seems reasonable in hindsight. Right or wrong, you will think what you need to think so that you can get by. So find some reason here:

Without the church bells, the days had a wistful magic to them in the village.

‘Don’t worry,’ Marek said. ‘Death is not the end. You shall rise. What are the birds but angels? You will never have to walk among the monsters. It’s much better up there. You’ll see, you’ll see. You will be so happy and free, you’ll sing.’