Lapvona

by Ottessa Moshfegh

A clear blue sky was hard to take. Marek saw it as emptiness, a place with no heaven in it. He preferred the clouds because he could imagine paradise behind them.

The ram seemed indestructible. And he was strangely complicit in his own imprisonment.

Jude felt sorry for the ewes and fed them extra wheat when they were with child. But he hadn’t felt so sorry for Agata.

His sucking did not restore her vision, but by now Ina was tired of looking at things anyway. She had seen it all.

At her age, in her loneliness, her mind was like a memory of a mind, echoes of birdsong. She’d done everything so many times in her life, she drifted between now and then, often getting lost in between.

Marek liked birds because he felt they were liminal creatures between heaven and Earth, and by liking them he was aligning himself with ascension. Jacob liked them for the way they looked.

‘What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.’

He envied the eyeless horse in a way, that it required and received so much careful attention, like a babe, and that it was blind to the disturbed looks on the other horses’ faces. Creatures were cruel.

‘Open up your heart,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid it’s broken.’ ‘If I was knocking at your door, would you open it?’ ‘I would, of course.’ ‘Even if the door was broken.’ ‘I would try.’