Lapvona

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Jude never let on that Marek’s face had an unseemly disproportion; the boy’s forehead was high and veiny, his nose bulbous and skewed, his cheeks flat and pale, his lips thin, his chin a stub giving way to a neck that was wrinkled and soft, like a drape of skin over his throat, which was flabby at the apple. ‘Beauty is the Devil’s shade,’ Jude said. *

Of course, he and his father never marked the occasion as the day of his birth, but the day of Agata’s death. Her absence hung over both of them like a hovering bird. Marek felt the bird wasn’t close enough, that it was just out of reach, that if it descended a bit farther he could grab hold of its foot and it would take him away, fly him to some better place. And Jude felt the bird was too close. If he looked up at it, it would scratch his eyes out. The difference was that Jude had known Agata. And he knew the truth about her absence. All Marek knew was that she had given her life for his own, like any good mother would do.

The survivors became infected with fear and greed. Guilt was extinct in Lapvona thereafter.

the darkness was a benefit to Ina’s heart.

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.

Ina thought maybe Marek was something like her, attuned to a different nature.

he had been right to act with violent hatred against the boy the night before: Marek was a pest. His mother had been smart to abandon him, and God knew it was Jude’s great sacrifice to allow the creature to live out his meaningless life. As usual, Marek was heartened by his father’s renewed disdain, as this made God love him more through pity.

At her age, in her loneliness, her mind was like a memory of a mind, echoes of birdsong.

indignation.

Never in Jacob’s fourteen years had he seen the lord so much as clear his throat in anger. Even at his most impulsive and cruel, his father spoke with humor, as though it were all a game. When news reached Villiam that a bandit had been captured and put in the pillory, he simply laughed and told the guards to have good fun at the hanging. ‘It isn’t every day that we get to play keepers of the peace.’ And he wanted to hear all the details: How big was the crowd, were people crying, did they throw any food of value? Did they go back to work right away? ‘Tell the villagers that God wants them to redouble their faith now, and that this spring harvest will be a testament to their goodness in the face of villainy. And let the bandit hang for a day. Good if some birds come and peck at him or something. That will make people feel that justice has been paid.’

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.

It seems only with the appearance of Jacob that the level of language and word usage has elevated.

Marek knew Jude was already tired from the work of being enraged last night, so this new rage would be a passive rage, one that was too steely and cold to come out with the passion of violence, but would be pure evil.

ameliorated

Marek also sought pity as comfort

There was something in their temperament that made them especially well suited to amoral servitude. Villiam never tried to hide his cruelty or silliness around them. This was what saved him from fear of God’s judgment.

Ina was still alive but had been reduced to a crumpling of skin and bones in the corner of her bed. Her body had flattened, deflated. Only her skull had any volume. Her face hung on it like an old rag from a nail. Her blind eyes opened, spreading the wrinkles.

Dibra didn’t like nuns. She didn’t like their modesty. Once she had married Villiam, she refused to wear a cap over her head. Her long blond hair was wild and curly and bristly, and she liked to feel it swing as she walked. Modesty was boring, Dibra thought. Perhaps this was something she had absorbed from her husband—an irritation with anything too fussy in its purity. Marek was guilty of that fussiness. Dibra disliked him for so many reasons. Everything about him was a needy, arrogant demand for pity. He always looked up at Dibra with big, sad eyes, expecting what—a warm embrace? Forgiveness? She had nothing to return but cold disgust. He was scared of her, and she was glad.

but she felt no pity or compassion for the boy. No pity or compassion would she ever feel. Not for Marek, or for anyone.

Once Villiam caught his breath, he thanked the nun, promised her fine hospitality as long as she cared to stay, and then went on eating, a bit more carefully this time, engaging the priest in a long discussion of hell, its landscape, its economy, what kind of house the Devil lived in, how he managed his servants, and how he had escaped into the realm of Earth. And then he asked, as though he might be serious, ‘How long will God keep heaven’s gate closed? Hypothetically speaking.’ Then he chuckled. And then he frowned. ‘Honestly, Father, how much longer until the heat backs down?’

The section is moving about dramatically. You have the king choking on food, personifying the tension in the reader because you don’t know who is noticing the relationship first, marek or his mother. The anticipation is killer.

He never spoke to her as though she had a mind, but like something to operate, like a clock or compass.

Clod was an artist, a servant to beauty and his own imagination. He had no allegiance to humanity at all.

Their minds were connected by a rod of energy, like a stroke of fine lightning that ceaselessly vibrated.

He didn’t believe that a nun was something holy—the servants’ faith did not recognize holiness in human beings. They didn’t care for Jesus. Flesh was mortal. God was not. God was not alive. God was life itself. And life was invisible. This was why Clod felt he had to make art, to give proof of life. Clod knew as well as the other servants that Villiam was a sinner, the priest a heretic. But a person should never judge someone else’s faith. Nobody knows the truth.

Just the image of the white light, the way it swayed in the slow breeze floating through the manor, that was what mattered to him. If he could draw that, he thought, and make the picture move somehow, that would be interesting. He could suspend the drawing from a string and let the wind push it to and fro.

Love this imagery

fire hurts to the touch. Fire gives light. Shouldn’t the darkness hurt instead? Hell ought to be pure darkness. Nothingness.

‘Go to hell,’ Marek said into the darkness. ‘Maybe you’ll be happy there.’

eating as an act of ritual, worship. God was infinite, so just a symbol counted. To eat more than a single leaf of cabbage was greedy, akin to asking for proof of God from God Himself.

Faith is as a discipline.

She thought, maybe he is waiting for me, enacting a plan that I was deaf to hear in my sorrow.

Love this description

It was vain to keep your skin so close to the bone.

a song for Jacob. It began slowly, evenly, two notes playing back and forth, comfortably, like easy voices in a garden. Then a third note came in and overtook the melody.

fecund

The cold of autumn arrived. If you asked anyone, the Devil had gone back to hell.

cynicism to distrust anyone who claimed to have special powers.

Now he knew he had been working, in fact, to make heaven on Earth for the lord above. Of all the residents of the village, Grigor alone questioned the rations delivered back in August. Where did they come from?

‘People don’t like it when the truth is easy,’ Jude said. ‘Let them think what they want.’