And they, as if fathoming him from afar, gathered certainty of expression, and their masks became more severe with every day.
Then one August night, while he was leaning out of his window, enduring the crucifying gazes of their hateful eyes, the immobile faces suddenly became animated; in each flashed simultaneously the same will. Hundreds of pale, thin hands raised themselves in a movement of command, and scores of bony fingers made beckoning motions … .
Wrzesmian understood: he was being summoned inside. As if hypnotized he leaped over the windowsill, crossed the narrow street, jumped over the railing, and began to walk along the alley to the villa … .
It was four in the morning, the hour before dawn’s tremblings. The magnesium jets of the moon bathed the house in a silver whirlpool, luring long shadows from its curves. The path was a dazzling white in the midst of sorrowful shrub walls. The hollow echo of Wrzesmian’s steps reverberated on the stone slabs, as the fountains rippled quietly and their bent waters drizzled with unsolved mystery … . He went up the terrace and jerked strongly on the door handle: the door gave way. He walked along a lengthy corridor of two rows of Corinthian columns. The darkness brightened the glory of the moon, whose beams, pouring through a stained-glass panel at the end of the gallery, unreeled green fables onto porphyritic floor tiles … .
Suddenly, as he was walking, a figure emerged from behind the shaft of a column and followed him. Wrzesmian shuddered but silently went on. A couple of steps further a new figure detached itself from a niche between two columns; then a third, and a fourth…a tenth – all followed him. He wanted to turn back, but they blocked his way. He crossed the forest of columns and swerved to the right, into some circular hall. It was illuminated by the shimmering moon and crowded with strange people. He slipped between them, looking for an exit. In vain! They surrounded him in an increasingly closed circle. From pale, bloodless lips flowed out a menacing whisper:
‘It’s him! It’s him!’
He stopped and looked defiantly at the throng:
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Your blood! We want your blood! Blood! Blood!’
‘What do you want it for?’
‘We want to live! We want to live! Why did you call us out from the chaos of non-existence and condemn us to be miserable half-corporeal vagrants? Look at how weak and pale we are!’
‘Mercy!’ he wailed, desperately throwing himself toward a winding staircase in the depth of the hall.
‘Hold him! Surround him! Surround him!’
With the speed of a madman he ascended the stairs to the upper floor and burst into a medieval chamber. But his oppressors entered after him. Their slender arms, their fluid, damp hands joined in a macabre line.
‘What did I do to you?’
‘We want full life! You confined us to this house, you wretch! We want to go out into the world; we want to be released from this place to live in freedom! Your blood will fortify us, your blood will give us strength! Strangle him! Strangle him!’
Thousands of hungry mouths extended toward him, thousands of pale, sucking lips.
In a crazy reflex he flung himself toward the window, ready to jump out. A legion of slimy, cold hands seized him by the waist, dug crooked hook-like fingers into his hair, wrung his neck. He struggled desperately. Someone’s fingernails cut into his larynx, someone’s lips fastened to his temple … .
He staggered, supported himself on the embrasure with his shoulders, and leaned back. His convulsively extended arms spread out in a sacrificial movement; a weary smile of fulfilment crept over his whitened lips – he was already dead … .
At the moment when the interior cooled with the agonized throes of Wrzesmian’s body, the pre-dawn silence was interrupted by a dull ripple. It came from the vat at the corner of the house. The surface of the water, mouldy from the green scum, seethed; inside the rotten barrel, encompassed by rusty hoops, swirls rose, refuse undulated, sediment gurgled. A couple of large, distended bubbles escaped, and a misshapen stump of a hand appeared. Some sort of torso or framework emerged from the depth, dripping with water, covered with mould and a cadaverous putridity – maybe a man, beast or plant. This monstrosity glinted its amazed face toward the sky, opened spongy lips wide in a vague imbecilic-enigmatic smile, extracted from the vat legs twisted as a thicket of coral, and, shaking the water off, started to walk with an unsteady, swinging step … .
Daybreak had already arrived; violet luminosities slithered about the boundless regions of the world.
The monstrosity was heading toward the deep-blue forest on the distant horizon. It opened the gate in the garden, hobbled on bowlegs along a narrow path, and, drenched in the amethystine streams of morning twilight, tottered toward fields and meadows slumbering in daybreak’s obscurity. Slowly, the freakish figure diminished, became diluted, and started to expire … until it dissolved, dispersing in the gleams of early dawn … .
A TALE OF THE GRAVEDIGGER
For two years after the mysterious disappearance of Giovanni Tossati, gravedigger of the main cemetery in Foscara, the town’s inhabitants, particularly those settled near the place of eternal rest, complained of continual disturbance by the souls of the dead. Apparently, one group was tormented by all sorts of nightmares, another group had the onset of sleep blocked by phantoms, while others were bothered during the evening by ghosts moving about noisily from room to room. Masses conducted in these houses and exorcisms carried out by the bishop over the graves didn’t help. On the contrary, the unrest flowing from the main cemetery seemed to spread, almost infectiously, to other cemeteries, and soon the entire city fell victim to the capricious deceased.
Only the arrival of the learned archaeologist and art scholar, Master Vincent Gryf of Prague, and the effective advice he gave the distressed councillors of the town, put a stop to this dangerous phenomenon.
The master, carefully examining the main cemetery, and particularly its monuments and tombstones, released shortly afterwards a small volume entitled Satanae opus turpissimum, seu coemeterii Foscarae, regiae urbis profana violatio. This little book, a curiosity of its type, printed in the year 1500 in medieval Latin, today belongs to those rare works forgotten under piles of library dust.
On the basis of his scrupulous study of the tombs, Gryf came to the conclusion that the main cemetery at Foscara had succumbed to a desecration unprecedented in Christian history.
Vincent’s claim was met at first with violent opposition and disbelief, as his reasoning was based on details too subtle for the unskilled eye of the community. But when artists and sculptors from neighbouring towns verified his judgement, then there was nothing left for the city councilors to do but gracefully accept the verdict and apply his advice.
And, in truth, Gryf’s opinion was most interesting and unique. For he noticed the desecration precisely in those splendid monuments and eloquent inscriptions of which the Foscara cemetery was celebrated throughout the entire country, and which every traveller visiting charming Tuscany had to see at least once.
And yet, after his thorough examination, which lasted more than a month, Master Vincent showed that behind the pious, seemingly dignified works of art was hidden a sacrilege exhibiting truly devilish skill. The monuments, the marble sarcophagi and family tombs were one uninterrupted chain of blasphemies and satanic concepts.
From behind the hieratical poses of tomb angels appeared the vulgar gesture of a demon, on lips bevelled with suffering flickered an illusive smile of cynicism. Statues of women, bending with the agony of despair, aroused the libido with sumptuous bodies, unfurled hair, hypocritically bare breasts. The larger compositions, formed of several figures, created the impression of a double meaning, as if the sculptor had intentionally chosen risqué themes, for the boundary between lofty suffering and lewdness was ambiguous.
The least amount of doubt, however, was awakened by the inscriptions – those celebrated Foscara stanzas whose solemn cadences were admired by all lovers of poetry. These verses
, when read backwards from bottom to top, were a scandalous, completely cynical denial of what was proclaimed in the opposite direction. They were rank paeans of honour for Satan and his obscene affairs, hymns of blasphemy against God and the saints, immoral songs of falernian wine and street harlots.
Such, in reality, was supposed to have been the cemetery. No wonder that the dead didn’t want to lie there, that they raised an ominous revolt, demanding of the living the removal of the sacrilegious monuments.
Because of Gryf’s findings, it was decided that the cemetery had to undergo a radical change. In the course of a few weeks all the suspect monuments and statues were shattered, the tombstones dug up and broken, and labourers carried off the pieces beyond the city. In their place, wealthy families put up new statues, while the poor stuck simple crosses on their family graves. The parish priest conducted obsequies in the cemetery chapel for three nights, ending with a great purification service.
And so, after the execution of all these acts, the dead stopped haunting the city, and the cemetery became soothed, plunging into the quiet reverie of previous years.
Then various stories began to circulate about what had happened, and slowly a legend developed in connection with the gravedigger, Giovanni Tossati, now nicknamed John Hyena.
Contributing considerably to these stories was the death of one of the gravedigger’s helpers soon after the reconstruction of the cemetery. This person made a most interesting statement on his deathbed, which suddenly clarified Tossati’s disappearance and spared the authorities a fruitless search for the supposedly fugitive criminal.
This confession, travelling from mouth to mouth, was spread widely about the region and, coloured with the exuberant imagination of the populace, with time entered into the circle of those gloomy tales which, stemming from nowhere, unreel their black thread on the spinning wheel of All Souls’ Day evenings and frighten the children.
Giovanni Tossati had turned up at Foscara approximately twenty years earlier. Shabbily dressed, almost in rags, he immediately provoked suspicion, and the council even wanted to expel him from the city. Soon, though, he managed to gain the confidence of the inhabitants and the authorities, to whom he presented himself as an impoverished stonemason and sculptor of monuments. Given a trial examination, he demonstrated excellent skills and a seasoned hand in his craft. So, not only was he allowed to stay, but, owing to his oddly persistent pleas, he was appointed gravedigger of the main cemetery. From then on his job was to create monuments and bury the dead. He maintained that, for him, the simultaneous fulfilment of these two duties was an inseparable whole, that the rites for the dead were interwoven tightly with sepulchral art, and that he wouldn’t be able to erect a monument to a deceased person if he couldn’t bury him with his own hands. That’s why later, even though his fame spread widely, he never accepted any of the more profitable positions offered from other regions; he immortalized the memory of the dead exclusively at his cemetery.
At first this eccentricity gave cause for jokes and derision, but in time people got used to the whims of the artist-gravedigger, as the works emerging from under his chisel soon earned praise from even the most knowledgeable of the cognoscenti. The previously modest cemetery became, in a dozen years or so, a sepulchral masterpiece and the pride of Foscara, which in turn became the envy of other cities.
From a ragged lazzarone, Tossati was transformed into a respected and wealthy citizen, a person of influence and prominence. Eventually he was elected chairman of the city council. Holding such a high office, he no longer personally dug graves, but now directed a large number of helpers, whom he taught in a truly novel manner. Tossati introduced into the burial trade a series of original improvements, cutting the work in half and quickening its tempo. He was no less faithful, though, to his old principles; he didn’t neglect any burial and personally supervised the affair. After the corpse had been lowered into the grave, Tossati himself shovelled the first lump of earth onto the coffin, leaving the rest of the work to his labourers. In this manner his gravedigging functions took on, to a certain extent, a symbolic character, eliciting a pleasing memory of his former role; and not for all the money in the world would he abandon this particular custom.
Now, in general, Tossati was a strange person. His very appearance called attention to itself. Tall, broad-shouldered, his face wide and dreary, he was constantly smiling with a mysterious curl on his lips. His eyes were enigmatic, downcast. Maybe this downward gaze had adapted to his habit of bowing his head toward the ground, which he seemed to be carefully examining. The townspeople jokingly said that Tossati was sniffing for corpses.
Despite the renown of the gifted sculptor, the gravedigger was, in truth, not liked. People feared him and got out of his way. A superstition even developed that a meeting with him at an early hour of the day was a bad omen.
So, when after ten years in Foscara he decided to get married, none of the female inhabitants wanted to give him her hand. They were not tempted by Giovanni’s vast prosperity, nor were they enticed by the promise of a life of affluence. In the end, he married a poor workwoman from a neighbouring village, an orphan given as a favour for an unfavourable fate.
But he didn’t find happiness in family life. After a year of marriage his wife gave him twins: the first was stillborn; the second had been strangely formed in its mother’s womb. This freak, dissimilar to any human baby, died on the third day after its birth. The broken-hearted woman disappeared one day, and all searches for her were in vain.
From then on he lived alone next to the cemetery in his white brick-walled house, and saw the townspeople mostly at funerals. Yet his windows were lit up late into the night, and neighbours frequently heard drunken shouts of people emanating from his home.
Nearly every night Tossati had some guests; but they were certainly not inhabitants of Foscara – at least no one in the city boasted of going there. Carriages drove up in front of the gravedigger’s house, sometimes lavish coaches; strange people from unknown places would get out and go inside. At other times, heavy, usually empty wagons rolled in, creaking through the entrance gate, on which were loaded boxes and heavily boarded-up crates, to be taken away to an unknown destination before daybreak.
The city followed the sculptor’s secretive movements from a distance, not wanting to become involved in the affairs of a strange person who instilled fear in them.
By then the gravedigger and his home were enveloped in gloomy legends that had grown with the years and cemetery tales filled with rotting corpses and the stench of decay. It was said that the dead were visiting John and carrying on secret talks with him through the night. That’s why no one was courageous enough to steal up to his brightly-lit windows and observe his guests.
Tossati knew of the tales surrounding him and didn’t attempt to contradict them; on the contrary, it seemed as if he wanted to cocoon himself in ever thicker strands of mystery behind which he could hide his dark life.
The blasphemer’s entire fortune arose from the cemetery; his home, possessions and life absorbed with time a corpselike fustiness. And everything went along unpunished. As long as he walked the streets of Foscara, the dead seemed to patiently endure the affront. It was as if the evil demon residing in this person kept the world of shadows chained, as if the gravedigger’s satanic will tethered any sign of revolt on the part of the desecrated deceased.
Tossati still walked around a little stooped and still smiled to no one in particular. In his last years of earthly tramping this smile never left his face, and it even seemed to have become gentle. During this time, Tossati’s face gave the impression of a mummy with a set expression: it was the constantly smiling face of a good-natured soul.
For the stonemason had been wearing the same gypsum mask for two years. The material from which he had made it imitated so perfectly the colour of flesh, and the mask adhered so hermetically to his face, that it wasn’t noticed at all: he went among people freely, not awakening either suspicion or laughter.
Only an accident revealed his real face, a strange, unusual occurrence, after which one didn’t see him any more among the living … .
It happened in autumn, on one of those sad, rainy days when the damp earth is enveloped by mists and plunges into gloomy pensiveness. In the afternoon, amidst threatening grey skies, a funeral took place. The town was burying its richest inhabitant, a widely esteemed merchant and owner of the silk mill. The great funeral procession – comprised of the town’s first families, the representatives of every trade and the flower of the city’s youth – accompanied the deceased to the cemetery, where he was placed in his family tomb.
Tossati was in an excellent mood that day and furtively rubbed his hands with glee. The deceased was unusually rich and was laid in the tomb in very costly attire. As he was taking the body off the bier, the gravedigger noticed two diamond signets on the merchant’s middle and little fingers and a priceless ruby stud on his chest. Furthermore, he hadn’t buried anyone for a long while in such a good state of preservation and so well suited to anatomical explorations – the old professor from Padua would be most pleased. The double reward portended well; it necessitated, in truth, hard and laborious work, particularly as the tomb would be securely closed. Yet the affair would be worth the trouble.
The Dark Domain Page 5
