Sanctuary

by Luca D'Andrea

  The monolith was like a gigantic version of a children’s game. These weren’t just any books, they were Bibles. She imagined Simon Keller carefully stacking all these volumes, with that same concentrated expression he had when carving his wooden animals. She imagined him with his unlit pipe in his mouth, kneeling at first, then balancing on a stepladder, piling the Bibles ever higher. What she could not imagine was the reason he had done this.

  Moving gingerly, she described a circle around the mystery. Not a single book was out of place. The monolith stood solid and motionless at the centre of the maso.

  Marlene left the candle on the shelf, went back upstairs to the Stube, brought a chair down with her, placed it in front of the monolith and climbed onto it.

  She was petite, much shorter than Simon Keller, who was over one metre ninety, so she could not see the top of the monolith, but with a little effort, stretching her hand, she managed to take a Bible from one of the uppermost layers.

  She blew the dust off it, opened it and started to read.

  Voter Heini

  A.D. 1471–1484

  The same handwriting throughout the entire volume. Voter Heini had spent thirteen years copying this Bible. In Latin, which he must somehow have known, since the same hand that had transcribed Genesis, Deuteronomy and so on, all the way to Revelation, had added notes in the margin, which Marlene could not decipher, no matter how hard she tried, because the ink had faded.

  Amazed, she closed the book and, making sure the edges of the binding and the spine aligned perfectly with those of the Bible next to it, slipped it back where it belonged.

  She got down off the chair, moved it to the other side of the monolith and took out a second book. This time, she did not look through it standing up but got off the chair and sat down.

  Voter Hannes

  A.D. 1056–1063

  Marlene remembered the beam in the pigsty and Simon Keller telling her about Voter Luis’ assertion that the maso was much older than the 1333 carved in the timber. Here’s the proof, she thought.

  Voter Luis had not lied. He might have been a child killer, but the was not a liar. Voter Hannes’s Bible was almost a thousand years old.

  Marlene leafed through it, timidly at first, then with increasing wonder. This particular Bau’r, now reduced to dust, had filled his Bible not with notes but with drawings. And he had had a remarkable talent. The insects – grasshoppers, bees, ants and butterflies – that decorated the pages of Exodus, Proverbs, Psalms and Judges were so realistic, they looked as if they were about to leap out and vanish into the darkness of the cellar. Beside Revelation, Voter Hannes had drawn a pregnant filly. The whole of Ecclesiastes was framed with vines. St. Paul’s Epistles were a veritable treatise on taxidermy. Deer, squirrels, ibex and a thousand other animals.

  Perhaps it was Voter Hannes who had started the tradition of Vulpendingen. Who could say?

  Marlene found herself picturing Simon Keller’s ancestors spending their days copying their own fathers’ Bibles. Copying them and commenting on them, century after century.

  How had these Bau’rn obtained paper and ink at a time when a book was worth more than the life of a human being? Who had taught them to read and write? Was there an original Bible, a first Keller Bible from which all the others descended? Perhaps a manuscript, Marlene imagined – since the invention of the printing press was far in the future – from which the Kellers had drawn their inspiration. But how had they obtained it?

  From whom?

  And, most importantly, the most mind-boggling question of them all: why had they done it?

  Why?

  Out of faith, no doubt. And also to pass the time during those long, terrible winters. Writing and meditating were a good antidote to solitude. Marlene thought about Simon Keller talking to the pigs. Yes, that was it, solitude. She could easily imagine Simon Keller poring over the books for hours on end, trying to transcribe the faded scrawls of past Voter. Just as his father and his father’s father had done, all the way back through time, as far back as the years of the Flood, she thought, echoing the words Simon Keller had uttered.

  Faith. Boredom. Solitude.

  Or else it was just a way to feel that your loved ones were still alive, their thoughts surviving in their marginal notes.

  Or in their drawings.

  Marlene got down off the chair. She looked for and found a wooden box and made sure it was sturdy before putting it under the legs of the chair. She then got up on the chair again and searched among those books that looked less damaged.

  Here it was.

  Simon

  A.D. 1962–1966

  Just Simon. Not Voter Simon. Because Simon Keller had no wife or children. His would be the last Keller Bible, just as Simon Keller would be the last of his line. Nobody would open Simon Keller’s Bible in search of inspiration or comfort. Nobody would repeat his words the way he repeated his father’s. The Keller name would die with him.

  The thought wrung her heart.

  She hesitated, then decided against opening this last Keller Bible. She would have liked to, she was very curious, but she could not do it. Snooping through its pages would make her feel dirty. In a way, this book was even more precious than a personal diary. One day, it would be the only proof of Simon Keller’s existence.

  Delicately, Marlene put the book back on top of the monolith and got down, feeling sad, determined to leave this place. It had been stupid of her to become so obsessed with the cellar. There was nothing down here that concerned her.

  Only solitude.

  She grasped the leather sheet, spread it the way she did with bedsheets and covered the monolith. Then she put back the wooden box, stuck the chair under her arm, took the candle and headed for the steps that would take her back up to the Stube. Less than two paces from them, she tripped over a king, a boar, three brothers and a shepherd playing a flute.

  82

  A fragment of pottery, one of the many small wooden boxes, an empty bottle, rags, something like that.

  If she had tripped over a fragment of pottery, a bottle or some other everyday object, Marlene would not have thought of the king and the boar, or the drunken, murderous brothers. She would have picked herself up, gone back to the Stube, brushed the dust off her clothes and the spiders’ webs out of her hair. Then she would have gone and shut the door to the pigsty, which she had just remembered she had left open. Had she simply tripped over, the story of Marlene would have gone something like this: Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was saved by a kind Bau’r, and they all lived happily ever after.

  Instead of which, she instinctively raised her hands to shield her face, so that when she hit the stone steps the impact had no consequence except to make her swear and leave her in the dark. She immediately got up, relit the candle and looked irritably at the spot where she had felt the floor move. She pushed away a tangle of rags and discovered that the floorboards were damaged and rotten. There was a hole, but Marlene’s foot had not caught in it. No, she had tripped over something sticking out of it.

  A king, a boar and three brothers.

  The protagonists of a Grimm fairy tale her mother had never told her and which Marlene had discovered only after she had learned to read. The story had given her nightmares for weeks.

  The story was about a king and a boar: a cunning, cruel animal nobody was able to kill, as black and nasty as (Lissy) the devil. The king issued a decree. Whoever killed the vile animal would win the hand of his daughter, the princess.

  Three brothers decided to try their luck. After a few lame attempts, two of them, the drunken, wicked brothers, gave up and retreated to an inn to drink and boast about feats they had never accomplished. The third, though, thanks to a magical little man who had given him a very special spear, killed the boar and, overjoyed, ran to show his brothers the fierce animal’s carcass.

  Needless to say, the two brothers killed him, buried him under a bridge, and carried the dead boar to the king. The eldest br
other married the princess and lived happily ever after, enjoying her beauty, the king’s wine collection and a good life.

  Until a shepherd found a tiny bone under the bridge where the hapless third brother was buried. He carved it into a flute. No sooner did he blow into it than the flute sang a song about a brave man who had vanquished a monster but had then been killed by his brothers. A hero who would now never be able to marry the princess. The shepherd hurried to the king and played his flute for him. The two brothers were sentenced to death.

  That was what Marlene had tripped over. A skull. No Vulpendingen this time. Not the skull of a wren, or a fox, or a rodent. It was a human skull. And there were teeth marks on that grinning skull, curved teeth wide at the base. Rats? Teeth like fangs. Lissy.

  Suddenly, it was as if she had really begun to see.

  The tobacco, for instance. The smell was coming from a large jute sack in a corner. She had briefly glanced at it, then forgotten about it. There was nothing odd about finding tobacco in Simon’s cellar. He smoked a pipe and sometimes did not go down to the village for months at a time. It was only natural that he should have a supply. Natural, too, that there should be a pair of boots next to the jute sack.

  Right?

  Boots are essential for life in the mountains. She had seen them and forgotten about them. But now Marlene the Not So Brave Anymore took a proper look at them. No Bau’r of sound mind would wear pointed boots like that. Pointed boots squeeze your toes and cause ingrowing toenails. An ingrowing toenail could be a real problem, it slowed you down, made you clumsy. It could also potentially get infected. Wegener would have called them a city slicker’s boots. Pointed boots of glossy leather, maybe snakeskin or crocodile. Cowboy boots. Like Kurt the pig.

  “Stop it,” she murmured. “Get out of here, get out.”

  But she could not go. She could not stop herself looking.

  Not far from her was what she had at first taken for yet another heap of rags. Actually, they were clothes. Women’s clothes. The kind of thing a city woman would wear for an excursion in the mountains. Not cheap clothes. And she thought of Birgit, the sow with the cared-for nails. “A distinguished lady.” And what was in that suitcase on top of the broken barrel right in the corner? Didn’t it look like a doctor’s bag? She remembered the round glasses she had seen the first time she had been in the cellar. A bag and glasses. Maybe a doctor with glasses and the unfriendly look of a know-it-all? Maybe . . . She let out a kind of snort that was also a moan.

  She looked down at the floor. What else would she find if she were to take up the floorboards? How many skulls?

  She had to get out. She needed air.

  She did not go. Not yet. She put the candle down, carefully, so that it would not go out, moved the wooden box, put the chair on top of it, climbed up, pulled the sheet away and took one of the Bibles from the top of the monolith. The only one without a bookmark at the end. The one Simon Keller was still compiling.

  And there on the first page were the words:

  Simon

  A.D. 1971–

  It was not finished yet.

  She opened it at random and read:

  Subsequently, they continued to offer a perennial sacrifice to Lissy, and sacrifices on Lissy days and on all feast days dedicated to Lissy, for all the offerings to Lissy.

  Trembling, she skipped a few pages.

  “If you are the son of Voter Luis, then go tell these stones to turn into bread for Lissy,” but Sim’l answered, “It is written: Lissy will not live on bread alone but on all the flesh the Voice will bring to Sim’l through Lissy’s mouth.”

  The Book of Revelation was a senseless sermon that began with these words:

  Revelation of Lissy, which Lissy gave him for Lissy, by Lissy, with Lissy and which Lissy manifested by sending flesh by means of her brother Sim’l. This is a testimony of the word of Lissy and the testimony of . . .

  Then nothing more, because this Bible of Simon Keller’s was not finished yet. The following pages were blank, and as white as bones.

  She hurled it from her, as far as she could.

  Madness. Pure madness.

  And, through the madness, a logical thought at last. Simon Keller was a murderer. He killed and gave Lissy . . .

  “Because Lissy is hungry,” Marlene murmured.

  In a state of shock, she got down off the chair, retrieved the Bible, put it back where it belonged, making sure its spine was aligned with the others, spread the leather sheet over them, blew out the candle and climbed the stairs, numbly, taking the chair with her. She closed the cellar door. She left the chair by the table, feeling herself transfixed by the eyes of the Vulpendingen.

  She ran her fingers through her hair. Dust, spiders’ webs.

  “Lissy is hungry,” she murmured, putting on her jacket. She left the Stube. She left the maso.

  She went down the steps and breathed in the frosty air. She stopped, buttoned her jacket and stroked her cheek. Then she slapped it. Hard.

  “Lissy is hungry!” she cried to the mountains, the snow and the sky.

  She started to run.

  83

  How do you flee when Wrath is unleashed upon the Earth? Where do you flee when the waters of the seas and oceans rise, determined to drown every form of life?

  You go higher.

  The Keller maso was perched above the woods and above the limit of the fields, on a strip strewn with rocks and a few bushes. Above it there was only the perennial snow and the constant movement of the clouds. In order to reach it from the valley, you had to take a kind of mule path which was gradually reduced to a hint of a track covered in brushwood and eventually vanished amid roots, stones and moss. In the winter, when snow erased all points of reference, it was impossible to find a safe way to get to it.

  Or get away from it.

  All you could do was head downhill and hope. That was what Marlene did.

  She crossed the fields, the snow coming halfway up her thighs, struggled towards the woods, where the blanket of snow was less thick and more compact, and plunged into them.

  She nearly slipped and fell several times. Miraculously, she did not.

  She passed the clearing where Alex the poacher had seen Simon hugging the dead deer. She kept running, scratched by branches, her movements slowed by the snow, her knees and back aching.

  She ran as fast as she could, and when her muscles and lungs begged her to stop she put on even more speed. It was only when she got to the heart of the forest that she allowed herself a brief pause and leaned against a centuries-old spruce. For a few minutes, she felt safe beneath its canopy. She had stopped screaming a while ago, but was still unable to think clearly.

  Panic in its purest form.

  A sound made her jump, perhaps an animal or just the thud of snow falling from a branch. Her heart in her mouth, she looked around. There was nobody to be seen.

  She resumed running.

  Or almost.

  Now that she was deep in the woods, the strain she felt was overwhelming. She had to watch out for tree trunks lying buried in the snow, be watchful at every step to avoid falling into a covered hole, walk around thorny bushes concealed by the whiteness.

  She would not have struggled so much if she had brought snowshoes with her. She had not done so because she had acted on instinct. And now she was starting to waste breath and energy.

  At one point, she came across fresh footprints and shuddered. She stopped, bent down to examine them and realised they were her own. In her terror and exhaustion, she had been going round in circles.

  She didn’t lose hope. All she had to do was slow down and take more care.

  But it was when she slowed down that she noticed the cold. The sweat froze on her neck and she felt nasty shivers up and down her spine. The cold cleared her head a little. The shivers on her back and neck made her think about the night. And she realised she had left wearing only her jacket. Although it was thick, it would not be warm enough if she were caught out
in the open at night. Her fingertips had already turned blue. By nightfall, the temperature would drop even lower.

  Minus ten? Minus fifteen? Colder still if the wind rose.

  Marlene the Brave told herself she would grit her teeth, get down to the valley and from there head south-west, where, she thought, the village she had driven through in her Mercedes was located. Once she was in the village, she would be safe. She would scream, knock on every door. Someone would help her.

  You just have to keep going, she told herself. Resist the cold, the tiredness. You have to, for Klaus’s sake.

  If she had stayed at the maso, Klaus would have died with her. Just like Kurt, Birgit and Gertrud. And heaven knows how many others. Because Lissy was hungry. But Lissy wasn’t going to have her or her child. She clung to this idea, and yet she was unable to move.

  She was exhausted, numb with cold, no longer scared of what she had found in the cellar but of what awaited her shortly. The night and the cold, which would kill her.

  I can’t turn back. I can’t . . .

  And as she wrestled with this dilemma, she heard Simon Keller’s voice.

  84

  “You’ll catch your death like this.”

  Simon Keller was behind her, his black hat pulled down over his head, the rifle over his shoulder. He was carrying a large deer on his back, and was looking at her in surprise.

  “Simon Keller . . .” she gasped.

  He said nothing.

  “I . . . I . . .” Marlene stammered.

  He took a step towards her: threatening, perhaps, or perhaps not, she could not tell. But he was clearly expecting an explanation. She had to improvise, and fast, before he put two and two together. She took a deep breath.

  You’re the Thieving Magpie. Make something up. Or this’ll be the place where you die. Where both of you die.

  “Lissy,” Marlene said breathlessly. More out of fear than tiredness.

  At last, Simon Keller spoke, a note of alarm in his voice. “Another fit?”

  Marlene shook her head. “No. Yes. I mean . . .”