Black Spring

by Alison Croggon

  “Damek?” said she, turning white. “You say Damek has come home?”

  “I fear so,” I said.

  “And you’ve seen him yourself? He is not dead?”

  I assured her that I had seen him with my own eyes, and that he was as alive as we were. She turned her face away from me, and I stood uncertainly before her, wondering whether to leave or whether she might need some attention. But in a moment she leapt up and grasped my hands, her eyes shining.

  “Anna, I know you would not mislead me. But I can scarce believe my ears! This is beyond everything marvellous! It is a miracle! Damek is come home. Oh, I don’t believe it. He is not dead! And he is well? He is happy to be home? Why did he not come to me first? Why is he not here? I must tell Tibor at once! Such news!” Here she began to run from the room, only to halt in the doorway. “Did he say when he would visit me? Did he say when we would see each other again?”

  “Soon, he said. Soon. He’ll be here soon.” I studied with misgiving the hectic flush that had now risen in her cheeks. “Miss Lina, you must not get too excited. Time enough to tell Mr Tibor at luncheon, without running out to look for him. Come, let me pour you some wine.”

  “Wine? What need have I of wine?” She rushed back into the room and embraced me. “But you’re right, I can tell Tibor later. He shall be so happy! I think I have never been happier in my whole life! And what if Damek called and I were out? I couldn’t bear it. And he is at the Red House? I should ride there this instant! I can’t bear to wait even one minute. I should ride there now. Order my horse, Anna.”

  She was breathing fast in her excitement, and her eyes were dangerously bright. I begged her to sit down, and poured her a wine which I made her drink. She agreed at last to sit, but it made her no less restless: the words tumbled out of her, expressing her astonishment, her joy, her impatience to see Damek. It took me the best part of an hour to calm her. She only agreed to rest because she became exhausted, and even then she insisted on lying on a sofa in the front room, where she started at every noise in an anguish of expectation. I had not seen her in such elevated delight since my return, and I wished I could feel an equal joy. But I could not like the fever that attended it, nor how her pulse fluttered in her neck, as if a wounded butterfly were trapped there.

  XXVII

  When Tibor returned to the house, Lina flew to greet him, breathless with her news. At first he responded to his wife’s joy – he knew that Damek was a childhood friend long missed – but as the excess of her emotions overflowed, sweeping aside any other topic of conversation, his enthusiasm began to dim. His wife scarce noticed his indifference: she had enough animation for both of them. They were a pretty picture at the luncheon table, one bubbling over with excited chatter, the other becoming more and more morose. At last Tibor’s unresponsiveness penetrated even Lina’s overwrought perceptions, and she upbraided him for not sharing her delight. He answered curtly, she took further umbrage, and at last he threw his plate across the room and stalked out of the house.

  As I cleaned up the mess, I reflected gloomily that this was not a propitious beginning. Irli, who since my arrival had been assigned general duties, helped me to clean the walls, her eyes lively with curiosity, but I refused to tell her what had happened. Lina, of course, failed to see any good reason for Tibor’s actions, and abused him as capricious, ungenerous and cruel.

  “I would say he is jealous,” I said shortly. I felt little patience with her, as I was behind with my work after the scenes of that morning. “And perhaps that is understandable.”

  “That is just foolish! He is my husband, and he should love where I do. It is small and mean of him to try to spoil my joy.”

  I sighed, and took my bucket and cloth into the kitchen without further argument. I knew it was useless. It wasn’t long, however, before she followed me. She had already forgotten her quarrel with her husband.

  “Anna, do you think Damek will call this afternoon? I think I should visit the Red House, don’t you? If he doesn’t come here, I mean. Why has he not called already?”

  I told her that if she called alone on Damek, it would cause a scandal. I also reminded her that Masko lived in the Red House, and that she would be forced to speak to him as well. Only the latter point gave her pause: she still hated Masko with a passion, and avoided him entirely. I repeated my assurance that Damek would call soon, and bent to my work. After a while, she drifted back to the front room, to hover impatiently by the window. For myself, although I dreaded Damek’s visit, I also prayed that he would make it that day. If he did not, I couldn’t imagine what state Lina would be in by nightfall; but given his anger about her marriage, it was not impossible he would delay his call. In my anxiety, I found myself wishing that Damek had indeed been killed. Lina’s irrationality that morning dismayed me more than I could admit even to myself; when I thought of what Damek had said to me the night before, and of the lunchtime quarrel, I found myself filled with dread. So I didn’t think at all: I attended to my tasks, and then I tried to make my mistress take a rest, which she resisted with increasing irritation.

  She became more tense with every minute. By mid-afternoon, Lina was in such a state that the smallest sound – a dog’s bark, the shutting of a door – would make her start horribly. I was not much better myself, as her restlessness and anxiety had infected me. Also, I was listening for Tibor as well as for Damek; most of all, I dreaded that they might turn up together, an unlucky chance which would do no good for any of us. When I heard hoofbeats nearing the house, I think I jumped as high as Lina. She rushed to the window, and confirmed it was Damek; she lost her colour, and for a moment I thought she might faint. I rushed to her, holding her arm so she would not fall, and she turned on me eyes piteous with fright.

  “I can’t see him,” she said. “Anna, tell him to go away!”

  In my exasperation at her perversity, I could have shaken her. There came a rap on the door, and I swear she went even paler.

  “It’s him!” she whispered. “Oh, he is here! What shall I do?”

  I bit back the sharp words that came to my tongue, and instead asked her to sit down so I could answer the door.

  She shook her head, so I made no move; when he knocked again she gripped my hand so tight I felt the bones crunching. She was trembling all over. By now I was half distracted.

  “Please sit down, Mistress Lina, I fear that you will fall,” I said, and to my relief she did. “I shall tell him you’re unwell and can’t see him.”

  “No! No, show him in!”

  I looked at her dubiously, but a little colour had returned to her face, and so, lamenting the ill-luck of the day, I left her and hurried to the door.

  “Greetings, Anna,” said the author of all this discomfort. “How is your mistress?”

  After dealing with my mistress all day, his calmness was a severe provocation. “She is not well, Damek,” I answered. “Not well at all. I almost curse your coming home, after the morning I’ve had.”

  He said nothing in reply, but entered the hallway and gave me his coat. Lina heard his entrance, and called out to me. He stood very still for a moment, his face expressionless, and then turned towards her voice.

  “Well then, she is in there?” Without further reference to me, he walked towards the sitting room. I followed, wringing my hands; I felt I ought to stop him, but knew not how.

  Lina was seated where I had left her, staring towards the doorway. When she saw Damek, her eyes widened, and her lips parted as if she would speak, but no words came. Damek halted at the threshold of the room, and for a long moment they neither of them moved nor spoke. I think he had not really believed until that moment that she was with child: he stared fixedly, almost with horror, at her swollen belly.

  Lina couldn’t but notice this, and she blushed and put her hand protectively on her stomach. Then she seemed to recollect herself, and she stood up, stretching out her hand in formal greeting.

  “Damek!” she said. “How – how wonderful t
o see you!”

  He strode towards her and, taking her hand, stared earnestly into her face. “And to see you!” he answered.

  A long silence fell between them, but their eyes remained fixed on each other’s face. He kept hold of her hand, and she did not withdraw it. At this point I thought it politic to interrupt, since they seemed to have forgotten altogether that I was present.

  “Mistress, shall I bring some refreshments?”

  Lina turned to me, startled. Her face was radiant, as if a light inside her had been suddenly unveiled. “Refreshments? What for?”

  “For you and your guest,” I said.

  “I think we will not need anything, Anna,” said Damek, with a meaning glance. “Except, perhaps, a little privacy.”

  “I think the master would not like his wife to be alone with a man…”

  Here Damek interrupted with a profanity and, to my distress, Lina laughed. Now that Damek at last was present, her anxiety seemed to have vanished all at once; indeed, the mocking glance she turned on me was more like the old Lina than I had seen since my return to Elbasa. She pressed Damek’s hand to her breast as she spoke.

  “Anna, don’t be so ridiculous. Damek is no stranger. He might as well be my brother, and there is nothing improper about my being alone with him. Now, you go and do all those jobs you were complaining about before. We have much to say to each other, and we don’t need a chaperone.”

  “Off you go, Anna,” prompted Damek. “You heard your mistress.”

  I had no choice but to leave the room, if with many misgivings at their folly, and Damek took care to shut the door behind me.

  XXVIII

  The pair remained closeted up for nigh on three hours, and all that time I was in a constant alarm, lest Tibor would come home and discover them. I confess too that I was burning with curiosity: I wondered what they were saying, and what they were doing. Lina did little to satisfy this last vulgar hunger; after Damek had left she simply said that they had been exchanging news, while giving me an ironic look that showed she was perfectly aware of my interest. If Damek revealed to Lina where he had been for the past few years, she never told me.

  It seemed that Tibor was still angry with Lina, as he stayed out late that evening and didn’t come home until well after dark. Damek left carrying a lamp, for Masko was hosting a card party that he wished to attend. And so the meeting I dreaded between Damek and Tibor did not take place, on that day at least. Their encounter was inevitable, but as St Matthew says, “Sufficient unto the day is the evils thereof”, and I was happy to take his advice.

  After Damek’s departure Lina was strangely calm; she seemed abstracted, but biddably ate her dinner and took the foul-tasting tonic the doctor had prescribed her without protest. She retained that radiance, which gave an almost supernatural edge to her beauty; as she sat in her sitting room, a book open but unread on her lap, her chin resting on her hand, she seemed like a figure carved of alabaster, lit from within by a soft but intense flame. When Tibor at last returned, she greeted him languidly, but without hostility; and he, no doubt expecting a petulant greeting, was unexpectedly disarmed. He ordered a late supper and they sat quietly, speaking together without rancour. Anyone who saw them would not have imagined them to be anything but the most content of couples.

  As I prepared myself for bed that night, I wondered if my fears were unfounded. Whenever I thought of Damek’s conversation with me, I felt uneasy: I did not see that he would accept Lina’s marriage with any complacency, and I knew he had little respect for the conventions that ruled the rest of us. On the other hand, I thought, if he truly loved Lina, he would see what was in her best interests, and put his own desires aside. After all, he had even forgiven Masko, with whom he seemed now on the most cordial terms, and that suggested anything was possible.

  That I entertained such thoughts shows the foolishness of wishful thinking. Damek could be patient, more patient than anyone I knew, in pursuit of his desires, putting aside immediate gratification if he needed to; but the thought of relinquishing the passions that drove him never entered his head. I think he was the most single-minded person I ever met. And I had forgotten Lina’s wilfulness; I had thought it controlled, when in fact it had simply had no object. Well, I was soon to be disabused of my hopeful fancies.

  Damek arrived at the manse after breakfast the following day, not long after Tibor had left the house; he was then supervising the building of some outsheds which, now the burden of the harvest was over, he hoped to have finished by winter. I was surprised to see Damek, but Lina was not; they spent an hour or so talking alone in her bedchamber, which scandalized me, and then Lina called for her cloak and boots and they left the house, striking out towards the river, even though the air smelt of rain. When Tibor returned for his lunch, they were still out. He asked me where Lina was, and I answered with some confusion that she was out walking with Mr Damek. He flushed with humiliation and anger, but said nothing in response, and finished his meal in silence. I felt sorry for him, and annoyed with the pair whose thoughtlessness was causing such pain.

  An hour after lunch, the wind changed and it began to rain. At first it was a light shower, and I thought it would pass, but after a half-hour I saw the bad weather had set in. I watched the veils of rain sweeping over the back courtyard as I worked in the kitchen, and fretted uselessly over Lina’s foolishness. She was exposing herself to a bad chill, at best; at worst, in her delicate condition, she was putting not only her life, but her baby’s, at risk. A little later, Tibor came in the back door, nodded towards me as he divested himself of his wet outer clothes, and went upstairs.

  It seemed an age before I saw any sign of the others, although I think it was perhaps less than an hour, and only my impatience made it feel so long. There was no let-up in the weather, and I began to be seriously worried, and wondered whether I ought to send out someone to look for them. At last I heard a disturbance at the front of the house, and hurried out, wiping my hands, to see Damek and Lina, soaked through from head to foot, standing in a puddle of water in the hallway. Lina was clutching Damek’s arm and laughing; she was panting, as if she had been running – and in her condition!

  “Oh Anna!” she cried when she saw me. “Look at us! The rain came down in buckets when we were by the river. We tried to shelter under the old willow, but it did not pass, and we were going to be as wet there as here, and so we have run home!”

  I hurried forward, scolding the both of them. Lina’s eyes glittered with a dangerous elation, and when I touched her arms as I stripped off her dripping cloak, the skin felt as cold as a corpse. Aside from a flush high on her cheeks, she was deathly pale, and her teeth were chattering.

  “Mr Damek, you ought to be ashamed! You must have known better than to make her run in the rain!” I said. “She is not a child any more, and she has been sick! If she falls ill and dies, then it’s your fault and no one else’s.”

  I saw his eyes flicker towards her face when I said that, and knew that what I said had hit home.

  “Don’t be silly, Anna,” cried Lina. “I have never felt so well! How could I die now? Now, when I am more happy than I have ever been?”

  Her voice rang out over the hallway, and carried to the ears of Tibor, whom I now saw was standing at the head of the stairs, just about to come down. He halted like a man who had been slapped, and then all but ran down the stairs. Ignoring Damek, he grabbed his wife’s arm and swung her round to face him, demanding to know where she had been.

  Lina tore her arm out of his grasp. “How dare you touch me like that!” she said, with all the hauteur of a princess of the blood. Tibor had not seen this mood before, and he stepped back a pace, surprised and abashed, as she continued, “You do not speak to me like that. You should address me with respect.”

  “I’m your husband,” said Tibor, who was shaking with anger. “Or have you forgotten that?”

  “Of course I haven’t,” she said.

  “You’re acting like a whore,” he s
aid. “Not like any wife of mine.”

  Lina gasped, and Damek’s face went black with anger. I think he would have punched Tibor there and then if I had not shouted at both the men to come to their senses, and to stop behaving like children. I was out of patience with all of them, but mostly I was concerned that Lina change into some dry clothes; and so, before anything else could be said, I hurried her upstairs to her bedchamber, stripped off her damp dress, and scrubbed her hard with a towel before a warm fire until the colour came back into her face. As I did so, the baby began to kick, and she put her hand on her belly to feel its limbs writhing beneath her skin.

  “You’ll kill your baby, and yourself, running about wild like that!” I told her. “And you’ll drive Mr Tibor to distraction.”

  “Nay, Anna!” She had been standing passively as a small child, not helping me one bit, except to lift an arm or a leg if I asked. “The baby is joyful too! It loves freedom as much as I do!”

  I shook my head at her wilfulness. When she was warmly dressed, I studied her closely. She didn’t appear to be feverish, but I didn’t trust the sparkle in her eyes. I told her to stay in front of the fire until her hair was dry, and went downstairs to check what had happened to the men. Neither was anywhere to be found. I asked Irli if she had heard anything, and she said that they had both left the house directly after I had taken Mistress Lina upstairs. I wondered briefly if they had gone out to knife each other, but at the time I was too cross to care. Good riddance, I thought, to the both of them.

  XXIX

  To my astonishment and relief, Lina didn’t catch cold. It was as if something had ignited inside her which drove off the possibility of chills. The fragility that so concerned me was still evident, and she was more easily exhausted than I liked, but at the same time she was consumed with a fierce energy that made her seem stronger than she was. She breakfasted sulkily with Tibor the following day, refusing to speak to him at all until he humbly apologized for his insult the previous day; but once he did apologize, she smiled radiantly and reached across the table to stroke his face.