Thirteen Tales

BetaHere in the mountains it starts to snow in early November, so by the time we found one of the local farmers dead in a frozen bank, we all thought it was wolves. Wolves. In January the idea is not as comical as you think. Wolves howl around our village all winter, and during the long brutal seasons, when we are covered for months at a time in a thick carpet of white, they steal across our fences, feed on our livestock. Our village is not completely isolated. A lake lay only a twenty-minute walk away, we are a few hours ride from the river, and with it the city of P—. In the summer the hills in the river valley are covered with roses, vegetables, fruit, glowing gold and maroon, blue, green, and red, like a painter dropped thick globs of paint all over the hillside. We have our goats and cheeses and our wool from our sheep. They come highly prized in the valley and lowlands, and the river affords us trade as deep as Mnichov. Bednan the Cooper said wolves had killed three of his chickens the week before, and that one of the shepherds told him some of his sheep had disappeared, too. “He found them halfway to the river, near the old cemetery. Not eaten, but cut. They bled to death. A waste of good wool and chops.” He spat on the ground. “Why didn’t you tell us?” someone asked. “Why should I? It was just a wolf. My son Han and I went out into the woods and hunted it down. We’re not sure if we got the right one, but we killed a wolf.” Some of the older men standing around the dead man scolded Bednan for not staking the head on a stick as a warning to the other wolves, but Bednan waved his hand at them and turned away muttering. All evidence pointed to wolves. It is a fact. I am an old man now, and my joints may creak and my eyes may water, but back then I was just a boy, yes, and my mind was sharp and my eyes were keen. I remember the poor farmer, his throat torn out, his stomach a rose in full bloom. His face was more horrific, frozen in wide-eyed surprise, mouth half open. A rivulet of blood painted a crooked line from one corner across his cheek. His arms and legs stuck out of the snow bank, and it looked like he was trying to leap out at us, fingers rigid with rigor and cold. You get the idea. An altogether horrible death. To die like that no one deserves. The curious thing was the lack of blood—like the sheep, the lack of blood. Only with the sheep they’d fallen down, or maybe were just attacked and then left, or maybe they died and bled out before the carrion fowl got to them. With the farmer we expected the snow to be saturated black with it, but this was simply not the case. There were some orange stains around him, some red and maroon splatters, but not near as much as should be. “It’s been a long winter,” the konstabl said. We all looked to him for an explanation. The konstabl, a fat man with a few wisps of hair stretched over his bald pate and, like the rest of the men, a thick, full beard, pouted his lips and looked around at all of us like we were stupid. “They’re hungry.” The next day was cold and crisp and clear. The konstabl gathered some local men, shop owners, Fleischaka the butcher, Bednan, and a few shepherds, and led them higher up into the mountains to kill the pack that killed the farmer. Bilko the priest blessed their weapons himself, the muskets and swords, the pitchforks and axes, all with rusted red metal or wood-wormed, handles smooth and worn from decades of use. He pitched holy water in the winter air and it stung their cheeks. I wanted to go, of course, but my mother forbade it, and my father (who probably would have let me) ordered me to help him in the shop. He was a cobbler, and the long, cold winter created an unusual demand for mending boots and shoes. His little shop stank, and the open hearth and ever burning fire made it worse. Even now as I tell you this I remember the smell: hot feet and mildew, burning hair where the sparks shot out and singed the wool-covered boots, and beneath that, mud and dirt, always the mud and the dirt. I moped around the shop like a scorned puppy. My long face, stooped shoulders and deafening silence must have been unbearable because by ten o’clock my father sent me out to retrieve some nails from the kovar’s son, and leather from the kozeluh. He did this because he knew I’d have to go by the Inn, which was where all of the news gathered before disseminating into the village. There I could pass the time and wait for reports from the hunting party. What he didn’t know was the way also brought me past the butcher’s, and the butcher’s daughter, Beta. Beta was older than me by five years, and at nineteen she possessed a beauty unrivaled in all the surrounding villages. Her skin was milky white, and she had long, blond hair that fell down to the middle of her back, even when she wore a thick parka and woolen hat. Her mouth was wide and lips full, and they were soft pink, and her eyes so blue that they glowed in the night. Beta. Her name dripped off my tongue like honey. Tasted like sweet red wine. Every man was in love with Beta, even the married ones (especially the married ones) but the problem was that she knew it. When she walked through the village she held her nose so high as if to keep it above the stench of we lowly rabble, and she spoke very little to anyone, or sometimes not at all. She was also very dedicated to God, and spent a large part of her day at the church with Bilko the priest. The butcher was very proud of Beta, and he bragged about her beauty to everyone. His wife had died giving birth to her, so we all gave him leeway with this. There were some who ascribed unnatural things to the pair, but they were shouted down. The idea was unthinkable, and besides, she spent all her free time with the priest. I often strolled by the butcher’s whenever I could, just to catch a glimpse of her, hoping she might look at me or even say hello. On that day, slogging through the ankle deep snow and churning mud that comprised our lanes, the sun bright and blazing but the air cold and sharp, I went by to see if that would be the day Beta acknowledged my existence. It was cold enough to keep everyone in their homes and away from the shops, barring a few of the women hurrying on one or another errand, or the odd shop-owner shoveling snow off his stoop. As I approached the butcher’s from behind, I heard voices from the slaughter yard, where Fleischaka rendered his animals, capturing their blood and inedible organs in a huge stone tub, which he emptied into a fire pit and burned. He kept a barrel there, too, double fortified, in which he sometimes cured the meat. It was huge, and on occasion when he cleaned it, it held hundreds of liters of water. The stench coming from the yard was at all times unspeakable. The voice I heard was high and keening, a whine as if from a child. It stopped me dead cold. “I know I know I know.” It gasped and sobbed. “Don’t make me do it again. Don’t make me do it.” Could that have been Beta? Were the sick rumors of the old lechers at the Inn true? What had her father done? I’d kill him! But then I remembered that he was out with the hunting party. No. As I listened I knew that it was not her voice. Beta afraid of wolves, afraid of her father who doted on her, was laughable. The voice I heard belonged to the priest, Bilko. Then another voice spoke up, nothing more than a low murmur. I couldn’t discern anything it said, but I understood the tone, at once calming and threatening, and over that came Bilko’s whining voice, pleading “No! Of course I do! I’ll do anything. Anything at all!” More murmuring, and then I heard a whisper of water, as if someone were stroking his hand on the surface of a pool. I had to know who he was talking to, who had made him so upset. How could it be Beta? Her father, though he loved her so, would thrash her if he found her alone with a man in the back yard. Fleischaka had built a tall, handmade fence. I always thought it was out of deference to the rest of the village so that we wouldn’t have to see the repulsive course of his work, but his designs were not out of respect but practicality. He built the fence to keep as many animals as he could from raiding his fire pit and slaughter tub and befouling his workspace. As I said, the fence was sturdy and tall, but Fleischaka was a butcher for a reason, and some of the slats were misaligned. I found a crack and pressed my eye up to it to look inside. There it went wide. My knees went weak. I pushed myself away, and some snow shifted off the top and plopped on the ground. “Ssst!” I heard Beta hiss, but I was already running away. All of the sudden I never wanted to see her face anymore. I ran as fast as I could away from the slaughter yard and the image that burned my eyes. I didn’t care if she heard me; at least she didn’t know who I was. The konstabl and his hunting party returned at dusk carrying the carcasses of three full-grown wolves. Fleischaka gutted and cut the meat in his slaughter yard and we held a feast around a bonfire in the middle of the village. The heads were cut off and staked on pikes at three points around the village. Beta sat close to the fire, her cold smile appraising every face of the attendees, meeting their gazes and holding them until they could no longer bear to look, then moving on to her next mark. I did my best to avoid her completely, but at one point she caught me across the fire. My face flushed and I jerked it away. Then, aware of my obvious guilt, I glanced up again. She was still staring at me, her smile like icicles. It broadened and broadened until I could see her teeth. The priest did not attend the feast. Beta went home soon after. The next murder occurred a week later. We had gotten arrogant and careless. The new snow piled another three inches into the lanes, blanketing (at least for a little while) the black mud in pure, clean white. The men resumed ice fishing at night, and tromped to and from the Inn. Mothers let their children out to chore before the sun came up. The innkeeper stayed open at all hours, working himself around the clock to make up for the custom he lost during the panic after the first murder. He gave me a job, calling me his “Assistant,” and while the pay was good, being an “Assistant” innkeeper consisted mainly of clearing the tables of empty mugs and half eaten food, and mopping up the contents of the drunks’ stomachs if they couldn’t make it outside into the snow. Still, father allowed it as it brought in a few extra korunas and gave him an excuse to start training my younger brother as a cobbler. They found Bednan the Cooper east of the village, staked through the heart with one of the pikes we used to mount the wolf heads. His throat was torn out just like the farmer’s. His stomach was another rose in bloom. And there was again very little blood in the snow. This time with no wolves upon which to blame the murder, the villagers’ eyes turned on each other. I was at the Inn one night after they found his body, working what looked to be my last shift, judging by the sudden drop off of customers. The men whispered and grumbled, casting gossip as carelessly as a cat toying with a bird. “. . . naturally it’s the butcher. Only he can wield a knife so expertly.” “Why not the chirug, the surgeon?” “Did you see the wounds? No respectable surgeon would be caught making such ragged filth. A common beggar could have butchered . . .” “Ah ha! See a butcher!” “No, no butcher. No surgeon.” “Why then, do you mean to say it could have been any one of us?” “Of course. Where were you yesterday morning?”