Sylvia by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online

crept out of the woods towards the cottage, approaching the pigsty on my way. Pigs grunt in an unmistakable fashion when they are eating and as I approached I heard them carrying on as if they were at the trough. I crept up to take a closer look. Brass Leg Peter the Forgiven Coward lay on his back in the black, slimy mud, the clothes torn from his bloody carcass. The boar stood over him, a section of my father’s gaping stomach hanging from the side of its mouth, its great pink snout covered in blood. The pigs had set about the softest parts first, going for the contents of his huge stomach, now a visceral hole where his intestines would once have curled and rumbled. In the process of tearing open his abdomen, the animals had also eaten the appendage that had caused me so much childhood suffering.
    And so my childhood, both good and bad, was finally over. Several of the village men at the inn that night recalled that my father had left overcome with anger when Frau Anna’s husband had brought him the news of my mute recalcitrance in front of the priest that had caused the Miracle of the Gloria to be rejected. The general conclusion was that he’d entered the pigsty for some reason and slipped, knocking his temple against its stone wall and falling unconscious to the ground where the pigs had viciously attacked and eaten him.
    The three pigs were pronounced unclean and were summarily slaughtered and buried, the priest saying a prayer for the parts of my father that were missing from his body but refusing to bury the remaining parts in consecrated ground. As both the sows were pregnant at the time, with their disposal went any hope that I might survive the coming winter by selling the fattened piglets. Nor could I expect any local sympathy – the news that the priest had rejected the Miracle of the Gloria, together with Frau Anna’s self-preserving description of my behaviour in the vestry and her conclusion that the demon had returned, meant that I was once again a miserable outcast.
    While I had the means to survive the coming winter with turnips and onions stored and winter cabbage growing in the garden, I had not counted on the redoubtable Frau Anna. Together with a contingent of village women she arrived at the cottage a day after my father’s burial. Indicating the women who accompanied her, Gooseneck and Frogface among them, she declared, ‘We have had a meeting and have decided you may no longer remain in the village. It is clear to us all that the demon has returned to possess your soul and we are afraid that our sons and husbands will be tempted with a desire for Satan’s flesh. You will soon be twelve years old and so no longer a child but a grown woman. We have declared you a wanton hussy and a whore and not a woman we want among us. You must leave this village forever!’ At this a general murmur of approval came from the assembled fat and oh so self-righteous women. Frau Anna had not only regained her former status as Gossip Queen and leader in their eyes, but was now being hailed as the protector of the virtue of their husbands and sons. The eleven-year-old harlot possessed by the devil would, at twelve, no longer be forbidden fruit but instead become fair game for an adulterous husband or cock-randy son.
    â€˜This is my home, my cottage and my land,’ I protested.
    â€˜Ha! You are possessed, your inheritance will be subsumed by the Holy Church, you have no soul and so no rights other than to become a ward of the Church.’ She pointed her fat finger at me. ‘But first it will be necessary for Father Pietrus to cast out the demon that now possesses you!’ A general nodding of heads and murmuring of agreement followed.
    I must say I couldn’t blame them; after all, in their eyes I was Satan’s child, a whore and, had they only known it, I was now guilty of murder as well. But of one thing I was certain: I was not possessed and would rather depart this