The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Read Free Book Online

me …”
    Françoise did not understand how Pierre could sleep so soundly. A mortal horror seized her: what if he were to wake up and find out: everything. Just what that tormenting and sinful everything was, she didn’t yet know—the heavy latch gave way, the door opened, and she walked out, nearly naked, to meet the Festival of the Ass. Instantly, the din ceased about her but not in her. She walked on, barefoot over the grass, not knowing where she went, or to whom. Soon she heard a clopping of hooves, the jingle of a stirrup, and someone quietly calling her: a knight-errant, perhaps, who had lost his way in the moonlessness, or a passing merchant who had chosen a darker night for the smuggling of contraband. A nocturnal bridegroom has no name—on a dark night he takes what is darker than all nights: he steals the soul; having come like a thief, so he goes. In short, the stirrup again jangled, the hooves clopped, and in the morning, seeing Pierre off to work, Françoise looked into his eyes with such tenderness and held him for so long that he couldn’t stop grinning and, swinging his mattock on his shoulder, whistled a merry tune.
    Again life seemed to resume its old course. Day-night-day. Until again it descended. Françoise vowed not to give in to the delusion. She knelt for hours on the cold flags before the blackening faces of icons, twining prayers around her rosary. But when, rending her sleep, the frenzied Feast of the Ass again began to dance, swirling around her in ever closer circles, she, again losing her will, got up and set off—not knowing where, or to whom. At a pitch-black crossroads she met a beggar who had gotten up off the ground for the white vision floating toward him through the darkness; his hands were scabrous, the stench from his rotten rags revoltingly acrid; neither believing nor understanding, he still took her hungrily—and then: the coppers in his sack tinkled, his crutch-stick tapped, and, skulking like a thief, the nocturnal bridegroom, frightened and bewildered, vanished in the gloom. When Françoise returned home, she listened for a long time to her husband’s even breathing and, bending over him with clenched teeth, wept soundlessly: in disgust and happiness. Months went by and perhaps years; husband and wife loved each other still more dearly. And again, as suddenly as ever, it happened. Pierre was away that night, ten leagues from the village. Called by voices, Françoise went out into the darkness between the hazy shapes of trees; skimming the ground like a large yellow eye was a flame; keeping her eye on that eye, Françoise went to meet her fate. In a minute the eye had turned into an ordinary glass-and-metal lantern; clasping the handle from under a soutane were bony fingers and, a bit higher in the flame’s turbid gleam, the withered face of Father Paulin: past midnight he had been called to a dying man and, having promised his soul heaven, was returning home. On meeting Françoise in the middle of the night, naked and alone, Father Paulin was not surprised. He lifted his lantern up to illuminate her face, peered at her trembling lips and glazed eyes. Then he blew out the flame, and in the blind blackness Françoise heard: “Go home. Get dressed and wait.”
    The old priest plodded on with shuffling step, often stopping to catch his breath. Walking into Françoise’s house, he saw her sitting motionless on a bench by the wall: her palms were pressed together, and her shoulders shuddered only rarely under her clothes, as if with cold. Father Paulin let her finish crying; then he said, “Surrender, soul, to what has inflamed you. For in the Scriptures it says: only on an ass, a foolish and stinking beast, can one reach the broad streets of Jerusalem. I say unto you: only thus and through this can one enter the Kingdom of Kingdoms.”
    Françoise looked up in amazement, her eyes brimming with