A Hunt in the Padunegra

In the Glagolitic, which is, I believe, a mountain range in Moldavia, there is a forest which you only believe in if you have just lost fifty ounces of blood, or are similarly rendered half-conscious. I heard of it just after being whalloped over the head with a jar of green walnut preserves, but I knew a truthful old woman who heard of it during the throes of carbon monoxide poisoning, and believed implicitly. I do hope you don’t believe what I tell you, or I shall have caught you at a very bad time.

The forest is remarkable for its gloom and discomfort, but that didn’t deter old Colonel Wegszyn, who told me about it, from his plan of hunting there. Colonel Wegszyn has hunted everywhere that ends with a -slav or a -bov or a -ska, and had heard of this Padunegra, this formidable forest, years before, but never believed it existed (at least in the way it’s said to) till he had a heatstroke on the Riviera and two French gents were talking of it on the next balcony.

That made up his mind, whatever was left, I mean. He picked me up in Skopje, where I work summers, and told me that since I was the only one of his acquaintance daft enough to go, he’d hand-picked me to accompany his never-to-be-forgotten hunt in the Padunegra.

I wasn’t flattered, and would have prudently stuck right there on the sun-drenched Balkans, typesetting for my brother-in-law’s newspaper (it’s very exclusive; he writes it in the secret code of his Neo-Hospitallers’ Club and only six men in Macedonia can read it), but Wegszyn got around me when those preserves fell off Luzina’s top shelf and dashed me dimwitted.

When I fully came to, I believed the whole rigmarole—a dark impenetrable forest in the Glagolitic, where the dead of various battles occasionally pop up like bamboo runners and hold terrified or gallant intercourse with living, talking flowers; where fountains are deeper than the earth, and if you can get a deer out of the wood alive, it turns into a pale-colored, velvety human being with only two digits on each limb and big pointed ears, and has a gentle and reflective disposition, and often does spectacularly well in academics. Georg Cantor was said to be descended from one, but that’s hearsay.

Oh, I believed it, with a lump on my scalp like an agate and twitching irises, but I wasn’t about to go there, not with Colonel Wegszyn or anyone.

I’m the only grandson in my paternal extended family. My aunts and uncles have gone all over the civilized world starting up shops and corporations and abbeys and republics, but they’re all so ambitious it doesn’t leave them much time for marrying. Papa was the only exception. He was only seventy-five percent ambitious, which allowed him to marry and get me and Luzina and Apollonia, and after he died, all the aunts and uncles considered it their duty and pleasure to make me their heir, apprentice, junior partner, errand boy, acolyte, or whatever else they needed. My nature resembled Mama’s yielding, pleasing one, which was exactly what they liked, but which made my life harder and harder without my quite knowing how to change it.

I was firm in reserving the summers for Luzina and Miroslav and the newspaper, if only for a chance to get my breath; the rest of the year I was run off my legs by Uncle Kazimir in Lübeck, Uncle Theokritos in Paris, Aunt Sacred Obligation at her abbey in Nîmes, Aunt Sophia in New York, or Uncle Petros in Naples. Uncle Presidente Antioqueno in Central America said he wouldn’t send for me until the guerrilla fighting was all over.

“Hold your words, Kyrie,” I told the Colonel, as firmly as I could with the world so wobbly just then. “I wasn’t born the only grandson of Antiochene Thaumastos to be assaulted by Napoleonic hussars and animated dahlias in a dark impenetrable wood. Get one of your dafter comrades. Get Zoltán Banky.”

Zoli isn’t daft, just unbelievably dull. I wouldn’t have suggested him if I hadn’t been so concussed. It only made the Colonel mad, and in trying to settle him down, I accidentally let him have Luzina’s prized imported aniseed water, and then—alas, my weak nature—he got me. We were on the narrow-gauge for the Glagolitic as soon as my head disegged.

Everything seemed to go badly from the first, but I suppose that’s to be expected when two men with such recent brain-trauma get in a little provincial railway carriage together to go hunt uncertain heraldic beasts in a wood with trees a hundred feet high and so dense that mount Vesuvius went off unheard. (Dio Cassius or Pliny or somebody mentions how nobody in the Padunegra knew about the blast until the newspaper was invented in the late seventeenth century.) So there were Wegszyn and I, at each others’ throats for leagues upon leagues. We quarreled bitterly over the last aspirin tablet, and jerked on our single down cushion till the down came out. I felt bad about that. Wegszyn had taken that cushion on sporting jaunts from the Amur to the Elbe. But he’d taken his nose, too, I reflected, which must console him.

Our really serious tiff was about the deer. Colonel Wegszyn’s whole point, of course, was to hunt, but I insisted that he couldn’t shoot a deer, any one of which might be a third cousin of Cantor or Pascal, a hoofed ruminant only waiting to be dragged from the sylvan depths to amaze the world with a new theory of matter. I said he could shoot anything else. Colonel Wegszyn felt strongly that, from all accounts, the fauna of the place were so unusual that a deer was the only animal he really felt sure of.

We were not unanimous on this when the narrow-gauge came to no gauge at all, and the native conductor with his horrible Rumanian (his Latin roots had been grated into borscht) was tossing our things down, including the elephant rifle that Wegszyn caught expertly by the trigger.

The Padunegra begins gently. The trees are no higher than the ones I’ve walked beneath with Aunt Sophia in Central Park, and no more densely crowded than Uncle Petros’ pizzeria on a weekday afternoon.

The peasants at the last railway terminal, Karsk Drevena, all seemed to be laughing up their linen sleeves. The Colonel set about, in his usual way, to hire a native guide, but the rustics seemed to be slapping stones and plaster on the language-barrier every minute. The Colonel said he never met such thick-headed mumble-mouths even in Kyrgyzstan.  They not only couldn’t grasp a syllable of Russian, Rumanian, Greek, Czech, or German, but couldn’t fathom the most expressive pantomimes of hunting, even when the Colonel pretended to be a deer and then to shoot himself; and incredibly, failed to grope the significance of imperial coins pouring noisily between the Colonel’s hands. (I’m sure by now that it was conspiracy, just to avoid going into those woods, which they never seem to do for any reason, except gathering firewood along the edges. They congratulated us in graspable Rumanian when we got out of the forest again.) Anyhow, failing to secure a guide, we reluctantly prepared to go in alone.

I was reluctant. The Colonel seemed to relish the danger. He’s from that old Baltic nobility that are born in the saddle, fight duels over a quirked eyelash, and do all sorts of things to avoid dying peacefully in old age. He cheerfully trussed up our supplies (the peasants found us intelligible enough when it came to selling us food), burbling his enthusiasm about the carnivores and quadrupeds which must roam such a primeval forest in fantastic sizes. I couldn’t work up a burble even for the runcible meals we would enjoy; I am not a Pole and could not exult over such an array of sausages. Only the Turkish Delight comforted my heart.

We would start in the morning. I couldn’t sleep even by imagining I was listening to Uncle Kazimir on Economics, a memory that can put me to sleep running full-tilt down the football field. I stole out of the stationmaster’s cottage and walked to the outskirts of Karsk.

I had believed in the storied Padunegra while my head was knocked up, but those ordinary trees at the edge of the village had shaken me. However, as I padded through the needles along the treeline, while the North star swam in ragged clouds and cold, suffocating mist exhaled from between the trunks, and the forest loomed over my head like a monster wave of dizzying black, I felt for the first time since Wegszyn’s rhetoric a shiver of lust on my own account to ravage the secrets of this uncouth wood.

We set out early, humping the Colonel’s mass of foodstuffs and guns. The only path out of Karsk led us through two more villages; the second was Pleva Drevena, a perfectly typical Moldavian forest settlement in all but one thing. It had no paths into the forest. Undergrowth like the frames of innerspring mattresses choked every yard of treeline. The peasants of Pleva stood in their doorways and sat on their fences, watching us with sad, wry faces, but offering not a word or gesture, either of discouragement or help.

Colonel Wegszyn finally crashed in among the trunks by main force. As I scrambled after, I thought I heard a collective groan behind my shoulder; and as we pushed into the dusky growth, I heard an axe take up its chopping again, then a hoe pound its rhythmic thud.

We struggled on and on. The air had the stale chill of an icebox, but sweat soon moistened me from brow to boots, and I stumbled over huge mushrooms I mistook for Turks’ heads, and tripped through brambles I mistook for cavaliers’ entrails, longing for Miroslav’s dusty print shop where the news trickles in one lost cat and one fiftieth wedding anniversary at a time, and the loudest sound is my hand leisurely dropping the type into the frames between sips of sugared tea.

“Colonel!”

“Eh, lad?”

“How far d’you intend to go this morning?”

“Intend to go?” The Colonel swung his ponderous pack about like a feather pillow as he faced me, barely panting between his white moustaches. “We’ll go to the deer! Or the bears! Or the wolves! We’ll go till we don’t know where we are and have to use the map and sextant! We’ll go till we find running water! We’ll go till the food is gone! We’ll…”

He sounded so like Uncle Theokritos, my head hung like a rained-on morning glory. The Colonel’s voice softened a little. “We’ll go on, lad, we haven’t even started. Have a drink, cinch up that strap, and keep in my tracks where it’s easier.”

I obeyed. If it was easy, I don’t know what walking outside the tracks would have been.

I was prematurely sure that noon had come, sixteen times. When it really did, I didn’t believe it and was full of wondering awe, as if it were the first noon of the world. Thus, imagine my surprise when dusk followed this tardy noon as if to make up for lost time, and descended within an hour of our short pause for luncheon.

“Colonel!”

“Eh, lad?”

“It’s positively night!”

“A brave day’s going, Ioudas!”

“But has it been a day?”

“Are you verrückt, lad? Look about!”

I didn’t need to. We had gone hardly fifty steps further before everything was a deep, oily, blackish blue, like the Bay of Naples when Uncle Petros and I would take his little boat out on a slow evening.

“Colonel, we must stop.”

“You may be right,” sighed the Colonel, and pushed on another half-mile, stopping only when he walked into a tree-trunk like one of the Pillars of Karnak. “Rather dark, isn’t it?”

I wanted terribly to look at my watch, and begged the Colonel for a sulfur match, which his survivalist thrift refused for a long time. When he finally gave in, the watch read 2:45.

“It can’t be that late,” snorted the Colonel. “I’m not tired enough.” I was glad he finally recognized the bizarrity of this early-afternoon darkness, until I realized with a start that he was merely bragging about his stamina and really believed it could be 2:45 am.

“Perhaps it’s an eclipse,” I ventured.

“Nonsense. Obviously it’s night, and if you insist that it’s not yet a quarter to three in the morning, then you must admit your watch’s broken. I’m all for going on, but if you’re tired, boy, I’ll oblige you. We can brew a little coffee.”

The old man fell asleep while it was brewing. I sat very close to our little fire of twigs, needles, and cones, my eyes fixed on its blunted little flames; for away from its circle of soft orange, I could see nothing at all.

By six ounces of black Macedonian coffee, I was nearly eager for adventure again, and rose to shuffle a cautious circumference about our bivouac, examining the timber and the deep mould of needles.

The trees were scaly-barked as of conifers, but branchless as far up as I could determine. There was no undergrowth here except the frequent large mushrooms. When I carried one to the firelight, it had a beautiful metallic gleam, and when I sliced its stem, the interior glittered and twinkled like frost or the Milky Way. Speaking of which, I believed I saw stars, but they were altered: much more evenly spread out, much more uniform in brightness, than I remembered.

Wegszyn slept on and on. I covered him and sat tending the fire, unwilling to see its precious light wink out. I poured more coffee and rummaged out a square of Turkish Delight.

My mouth, full and sticky, stopped chewing; my coffee slopped unheeded from the cup.

“Colonel!”

He made gusty noises and crackled the twigs beneath him a bit.

“Colonel Wegszyn, wake up!”

But the terrifying sound, becoming louder at that moment, woke him for me.

“Ioudas, do stop that awful singing, I’m trying to sleep.”

“Colonel,” I chattered, “I’m not singing. Wake up! What is that?”

He sat up slowly, like a drawbridge, and listened with that profound expression which can look so wise or so stupid, according to the terms you’re on with him.

“What awful singing,” he rumbled at last. “There was an alto soloist with the Berlin Court Opera who sounded like that, forty years ago. Frau Marlein Dresdener. Funny I can remember her name. She sang somebody in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, and when she opened her mouth, weak-minded people crawled under the seats and whimpered.”

“Colonel,” I clamped the coffee-cup between my knees to stop their shaking, “Don’t go on about your youth in Berlin. I’ve heard it all. Tell me what that awful noise is, or I shall scream!”

“Singing, of course,” snorted the Colonel. “Produced by lungs and a larynx, quite obviously. Powerful lungs; it’s far away, hear how it echoes? I should never have thought to meet Marlein out here. What a tartar she is. But good-hearted, lad, like one’s own mother.”

“Go back to sleep,” I snapped. “If all you can do is ramble about outdated prima donnas, I’ll face the horrible beast—a hyena? A panther?—alone. Where’s the carbine?”

The Colonel passed me a rifle as he would have passed a spoon or a cigarette, and covered his shoulders with the blanket again, burrowing the back of his head comfortably in the dry duff. I laid the carbine across my lap and listened; the drawn-out, almost melodious cry was lower, but persisted. At last I shakily poured myself the last of the coffee.

What a good smell it had, that last steaming, condensed draught. I held it like smelling-salts to revive myself, and was feeling very nearly reasonable and vigorous when I was obliged to throw the cup in the air and clap both hands to the rifle-stock, by an apparition at the edge of the firelight.

It was a man; yes, without doubt, a man.

His rough stockings, heavy breeches, and sheepskin vest were smeared and caked with something gritty and clogging, like mud, but which glittered like the mushroom’s inside, like the Bolivian salt-flats, like powdered glass in strong sunlight. His skin was bright and metallic like the mushroom’s; bronze by firelight, I-don’t-know-what in daylight. His shining, coaly hair and beard hardly concealed features rich with several sorts of good emotions, concentrated like the coffee in fascinating strength.

“Wovon kamen Sie?” I murmured. (Between Uncle Theokritos and Uncle Kazimir, I always speak French or German when intimidated.)

“From Pardubice,” his voice was rich and musical, his German rough and badly dictioned. “You aren’t one of us.”

“Who are we, I mean, whose, whom, who are you?” (My German pronouns are disobedient.)

“We are soldiers of many nations, and I am Theodosij Ketla. I came here after the Battle of White Mountain. You and he are adventurers. They come here very seldom. I approached at the smell of your kettle, which is unlike any smell I ever met in Bohemia, yet beautiful and full of pleasure.”

I took the kettle off the tripod of sticks and regretfully confirmed that it was empty. “It was coffee. I’ll brew you some more.”

Theodosij could stand very still, never needing to shift a foot or blink an eye. “I neither eat nor drink, but I thank you.”

“What are you?” I burst, almost irritably.

“Do I not look like a man?”

“You look like one, yes, only an awfully shiny, stationary one, who never eats or drinks. What kind of a man is that?”

Theodosij’s gliding walk carried him to Colonel Wegszyn; he sat down on the old man, who never stirred.

“You’re awfully light,” I observed stupidly.

“I am not light, I am bodiless,” explained Theodosij.

“May I…”

“What?”

“Stick my hand through… I’m sorry. So rude.”

“No, do oblige.” Theodosij laughed so beautifully. “The ancient test of flesh and spirit. The Lord invited it upon St. Thomas.”

I got up unsteadily and extended my jerky hand into Theodosij’s chest.

“Go on, reach your other hand round and grasp the first. It’s the only way to be sure.”

I shakily reached and grasped, to encircle Theodosij in an embrace that passed directly through his breast.

“Your embrace is most light and fraternal,” observed Theodosij. “Maintain it as long as you like.”

I was shocked to find that I liked it a great deal.

“Your mortal body does not find the position comfortable. Arrange yourself comfortably. I will speak long and deeply with you, and your body must not interfere with your understanding.”

“One moment,” I protested. “I can’t be sure of the time, but it may be a little after three in the morning. If that’s the case, the Colonel, under you there, will wake with the sun, as he always does; and since it’s summer, the sun will come up before five. How long and deeply do you mean to talk?”

“The sun will not come up. It is up. It never penetrates here.”

My slow head oriented my unbelieving eyes to the stars.

“The branches of the trees begin sixty feet from the ground and are very thick, and very thickly plumed, so that no daylight except many star-like snippets can come through. When the stars go out, the outer night has begun.”

I was helplessly wrung by a surprising terror, terror of nothing more or less than the perpetual darkness of this cursed Padunegra.

“To us who inhabit it,” said Theodosij, so softly, “this is not darkness, but only the large home of the small light. Were it a thousand times larger in proportion to the light, we would feel no alarm or sorrow; we would love the light the same. We do not love the light for its size, but for its nature.”

Settle, settle did my terror, and though my bending stance was so uncomfortable, I still embraced Theodosij until he told me to drag my pack over. I sat on it with my left arm nestled in Theodosij’s core, and my eyes roamed over his bright clothing and his face.

“No man has joined us in the wood in sixty-seven years,” intoned Theodosij, who had begun to fan me with his hand; the delicate wafts made my eyes fall half-shut. “Before your age, Bruderherz [Brother-heart], before his [indicating the Colonel] and before his father’s, the battles were shorter and more brutal, and the dead upon a single field more numerous. Afterward the infantry or the serfs were made to bury them quickly, to prevent rotting and disease.

“It often happened that in their haste they came on a man not yet dead, but whose wound was so terrible he could not long live. Frightened of pestilence and half-deranged with the horror of handling so many mangled corpses, they sometimes shoved the living with the dead into the pits, and hastily covered them. This befell me after the slaughter at White Mountain. The German imperialists had no pity for we Slavic heretics, and many shared my fate, thrown alive in trenches and smothered with gory corpses before the earth was piled over us. This is truly a terrible experience, and a most serious test of a man’s faith. The impious give themselves over, sometimes to terrible fear and cursing, sometimes to terrified prayer. It is the longest hour, or six hours, in all of time, Bruderherz.

“But God has mercy on the pious. Even in a mass grave He does not forget His own. My own experience, I have found, is like many another.

“All my life I had a terrible fear of suffocation. I was afraid of water, afraid of the haystacks, afraid of heavy blankets on my bed. When I came to the Lutheran faith I found many sins and unbeliefs in my heart which the dear Lord wanted to purge away; and one of these was this fear. I had a terrible dream that I was buried alive. I awoke in the night, and prayed very earnestly; and the Spirit of God led me back into the dream, to brave and bear it. I stopped kicking and thrashing in my coffin, and lay still. I breathed shallowly, and heard a verse repeated in my heart: Man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep… Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the works of thy hands.”

“So repeating, I fell into deep peace, my arms crossed on my breast, confident that the hands which had formed me would desire my shape and my substance again, and raise it, formed anew. Then I awoke to the light and air of morning.

“Thus, years later when I received the ventrical wound at White Mountain and was flung under the mound of men and earth, I neither raged nor panicked in final woe, but, unable to cross my arms, I crossed my feet and committed myself to the hands which made me from the dust. A long time I remained in peace deeper than the trench and higher than the mound, until my brain settled in softness and blackness and fell from my mind, and I rose light and superlatively intelligent, and learned that the Padunegra receives the souls of pious persons buried alive, until the day of Resurrection.”

When his recitative ended, he looked down into my face.

Conscious that I had never seen anyone so beautiful, I was amazed to find that he was beautiful exactly and precisely because he did not mind being buried alive.

“I want to stay here with you,” I said.

“You are not pious,” he said. “Since I have spoken with you, you believe in our Lord again, but you are not His man yet. Piety is not learned but rewarded, here. You did not come in to be rewarded, but to be rebuked, and sent back to learn. You have been rebuked.—I needed not even mention it, Bruderherz, for your mere closeness to me taught you to hate your weak will, your unbelief, and your life of serving, not the needy, but the overbearing. Your sorrow is beautiful in your face. Go back to your nation and learn how the Lord purges the heart.”

I looked down at Colonel Wegszyn.

“He was rebuked long ago,” said Theodosij. “There was a singer with whom he sinned, long ago. If he had learned to feel sorrow like yours, he might now be very near the Wood which receives pious solders who die in their beds. But he blamed her, and everything about her, even her magnificent voice. I sang like her a little while ago, to test him. He felt nothing, as you saw.”

I looked sorrowfully at my old friend, a long time.

“They say all sorts of things about this wood,” I murmured, when I first noticed that the stars were fading. “They say, of course, that it’s full of dead soldiers, but they also mention intrigues with talking flowers, and… and deer which become people if they’re pulled out in the daylight.”

“Such things will be said,” observed Theodosij serenely. “Some of my colleagues are so beautiful they might well be taken for flowers. I was taken for a mass of hoarfrosted syringa once.” (I looked critically at him, and found the mistake highly possible.) “As for intrigues, humanity has a nasty way of mistaking the gestures and words of the highest platonic love for the erotic. You’re not that way. Your arm in my bowels, there, is the purest fraternal affection… As for the deer—

“There are no deer in this forest. There are no beasts at all, you may have observed. Certain rumors, of course, have circulated about fantastical creatures, but those are only some of my more gorgeous colleagues. Dear Count Jan Vratislav of Mitrovice, prematurely entombed in St. James’ Church, has the likeness of a lion, with his shimmering golden color and the rays about his head. And the Seven Martyrs of Ephesus, falsely reported to have been extracted alive from the sealed cave after a hundred years, have agility and plumage which may resemble eagles. A certain Calvinist lady interred alive by the counter-Reformation policies of Charles V might bear some resemblance to a deer. She is extremely swift and wears fawn-colored robes.”

“I heard that the deer became gentle, reflective, terribly intelligent people, out there,” I murmured. I felt drawn to confession and every sort of transparency with Theodosij. “I wanted to bring one out, and perhaps it would be a blessing to the world, a great scholar or scientist.”

“It is no wonder that the inhabitants of this wood are reported remarkably intelligent,” replied Theodosij. “And I do not wonder that you wanted to give the world such a person. But I have the same desire, Bruderherz. You are my blessing to the world. You have thrust your hand through my body, but I thrust my hand through your soul.

“In a little while I’ll leave you. Wake the Colonel then, and induce him to return to Pleva Drevena. You have only to light your lantern and follow your tracks in the mould. But I will not leave yet, Bruderherz. Do as you have longed to do these hours, move further in me.”

I did not wonder how he had known, nor did I find my desire strange. I leaned further into his bright shape, and relaxed as motionless as he, static in a high joy of knowing, feeling, and contemplating his great goodness and the immortal solidity of his being.

“Learn without mistake,” instructed Theodosij. “The aim, end, and highest joy of every soul is to rest in the Final Good, God the Father. Your rest in me is the faintest taste of that rest and that joy. Let it spur you to the immortal blessedness, which is only gained by piety; and piety, Bruderherz, is only gained by participation in the death and resurrection of His Son.”

I leaned content and beatific in Theodosij.

“Why is it,” speech was as natural to me now as silence, “that only compromised brains take this wood seriously enough to investigate?”

“Is that really so strange?” said Theodosij. “Even ‘the preaching of the Cross is foolishness to them that perish.’ Should not a suburb of the blessed regions be a little incredible?”

A silly question came to me, so silly that only my new transparency could make me confess it.

“Theodosij, what do they do all the time, the spirits here?”

His color changed. His metallic skin seemed molten, hot and glowing.

“Feel now bright flames of joy in thy small heart

Because so near a perfect heart it lies;

Then cast, mein Bruderherz, beyond thine eyes

The contemplation of thy deathless part

Upon the great joy, brightening tenfold

Then hundred, thousandfold the nearing space

In which a soul approacheth to

That face

Whose bloody brow makes more than angels bold

The men who found in bloody wounds their peace

To near, grasp, see, and to the endless age

Burn sunlike with adoring vassalage

Ceaseless is their joy, love without cease.

Blind darkness blinds the living, not the dead;

On me perpetual falls the blessed light

Which walked Gennesaret one stormy night;

This wood thy terror is my quiet bed.

Such rest, to earthly life is livelier;

All-patiently its waking I expect

When with a knee to kneel, eyes to reflect,

All-Blessed, in Thy Kingdom I appear.”

I leaned content and beatific until at last the stars appeared again, and he rose, his gliding walk carrying him swiftly through an aperture of the dark trunks.

Well, I woke the Colonel, who had slept, I calculated, a night and half a day; I told him of a dead soldier’s order to leave the wood, and that there were no animals. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have turned back empty-handed from a hunt for any words of mine. But our relation had somehow changed. I was firmer, supremely sure of myself in this demand, and he obeyed it almost without complaint.

I’m not in the habit of preceding anyone—my aunts and uncles prefer to be followed—but now I walked before and carried the lantern.

The Colonel seemed hardly himself, foggy with his long sleep, nonplussed at my changed manner, and perhaps shaken more than he had revealed by his auditory encounter with Marlein Dresdener. We moved slowly, and only emerged into twilight by mid-afternoon; at five, we found the mottled daylight of the woods in early evening, and twilight settled again as we thrust through the dense undergrowth of the forest’s margin. It was late dusk when we struggled into Pleva Drevena.

My family hasn’t quite known how to handle me after the hunt in the Padunegra.

My first shocker was to address a meeting of Miroslav’s Neo-Hospitallers in Luzina’s parlor. I upbraided their betrayal of the ancient order of Knights Hospitaller—their contentment with a merely social and arrogantly esoteric institution, and neglect of the poor, the ill, and the vulnerable. Miroslav’s easy-going nature hardly resents anything I can do, but he was in an embarrassing position harboring me in the print shop after a number of the Neo-Hospitaller stalwarts demanded my dismissal. I kissed Luzina and went to Naples.

Uncle Petros Thaumastos (he’s Pietro Tomasso there) put me to work as always, delivering pizzas, but he got annoyed when I gave my wages away to so many beggars that they followed my delivery bicycle in hordes, and then got furious when I took to expounding the Gospel in the pizzeria. I went to Paris.

Uncle Theokritos Thaumastos (he’s Theocrité St-Thomas there) put me in the polishing department of his furniture-refurbishing enterprise, which was a nice change from sewing upholstery; but he became annoyed when I reprimanded his very low buying and high selling, and then furious when I visited Monsieur the Archbishop to suggest that he was not being strict enough with the sins of the Royal Family for the good of their souls. Uncle Theokritos sent me to Lübeck.

Uncle Kazimir Thaumastos (he’s Kasimir Thomasius there) was wired ahead of time by Uncle Theokritos, and took me reluctantly into the exchanging house, and soon regretted it as much as he expected to. He sent me to Aunt Sacred Obligation, saying I was just her type.

Though as a man I could only access certain parts of her abbey, and had to wear odd things and maintain a certain distance, Aunt Sacred Obligation was the first of my relatives except Luzina to whom I told my experience in the Padunegra. I was surprised (but shouldn’t have been), when she revealed longtime knowledge about the wood and its inhabitants, though she had only believed in it since a fainting-spell during a prolonged fast. She showed me medieval manuscripts on the subject in the abbey scriptorium.

I found myself much more drawn to her than ever before, and we had some beautiful conversations. She was especially curious about what denominations were represented by the Padunegra’s spirits, but the fact of Theodosij’s Protestantism gave her so much to think about that she began an extensive sort of research project involving about 180 pounds of Church Fathers, prolonged solitude, and more fasting, which made me feel a bit left out of things. We parted lovingly, however, when I left the strictly feminine confines of the Abbey for New York.

My impassioned speech against adultery enraged one of Aunt Sophia’s clients (whom I didn’t even know was listening), and the woman withdrew her nine pedigreed collies from Aunt Sophia’s grooming business. Aunt Sophia fired me. We stayed up all night talking and crying, which is her way, and the upstairs neighbors banged on the ceiling, just like when we talked and cried all night when we heard about Luzina’s engagement. She didn’t want to send me away and I didn’t want to go, but being fired, it seemed the only decent thing to do.

I was getting desperate when I wired Uncle Antioqueno. His aide-de-camp wired back that the Presidente was currently in the mountains leading a sortie against the guerillas, but if I cared to wait six or eight months in the capital, there was a dossier marked, “Tasks to Be Accomplished by My Nephew In Case of His Arrival in My Absence.”

I declined.

No aunts or uncles to order me about! I was completely at a loss. I didn’t even know until mid-Atlantic whether my boat was bound for Southampton or Cape Town.

Having lived so much among the various capitals, with uncles and aunts who know everyone financially worth knowing, I bumped into several acquaintances on shipboard, with whom I could discuss piety and the aim of the soul. One of them, merely to get me off his back, referred me to an old flame of his, a deaconess with the Pietist mission at Kaiserwerth. I trained in theology there and then at Bonn University, and have been shepherding a flock in Skopje for ten years.

Colonel Wegszyn died some time ago. I didn’t see him much in his last years, but I heard he died peacefully in his bed, which makes me wonder if a rebuke like Theodosij’s came home at last. He left me all his guns; leaving them to me seemed an overt plea that they never be used again, which gives me hope.

I have never gone back to the Padunegra, increasingly convinced, as my knowledge of Scripture and theology deepens, that as a sort of annex of the Church Dormant it’s barred to the reverent. A pastor meets all sorts, and I’ve heard of three or four more madcap sorties up the narrow-gauge to Karsk Drevena and into the forest. Three of those characters were changed for the better by their experiences, though no two stories I’ve heard are the same.

Four are still spreading hogwash about talking beasts and walking flowers; and no one believes a thing unless impaired in the consciousness. Well, take care of your cranium, and don’t believe them.

There are much greater things to believe.