Lapvona

What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.

When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn't know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.

that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.

When God gives you more than you can tolerate, you turn to instinct. And instinct is a force beyond anyone’s control.

I am interested in disgust.

Marek guessed that Villiam could use his wealth to influence God's will. That was the way things worked, Marek thought. If you didn't have money, you had to be good.

Jude didn’t understand forgiveness. He was incapable of forgiveness because he was so addled by his own grief and grudges. This bad blood was what kept Jude’s heart pumping.

But such was death - it had nothing to say.

He went outside, desperate for something, anything—an embrace or a blow to the head.

Blood was the wine of the spirit, was it not?

Open up your heart,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid it’s broken.’ ‘If I was knocking at your door, would you open it?’ ‘I would, of course.’ ‘Even if the door was broken.’ ‘I would try.

Since he was little, a scraped knee or a whipped back, anything to make his body hurt, felt like the hand of God upon him.

Strange, he thought next, that fire hurts to the touch. Fire gives light. Shouldn’t the darkness hurt instead? Hell ought to be pure darkness. Nothingness.

She was, to him, a holy grace, far more powerful than any priest or nun. God lived in her eyes. That was how he had fallen for her—like a religious conversion. It had struck him the moment he’d seen her, a profound, eternal love, the kind that occurred by cause of fate, against reason.

Yes, Marek was her son, but he was a bastard, a scar. That’s what a child of rape was, in fact—evidence.

He loved not the Christ but himself and the thrill of keeping people in line. He liked wearing his habit, and he liked the preposterous authority that his position granted him. Since his assignment in Lapvona, he had not given any real sermons. He simply translated Villiam's rule into language that sounded vaguely religious.

She had indeed seen death and she was not afraid of it. What scared her were other people and their immovable selfishness.

Beauty is the Devil’s shade,’ Jude said.

She’d done everything so many times in her life, she drifted between now and then, often getting lost in between.

I finally heard the truth,’ Grigor told him. He couldn’t explain when he’d heard it, or from whom, but he’d heard it in his heart, without words, a deep knowing, and nothing could hurt him or frighten him now. It was so simple that the reasoning of it tended to slip through his mind as soon as he touched it, like a rabbit in the woods. Once you breathe, it’s gone.

Children are selfish, she thought. They rob you of life. They thrive as you toil and wither, and then they bury you, their tears never once falling out of regret for what they’ve stolen. That

Perhaps hell is a tiny place, a single flame, Clod thought now. The thought moved him, and he imagined the pureness of the flame as he gazed through the darkness at the candelabra. Just one flame could contain all the evil that has come and gone. What if it were that easy to snuff it out? Would he do it? No. He would never interfere. Just the image of the white light, the way it swayed in the slow breeze floating through the manor, that was what mattered to him. If he could draw that, he thought, and make the picture move somehow, that would be interesting. He could suspend the drawing from a string and let the wind push it to and fro. Strange, he thought next, that fire hurts to the touch. Fire gives light. Shouldn’t the darkness hurt instead? Hell ought to be pure darkness. Nothingness. The thought chilled him. There was nothing to see there. He shrugged and pulled his back away from the wall, feeling his shirt stick to his skin with sweat.

Marek lay back. He felt the warmth from the sun on his face, and felt his back relax a bit against the hard stone floor. 'Do you think my bones are right?' he asked Villiam. 'Please, don't ask me about bones. Tonight, we will only talk about normal things.' Marek nodded. He had no idea what that meant. The wine had made him a bit softer in his mind, but no wiser.

She was empty. ‘I am an object in the room,’ she had told herself. ‘That is all that I am.’ This belief spared her the agony of her own intelligence while she was a slave to the nuns.

There was something strange in her face, a blankness that made her hard to see. He didn't believe that a man was something holy--the servants' faith did not recognize holiness in human beings. They didn't care for Jesus. Flesh was mortal. God was not. God was not alive. God was life itself. And life was invisible. This was why Clod felt he had to make art, to give proof of life.

Vuna and Jon were not free. Their idea of life was to work the land and worship, and to have another child who could work the land and worship when they were gone. Their only anxiety was in what the land would produce for them. Didn’t they know that the land was God itself, the sun and moon and rain, that it was all God? The life in their seeds of wheat, the manure from the cow, that was God. The priest had nothing to do with it.

Please, Erno. It’s Sunday. It’s evil to discuss money on the Sabbath, don’t you know?’ ‘It’s Tuesday, my lord,’ Erno muttered. ‘Every day is Sunday in God’s kingdom.’ ‘Then when would we work?’ ‘Please, Erno. Clod needs to concentrate.

Her absence hung over both of them like a hovering bird. Marek felt the bird wasn’t close enough, that it was just out of reach, that if it descended a bit farther he could grab hold of its foot and it would take him away, fly him to some better place. And Jude felt the bird was too close. If he looked up at it, it would scratch his eyes out. The difference was that Jude had known Agata. And he knew the truth about her absence. All Marek knew was that she had given her life for his own, like any good mother would do.

The bandit didn't struggle or curse. He said only 'God forgive you', the same words Marek had said to him a few days earlier.