Oh? A man’s knowledge of women? A ‘complete’ man’s knowledge, eh, Dragosani?
He gritted his teeth, choked out: ‘There hasn’t been time … my work, studies … the opportunity hasn’t arisen.’
Time? Studies? Opportunity? Dragosani, you are not a child. I was eleven when I tore through my first maidenhead, a thousand years ago. After that – virgin, bitch, whore, what did it matter? I had them all, in all ways -and always wanted more! And you? You have not tasted? You have not soaked yourself in the sweat and the juice and the hot sweet blood of a woman? Not one? And you call me a dead thing!
The old one laughed then, laughed uproariously, outrageously, obscenely. He found it all so ecstatically ridiculous! His laughter went on and on, became a deluge, a tidal wave, a howling ocean of laughter in Dragosani’s head, threatening to drown him.
‘Damn you!’ he stood up and stamped on the earth, spat on it. ‘Damn you!’ he shook his knotted fists at the black soil and tumbled slabs. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn you!’
The old one was quiet in a moment, oozing like some nightmare slug in Dragosani’s mind. But I’m already damned, my son, he said, after a little while. Yes, and so are you . . .
Dragosani snatched out his knife, reached for the shunned piglet.
Wait! Not so hasty, Dragosani. I have not refused. But tell me: since it would appear that like some puny priest you’ve abstained for all these long years, why now?
Dragosani thought about it, decided he might as well tell the truth. The old devil in the ground had probably seen through him, anyway. ‘It’s the woman. She aggravates me, taunts me, flaunts her flesh.’
Ahhh! I know the sort.
‘Also, I believe she thinks I’ve been with men – or at least she has wondered about it.’
Like the Turks? The old one’s mental response was sharp, touched with hatred. That is an insult!
‘I think so too,’ Dragosani nodded. ‘So . . . will you do it?’
You are inviting me into your mind, am I correct? Tonight, when this woman comes to you?
‘Yes.’
And it is an invitation, made of your own free will?
Dragosani grew wary. ‘Just this once,’ he answered. ‘It will have no permanence.’
Again you flatter yourself, the other chuckled. I have -or will have – my own body, Dragosani, which is nothing so weak as yours!
‘And you can do it? And will I learn from it?’
Oh, I can do it, my son, yeeessss! Have you forgotten the fledgling? And didn’t you learn something that time, too? Who made you a necromancer, Dragosani? Yes, and this time you will learn . . . much!
‘Then I want nothing more from you – for now, anyway.’ He began to back away from the tomb, moving downhill, away from that place of centuried horror. And –
But what of the piglet? asked the thickly glutinous voice in his head. And more hurriedly: For the earth, Dragosani, for the earth.
In the deep, unquiet gloom, Dragosani narrowed his eyes. ‘Oh, yes, I very nearly forgot,’ he said, his tone not quite sarcastic. ‘The piglet, of course. For the earth Quickly he returned, slit the insensate animal’s throat, tossed its pink body down. And then, without looking back, he made silently away.
A little way down the slope, against the bole of a tree where great roots forked, trapped there and unable to roll any farther, he saw something strange and stopped to pick it up. It was last night’s offering, or what remained of it. A tightly interwoven ball of pink skin and crushed bones, all dry as crumpled cardboard. A beetle crawled on it, seeking in vain for some morsel of sustenance. Dragosani let it fall and roll out of sight.
Oh, yes, he thought – but guarded his thoughts carefully there in the darkness beneath the pines – oh, yes. For the earth. Only for the earth . . .
Dragosani got back to the Kinkovsi place in time to eat supper with the family again; for the last time, though he couldn’t know that then. During the meal Use showed little or no interest in him, which was as well for he felt tense and on edge. He was not sure he’d done the right thing; the old devil in the ground was no fool and had stressed that this would be at Dragosani’s own invitation; his old revulsion was gradually mounting in him as the time approached; but at the same time his body ached for release from years of sexual self-denial. For the first time since his arrival here the food seemed tasteless to him, and even the beer was flat and lifeless.