The Black Spider (8 page)

And Christine tried to comfort herself that it was nothing and it would go away soon; but the pain did not lessen, and the little spot grew imperceptibly, and everybody saw it and asked her what that black thing was on her face. They did not mean anything special by it, but their remarks went to her heart like swordthrusts, rekindled her dark thoughts, and she could not avoid coming back to the thought, time and time again, that it was on this very spot that the green huntsman had kissed her, and that the same fire which on that occasion had shot through her limbs like lightning, now remained burning and consuming there. Thus she could not sleep, her food tasted like firebrand, she rushed aimlessly about, seeking consolation but finding none, for the pain increased still further, and the black spot became bigger and blacker, single dark streaks ran out from the spot, and down towards the mouth it seemed as if there was a lump planted on the round spot.

In this way Christine suffered and rushed around many a long day and many a long night without revealing to anyone the fear in her heart and what it was she had received from the green huntsman on this spot; but if she had known how she could have got rid of this pain, she would have given anything in heaven or on earth to do it. She was by nature a brazen woman, but now she was savage with angry pain.

It now happened that once again a woman was expecting a child. This time there was no great fear and people were easy in mind; so long as they saw to the priest coming at the right time, they thought they could defy the green huntsman. It was only Christine who did not share this belief. The nearer the day of the birth came, the more terrible the burning on her cheek became, the more violently the black spot extended, stretching out legs visibly, driving up short hairs, while shining points and strips appeared on its back, and the hump became a head out of which there blazed a poisonous brilliance as if from two eyes. Everyone who saw the poisonous spider on Christine’s cheek shrieked aloud, and they fled full of fear and horror when they saw how this spider sat firm on her face and had grown out from her flesh. People said all kinds of things, some advised this, some advised the other, but all wished Christine joy of it, whatever it was, and all avoided her and fled from her whenever this was possible. The more people fled from her, the more Christine was driven to follow them, and she rushed from house to house; she must have felt that the devil was reminding her of the promised child; and she rushed after folk in hellish fear to persuade them in no uncertain words to make the sacrifice required by the pact. But the others were little troubled by this; what was tormenting Christine did not hurt them, and what she was suffering was in their opinion her own responsibility, and if they could no longer escape from her, they said to her: ‘That’s your affair! Nobody has promised a child, and therefore nobody is going to give one.’ She set about her own husband with furious words. He fled like the rest, and when he could no longer avoid her he cold-bloodedly told her that it would get better all right, it was a spot such as many people had; once it had taken its course, the pain would cease, and it would be easy to disperse it.

Meanwhile, however, the pain did not cease, each leg was hell-fire, the spider’s body hell itself, and when the woman’s appointed time came, Christine felt as if a sea of fire were surging around her, as if fiery knives were boring into her marrow, as if fiery whirlwinds were rushing through her brain. But the spider swelled and arched itself up, and its eyes glared visciously from behind the short bristles. When Christine found no sympathy anywhere in her burning agony and saw that a woman in labour was strongly guarded, she burst forth like a madwoman along the road where the priest would have to come.

The latter was coming up the slope at a quick pace, accompanied by the sturdy sexton; the hot sun and the seep road did not slow down their walk, for it was a matter of saving a soul and of preventing an eternal misfortune; coming from a visit to a sick parishioner who lived a long way off, the priest was anxious on account of the fearful delay he had experienced. In desperation, Christine threw herself before him in the road, clasped his knees, begged for release from her hell, for the sacrifice of the child that was not yet born, and the spider swelled still more, gleamed terrible and black in Christine’s red swollen face, and with terrifying glances it glared at the priest’s holy requisites. But the priest pushed Christine quickly to one side and made the holy sign; he saw the enemy well enough, but desisted from the fight in order to save a soul. But Christine started up stormed after him and did her utmost to stop him; yet the sexton’s strong hand held the woman off from the priest, and the latter could just arrive in time to protect the house, to receive the infant into his consecrated hands and to place it into the hands of Him Whom hell never overcomes.

Meanwhile Christine had been undergoing a terrible struggle outside. She wanted to have the unbaptized child in her hands and wanted to force her way into the house, but strong men prevented her. Gusts of wind buffeted against the house and yellow lightning hissed round it, but the hand of the Lord was above it, the child was baptized, and Christine circled round the house in vain and without power. Seized by ever wilder hellish torture, she emitted sounds which did not resemble sounds that might come from a human breast; the cattle quivered in their sheds and tore loose from their halters, while the tops of the oak trees in the forest rustled in terror.

Inside the house there was rejoicing over the new victory, the impotence of the green huntsman, the vain writhings of his accessory, but Christine lay outside, thrown onto the ground by dreadful pains, and her face was seized by labour pains such as no woman in child birth has ever experienced on this earth, and the spider in her face swelled higher and higher and burned ever more searingly through her limbs.

Then Christine felt as if her face were bursting open, as if burning coals were being born, coming to life and crawling away over her face, over all her limbs, as if her whole face were coming to life and crawling away red-hot over all her body. In the pale light from the lightning she now saw black little spiders, long-legged, poisonous and innumerable, running over her limbs out into the night, and after those that had disappeared there ran others, long-legged, poisonous and innumerable. Finally she could see no more following the earlier ones, the fire in her face subsided, the spider settled down, became once more an almost invisible point and looked with weary eyes out at the hellish brood which it had borne and sent forth, as a sign that the green huntsman would not let himself be made a fool of.

Exhausted like a woman who has just given birth to a child, Christine crept into the house; although the fire no longer burned so hot on her face, the fire in her heart had not abated, even if her weary limbs longed for rest, for the green would give her not more rest; once he has got somebody, that is how he treats them.

Inside the house, however, there was jubilation and rejoicing, and for a long time they did not hear how the cattle were bellowing and raging in the cowshed. At last they did start up, and a few went out to see; when those who had gone out returned they came back pale as death with the news that the best cow lay dead and the rest of them were raging and stampeding in such a way as had never been seen before. It wasn’t right, there was something unusual at the back of it, they said. At that the sounds of rejoicing were silenced and everyone ran out to the cattle, whose bellowing could be heard over hill and valley, but nobody had any suggestions. They tried both worldly and spiritual arts against magic, but all in vain; already before day broke, death had laid low all the cattle in the shed. But when it became silent in one farm, the bellowing started up on another farm, and yet another; those who were there heard how the trouble had broken into their cattle-sheds and how the animals called to their masters for help in their terrible fear. They rushed home as if flames were leaping from their rooftops, but there was nothing they could do; on one farm as on another death laid low the cattle; cries of distress from man and beast filled hills and valleys, and the sun which had set leaving the valley so happy rose to gaze upon scenes of awful distress. When the sun shone, people could at last see how the sheds where the cattle had been stricken were teeming with countless black spiders. These creatures crawled over the cattle, and the cattle food which they touched became poisoned, and any living creature began to rage until soon it was felled by death. It was impossible to get rid of these spiders from any cattle shed where they had penetrated, it was as if they grew out of the ground itself; it was impossible to protect any shed where they had not yet entered from their invasion, for unexpectedly they started creeping out of all the walls and would fall in clusters from the threshing floor. The cattle were then driven out to pasture, but it was simply driving them into death’s jaws. For wherever a cow placed her foot onto grassland, the ground began to come to life: black, long-legged spiders sprouted up, horrible Alpine flowers which crawled onto the cattle and a fearful wailing could be heard from the hilltops down to the valley. And all these spiders resembled the spider on Christine’s face as children resemble their mother, and nobody had ever seen such before.

The noise of the wretched animals had penetrated to the castle too, and soon shepherds followed with the news that their cattle had fallen because of the poisonous animals and von Stoffeln heard with ever increasing anger how herd upon herd had been lost; now he learnt what type of pact his peasants had made with the green huntsman, and how the huntsman had been deceived a second time, and how the spiders resembled, as children their mother, the spider on the face of the woman from Lindau who alone had made the compact with the green huntsman and had never given a proper account of what had happened. Then von Stoffeln rode up the hill in fierce anger and roared at the peasants that he was not going to lose herd upon herd for their sake; they would have to keep any promises that they had made; what they had done of their own free will, they would have to put up with. He wasn’t going to suffer damage on their account, or if he did have to suffer, they would have to make it good to him a thousand times over. They would have to look out. In this way he spoke to them, indifferent to what it was he was expecting of them; it did not occur to him that he had driven them to it, for he only took account of what they bad done.

It had already dawned upon most of the peasants that the spiders were a visitation of the evil one, a warning that they should keep the agreement; that Christine must know more about it, and that she had not told them all about her agreement with the green huntsman. Now they all trembled again at the thought of the green huntsman and no longer laughed at him, and they trembled before their temporal lord; if they did placate their overlords, what would their spiritual lord say about it, would he allow this, and would he not then lay any penance upon them? The leading peasants met in their fear in a solitary shed, and Christine was to come there and give a clear account of what exactly she had agreed with the green huntsman.

Christine came, more savage, thirsting for revenge, again racked by the growing spider.

When she saw the hesitation of the men and realized that there were no women there, she related exactly what had happened to her: how the green huntsman had quickly taken her at her word and had given her a kiss as a token to which she had not paid any attention any more than to other kisses; how the spider had now grown in hellish pain on that same spot from the moment onwards when the first child had been baptized; how the spider had given birth in hellish agonies to an innumerable host of spiders as soon as the second child had been born and the green huntsman had been fooled; for it was obvious that you could not fool him and get away with it, as she herself felt in her thousandfold pains of death. Now the spider was growing again, she said, the pain was increasing, and if the next child were not given to the green huntsman, nobody could tell how horrible a calamity might break out upon them, and how horrible the knights vengeance must be.

This is what Christine said, and the men’s hearts throbbed, and for a long time nobody was willing to speak. Gradually broken sounds pressed forth from their frightened throats, and when these sounds were pieced together, it was evident that the peasants thought exactly as Christine did, but they insisted that not one of them had given his consent to her action. One of the men stood up and said shortly and sharply that it seemed to him that the best thing was to kill Christine, for once she was dead, the green huntsman could do as he pleased with her, but would have no further claim on the living. Then Christine laughed wildly, stepped close up to him and said into his face that he could hit out at her, it was all the same to her, but the green huntsman wasn’t interested in her, but in an unbaptized child, and just as he had laid his mark on her, so he could mark the hand which wrongfully seized her. Then there was a twitching in the hand of this one man who had spoken, he sat down and silently listened to the advice of the others. In tentative, fragmentary phrases, of the type where nobody says everything but each speaker only says something that is intended to mean little, an agreement was made that the next child should be sacrificed; but nobody was willing to lend a hand here by carrying the child to the Kilchstalden where the beech-trees had been laid out. Nobody had been reluctant to use the Devil for what they considered to be the general good, but nobody wanted to meet him personally. Then Christine offered herself willing for this, for if one had to do with the devil on one occasion, it could do little further harm a second time. It was known who was to give birth the next child, but nothing was said about it, and the father of the child was not present. After making this agreement, which was both a spoken and an unspoken one, they dispersed.

The young woman who had trembled and wept without knowing why on that dreadful night when Christine had given her account of the green huntsman was now expecting the next child. What had happened in the previous cases did not make her feel cheerful and confident, an indefinable fear lay upon her hear which she could not remove either by prayer or confession. It seemed to her as if she were encircled by a conspiracy of silence, nobody spoke about the spider any more, all eyes which looked at her seemed to her suspicious, and seemed to be calculating the hour when they might seize upon her child in order to placate the Devil.