Lapvona

Lapvona undergoes a horrifying, months-long drought during the summer. The bandits intercept the late spring harvest and then the summer crops fail, leaving the village destitute. Villagers visit Jude, begging to trade their goods for his lambs, but Jude refuses, insisting that eating meat is a sin. One by one the lambs die of thirst, and Jude buries their bodies, entering a deep state of mourning. The villagers begin to eat anything and everything available to them to escape starvation: “Dead bees, bats, vermin, worms, dirt, and even old, desiccated cakes of animal dung had filled their bellies” (92). Jude eventually begins to eat mud down at the lake, where most of the villagers have camped out. At the lake, he sees a man, Klim, who has a dog on the leash. The dog pulls, causing Klim to fall and die. Fearing what the villagers will do, Jude hoists Klim over his shoulder and flees.

Meanwhile, Marek wakes to his new life in the manor, where he lives as Villiam’s son. Although he has had some difficulties adjusting—eating meat for the first time caused him to vomit, and he is no longer allowed to self-flagellate—Marek enjoys Villiam’s attentions, which seem more genuine than any he received from Jude. The drought has not disturbed life at the manor because Villiam keeps reservoirs of water from melting snow.

Father Barnabas is a frequent guest at the manor. There is no sincerity to his faith; he does not practice religion out of genuine belief but out of a desire for control. He uses religious rhetoric to coerce Lapvonians into fearing anything the manor labels wrong to enforce Villiam’s will. While Villiam, Dibra, Marek, and Barnabas enjoy a variety of foods, including meat, the servants live primarily off boiled cabbage. Villiam enjoys forcing Marek to eat meat since it makes him vomit, which entertains Villiam. Lispeth is Marek’s personal attendant, staying awake at his bedside when he falls asleep, bathing him, and even scraping his teeth using her fingernails. However, she dislikes Marek, still longing for Jacob, whom she loved.

When Marek goes down to the great hall to join his new father, Villiam demands a series of entertainments. Finally, he creates a game to humiliate Lispeth, forcing her to catch a grape in her mouth that has been rubbed against Marek’s anus. Villiam is aware that he is crueler to Lispeth than the other servants and knows he is doing this because she reminds him of Jacob. Though he doesn’t feel grief over his son’s death, thinking of it is uncomfortable for him because his mind goes dark. Lispeth tolerates these indignities because, like the other servants, she views Villiam as a man trapped in a childlike mind. She knows her life would be worse if she lived in the village.

Jude feels dazed with hunger. Mindlessly, he finds himself walking toward Ina’s cabin. He has no idea what condition the drought has left her in but hopes that she might still have something to eat. He finds that Ina is also starving, reduced to skin and bones and unable to move from her bed. He finds some dead spiders in her cabin and feeds them to her, but Ina asks that he feed her Klim instead. When Jude protests that it is a sin, she replies that it doesn’t matter. Though at first Jude thinks he should let her die, pity and the memory of her kindness to him as a child overtakes him, and he chops off Klim’s hand and feeds it to her. By night, Jude has also lost his inhibitions and begun to eat Klim. Both he and Ina feel their strength restored, and some clarity returns to their minds. Ina tells him to go home, and Jude leaves carrying what is left of Klim: head, neck, and torso.

At the manor, Villiam forces Marek to participate in a sausage eating contest with him, which he easily wins since Marek vomits the meat back up. Lispeth tells Marek that they will feed the remaining sausages to the livestock since it is against the servants’ religion to eat meat. Marek feels jealous that the servants still observe their religion since he believes that makes them superior to him and Villiam. After the contest he leaves the manor and walks to the top of the hill, where he can see Jude’s pasture, observing its emptiness.

That night, Marek wakes from his sleep and hears voices exiting the manor. He follows them in secret and discovers that it is Villiam and Father Barnabas, going for a midnight swim in the reservoir. Both slip out of their clothes and jump in the water like children. Marek steals the priest’s robes and walks down to the village, missing his father and hoping to be welcomed home. When he returns to his cabin it is empty, so he lies down, still dressed in the robes.

Meanwhile, Jude has completely forsaken his previous worries about cannibalism and is considering how he can use the remaining bits of Klim’s corpse. He arrives at the cabin and sees a figure sleeping there in a priest’s garb. His guilt comes rushing back to him, and he worries that he will be punished for what he has done. He flees the cabin, taking Klim’s head with him and leaving the torso behind. When Marek wakes, he mistakes Klim’s torso for his father’s and wonders who dismembered Jude. Feeling that it is his filial duty, he carries Klim’s torso to Agata’s grave and buries it. Once his task is complete, he runs home to the manor.

Jude runs through the trees begging for God’s forgiveness and wondering if the entire macabre experience has been a dream, a hallucination, or hell. Unbeknownst to him, Agata has fled the abbey, where the nuns treated her poorly, and is making her way to the manor, cutting through Jude’s pasture. He comes to what he perceives as a field of wildflowers and sees white lights dotting the air like fireflies. He believes he is dying. Then he spies a figure dressed in black robes and recognizes Agata, running toward her and overtaking her. Believing himself to be dreaming, he rapes her and then falls asleep in the field. When he wakes there are no flowers, and he takes this as confirmation that the events were indeed a dream.

Lispeth wakes up after a dream about Jacob. Her love for him keeps him alive, and Marek feels the presence of his spirit in the room. When Marek wakes up, he tells Lispeth that he found and buried his father, but Lispeth feels no sympathy, asking instead for the details of his death to satisfy her own morbid curiosity.

The narrator explains the backstory of Dibra, Villiam’s wife, and Luka, her lover. Jacob was Dibra’s son with Luka, though Luka was never able to claim him. Their love affair began when Luka was ordered to deliver her to Villiam, and they found themselves drawn to one another; Luka in particular regards Dibra with religious fervor, and he is the only one allowed to comfort her in her grief over her son. Villiam now sends Luka out to fetch a singer, intending to have him killed by bandits. On the road, Luka passes a nun walking toward the manor and wonders why she is unaccompanied. He hopes for death, wanting to reunite with Jacob and finally claim him as his own.

That night at dinner, Dibra worries about Luka’s absence. The others are primarily focused on the nun who has arrived; Villiam demands that she provide some entertainment, and Marek notices his resemblance to her. Dibra doesn’t care for nuns and considers herself an atheist because of the chaos of her life. When Villiam chokes on a piece of meat, the nun punches him in the gut, dislodging the morsel and saving his life. Clod, Villiam’s personal servant, carries Villiam to bed and obliges him by drawing the scene of the nun saving Villiam.

Marek struggles to sleep because he believes that the nun is his mother back from the dead. Lispeth tells him he is imagining things, though in reality all the servants recognize that Agata must be Marek’s mother. Lispeth asks if Jacob will also return from the dead, and he requests that she leave him alone, fearing her bitterness. After she leaves, Marek goes into Agata’s chambers, calls her mother, and tries to suckle at her breast. Agata rejects him, but he falls asleep beside her.

Meanwhile, Dibra packs a few supplies and goes out to find Luka, intending to abandon her life in the manor and seek a humble existence where she might be happy. In the morning, her horse returns riderless with its eyes gouged out. The servants are afraid to tell Villiam that Dibra left in the night, but one clueless stable hand reveals it. Villiam is unconcerned with Dibra’s absence, fixating on what the sightless horse could symbolize. Finally, he decides that the horse returning without sight indicates loyalty, and he interprets it as a sign that something good is coming his way.