The Testament of Yves Gundron Read Free Page B

had no way to signal her to start. I reached over the edge of the cart and slapped her croup, shouting. She turned her head to recognize me, and showed by the gleam in her eye that she understood. She pulled all of us—myself, Adelaïda, the dog, and a dry bale of hay—until the sun went down. That evening I rewarded her with oats from my own provender, and with the previous year’s dried apples, and scrubbed her down until she gleamed from crest to tail. Elizaveta, when we returned to the house, was completely bound up in her string, and lay with her arms pinned to her sides, blinking.
    That was the night the device’s Heaven-given name appeared to myinward ear. Harness would be its name henceforth until the generations expired. I was still speaking the name to myself when I rose before dawn to bring wood for Adelaïda’s fire, and as I spoke it, I realized that this one simple word meant that our horse, with God’s grace, would survive into her dotage. She would become a member of the family. She, too, would require a name. Again the voice spoke in my inward ear: Call the horse Hammadi. Its beautiful sound rang throughout my body and mind. Although the wood was heavy in my wood sling, I stopped at the barn. All the animals stood wide awake and expectant, and the horse looked at me skeptically, her white star shining, as she hoped for a breakfast as fine as last night’s meal.
    I said, “Hello, Hammadi.”
    She flared her nostrils and flattened her fine brown ears against her head. Perhaps this form of greeting had, in the intervening night, attained an almost human eloquence. I could practically hear her whisper, “Hello.”
    That day was a Saturday, one among the many. On Sundays God decreed a day of rest, but after we went dutifully to worship, and ate a solemn meal, we would return to our everyday work. We dared not tell our priest, Stanislaus, that we worked on the Sabbath—he was too young to have real experience of the world and its ways, and such an admission might have shaken his confidence. Our old priest, Father Icthyus, had fed us full up on the fear of God; but Stanislaus, thin as a reed in his dun-colored cassock, looked down his hooked nose at whatever he studied, his Adam’s apple bobbing ever in confusion, and could not inspire us to the same frenzy of worship and dread. Though he was a young enough fellow, he held to his doctrines with an old man’s fervor; and his unwillingness to grant pardon for our workaday follies made us hesitate to admit to him our real sins. The truth was that, whatever God had decreed, survival required a great deal of labor, and to take more than half a day of rest would have meant our demise. And as for spending one day in contemplation, for the multitudes there is nothing to contemplate beyond work; we think about it while we do it. Clerics or no, it is better to bring in the hay on a sunny Sunday than to meditate upon God’s goodness and allow the hay to be ruined by an evening rain.
    Sunday morning Adelaïda and I put on our good clothes, tied Elizaveta to a clean string to keep her from running wild in our lovely sanctuary of St. Perpetua, and walked to the village for services. The air was crisp and the sun bright, and I was humbled by the beauty of the mountains that lifted their heads to Heaven all around us. That day our church, with its jewel-hued murals, its clear morning light, and its great congregation of farmers, seemed truly the house of the Lord. Stanislaus’s sermon was a dreary injunction against drunkenness and profanity, but all the same was I ardent in my devotions. Adelaïda looked especially beautiful that day, and when we joined together in silent prayer, I thanked God for her as well as for my new invention and my horse. My friend Ydlbert must have noticed the happiness on my face, for as we left the sanctuary he regarded me with a look of some curiosity. I held my silence as we began