The Justice of a Body Snatcher
– a love story by renan goksin –
Episode Sixteen: Fate
The birds burst into a restless chatter; daylight was soon to break into the grove. The man with his precious letter was now under the earth.
‘A stranger’s death has transformed me into a murderer,’ Herman thought. From here on, he was emancipated from all moral restraints. ‘I will not confess to it, I will not share my crime with anyone, it belongs only to me, I earned it, and its secret will not see the light of day.’ Then, turning to Alphonsina, he smiled and said: ‘We must go now, sweet child, lost and unaware as you are, I promised you to Dear Doctor Augustus.’
As he walked to the mare with Alphonsina in his arms, he thought of her as when she was still alive and of her nobility even in death as she had flown away with the raven. At one time, as recently as only a day ago, how many men of good station would not have given their lives to be as close to her as Herman was now? He remembered the child of the wealthiest family in town, how she had suddenly grown into her youth only to become the elusive shadow of everyone’s desire, an ephemeral goddess behind the windows of her closed room. He felt the unfortunate creature’s limbs through the winding sheet; her legs, her arms drooping like broken branches from his embrace. He was filled with immense pity, for himself, for his deed, and for Sweet Alphonsina. ‘Who had ever asked to be born, and what was the difference between the death of a child and the death of the mother who was to give birth to it? Both would miss the life of the other, but even if they should have met, eventually, each would have still died alone. Isn’t to die, to become unborn again?’ Herman felt glad for the unborn baby, yet immensely sorrowful for Alphonsina. As he slowly rode away from Vanhausen’s estate with Alphonsina draped across the saddle, the emptiness of his being was filled with an inexplicable lust for the dead woman. He wanted to see her face, lay her on the spring grass, and caress her frosty white skin for once in his life before she would be cut to pieces, emptied, and disposed of into a heap with other body parts. Yet he would not have succumbed to shameful temptation if an equally overwhelming desire had not presently burst into his mind, demanding that Alphonsina be alive. He took her to the ground and ripped open the winding sheet in a crazed determination. Underneath, she was wearing the same black dress as when Herman had seen her with the raven. Her face was hauntingly beautiful in its paleness, despite the swelling of her lips and the dry blisters that had formed around the mouth. Consumed by lust as well as his desire to resurrect her, and unable to distinguish one feeling from the other, he tore the dress apart, the pearls from her necklace scattered around the grave site, he rubbed his face on her breasts over and over again, pressed his ear, waited, and then heard the faintest beating of her heart, which reverberated in his being like thunder heralding his salvation from the deeds of the night. ‘I have killed one man but saved a mother and a child,’ he cried. In a joyous burst of light, everything made sense to him now. It was fate. Fate, fate, and another thousand times fate.
to be continued…
next episode: 17- “It’s a miracle Gustav”
