Chapter 1
When I was born, the world was pitch black.
The streets were thick with stench and noise. It wasn't just where I lived. Of course, I slept in a stable with the horses, but I knew from the moment I could walk that my corner wasn't the only wretched place.
The world outside was carpeted in moss and filth clinging to uneven cobblestones, soaked in a sharp, pungent stench of stale piss, and swarming with fat rats that darted between everyone's feet.
Looking back, it was practically a miracle that a neglected child like me wasn't run over by a speeding carriage or trampled by horses, or wiped out by an epidemic. My older sister Sera, only a year older than me, had been struck by a carriage at the age of four, and my little brother, two years younger, had succumbed to sickness before he was even given a name. Neither of them ever got a proper burial.
There had been about six of us siblings, but as time passed, they vanished one by one. My oldest brother was caught pickpocketing; they chopped off his hand on the spot, and he died because no one treated the wound. My second and third older sisters were sold off somewhere. By the time I turned seven, there was nobody left beside me.
Given how things went, someone might argue that my luck and endurance weren't all that bad. But no—maybe I was the unluckiest of them all.
If I'd left this cesspool before I had the chance to sin, I could have lived in heaven, picking and eating fresh fruit to my heart's content. That is, if what the monks said was true.
My father was a gambler, and a terrible one at that. Every scrap of copper he made clowning and jesting in the streets went straight to taverns or gambling dens. Our home was the stable of the house where my mother worked.
“Damn that wretch. Meeting that scoundrel ruined my entire life!”
My mother would spit out curses as if choking on them, but the two of them didn't actually get along poorly. Father didn't come home often, but whenever he did, he always clung to Mother.
Whenever I tossed and turned in our makeshift bed—a pile of straw covered with a ragged cloth full of holes—and opened my eyes, I could hear Father's panting breaths as he buried his face in Mother's skirts.
“Father, what are you doing?”
“Ah, your mother said her belly hurt, so I'm curing it.”
“Shut your mouth and go to sleep.”
Whenever Mother shoved my face away in irritation, I would simply turn my back and close my eyes. It wasn't bad falling asleep to the lullaby of her sweet moans, breathlessly gasping as she called out Father's name, urging him on.
Once I turned eight, I started helping Mother with her work. Carrying buckets back and forth from the well to fetch water, feeding the horses. I also began sweeping the floors and doing laundry. Sometimes I hung around with the other kids, sharing cookies and treats they had nicked from the houses where they worked.
That day, I was helping clean Cullen's house, and it was sweltering. Sweat seeped from my upper lip, my armpits, the soles of my feet—everywhere. Long before lunchtime, I was already bone-tired.
In this heat, the fish I'd gotten from the master's house yesterday might spoil. It had already turned a little, to be fair, but a single night of an upset stomach was worth it. If we didn't finish it by lunch today, though, even a starving stray cat wouldn't touch it.
Still, I had managed to sneak a slice of lemon from Cullen's house, which meant we could put together quite a decent meal. Just like the nobles.
I hurried into the stable, fetched the fish, and built a small fire. While it roasted, I walked behind the stable to wash off some sweat, only to hear strange noises.
“Ah, ha, it feels so good! Darling!”
Hearing Mother's cheerful voice alongside wet, slapping sounds, I felt a spark of delight and poked my head around the wall.
“Father, Mother, do you want some lunch?”
Mother was bent forward against the wall, propping herself up and sticking out her rear. And the man plastered right behind her, unfortunately, was not Father. It was our landlord, Jose, thrusting his fat belly forward, his trousers gracelessly shoved down to his calves.
I could tell something was wrong, but Mother and Jose looked so utterly unfazed that I somehow couldn't bring myself to show any reaction. Mother flapped her hand at me in annoyance, and Jose let out a growl, boldly hiking her skirts up even higher.
Blinking, I turned away from the spectacle and went back to the fish. We didn't end up eating it that day.
Father didn't come home until night had fallen. Smelling of cheap liquor, it seemed he had managed a rare win at the tables. Mother clicked her tongue at him as he collapsed into bed, reeking of cheap women's perfume.
“Good-for-nothing wretch. If you won money, you should have brought home a single coin at least!”
Father kicked at the air, annoyed. I watched Mother crawl flat against him to rummage through his pockets and asked,
“Mother, why do you call the landlord ‘darling’? Isn't ‘darling’ only for Father?”
I had assumed Father was asleep. And while I knew something was wrong, I hadn't realized just how wrong it was.
At the very least, I never imagined Father, who could barely hold himself up, would leap to his feet and strike Mother across the cheek. Nor did I expect Mother, knocked to the ground, to snatch up the pitchfork used for gathering feed and swing it at him. And I never dreamed that the handle striking the back of Father's head would send him tumbling down to crack his skull against the stone floor.
Father, who had stained the stone floor bright red with his blood, never woke again. Jose covered the funeral expenses, and Father vanished into smoke, just like my oldest brother and the other siblings.
Not long after, having turned eleven, I ended up going to Mrs. Allmon's house. Put into a carriage so suddenly without a single bag, wearing only the clothes on my back, I never imagined that this would be my final parting from Mother. She had merely waved me off with an indifferent look, just as she always did, so I had simply assumed I was going there to work.
Later, when I found out Mother had sold me for ten fedirs, I cried for about a day. Then I thought to myself:
Shouldn't those ten fedirs have gone to me?
With that kind of money, I could have bought a fine set of clothes and had more than enough left over to stuff myself with real pork cutlets, not just pork fat that only smelled good.
So I figured that whenever I got a day off, once I saved enough for the carriage ride back, I would go to Mother and collect that money. But that was a truly naive thought.
Because in Mrs. Allmon's house lived a devil.
A devil who couldn't eat, dress, or sleep without me.
“One can recognize a devil's vicious nature from afar. The stench of brimstone that stings the nostrils is the proof it arose from hell, and a swarthy face and a lolling tongue are the marks of its failed attempt to mimic man. Only those who constantly discipline their souls will be granted eyes to perceive and shun it.”
Whenever you went to the market, you could always find a monk or two preaching things like that. Going by those words, Mrs. Allmon's mother, Mrs. Vino, was undeniably a devil. It was so glaringly obvious that you didn't need any spiritual discipline to tell.
With her brittle white hair completely wild and loose, her wrinkled face was dark, dusky, and mottled with age spots. Her tongue hung outside her mouth most of the time, making it look unnaturally long, and drool constantly dribbled down her chin.
And then there was the smell.
To be honest, I didn't know what brimstone smelled like, but if it was the sign of something crawled out of hell, I was certain it couldn't smell like anything else. Mrs. Vino was unmistakably a devil.
“What should you do if you find a devil?”
Once, I stopped a monk and asked. He stroked his white beard and chuckled heartily.
“A child's eyes can hardly spot a devil. You needn't worry about such things, child.”
“What if I really, truly found one? Would you get rid of it for me, Brother? Can you shove it back down into hell?”
Seeing something in my eyes as I stubbornly blocked his path, he slowly dropped to one knee. His brow, framed by a brown blanket of coarse wool weathered by wind and sand, shone faintly.
“Did this devil do something wicked to you?”
“It throws shit at me.”
It was true. Once, while I was changing her clothes and gagged, Mrs. Vino relieved herself right then and there and flung it at me. All while shrieking incomprehensible shrieks that were undeniably curses.
It hadn't happened just once or twice. Having grown up around horse dung, I could endure it reasonably well, but the day I saw Mrs. Vino smearing it across her own clothes, I had no choice but to flee the room.
Because she came lunging to throw her arms around me.
Seeing that, Mrs. Allmon flew into a rage, beat me about ten times, and starved me of dinner. Lying flat on my stomach in a tiny cubbyhole so as not to agitate my swollen, bruised buttocks, I had to rack my brain for a way out of the mess. And I did find a way.
I rubbed lamp oil around my nostrils, kept a solemn face, and began changing Mrs. Vino's clothes. Of course, while it was a decent idea, it wasn't a perfect solution.
Because I didn't gag, Mrs. Vino missed her cue and went several days without passing anything. Then one day, her face turned blue, she thrashed about, and she ended up unleashing a massive disaster right in front of Mrs. Allmon as she was tidying the bed linens.
That devil was clever. She obviously knew every single wrong she committed would fall on my head.
“A devil is not a being that throws filth at you. It is a being that defiles your soul.”
At the monk's words, I scowled.
What good did worrying about a defiled soul do? That was a problem to worry about after dying; all I cared about right now was my face and body getting filthy. Washing my only set of clothes every single day was exhausting and troublesome in every way.
“You alone are the one who can guard your soul. I give you my blessing.”
Resting a hand lightly on my shoulder, the monk made the sign of the cross. Thanks to that, I came to realize a fact that wasn't particularly surprising: the monk couldn't save me from the devil.
