The days went by. The months. The years.
All identical. Working in the fields. Voter Luis’ sudden outbursts of anger. The Word of the Bible, the sense of guilt. Lissy’s blood staining his hands. The hardship, the loneliness, the hunting.
The sleepless nights. The fear of damnation.
Finally, one morning, a sow was born. She was small and lively, but she was not like the others. She was special.
She had a black spot under her left eye, just like the drop of blood on Elisabeth’s cheek. The one Simon dreamt about every night.
His back covered in sores from Voter Luis’ lashes, Simon bent over the sow, took her in his arms and began rocking her and singing softly.
Sweet Lissy. Little Lissy.
That was when he heard the Voice. The Voice was inside his head, and at the same time it was all around him.
Simon nodded the whole time the Voice spoke to him. He stroked the sow one last time, went back to the maso, climbed the steps to his father’s bedroom and, as Voter Luis, drunk and dishevelled, slept, he put on his clothes.
Here I am, he thought as he adjusted the large hat over his forehead.
Then he cut Voter Luis’ throat.
When the man had drawn his last breath, Simon dragged the body outside and buried it next to his mother. Since Voter Luis had been a good father and a man of faith before losing his mind, he lit the Kellers’ blue flames and prayed for him.
After he had finished, he went back home, found the two little bells and took them to the pigsty. He tied one around the sow’s neck and held the other one tight in his fist. He spent the night there, singing to her.
Little Lissy, sweet Lissy.
He slept and did not have nightmares.
The next day, though, he woke in a state of anguish. Wearing Voter Luis’ clothes did not make him a real Voter. What if someone asked after his father? What would he reply? Would he have to run away? Leave the maso? The prospect left him with a sense of dread, deep in his gut. He had no idea what the world outside was like, apart from the village. There were times he even doubted the existence of anything beyond the mountains.
In his dismay, he asked the Voice for help, but the Voice kept silent.
He did not run away. And nobody came up to the maso to ask after Voter Luis. When he took a chance, went down the mountain and announced his father’s death in the village, people expressed their condolences but nothing else. Somehow, he kept going.
He wasn’t a Voter, but he was a Keller; he could scythe hay, dig for potatoes, shoot a deer, cure meat and stop wholesalers from cheating him with their scales when he sold them his produce.
Anything he had not learned directly from Voter Luis he found in his notes, and anything Voter Luis had not transcribed he discovered in the Bibles of past Voter. Through study, he became a good Kräutermandl.
The only joy of his day was filling the sow’s trough. Lissy was hungry, and he fed her. A perfect circle (though without mysteries or miracles) that brought him a little serenity.
The sow with the spot under her eye grew to adulthood, and Keller mated her with boars he bought at fairs. Each time, Lissy would give birth to a litter which would die within a few weeks. Each time, Keller would grieve, but no remedy suggested by past Voter seemed to have any effect on the sow.
Lissy started ageing faster than normal. Simon assumed there was something wrong with her blood. Anxiety came back into his heart. What would become of him without Lissy? He shuddered at the thought of her death.
The day Lissy, by now half blind, turned seven, as Keller stood pointing his rifle at a fox’s lair, he heard the Voice again.
It hadn’t happened since his father’s death, and he had started to think it had never existed. But seven years after Voter Luis’ death, the Voice returned.
It pointed him to a thick, wild part of the woods, where young Sim’l had fired a rifle for the first time. That was an important place, the Voice explained. He was to bring the sow here, set her free and go back home without turning back. The sow would find her way back on her own, pregnant. Her line, the Voice promised, would continue. A new Lissy would be born.
He would not be alone. He would never be alone again. It was a promise.
The Bibles of past Voter disagreed on many points, but all urged obedience, and so Keller, who was a man of faith, obeyed. He tied a rope around Lissy, dragged her into the forest and set her free. Then he left, his heart swollen with worry.
And even though this was madness – Voter Luis used to say there were no wild pigs or boars in the area (but had Voter Luis really uttered those words? Sometimes Keller’s mind was such a muddle . . .) – he discovered that the Voice had not lied to him.
His faith was rewarded.
Lissy returned, her body scratched, her trotters covered in mud, her teeth chipped as though she had fought a pack of wolves – but pregnant. Three months, three weeks and three days later, as is the norm for pigs, Lissy gave birth to a female. Another Lissy. With more spots, larger, hungrier. And more intelligent. Because, the Voice explained, she was more like her father than her mother.
When the old Lissy died, Keller lit a funeral pyre with blue flames in her honour and, barely holding back his tears, read out a passage from his Bible: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but Lissy abideth forever.”
From that day on, the Voice was always with him. It would urge him not to lose heart whenever anguish seemed about to crush him, and would make him laugh whenever he needed to. It would dictate new, dazzling versions of the Scriptures that filled him with inspiration. It would suggest ways to make the winters pass more quickly, carving wooden toys or putting together increasingly imaginative Vulpendingen. One day, as Keller was feeding Lissy her slop, the Voice made a request that alarmed him. His initial reaction was to shake his head and try to ignore it. In other words, he convinced himself he had misheard.
In time, the Voice grew more insistent and, fearful of such vehemence, Keller accused it of mocking him. It should stop now. This constant buzzing prevented him from concentrating on his duties as a Bau’r. The Voice burst out laughing. And it began to pester him, night and day, relentlessly.
The Voice changed.
It became deep, hard as flint stones scratching against one another, making his teeth vibrate and his gums bleed. Keller resorted to every available means to silence it. This was impossible, he discovered. Even blocking his ears with beeswax or eating handfuls of poppy seeds was no use.
Screaming like the Wehen, the Voice told him that he had to do it for Lissy, that it was his duty to obey, because he was both a man of faith and a murderer seeking redemption. Or had he forgotten that? Keller’s hands were stained with Lissy’s blood. The damnation of hellfire awaited him. Or did he doubt the Word of the Bible as well as the Voice? Did he not understand that Lissy was hungry and that it was up to him to feed her?
Having asked this final question, the Voice disappeared. At first, it was a welcome relief. Simon was able to sleep and rest. He looked after the maso, Lissy and the other pigs in the sty. He carved more animals and went hunting.
But without the Voice, the maso was an empty shell, the mountain a desolate heap of stones. He began to find the solitude oppressive. The fire in the Stube reminded him of Lissy’s face. No, he thought, the Voice was not a consequence of madness. The Voice was mystery and miracle. And he was a man of faith. He believed in miracles and mysteries. He stopped doubting, and the Voice returned.
The solitude vanished.
Keller complied with the Voice’s request. Not just once, but always. He did whatever the Voice asked whenever it commanded him. He began to kill. Killing made him feel one step closer to redemption.
But that was not the reason he killed.
He killed in order to satisfy Lissy’s hunger. And Lissy was always hungry.