Lapvona

Content Warning: This section includes references of child abuse, incest, domestic violence, sexual assault, suicide, cannibalism, and implied pedophilia.

Part 1 Summary: “Spring”

The village of Lapvona has just been raided by bandits, who killed five adults and two children and stole a variety of goods. Only the lambs are untouched, tended by a man named Jude who lives several miles from the village center. One bandit is caught and put in the pillory.

Marek, a 13-year-old boy born with a twisted spine, goes to help dig a trench to bury the dead, but the bodies frighten him and he’s unable to participate. While he is walking home, he comes across the pilloried bandit and stops to kiss his forehead. He resolves not to tell his father, Jude, since he feels that he wouldn’t understand; “Jude didn’t understand forgiveness. He was incapable of forgiveness because he was so addled by his own grief and grudges” (8). Jude’s grief stems from having lost his parents at a young age, when (he believes) they drowned in the nearby lake during an unexpected storm. Back at home, Jude hits Marek. Jude barely raised Marek, leaving him instead to the care of the village wet nurse, Ina. Now he chastises Marek for being afraid of the dead, telling him that when good people are placed in the ground their bodies disappear and that only bad people rot.

On Wednesday, the village attends the hanging of the bandit. Jude tells Marek that his mother’s family was killed by bandits and that she herself only narrowly escaped after having her tongue cut out. In reality, Jude made this story up; since her tongue was cut out, she couldn’t communicate with him when he found her. Marek turns away from the violence, covering his eyes and ears so as not to witness the hanging. Jude tells him that the bandits are not worthy of sympathy.

After the hanging, Jude and Marek make their way to Agata’s supposed grave. Marek worries about his father’s hard heart and fears he won’t make it into heaven. Though both are religious and practice self-flagellation, Marek worries that Jude enjoys violence too much.

After returning home, Marek goes to fetch water and trips, injuring himself and breaking one of the buckets on the yoke. Meanwhile, Jude muses on the lie that he fabricated about Agata. Rather than dying in childbirth as he told Marek, she fled after giving birth, and he has no idea of her whereabouts. After she ran away, he brought the baby to Ina, the village wet nurse. Ina told him that the baby’s physical condition resulted from Agata trying to abort it. The omniscient narration reveals that Agata was never Jude’s wife but his captive, her feet bound to the same round rock that now marks her fake grave. When Marek returns home with the shattered bucket, Jude beats him before calming down and crying in remorse.

Ina, the wet nurse, reminisces on her own unusual history. Ina lost her sight at age 17 when a plague swept the village, killing her entire family and leaving her with blindness. Ina was the only person who recovered, which made the other villagers suspicious of her; they wondered if she was being punished by God or was some kind of evil spirit bringing further suffering. The villagers put her in the anteroom of the church, but she fled when the door was left unlocked, deciding to risk her chances in the woods rather than be sent to a convent for menial labor.

In the woods, Ina developed her sense of hearing, learning the language of birdsong so that she could find water and sustenance. She spent the next two decades sheltering in a cave and foraging in the woods, letting her past become a distant, unfamiliar memory. In her forties, her breasts mysteriously began to produce milk, and when she suckled from them it temporarily restored her sight. This miraculous event prompted her to return to the village, which warmly welcomed her: Failing crops have created a crisis in Lapvona, leaving many mothers unable to produce milk for their children. Ina saved these babies while freeing the mothers to work the fields. Ina experimented with herbs, increasing her medicinal knowledge. With time, Ina’s milk supply ran out, but feeling partially responsible for Marek’s hardships since she aided in his attempted abortion, Ina allows him to continue nursing.

The day after the hanging, Marek wakes in a dark mood and decides to visit Ina. She allows him to suckle her breast as they lie on the bed together, and she thinks of his mother. From the birds, Ina learned that Agata left her family after her brother raped and impregnated her and her father cut out her tongue. After giving birth, Agata fled to Ina, who instructed her to go to the nunnery for care. Ina has never revealed that she knows of Agata’s whereabouts to Jude or Marek.

On the way home, Marek runs into Jacob, the strong and adventurous son of the fiefdom’s lord, Villiam. Since they were children, Marek and Jacob have played together, which Marek enjoys because he feels it is his rightful place to be subservient to Jacob. Jacob also enjoys the companionship because Marek is easy to manipulate and control. Marek tells Jacob that his new, colorful shoes remind him of some cliff birds, and Jacob demands he take him there so that he can hunt them. The two boys chat about money and their very different lives as they climb. At the top of the cliffs, Marek picks up a rock and throws it at Jacob, and when Jacob swivels away he slips and falls from the precipice. There are no cliff birds: Marek only asked Jacob to accompany him because he wanted to trick him. Jacob calls for help, but his body is crushed and he is dying. Marek runs back home, afraid of what he did.

A terrible storm rolls in. When Marek returns, Jude instructs him to comfort the lambs, and Marek reassures himself that he simply made a mistake: “He was an innocent, he told himself, a child” (61). After the storm, Marek tells Jacob that something terrible happened to him and claims that an evil wind knocked Jacob off the cliff. Jude and Marek hike to the cliffs, Jude feeling increasingly angry at Marek because he knows that the boy is lying. He reveals that Villiam is his cousin, making Jacob Marek’s relative. Finally, Marek breaks down and tells the truth, and Jude strikes him and tells him that Villiam will decide his fate. When they retrieve Jacob’s body, Jude is horrified and emotionally detaches himself from Marek, finally admitting to himself that he isn’t his biological son—something he has been cognizant of his entire life.

At the manor, Villiam lives in relative luxury. Villiam is a liar and manipulates those under his rule, hiring bandits to steal from them and using the local priest to poison them when they show any hints of insubordination. He spends his days feasting and demanding entertainment from both his servants and visitors. He dislikes his wife, who bores him, and Jacob, who refuses to be awed by him. Because he has spent his entire life consuming mindless entertainment, he is disassociated from reality.

A servant, Lispeth, wakes Villiam up and tells him that something terrible has happened. On his way downstairs, he hears Dibra, his wife, crying loudly, which provokes his curiosity. In the great room, Dibra lies on the floor wailing in grief. Villiam’s interest is most captivated by Marek, whose body reminds him of a faun’s. Marek confesses, and Jude steps into the light, holding Jacob’s mangled body. Villiam does not acknowledge his son’s death, instead remarking of the mangled body, “Doesn’t that doll look just like Jacob?” (84). Jude says that he is Villiam’s cousin and Marek is his boy. Continuing the conversation as if it’s all a “game,” Villiam says that they will make an exchange: Jude will take Jacob’s body while he will take Marek. Jude agrees, feeling relieved that he can at last accept the truth that Marek was never his son.