Sigismund, meanwhile, had no idea what he would do if Ajda didn't return. Chasing her down at home ran contrary to what he felt, which was not wrath, but remorse. Even if he wanted to burn down her uncle's house, there still existed, on the periphery of Empire, the concept of Right. Perhaps Sigismund felt no wrath because, paradoxically, he refused to accept rejection as the true outcome of his situation. People, especially women, were constantly in flux. Only death was irrevocable, death and God's final judgement. Hence, soon after the incident, he spent an hour in the confessional at St. George's on his knees before Ewald, the parish priest with the hope of being dealt an appropriate penance for what he had done. In the end, it looked like fasting. Five days, no food. No meat whatsoever until the Feast of St. Matthew. One day, sunrise to sunset on his knees in prayer, which was how he spent his Monday. And now, the steward stood there in the storeroom, no better than a lovesick boy. For hours he waited for her, still famished, unable to think clearly. That morning, he'd sent a servant out to the meadow where the lord's horses grazed to pick late summer flowers, flowers already wilting in his fist. He bound them with some string and on the string he attached a dainty silver bell, a gift with more heft. It seemed paltry, but he'd run out of other ideas. Money, goods, this was the language he spoke, the mechanism by which everything worked. Kindness would be the only way forward. The use of further force helped him little in his ultimate goal, which was for her to come to him willingly.
God, Sigismund believed, would forgive him. Such was God's nature. But Ajda? It was one thing to rape a woman. This, in his line of work, he was no stranger to. Spoils were spoils, though he never liked doing it as much as other men. You had to really hate the enemy to rape their women. While his blood ran hotter as a younger man, these days he didn't hate the Magyars all that much. For half his life the lord had been at war with them. Now Sigismund mostly found himself exhausted with the situation. Besides, he told himself, this business with the girl wasn't rape. After all, he always found it difficult to finish if he knew a woman didn't want it. No, it was an accident. He hadn't intended to hurt Ajda. Though, he acknowledged with a certain pride, he was more than capable of doing so.
When the door to the storeroom finally opened, it startled the steward. He really didn't think she would come. In silence, they looked at one another. Seeing him there, standing completely still, the girl had no clue what to think. Were those flowers in his hand? For her? The very notion struck her as absurd. Pathetic. The steward bringing her flowers? As though anything, much less flowers could possibly heal the wound he'd dealt her? She laughed at him, right to his face. She said, without addressing him by title, "Have you gone mad?"
What, really, was there to be afraid of? He'd already done his worst. She thought so little of herself, if he killed her, it would come only as a blessing. Nothing of value would be lost, and death would spare her from the disappointment of the rest of her life. Yet when Sigismund did nothing but hand her the flowers, his eyes cast to the ground, she came to the stark realization that the steward was pathetic. That despite all his finery, pomp and menace, he was a weak man whose weakness unfortunately had consequences for her. She did not thank him, nor did she even look him in the eye. Instead she asked him, "What do you want from me?"
"I love you," said Sigismund, wringing his hands. Even though he said these words to conceal more furtive motives, they were true, and the power they had on him struck him. "I called you here only to see you. To be here with you."
You are mad, Ajda thought. You are beyond mad, saying things like that, looking at me like that. Thinking that this matters after what you've done. Flowers? Childish nonsense-talk? She couldn't stand it. And she didn't believe him. She didn't believe that he loved her, nor did she believe that he had only come to see her. Tears in her eyes, she shouted, "Just see me? You could have done that the last time. But instead you acted like an animal. I have nothing, yet you took from me the only thing that could be taken. Can't you see that what you've done has robbed me of my life?" Ajda threw the flowers on the ground where the bell tinkled and the petals scattered like ashes, thinking please end this. Please. She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting at any moment a dagger in her stomach, or perhaps his hand back where it started, spanning her throat. But when nothing happened save for a long silence, she opened her eyes again.
"Perhaps there is no forgiving me," admitted Sigismund, looking at his ruined gift. "Believe me or not when I tell you that I didn’t intend to harm you. I can only say I lost my senses. And I did not realize...well, for that I am sorry. But," he said, turning to leave, "I have not robbed you of your life. Nor will I, despite what you seem to think. You people have always had the wrong idea of me. No, it is as I said. All I want is to see you. Nothing more."
Spared from harm, the second Ajda saw the light of day, she collapsed to her knees and thanked God for answering her prayers.
It’s hard to say what happened next. What was once simple exploitation became ever murkier. It made no sense, for example, that Ajda sometimes felt sorry for Sigismund. That she came to pity the man who had raped her. It puzzled her even further that she didn’t offer the same lenience to others. She hated being the subject of so much false sympathy. She stopped speaking to Aleksandr not only because he made her deeply sad, but because she found his clemency intolerable. He could not look at her as he once did, as a human being with a name that was Ajda, who came from a family who lived downstream near the linden tree. Instead she became a misfortune. A living story in which Aleksandr fancied himself gentle and Christlike, spared, thankfully, from his own desire by the actions of another man. The more they found out, the more other women cooed and cried over Ajda all while using the same mouths to whisper behind her back. That it was the steward who stole her away roused jealousy among her peers who, to her astonishment, wanted to be in her place. How could she be so ungrateful? A man like that? Well, you know, it's probably just a story. I don't feel sorry for her at all...
Gossip, betrayal, aversion, jealousy, was this really the way things would be from now on? It was easier to be alone. And so Ajda turned away from the people she knew. If they wanted to talk, let them talk. She did what women have done since time immemorial when under profound distress: her work, diligently, without complaint. And then, every week, she went to that same awful, drafty storeroom to see the steward, because she had no choice. Despite the apparent kindness of his words, the day after returning home from their second visit, the steward sent armed men to ride past her uncle's house at regular intervals. Not stopping, only passing. And because the family lived rather far from the main road, these men had no other reason to pass by other than whatever one the steward gave them. The message was clear. However, once Ajda reassured him by coming the next week, and the week after that, Sigismund stopped sending his messengers. People used to say he was a persuasive type of threatening. Now she understood what they meant. Not terrifying but unnerving. Communicative.
Bafflingly, when she saw him, the steward only seemed to want to talk, even though she loathed him and understood so little of what he said. Sometimes he talked about his chores, other times about Hungary, other times about the harvest, guiltily explaining where everything given to him went. "You see, we need grain stores in case the town or castle ever came under seige...which, you know, is not so unthinkable." Often, he brought her small, nice things. Silk ribbons, bread made with white flour and honey, new linens of Carinthian stock, all of which she took without thanking him. She gave the ribbons and bread to her little cousins, but the linens she kept, if only because her old ones had long become threadbare. Despite how much she wanted them, keeping the linens felt wrong. As though she deserved everything that had happened to her, or had at least accepted it, even though it didn’t seem like the kind of thing one could ever accept. As the gifts grew more and more lavish - new shoes, a leather purse, even a little gold ring - this sensation only became more intolerable until one day she developed the courage to tell Sigismund to stop, that he was making her life worse because other people noticed the gifts and got the wrong idea. It may have served Sigismund well that the peasantry saw Ajda not as his weakness, but as his whore, if not the whore of the entire castle familia. But the accusations wore her down, and after a while she started to believe them. Each time she met him, she felt more and more unclean, even though he had yet to touch her again.
Slowly, however, Ajda did allow Sigismund to touch her. She did not want him to touch her, but she would rather the degree to which he touched her be set on her own terms. It pleased her, gave her a semblance of enfranchisement, that he behaved with such trepidation, as though the tables had turned regarding who feared whom. Sometimes he held her hand in his. Other times he stroked her shoulder or back with the flat of his palm. At first, she closed her eyes and tried to think of Aleksandr, but she did not possess a powerful enough imagination to convince her of his presence. This subsequent awareness only brought her further pain. When she came to hate Aleksandr, too, she no longer shut her eyes. She accepted the intimacy for what it was, as well as who was responsible. To an initial disgust, of course, but later to her quiet relief. After all, nobody else wanted her, nor would ever want her. If the damage was already done, why should it matter? Why should anything?
Those first few months, she kept asking herself, if I don't forgive him, why do I keep letting him pretend that I do? As though such forgiveness was even possible? Why do I let him behave like this, let myself behave like this? What are we doing? For a long time, she liked to believe that, because she carried Christ with her wherever she went, Sigismund’s contrition moved her. It was just like a scene from those stories of Mary Magdalene told during Lent. The washing of Christ's feet. A sinner's great reconciliation built on humility and acts of service. He who had been cruel now exuded nothing but tenderness, just as she had prayed for. Even though she treated Sigismund with little more than wary scorn, the time passed in big slices, from late autumn well into frigid January, and still, he did not hurt her. Eventually she let herself be convinced that he wouldn’t, that a single transgression had satisfied him. That he, too, believed in the same God, the same sins, even though the elevated life he lived on earth made him less acutely accountable to both. Was this not the best situation she could hope for? That seeing him was now just another part of her daily labor? No longer a terror, but a chore? She began to doubt her own convictions, even her own memory. Maybe he was genuinely penitent. Maybe all those nice things he said to her, he really meant. When he looked at her the way he did, with a kind of urgent softness, she found it hard to bear. I don’t understand, she muttered to herself, every time she went up there. I don’t understand.
Sigismund, for his part, wanted so badly for her to love him. He needed her to love him, or at least to look at him with a hint of real kindness. Being in her enigmatic presence was both enough, yet not enough for him. He effaced himself before her, though he was well aware that this effacement was a tool, a cudgel used to pry her open so that he could see inside of her. And as the time went on, week by week, it seemed to work. She relaxed. She trusted. Sometimes, he could even feel her eyes on him when his own were averted. It was all so strange to him. Why did he talk to her freely like this? Why did he debase himself just to spend a small amount of time in her presence? When had he ever been so patient? Was this silly, ill-bred woman really worth all this effort? Sometimes these questions took on an air of resentment, and yet when he saw her again, all such ugly feelings disappeared. On occasion, the pair even approached contentment. She stopped shuddering when he touched her, and he began to touch her more. His arm around her shoulder, his fingers intertwined with hers. These small touches were enough to set him ablaze. He wanted more, he needed more. He began to believe that more was possible.
One afternoon, Sigismund, in his desperation, knelt before Ajda on his hands and knees and begged her just to run her fingers through his hair. When she did this, he trembled and let out the most wretched sigh. And despite her shame, this particular scene enthralled her. Her own breath grew shallow, her body heavy and warm. The air around them, charged as in a storm. Paralyzed, each could sense something moving in the other. And then his arms around her waist, his mouth pressed against her belly, his eyes peering up at her, pleading, and that day, she let him unlace her dress, let him kiss her mouth, her breasts and, in a display of hunger and gratitude, he made her shudder sweetly against the flat of his palm. The week after, he was within her on the dirty storeroom floor.
It’s strange isn’t it? This woman hated this man. Never a day in her life did she love him. When she died she would do so without forgiving him, for he had ruined her, made her worthless even to herself. And yet he worshipped her, needed her, yearned for her, and she knew this, and it gave her something, which was better than nothing. Guiltily she asked herself, if I’m worth nothing, why not let him have me? This evolved into a strange, contradictory notion: Why not remake the memory of this man into something less tormenting? She would, at the end of the day, rather him bring her pleasure than pain. To hate her for it would be to imply that she deserved to suffer more. And she did not deserve to suffer at all.
A mutual illusion of power bound them both in a dangerous game. Letting him make love to her allowed her to cling to an agency she still did not have. She could no more leave him now than in the days when he sent the men to patrol her uncle's house. When he made her come, she felt at once ashamed, as though her body had betrayed her, yet also relieved – it was a sign of genuine – not persuaded – acquiescence. Want, even. This alleged want, disgusting as it was, comforted her merely by being the opposite of pain. This is who I am now, she often thought, these are the kind of things I do.
At first, Sigismund was happy. He stood up a little taller, whistled when he dressed himself, saw the sky to be bluer than it’d ever been before. But soon, after the profound, heavy pleasure of having her wore off, he began to doubt. He believed, deep down, that Ajda neither loved him nor truly desired him in return but rather only acted the way she did to spare herself. When inside of her, he felt that same martyr-like limpness, saw her green eyes dim as they looked away. He despised how, after they finished, she never said a word to him. How she merely righted herself, dressed, rose from the ground and left. No longer a victim, she became a mere, cold mirror for his own tenderness. Or perhaps a vessel.
The more they saw one another, the more this discrepancy enraged him. Not even pleasure could turn her, and if not pleasure, than what? He believed pleasure to be the ultimate cathartic aim, maybe even the reason for living. After all, wasn’t pleasure the alleged cure to his initial ailment? And yet, still this madness? On the other hand, was what the two of them experienced even pleasure? Was pleasure not something that could only be succumbed to utterly, totally? Then, increasingly, the worst thought of all: if she did not love him, nothing could stop her from loving another. No longer a virgin, what, really, stood in her path? Possession was not enough, he decided. He needed control. There are men in this world who seek gratification from the humiliation of women, but Sigismund was not among them. Wide awake at night, he thought, with boiling indignation: After all my kindness, all my love, what right do you have to treat me this way? Don't you understand that I own you? Those words, tantalizing, over and over: I own you. He had to own her. He would.
The next time he saw her, the mere sight of her immolated him. For the first time, he almost hated her. However, the thought of hating her aroused an odd panic in him. Of course he didn’t, no, he couldn’t possibly hate her, not after all this…She doesn’t understand, my love, mine, mine, and only mine…Despite his agitation, his turgid excitement, he approached her as usual, persuasive, obsequious, but once he had her where he wanted, he changed. He reached up, not to touch her face as she expected, but to pin her arms above her head. Fine, she thought, so he wanted to pretend to manliness. To spite him, she stayed calm, patient, the same as ever. But as his breath grew ragged and his voice low, she kept waiting for him to withdraw like he always did, come on, come on, any moment now, and then, to her terror, she realized he wouldn't. He bore down on her, and when she began to struggle, he made her feel his weight, his strength. At first her resistance, her pleading, upset him, but Sigismund comforted himself with the soon-to-be pleasure of oblivion. And as it flooded him, he pressed his mouth against her ear and whispered her name, Ajda, Ajda, all for you, Ajda…Once he finished, he lingered inside her until he went soft, making sure every bit of his seed had a chance to fulfill its potential. And just like the first time, he loved her more than ever, kissed her, murmured the same sweet nothings. He even lapped up the tears as they fell into the crevice of her neck.
And this was how Siegfried came into the world.
