Free The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski

attention to the difference between the state of the head and the rest of the body. Just as long as they moved forward, as quickly as possible, so as to be finished with the whole affair!
    They plunged into the cool paths of the cemetery; they passed the main road, crossed several side ones, and turned right, amongst the fresh graves. Here, beside a jasmine tree hidden by thickets, they stopped and lowered Tossati to the ground.
    ‘To your shovels,’ resounded the quiet order of Peter Randone.
    They briskly grabbed the handles and began to scoop out wet lumps of earth.
    In fifteen minutes the grave was already deep.
    Randone spoke again. ‘To the bottom with him!!’
    Tossati didn’t budge, he didn’t stir; he slept soundly.
    Eager black hands hurled him into the hole. The thud of the dropped body merged with the impact of shovels throwing back the earth. The men worked with rare fervour, as if in a mad race. In several minutes the hole was filled up. Freshly carried and hastily packed-down earth topped off the grave.
    Then the group breathed freely. With soiled hands, they wiped pearly drops of sweat from their foreheads; they looked about with a strange, quizzical glance. Then, not saying anything, they took their shovels and put as much distance as possible between themselves and the grave … .
    It was perhaps four in the morning. A light rain started to fall again, sifted as if through a sieve. Beaded tears flowed down from cemetery birches and ran silently along paths; damp and pendulant willows swung sadly in the wind. Dawn’s grey radiance, passing through the wall of trees, studied with amazement the melancholy retreat. Some evil birds, blinded by the pall of night, flapped their wings ominously amongst the branches and dug themselves deeper into the leaves. The rain drizzled, the wind soughed in the trees, the dawn became misty … .
    A long, black procession of Tossati’s men moved out stealthily from the cemetery gate, their step heavy, uncertain, their heads bowed low … .

SZAMOTA’S MISTRESS
    (Pages from a discovered diary)

    And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Genesis 2:22–24

    I have been intoxicated with joy for six days now and can hardly believe my good fortune. Six days ago I entered a new phase of life, one so markedly different than what preceded, that it seems I am living through a great cataclysm.
    I received a letter from her.
    Since her departure abroad a year ago to an unknown destination – this first wonderful sign from her … . I cannot, I truly cannot believe it! I will faint from joy!
    A letter from her to me! To me, someone completely unknown to her, a humble, distant admirer with whom no friendly relations had existed before, not even a fleeting acquaintanceship. But the letter is genuine. I carry it continually with me, I do not part with it even for one second. The name on the address is clear, without a doubt: Jerzy Szamota. It is I, after all. Not believing my own eyes, I showed the envelope to several acquaintances; everyone looked at me with some amazement, then smiled and confirmed that the address is legible and bears my name.
    So she is returning home, returning in just a couple of days, and the first person who will greet her at her door will be I – I, whose adoring eyes barely dared to look up at her during chance sightings on the street, on some park lane, in the theatre, at a concert … .
    If I could have to my credit at least one glance, or a brief smile from her proud lips – but no! She seemed to have been completely unaware of me. Until this letter, I had been certain she did not even know of my existence. Surely she hadn’t noticed