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age. For man by his nature i s a peaceable being, seeking the company of others, not solitary and wild . . . What is more fitting ro our nature than to enter into union with another, beloved person, to
love him, to multiply and acquire land, as Our Lord has enjoined?
Did not the Son of God tell us: 'By this shall all men know that ye are
my disciples, if ye have love one to another'? And Kummernis
replied: I already have a beloved husband for evermore and I am
united with him. To this her father cried out: What? You have a
husband without my consent?
Father, restrain your anger, your son-in-law is jesus Christ, replied
Kummernis.
Kummernis is basely kidnapped and imprisoned
by her own father
XIV The baron returned home crestfallen, but it was not melancholy that was poisoning his heart, not unrequited love, but anger and resentment that anyone should dare to oppose his will. So he
incited Wolfram and together they committed a terrible sacrilege - by
force of arms they attacked the convent where Kummernis was
living, recaptured her, tied her to a horse and kidnapped her. Despite
the faa that she begged and implored them, reminding them O'er
and over that she no longer belonged to the world but ro jesus Christ.
they ignored all her pleas. locked her up in a windowless room and
left her alone for some time, so that her will would be crushed and
her belief in marriage would return. Every day her father came to her
and asked if she had changed her mind yet. And the longer and the
more steadfastly she persisted. the greater was his rancour and
hatred towards God. For nothing had come of the wars. his castle and
property had fallen into chaos, and he no longer had a family.
Therefore he kept her without food or drink, imagining that through
hunger and thirst he would break her will. But for whole days on end
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she lay prostrate on the flagstone floor and prayed, and no hint of
hunger could touch her. Even Wolfram grew disheartened and started
asking the baron to renounce his obduracy.
Sometimes Wolfram looked through his future wife's keyhole and
he always saw her in the same position - lying with arms outstretched, face up towards the vault. Her eyes were fixed on a single point and remained motionless. And how beautiful she was.
Kummernis's prayers in imprisonment
XV. She remained without stirring and prayed: I have spurned the
kingdom of the world and all its finery, but not out of fear of sin nor
out of pious self-interest, only out of love of my Lord Jesus Christ,
whom I saw and fell in love with, of whom I am enamoured for
evermore. I sought Your countenance, 0 Lord, and in myself I found
it, so that the world is no longer necessary to me. You provided me,
0 Lord , with my sex and my woman's body, which has been a bone
of contention and a source of all manner of desire. Deliver me, 0
Lord, from this gift, for I do not know what I am to do with it. Take
back my beauty and give me a sign of covenant that You love me
too, unworthy as I am, and have destined me for Yourself since
birth.
The miracle of Kummernis
XVI.
must bravely continue my account of the life of Saint
Kummernis and approach the day of her death, though it will be
hard for me to write about it, and even harder for you to believe.
As the baron and the knight Wolfram were waiting for some sort
of change, the fear grew in them that they had presumed to alter
something over which they had no influence. In order to dissolve this
fear and for a while at least to forget about the imprisoned girl, they
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
63
went hunting and held feasts. In the mornings the horns rang out,
and in the evenings music resounded.
During one of these feasts the baron said to Wolfram: If you
were to go in there and take her by force, then she, who does not
know the taste of love, would realize what she is giving up. and
would throw herself into your arms. Do you think she is any different
from these harlots who are willing to pull up their skirts at every
demand?
Wolfram obediently stood up, staggered, but took himself in
hand and set off straight for the door. The baron pushed away his
harlot, ordered his beer to be poured and waited. But only a
moment had passed when Wolfram came back again. His face was
the picture of horror - he was opening and closing his mouth, and
pointing behind him. The din in the hall fell completely silent. The
baron sprang to his feet and rushed in the direction of Wolfram's
pointing finger, and after him slipped the curious guests. servants
and musicians.
XVII. In the windowless room stood Kummernis. but it was not
the same woman that they all knew. Her face was covered with a
silky beard and her hair fell flowing to her shoulders. From the tattered bodice of her dress there protruded two naked, girlish breasts. The gaze of her dark, but gentle eyes moved across the
faces of the inquisitive onlookers and finally came to rest on the
baron. The harlots began to make the sign of the cross and knelt
down one after another. Kummernis. or whoever it was, raised her
hands, as if to enfold them all to her breast. In a quiet voice she
said: My Lord has delivered me from myself and has bestowed His
face on me.
That same night the baron gave orders for the freak to be walled
up in the room. Wolfram mounted his horse and. without taking his
leave, departed.
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The second coming of the Devil and his three temptations
XVIII. On the first night the Devil came to Kummernis in the form
of an infant. When she stopped praying for a moment, she found a
cradle by the wall, and in it a tiny child, whining helplessly.
Surprised to see the child, Kummernis interrupted her prayer, took
it in her arms and nestled it to her breast. The devil burst out laughing in a gruff voice and said triumphantly: Now I've got you. But at once she replied: No, it is I that have got you. And nestled him yet
more closely to her breast. The Devil tried to tear himself away, but
he couldn't, so he decided to change his shape again. But the force
radiating from the breast of the saint was so powerful that it stupefied the Devil and weakened him. He realized that he was contending with a being as powerful as he, maybe even more powerful because
of her union with the Lord. Yet he did not renounce his resolve, but
simply changed his approach.
You could love and be loved, he said.
I could, she replied.
You could bear a child in your womb, and then bring it into the
world, he said.
Indeed I could, she said.
You could bathe it, feed it, swaddle it and caress it. You could watch
it grow and become like you in body and soul. You could dedicate it to
your God, and other children too, and He would be gratified.
So I could.
Look at me, said the Devil.
She clasped him more tightly to her breast. Tenderly she stroked his
smooth skin. Then Kum
mernis drew forth her breast and set the Devil
to it to suck. The Devil struggled and vanished just as he had appeared.
XIX. On the second day when she paused in prayer he appeared to
her as a Bishop and delivered a speech of the kind that Bishops are
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
65
in the habit of making. He said to her: What are you trying to show
them? That God has literally fulfilled your request and changed you
into a monster? You should know him a little by now. He does not do
such things.
They do not understand what has happened. They are ashamed
of you and will forget you. They will curse you and laugh at you.
This miracle will fill them with dread. They will not believe that it
comes from Him. Miracles are meant to be beautiful and sublime,
to spread sweet odours and to shine with heavenly radiance, to the
sound of angelic music. But what have you become? A woman
with a beard. Now you are only fit for the circus in the marketplace.
Your obstinate sojourn here, in solitude, with an alien face instead
of your beautiful countenance, is senseless. You are not Him. He
has made a joke of you and is no longer concerned about you. He has
forgotten you, He has gone to create new worlds. Do you really think
you have a place in His thoughts? He has left you among the
common rabble, who are just as likely to demand your sanctification
as your burning at the stake.
No one will remember you. You are here in vain and your suffering is in vain. Are you trying to teach God about Jove? Do you expect Him to fall in love with your wretched person?
At these words Kummernis made the sign of the cross before the
Bishop and replied: All of your strength is derived from doubt. May
you one day come to know the mercy of faith.
At these words the Devil vanished.
XX.
On the third day a holy crucifix appeared in Kummernis's cell.
and on it the body of the Redeemer, bur without a face. Then
Kurnmernis's heart was flooded with grief and terrible guilt that He
had deprived Himself of a face because of her. But Kummcrnis's soul
was alert - where guilt appears, there He cannot be present. So she
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0 I g a To k a r c z u k
realized that the Devil had come to her a third time, and she made the
sign of the cross three times over the crucifix. The Devil knew that he
had been recognized and began to tremble.
What do you want from me? he asked in terror, for it was a long
time since anyone like this woman had walked in a human body.
She replied: Make your confession to me. Admit your sins to me.
The Devil cried out in despair: How can it be? Am I to make my
confession to a human being?
But he could see that he had no other way out, so he began to
speak, first resentfully, then with ever greater humility. And for three
days and three nights he confessed his sins to her, finally begging
the whole human race through her to grant him forgiveness for all
manner of evil that he had done to it.
Kummernis told him: Are you not also a child of God, just as I am,
just as all people are?
And as he answered her, she knew the mystery of God and
released the barely living Devil from her embrace.
The martyrdom and death of Kummernis
XXI.
In his confusion the baron started to drink even more, and
when he came to, he found fresh flowers and lighted candles before
the door of the walled-up room. He also found a huddle of women
deep in prayer, who at once fled before him, in fear of his anger. This
infuriated him even more.
In a booming voice he shouted at Kummernis: Who are you to
oppose my will?
She replied: God is within me.
The baron was overcome with a rage greater than he had ever
felt before. Neither as a newly born infant pushing his way into the
world had he experienced it, nor even while massacring the armies
of the infidels. This was a fury that could only have its source in
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67
God or in the Devil. With a single kick he demolished the freshly
built wall and found himself facing the creature that had evaded his
will. Blinded by rage, he threw himself upon her, and shouting
oaths, he stabbed her with a dagger. But even this was not enough
for him, so he raised her body and nailed it crucified to the roof
beams, crying out as he did so: If God is within you, then die like
God.
Even after death he would not give her peace, and before she was
laid in her grave he ordered the beard to be cut from her face, but it
miraculously grew again.
After that, for the rest of his sinful life, he effaced the beard from
images of the saint. But the memory of the saint survived and
inspired much hope in people's hearts, spreading throughout the
country and abroad, where she was given many names, for each
land engenders new names.
Conclusion
XX/l All that is related here I took from the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, from the works of Kummernis, as well as from the archives of
the Benedictine convent at Kloster and from tales that I heard about
her.
Whoever you are, as you read these words, I beseech you to
the opportunity to choose - would far more willingly choose the body
of Kummernis, with all its suffering and merits, than the honours of
any kingdom.
Tell this story to future generations, so that they may know that
no evil can subjugate the human soul, and that a person united with
Christ may die, but can never be defeated.
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T h e w i g m
-
a ll e r
Last year Marta showed me her wig-maker's chest. She keeps it
under the window in the main room. It is lined with old newspapers, in which all the necessary equipment is also wrapped.
She has ready-made wigs in there, on wooden heads stored in
cellophane to prevent even the tiniest speck of dust from landing on them, and she also keeps skeins of unprocessed hair, waiting to be transformed into wigs.
She unwrapped the newspaper and showed them to me. 'Feel
how soft and alive it is,' she said. 'Hair goes on living even after
being cut off. It doesn't grow any more, of course, but i t goes on
living and breathing. It's like people whose bodies have stopped
growing - that doesn't mean they're dead, does it?'
But I didn't dare touch it. I felt disgusted.
'Where did you get it from?' I asked, and she told me she'd
had a hairdresser friend who had died and left her the most
beautiful tresses from girls who had got bored with their mermaid hairstyles. He had picked them up from the floor for Marta, wrapped them in paper and kept them in the drawers of his
hairdressing tables, to give her later as a present. Sometimes he
had taken orders for Marta from women who had lost their hair
because of illness or old age, or from men. Baldness affects them
more often, though maybe less pa
infully. Marta said that a growing hair gathers a person's thoughts. It accumulates them in the form of indistinct particles, so that if you should want to forget
something, or make a change or a new start, you should cut off
your hair and bury it in the ground.
'What about a person who wears a wig made of someone
else's hair?' I asked.
'It takes courage ,' said Marta . 'They have to take on the
thoughts of the person the hair came from. They have to be
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
69
ready for someone else's thoughts, and they must be strong and
impervious by nature. And they have to be careful not to wear
the wig all the time.'
Marta once used to make a lot of wigs, five or six a year,
almost always to a specific order. She starts by matching the
hair of the person placing the order - both its texture and
colour, because dyeing is out of the question. She places the
skeins of hair so that they lie in the same direction, then soaks
them in soapy water to clean them. Once they're dry she rolls
them up on her fingers and casts them on to a hackle, a wooden
base with metal prongs used for disentangling. During the
combing, some individual shorter hairs fall out, and she is left
with a clean, shiny skein, as even in length as freshly mown
grass. Then she uses the drawing brush, which consists of two
little boards and a brush and holds the hair in place while the
wig-maker weaves it. Then Marta pulls from the hackle a very,
very fine strand, a few hairs thick, like the sort that sometimes
falls in your eyes, and which you impatiently Oick aside, and ties
the strand on to the threads of a weaving frame. She demonstrated this to me. The hairs are attached with special knots, like macrame. Long strands have to be tied double or even treble.
After that, Marta stretches these fringes out in her main room , so
the hair won't get crumpled or broken. This is when the actual
wig-making begins. Evenings are the perfect time for weaving
threads of knotted hair into a fine piece of gauze . Mana does it
with a crochet hook, exactly as if she were making a woolly cap.
Her thin fingers with their pale nails work the threads nimbly
through the tiny holes. She begins with a little circle that will
eventually be at the very crown of the head, then adds more littlr
holes, gathering them together so that a close-fitting, semicircular shape begins to emerge beneath her fingers. For specific orders you have to be very accurate, so Mana keeps an exercise