The position of the Keeper of the Cemetery has been passed on
for over three generations now, however there is no information
as for its being caste or ritual. Since the foundation of the
stone city, the cemetery was kept by quite a number of people
and among them there were not only ones from the steppe. Our contemporary
keeper is actually of the late settlers, so it would be foolish
to attempt explaining the strange behavior of the keepers by attributing
it to their being members of the local death cult. In fact, people
of the steppe don’t actually have a fully developed death cult;
it is in some way integrated into the complicated cult of the
earth. The inhabitants of the steppe are afraid of their dead
and take them for filth. The custom of burying the dead by means
of putting them inside the earth they think for barbarism and
only the chosen ones, the most revered of their people are allowed
to be buried in this way. Moreover, occasions of such “filthy”
burial are accompanied by numerous rituals of cleansing.
Some primitive peoples look upon their dead just as if they were
living. Their mythology didn’t create a world where the dead could
live or await the meeting with the living. Not having the ability
to preserve the voices and feelings of the dead and not believing
in the forthcoming meeting with the beloved ancestors, these peoples
try to save the bones of their dead and give them the attributes
of the person. In this way they create an illusion of the person’s
presence in everyday life. Our steppe people are not of this kind.
I presume that the strange care and warmth with which our keeper
treats the dead has nothing to do with ritual or tradition. The
desire to care for the dead, to comfort them in the way he does
it, comes from the depth of the human soul. The keeper treats
the dead in this way because he sees no alternative. It is barely
possible that he loves the dead, but I’m sure he feels them too
well to treat them with indifference.
I think that the reason for such whole-hearted attention to the
dead comes from exceeding usage of twyrin and smoking the resinous
roots of saviur. There is no other explanation because the keeper
is no madman, in fact, he is quite a sensible person. Twyrin sharpened
his senses. By exceeding the allowed dosage of twyrin, living
in a scarcely populated area of the town, among the wide variety
of herbs, the keeper learnt of the torment of the dead too many
things that mortal men aren’t allowed to know. He can feel the
awful, hopeless pain of the dead with his skin, his nerves, and
therefore, he tries to ease it by feeding them sugar and pouring
warm milk on the graves. I think that their pain spread on him
shocked the man. He tries to ease his own pain by drinking more
twyrin, but his senses sharpen even more and the torment becomes
overwhelming.
He brought up his daughter, Laska, in this way. First, he made
his wife drink as much twyrin, then did the same to her. The baneful
influence of the herbs had an effect on his family members. Their
ears are extremely sensitive and the hairs on their skin seem
to move in response to any stirring on the cemetery land. His
wife used to be a pretty woman in her youth, but later turned
into something that looked like a creature from the other side.
By the time her hair went gray, she had grown it to be so dense
and heavy, as to conceal her whole body. If one were to look at
her from behind, her hair reached the ground and fell lower than
her waist from the front. Her nails became stone-hard and the
skin on her hands became dry and wrinkly because of the constant
digging that she was up to.
Obviously, the family cannot treat the dead for anything other
than their relatives, perhaps immobile, but present at all times.
The three live and sleep almost hugging the dead. The earth, full
of buried people lulls them on its dented hand; at night, when
the silent aura of the town isn’t broken by any foreign sounds,
they press their ears against their rough beds, their blood full
of the hallucinating twyrin, and listen to the sounds of the earth;
stars shed their cold light from above upon them, staring indifferently
at the three. The dead are everywhere around them, their tormented
screams and groans louder and louder. Sometimes, having just buried
a man in the morning, by the time dusk sets in, they hear the
stirring and discomfort of the new neighbor.
Being able to hear the speech of the dead and feel their pain,
the keeper can no longer forget about his ward. He cares about
them because feels with every molecule of his body that their
existence is not over. Perhaps he no longer thinks that this care
is utmost necessity, but takes it for an unpleasant, but essential
duty.
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