The Justice of a Body Snatcher
– a love story by renan goksin –
Episode one: ‘It actually tastes nicer’
Alphonsina was so beautiful she could make all the spring seasons in the entire world dissolve all at once. Few got to know the quirkiness concealed behind her unattainable beauty.
On the early morning of the 20th of April in the year 1764, on Good Friday, Alphonsina of the wealthy and pious Vanhausen family of Burgen would drink her usual cup of tea laced with nutmeg; but on this occasion she also stirred in a tablespoon of arsenic in order to escape the merciless life which awaited her. She was at the time seven to eight months pregnant. Her final thoughts were one of bemusement. “It actually tastes nicer,” she smiled as she sipped from the porcelain cup. She did have a quirky mind.
Proclaimed dead, Alphonsina was buried the same day in the hope her shame might not outlive her life. Despite the haste of the proceedings, her father Henrich Vanhausen in a last minute display of solicitude, took the gravedigger aside and whispering into his ear, instructed him to blend the topsoil with straw, a practice increasingly common amongst the poor as a modest means of protecting their lost ones against the dreaded spades of body-snatchers. It appeared that the destiny which had denied Alphonsina the enjoyment of her nobility and wealth in life would also, in death, abandon her to be buried like a pauper without the sanctuary of a well-guarded family tomb her privileged birth had once promised.
Herman dreamt of her.
to be continued…
next episode:2 – The Raven
