The doctor's wife blames me for her misfortunes, and she retaliates with ugly talk. She tells people I can kill chickens by wringing two fingers of my left hand in my right fist. She says I can make the rye get the damp rot by breathing slow and hot onto the side of the barn under a full moon. She says I can make a man forget his wife and child, walk barefoot in the snow to stand pleading at my door, that I can do this by touching him once, hard, on the back of the neck while he kneels at prayer. And she says all the women can do these things back where I come from. No matter how I resent this ugly talk, I can't deny that her chickens did die one by one, that her rye is utterly ruined now, that her husband comes again and again to stand all night long outside my door. He is there right now. I hear him calling my name soft and low, and it sounds like the moan of pigeons high in the rafters, chills me like the cold force of the wind off the hillside, driving tiny splinters of fear into my heart.
Once, earlier this evening, I opened the door just a little. "What do you want?" I called into the night cold, my breath a sudden white cloud touched by moonlight. Quickly, the doctor came forward to breathe that cloud. There was a wild, curdled look in his eyes when he said, "I want to come inside." I closed the door with a bang and put out all the lights. Later, I looked out the window, and he was still there, wearing no shoes, no hat or coat. He seemed not to notice the cold.
When I first came to this village, I thought I'd found a real home. Then people began to hear ugly talk, and they turned against me one by one. One by one, the way those chickens died. A few months ago, when there were still a few hens scratching in the doctor's yard, the priest came to ask me to stop killing them. "How," I asked, "could I kill them when I never go near them?" "Everyone knows what the women can do back where you come from," he answered. He wore a cross around his neck and held it in his hand while he talked to me. Later, when the mayor came to ask me not to spoil the oats, his neck bristled with charms against the evil eye. "Why not listen to my side of the story?" I asked, and he said I should be glad he was giving a woman like me fair warning.
Now I can hear the doctor begin to call my name again. The sound separates itself from the shush-hush of the wind and comes to my ears like painful music. When I look out, I see him turning, turning slowly, calling my name once with each rotation like a creaking waterwheel.
I had hoped that people might stop believing the ugly talk until Pavel began to listen, too. Then I lost all hope. Of course, he didn't believe that I could kill the chickens, didn't believe that I could spoil the grain, but when he heard that the doctor had walked to my door, barefoot through the snow, he asked, "What goes on between you?" I said, "Nothing. I don't even know him. I love only you." But again and again he heard the ugly talk: that, like the other women where I come from, I know all about amulets, spells and potions; that I drew the doctor's picture on my pillow to dream him into my life; that I made his shape from bread dough and devoured him; that I made his likeness out of cloth and pierced his heart; that I made his figure of clay and burned him in the oven of my desire. Finally, Pavel decided that the talk must be true. He said that the same thing happened to a man in the next village because of a woman like me. And when Pavel left me alone, I was truly alone.
Now no one but the doctor will speak to me. The women chant softly when I pass in the marketplace. Children throw stones. The vendors cross themselves before they take my money. My Pavel turns his head and walks past me without saying a word. I overhear more ugly talk and am afraid.
Although it's very late, I'm unable to sleep. One more time I go to the window. The doctor has stopped turning and stands looking up at the moon, his arms outstretched. When he begins to call my name again, I open the door and let him come inside.