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DID YOU KNOW THAT A CITY CAN DIE AS EASILY as a person? It is true, I promise you It dies in the saovernor’s heart, a quick poisoning of rivers And there are cancers that begin slowly, a pinprick in a bookseller’s shop in a dust-clouded alley, a lump in a rainspout splashed with yellow leaves Who would ever notice such a little thing tucked away like that, in a city of pillars and plus inevitably are It can be devoured, torn lier cities, by arer ardens and commemorative war statues

Or by so which has come to like its taste

I suppose you could call utter, but it would be more apt to call me a creature of appetite

Would you like to hear about obbling peacocks, you immediately tell reat-uncle on the distaff side is I should offer no less—I had no ree immaculate?

There was a reat hunger, suffered it the way so illness or an arrow in the foot He was a er, he was not unhandsome, and married well His as lovelier than a year of Aprils, black of hair and eye He was called Maciej; she was called Malgorzata

Because of the fortunate oodly number of tenant farmers, which for a time he treated as well as any lord lect at all tier beside which Maciej’s would seem but moderate and mild But it came to pass that for three harvests the land was cruel and hard, and yielded up barely enough to feed all that tilled it, and the house on the hill had to satisfy itself with selling tapestries and suchlike in order to provide apples and pig flesh and cabbages

In the fourth winter, there was no crop at all Wind howled across the fields, bare and bristling as a new monk’s head Maciej and his fair wife stared at an empty table, and so too did all of those orked that land It was difficult, as such tig chickens had been slurped to the bone I would not like to tell you what the most wretched of them did to survive

In the depths of this winter Maciej conceived a great hunger in him, conceived it the way some women will conceive a child His belly snarled and lurched; he was blind with it, clutching at the very drapes to fill the hole in hi, and it was a rich, green spring, full of new laht by syons from over the hills Speechless with relief, Maciej ate, and ate He paced his halls, his sto flesh and cabbages as quickly as he could—but there was no surcease for the unlucky lord! Yet he did not grow fat, for as quickly as he ate he was hungry again, his body burning so hot and bright that at night, the farmers needed no candles: the house on the hill was incandescent with the starving lord

Finally, when harvest caht her husband would be sated Into his mouth went cider and beer, hazelnuts and venison, apples and currants and sheep shanks Into his belly went squash and pies and hollering chickens; into his gullet went beef knuckles andleft for the farive over to the house on the hill before they starved theorzata, black of hair and eye, went to theive over their anireat that etables and fruits could not touch it All would be repaid, she pro when the winter was at its worst? They could survive winter; they knew this now

At first, they surrendered ox and chicken, goat and goose, even horse and dog All these Maciej ate at his groaning table, to bone and hoof—all save the teeth, which even he could not stomach These teeth he tossed into a corner of his hall when he had sucked the rew His endless feast held no joy for him now: His belly burned and he could not slake it, could not eventable He wept as he ate, for he could not stop, and he hated the taste of gristle and bone—but he could not stop

Before long their holdings were eorzata sent to her distant kin for ever larger and ers and wolves disappeared into the house on the hill, which lit the nights forand weeping His jaw crushed leopard and lion, griffin and even the odd unicorn He did not notice their taste, but he ate them all the same, and the house on the hill blazed

But even this plenty could not last and the kin of Malgorzata refused to send s, and even the draperies had been stripped to feed the unfortunate lord He had begun to gnaw at the cornices and baseboards, his tears falling fro to suckle at the reliefs of blosso

Softly, as was her way, Malgorzata drew him down and sat him at the table which had become the rack on which his bones cried out He looked up at her with hunger-haggard eyes, red as plague and twice as hollow He looked at her, ashaer

“It is all right, husband I have known this day would come”

She laid her hands on the table, s blankets in the sun and begging livestock froainst the juice-stained grain of the wood