BARBARA THE SOUL-STEALER
Varvara, the stealer of souls. Barbara Langisz, whose coffin portrait hangs on the fourth floor of the Historical Museum on Rynok Square with her sweet, looping locks of hair. Mr. Viktor wrote about her in one of his books. It’s fiction, of course, he said, it’s fantasy. She’s the urban version of the niavka, the wood nymph with a hole in her back, who finds unsuspecting young males wandering in the forest to tickle them to death and fulfill her virginal unrealized desire in the netherworld. She died at the age of eighteen before fulfilling her dreams. She experienced only Thanatos without the eros. So she returns to the earthly realm from the beyond on the last Friday of each month in Lviv to seduce and bring back an unsuspecting young male soul to her realm. Nic
