Five Women Page 3

  There was plenty of incident. For instance, a man might break his leg, and two others would carry him into camp on their crossed arms. Or suddenly the shout of: "Take co-ver!" would ring out, and everyone would run for cover because a great rock was being dynamited for the building of the road. Once, at such a moment, a shower swept a few flickers of moisture over the grass. In the shelter of a bush on the far side of the stream there was a fire burning, forgotten in the excitement, though only a few minutes earlier it had been very important: standing near it, the only watcher left, was a young birch-tree. And still dangling by one leg from this birch was the black pig. The fire, the birch, and the pig were now alone. The pig had squealed even while one man was merely leading it along on a rope, talking to it, urging it to come on. Then it squealed all the louder as it saw two other men come delightedly running towards it. It was frantic at being seized by the ears and unceremoniously dragged forward. It straddled all four legs in resistance, but the pain in its ears forced it to make little jumps onward.

  Finally, at the other end of the bridge, someone had grabbed a hatchet and struck it on the forehead with the blade. From that moment on everything went more quietly. Both fore-legs buckled at the same instant, and the little pig did not scream again until the knife was actually in its throat. There was a shrieking, twitching blare, which sank down into a death-rattle that was no more than a pathetic snore. All these were things Homo saw for the first time in his life.

  When dusk fell, they all gathered in the little vicarage, where they had rented a room to serve as their mess. Admittedly the meat, which came the long way up the mountain only twice a week, was often going off, and not infrequently one had a touch of food-poisoning. But still all of them came here as soon as it was dark, stumbling along the invisible tracks with their little lanterns. For what caused them more suffering than food-poisoning was melancholy and boredom, even though everything was so beautiful. They swilled it away with wine. After an hour a cloud of sadness and ragtime hung over the room. The gramophone went round and round, like a gilded hurdy-gurdy trundling over a soft meadow spattered with wonderful stars. They no longer talked to each other. They merely talked. What should they have said to each other, a literary man of independent means, a business man, a former inspector of prisons, a mining engineer, and a retired major? They communicated in sign-language—and this even though they used words: words of discomfort, of relative comfort, of homesickness—it was an animal language. Often they would argue with superfluous intensity about some question that concerned none of them, and would reach the point of insulting each other, and the next day seconds would be passing to and fro. Then it would turn out that nobody had meant a word of it. They had only done it to kill time, and even if none of them had ever really known anything of the world, each of them felt he had behaved as uncouthly as a butcher, and this filled them with resentment against each other.

  It was that standard psychic unit which is Europe. It was idleness as undefined as at other times their occupation was. It was a longing for wife, child, home comforts. And interspersed with this, ever and again, there was a gramophone. "Rosa, we're going to Lodz, Lodz, Lodz ..." or: "Whate'er befall I still recall...." It was an astral emanation of powder and gauze, a mist of far-off variety-shows and European sexuality. Indecent jokes exploded into guffaws, each joke, it seemed, beginning: "You know the one about the Jew in the train.... " Only once somebody asked: "How far is it to Babylon?" And then everyone fell silent, and the major put on the "Tosca" record and, as it was about to start, said mournfully: "Once I wanted to marry Geraldine Farrar." Then her voice came through the horn, out into the room, and this woman's voice that all these drunken men were marvelling at seemed to step into a lift, and the next instant the lift was flashing away up to the top with her, arriving nowhere, coming down again, bouncing in the air. Her skirts billowed out with the movement, with this up and down, this long lying close to, clinging tightly to, one note, and again there was the rise and fall, and with it all this streaming away as if for ever, and yet again and yet again and again this being seized by yet another spasm, and again a streaming out: a voluptuous ecstasy. Homo felt it was that naked voluptuousness which is distributed throughout all the things there are in cities, a lust no longer distinguishable from manslaughter, or jealousy, or business, or motor-car racing—ah, it was no longer lust, it was a craving for adventure—no, it was not a craving for adventure either, it was a knife slashing down out of the sky, a destroying angel, angelic madness—the war?

  From one of the many long fly-papers trailing from the ceiling a fly had dropped in front of him and was lying on its back, poisoned, in the middle of one of those pools that the light of the paraffin-lamps made in the scarcely perceptible wrinkles in the oilcloth—pools with all that sadness of very early spring, as if a strong wind had swept over them after rain. The fly made a few efforts, each weaker than the last, to turn over, and from time to time a second fly that was feeding on the oilcloth ran to see how it was getting on. Homo also kept a careful watch—the flies were a great nuisance here. But when death came, the dying fly folded its six little legs together, to a point, and kept them straight up like that, and then it died in its pale spot of light on the oilcloth as in a graveyard of stillness that could not be measured in inches or decibels, and which was nevertheless there. Someone was just saying: "They say someone's worked out that all the Rothschilds put together haven't enough money to pay for a third-class ticket to the moon."

  Homo murmured to himself: "... Kill, and yet feel the presence of God? ... Feel the presence of God and yet kill?" And with a flick of his forefinger he sent the fly right into the face of the major sitting opposite, which caused another incident and thus kept them occupied until the next evening.

  By then he had already known Grigia for some time, and perhaps the major knew her too. Her name was Lene Maria Lenzi. That sounded like Selvot and Gronleit or Malga Mendana, had a ring as of amethyst crystals and of flowers, but he preferred to call her Grigia, pronounced Greej a, after the cow she had, which she called Grigia, Grey One. At such times she would be sitting at the edge of her meadow, in her mauve-brown skirt and dotted kerchief, the toes of her wooden clogs sticking up into the air, her hands clasped over her bright apron, and she would look as naturally lovely as a slender little poisonous mushroom, while now and then she called out to the cow grazing lower down the hillside. There were actually only two things she called: "Come a-here!" and: "Come a-up!" when the cow strayed too far. But if her cries were unavailing, there would follow an indignant: "Hey, you devil, come a-here!", and in the last resort she herself would go hurtling down the hillside like a flung stone, the next best piece of stick in her hand, to be aimed at the Grey One as soon as she was within throwing distance. Since, however, the cow Grigia had a distinct taste for straying valley-wards, the whole of this operation would be repeated with the regularity of pendulum-clockwork that is constantly dropping lower and constantly being wound higher again. Because this was so paradisically senseless, he teased her by calling her Grigia herself. He could not conceal from himself that his heart beat faster when from a distance he caught sight of her sitting there; that is the way the heart beats when one suddenly walks into the smell of pine-needles or into the spicy air rising from the floor of woods where a great many mushrooms grow. In this feeling there was always a residual dread of Nature. And one must not believe that Nature is anything but highly unnatural: she is earthy, edgy, poisonous, and inhuman at all points where man does not impose his will upon her. Probably it was just this that fascinated him in this peasant woman, and the other half of it was inexhaustible amazement that she did so much resemble a woman. One would, after all, be equally amazed, going through the woods, to encounter a lady balancing a tea-cup.

  "Do you come in," she too had said, the first time he had knocked at her door. She was standing by the hearth, with a pot on the fire, and since she could not leave it, she made a courteous gesture towards the bench. After a while
she wiped her hand on her apron, smiling, and held it out to her visitors: it was a well-formed hand, as velvety-rough as the finest sandpaper or as garden soil trickling between the fingers. And the face that went with the hand was a faintly mocking face, with delicate, graceful bones that one saw best in profile, and a mouth that he noticed very particularly. This mouth was curved like a Cupid's bow, yet it was also compressed as happens when one gulps, and this gave it, with its subtlety, a determined roughness, and to this roughness again a little trace of merriment, which was perfectly in keeping with the wooden shoes that the slight figure grew up out of as out of wild roots.... They had come to arrange some matter or other, and when they left, the smile was there again, and the hand rested in his perhaps a moment longer than when they had come. These impressions, which would have been so insignificant in town, out there in this solitude amounted to a shock, as though a tree had moved its branches in a way not to be explained by any stirring of the wind or a bird's taking flight.

  A short time later he had become a peasant woman's lover. This change that had taken place in him much occupied his mind, for beyond doubt it was not something he had done, but something that had happened to him.

  When he came the second time, Grigia at once sat down on the bench beside him, and when—to see how far he could already go—he put his hand on her lap and said: "You are the beauty of them all", she let his hand rest on her thigh and merely laid her own upon it. With that they were pledged to each other. And now he kissed her to set the seal upon it, and after the kiss she smacked her lips with a sound like that smack of satisfaction with which lips sometimes let go of the rim of a glass after greedily drinking from it. He was indeed slightly startled by this indecorum and was not offended when she rejected any further advances; he did not know why, he knew nothing at all of the customs and dangers of this place, and, though curious, let himself be put off for another day. "In the hay," Grigia had said, and when he was already in the doorway, saying goodbye, she said: "Goodbye till soon", and smiled at him.

  Even on his way home he realised he was already happy about what had happened: it was like a hot drink suddenly beginning to take effect after an interval. The notion of going to the hay-barn with her—opening a heavy wooden door, pulling it to after one, and the darkness increasing with each degree that it closes, until one is crouching on the floor of a brown, perpendicular darkness—delighted him as though he were a child about to play a trick. He remembered the kisses and felt the smack of them as though a magic band had been laid around his head. Picturing what was to be, he could not help thinking of the way peasants eat: they chew slowly, smacking their lips, relishing every mouthful to the full. And it is the same with the way they dance, step after step. Probably it was the same with everything else. His legs stiffened with excitement at these thoughts, as though his shoes were already sticking in the earth. The women lower their eyelids and keep their faces quite stiff, a defensive mask, so as not to be disturbed by one's curiosity. They let scarcely a moan escape them. Motionless as beetles feigning death, they concentrate all their attention on what is going on within them.

  And so too it was. With the rim of her clog Grigia scraped together into a pile the scrap of winter hay that was still there there, and smiled for the last time when she bent to the hem of her skirt like a lady adjusting her garter.

  It was all just as simple and just as magical as the thing about the horses, the cows, and the dead pig. When they were behind the beam, and heavy boots came thumping along the stony path outside, pounding by and fading into the distance, his blood pulsed in his throat; but Grigia seemed to know even at the third footstep whether the footsteps were coming this way or not. And she talked a magical language. A nose she called a neb, and legs she called shanks. An apron was for her a napron. Once when he threatened not to come again, she laughed and said: "I'll bell thee!"

  And he did not know whether he was disconcerted or glad of it. She must have noticed that, for she asked: "Does it rue thee? Does it rue thee much?" Such words were like the patterns of the aprons and kerchiefs and the coloured border at the top of the stocking, already somewhat assimilated to the present because of having come so far, but still mysterious visitants. Her mouth was full of them, and when he kissed it he never knew whether he loved this woman or whether a miracle was being worked upon him and Grigia was only part of a mission linking him ever more closely with his beloved in eternity. Once Grigia said outright: "Thou'rt thinking other things, I can tell by thy look", and when he tried to pretend it was not so, she said: "Ah, all that's but glozing." He asked her what that meant, but she would not explain, and he racked his brains over it for a long time before it occurred to him that she meant he was glossing something over. Or did she mean something still more mysterious?

  One may feel such things intensely or not. One may have principles, in which case it is all only an aesthetic joke that one accepts in passing. Or one has no principles, or perhaps they have slackened somewhat, as was the case with Homo when he set out on his journey, and then it may happen that these manifestations of an alien life take possession of whatever has become masterless. Yet they did not give him a new self, a self for sheer happiness become ambitious and earth-bound; they merely lodged, in irrelevantly lovely patches, within the airy outlines of his body. Something about it all made Homo sure that he was soon to die, only he did not yet know how or when. His old life had lost all strength; it was like a butterfly growing feebler as autumn draws on.

  Sometimes he talked to Grigia about this. She had a way of her own of asking about it: as respectful as if it were something entrusted to her, and quite without self-seeking. She seemed to regard it as quite in order that beyond the mountains there were people he loved more than her, whom he loved with his whole soul. And he did not feel this love growing less; it was growing stronger, being ever renewed. It did not grow dim, but the more deeply coloured it became, the more it lost any power to decide anything for him in reality or to prevent his doing anything. It was weightless and free of all earthly attachment in that strange and wonderful way known only to one who has had to reckon up with his life and who henceforth may wait only for death. However healthy he had been before, at this time something within him rose up and was straight, like a lame man who suddenly throws away his crutches and walks on his own.

  This became strongest of all when it came to hay-making time. The hay was already mown and dried and only had to be bound and fetched in, up from the mountain meadows. Homo watched it from the nearest height, which was like being high in a swing, flying free above it all. The girl—quite alone in the meadow, a polka-dotted doll under the enormous glass bell of the sky—was doing all sorts of things in her efforts to make a huge bundle. She knelt down in it, pulling the hay towards her with both arms. Very sensually she lay on her belly across the bale and reached underneath it. She turned over on her side and stretched out one arm as far as she could. She climbed up it on one knee, then on both. There was something of the dor-beetle about her, Homo thought—the scarab, of course. At last she thrust her whole body under the bale, now bound with a rope, and slowly raised it on high. The bundle was much bigger than the bright, slender little human animal that was carrying it —or was that not Grigia?

  When, in search of her, Homo walked along the long row of hay-stooks that the peasant women had set up on the level part of the hillside, they were resting. He could scarcely believe his eyes, for they were lying on their hillocks of hay like Michelangelo's statues in the Medici chapel in Florence, one arm raised to support the head, and the body reposing as in flowing water. And when they spoke with him and had to spit, they did so with much art: with three fingers they would twitch out a handful of hay, spit into the hollow, and then stop it up again. One might be tempted to laugh; only if one mixed with them, as Homo did when he was in search of Grigia, one might just as easily start in sudden fright at this crude dignity. But Grigia was seldom among them, and when at last he found her, she would perhaps be crouching
in a potato-field, laughing at him. He knew she had nothing on but two petticoats and that the dry earth that was running through her slim, rough fingers was also touching her body. But the thought of it was no longer strange to him. By now his inner being had become curiously familiar with the touch of earth, and perhaps indeed it was not at the time of the hay-harvest at all that he met her in that field: in this life he was leading there was no longer any certainty about time or place.

  The hay-barns were filled. Through the chinks between the boards a silvery light poured in. The hay poured out green light. Under the door was a wide gold border.

  The hay smelt sour—like the Negro drinks that are made of fermented fruits and human saliva. One had only to remember that one was living among savages here, and the next instant one was intoxicated by the heat of this confined space filled to the roof with fermenting hay.

  Hay bears one up in all positions. One can stand in it up to the knees, at once unsure of one's footing and all too firmly held fast. One can lie in it as in the Hand of God, and would gladly wallow in God's Hand like a little dog or a little pig. One may lie obliquely, or almost upright like a saint ascending to heaven in a green cloud.

  Those were bridal days and ascension days.

  But one time Grigia declared it could not go on. He could not bring her to say why. The sharpness round the mouth and the little furrow plumb between the eyes, which before had appeared only with the effort of deciding which would be the nicest barn for their next meeting, now boded ill weather somewhere in the offing. Were they being talked about? But the other women, who did perhaps notice something, were always as smiling as over a thing one is glad to see. There was nothing to be got out of Grigia. She made excuses and was more rarely to be found, and she watched her words as carefully as any mistrustful farmer.