16
ROBERT
MUS I L
the valley like the sea beyond the mouth of a river: one could scarcely
tell what was still the golden-yellow distance of the blessed plain and
where the vague cloud-floors of the sky had begun.
It was a fine life they led there. All day one was up in the
mountains, working at old blocked mine shafts, or driving new ones
into the mountainside, or down at the mouth of the valley where a
wide road was to be built: and always one was in gigantic air that was
already soft, pregnant with the imminent melting of the snow. They
pOured out money among the people and held sway like gods. They
had something for them all to do, men and women alike. The men
they organized into working parties and sent them up the mountains,
where they had to spend the week; the women they used as porters,
sending them in columns up the almost impassable mountainside,
bringing provisions and spare parts. The stone schoolhouse was turned
into a depot where their stores were kept and whence they were
distributed. There a commanding male voice rapped out orders, sum–
moning one by one the women who stood waiting and chattering,
and the big basket on each woman's back would be loaded until her
knees gave and the veins in her neck swelled. When one of those
pretty young women had been loaded up, her eyes stared and her
lips hung open; then she took her place in the column and, at a sign,
these now silent beasts of burden slowly began to set one foot before
the other up the long, winding track into the heights. But it was a
rare and precious burden that they bore, bread, meat and wine, and
there was no need to be too scrupulous about the tools either, so that
besides their wages a good deal that was useful found its way to their
own households, and therefore they carried the loads willingly and
even thanked the men who had hrought these blessings into the
mountains. And it was wonderful to feel: here one was not, as every–
where else in the world, scrutinized to see what sort of human being
one was-whether one was reliable, powerful and to be feared, or
delicate and beautiful-but whatever sort of human being one was,
and no matter what one's ideas about life and the world were, here
one met with love because one had brought blessings. Love ran ahead
like a herald, love was made ready everywhere like a bed freshly made
up for the guest, and each living being hore gifts of welcome in
his eyes. The women could let that be freely seen, but sometimes
as one passed a meadow there might be an old peasant there, waving
his scythe like Death in person.
