GRIGIA
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suddenly ask with extreme courtesy and reserve: "Shall I not hold
your coat for you?" Once, when Homo said to a charming fourteen–
year-old girl: "Come in the hay"-simply because "the hay" suddenly
seemed as natural to him as fodder is to cattle-the childish face
under the pointed, ancestral kerchief showed not the slightest dismay:
there was only a mirthful puffing and flashing, a tipping this way
and that on the rocking shoe-boats, and almost a collapse on to herl
little bottom, with her rake still on her shoulder, the whole performance
conveying, with winsome clumsiness, comic-opera astonishment at the
man's intensity of desire.
Another time he asked a tall, Valkyrie-like peasant woman:
"Well, and are you still a virgin?" and chucked her under the chin
-this time, too, merely because such jests need a touch of virile
emphasis.
But she let her chin rest quietly on his hand and answered
solemnly : "Yes, of course. . . ."
Homo was taken aback. "You're still a virgin!" he repeated, and
laughed.
She giggled.
"Tell me!" he said, drawing closer and playfully shaking her chin.
Then she blew into his face and laughed. "Was once, of course!"
"If
I come to see you, what can I have?" he went on with his
cross-examination.
"Whatever you want."
"Everything I want?"
"Everything."
"Really everything?"
"Everything! Everything!" and her passion was so brilliantly
and passionately acted, that the theatrical quality of
it,
up here, nearly
5,000 feet above sea level, left him quite bewildered.
After this he could not rid himself of the feeling that this life,
which was brighter and more highly spiced than any life he had led
before, was no longer part of reality, but a play floating in the air.
Meanwhile summer had come. When he had received the first
letter and recognized his ailing little boy's childish handwriting, the
shock of happiness and secret possession had flashed right through him,
down to the soles of his feet. Their knowing where he was seemed
to give everything tremendous solidity. He was here: oh, now every-
