GRIGIA
25
it was a knife slashing down out of the sky, a destroying angel, angelic
madness-the war?
From one of the many long flypapers 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 oilcioth-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 Greeja, 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
